The Pandemic, the Movement, and the Awakening

Three very different events are all happening in the world today:  A global pandemic that is killing people, a movement for racial justice in the United States, and a spiritual awakening by indigenous cultures.  How all this interconnects and plays out no one knows. 

THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC  

Scientists have been warning about a coming pandemic for years because this is not the first pandemic and unfortunately will not be the last.  

We have had pandemics throughout history and COVID-19 is only the latest pandemic. 

In the 14th Century, the Black Death a/k/a bubonic plague caused by fleas killed up to 200 million people. 

Smallpox has been around for 3,000 years with many outbreaks and has killed unknown millions of people. 

The 1918 flu pandemic infected one in every three people on the planet and killed over 50 to 100 million people. 

HIV pandemic is still with us and has killed over 32 million people and infected 75 million with more added every day.

The coronavirus pandemic originated in Wuhan, China, and came from bats that jumped to pangolins that are widely sold in wild meat markets in China. 

Bats carry hundreds of coronaviruses and they infect other animals that have closer contact with humans and that is how viruses are spread, according to Dr. Kevin Olival with EcoHealth Alliance who conducts research on emerging infectious diseases. 

The SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak in 2003 came from a coronavirus bat and jumped to civets.  MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak in 2012 came from a coronavirus bat and jumped to camels to people.

Diseases that transmit from animals to people are called zoonotic diseases and are common around the world.   Scientists predict even more dangerous viruses in the future because there are over 1.6 million viruses lurking in mammals and birds and half might have the potential to jump to humans.  

CURRENT STATISTICS OF COVID-19 

As of July 27, 2020, the global total confirmed cases of COVID-19 tops 16.4+  million with over 651,882  thousand deaths.

In the United States, the total cases of COVID-19 tops 4.2+ million with 150+ thousand deaths. 

The State of Georgia has total confirmed cases of COVID over 168+ thousand with over 3,500+  deaths.

The U.S. is number one in the world in COVID cases and still rising while other countries return to normalcy.   Trump’s agenda of lies, denial, misinformation, and incompetence continues to allow the virus to spread and kill Americans.  

THE MOVEMENT FOR RACIAL JUSTICE

From the 1960s civil rights movement to the 2020s Black Lives Matter movement people are demanding justice, police reform, and an end to systemic racism.    

People are tearing down racist confederate monuments, as white supremacists cry that their heritage of slavery, lynching, and racism is being violated. 

Protests against injustice are happening all over the country since George Floyd was murdered by police on May 25, 2020.    It was the last straw after watching daily videos of black people being murdered by police and white vigilantes for years.       

In response to the call for justice, the White Supremacist- in-Chief is sending his secret federal thugs into cities that are run by Democratic mayors to brutalize citizens that protest against police brutality.   

Trump is criminalizing protests and violating citizens’ Constitutional rights to free speech.

Ted Wheeler, Mayor of Portland, and  Kate Brown, Governor of Oregon, did not ask for the federal troops and have demanded that Trump remove federal troops from Portland.   

Under the guise of “law and order” Trump is deliberately making the situation worse by actually creating the violence so he can say to his cult followers, “see how dangerous these radical leftist anarchists are and I’m the only one with the courage to stop them.” 

Trump is positioning himself as the “law and order” president but eight men from his administration are convicted felons and Trump is the most lawless president in history.

The reality on the ground is that moms, young people, veterans, the Mayor of Portland, and peaceful protesters are being beaten with batons, shot with rubber bullets, and sprayed with tear gas by Trump’s thugs.   

A Navy veteran’s hand and arm was broken, a young man was shot in the head with rubber bullets that fractured his skull, and a “Wall of Moms” trying to protect peaceful protesters were sprayed with tear gas by Trump’s federal troops.

Tear gas targets the nose, eyes, throat, and lungs and hurts the eyes, causes coughing, rise in blood pressure, mucus secretions, nausea, vomiting, and difficulty in breathing and occasionally death. 

It’s ironic that a chemical that hurts the lungs and makes it difficult to breathe is being used on citizens who are exercising their First Amendment Rights during a pandemic of the COVID-19 virus that targets the lungs and makes it difficult to breathe.   And the protests were sparked by George Floyd being choked to death by police as he said, “I can’t breathe.”  

CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post and many other news sources are finally saying what people on the ground have known for years, that Trump is destroying Democracy and establishing an authoritarian fascist regime.

If you have been a victim of federal repression that undermines your civil rights, including the use of unidentified federal agents that grab citizens off the streets who are peacefully protesting, call the National Lawyers Guild hotline to report federal abuse 212-679-2811.

THE AWAKENING

When African Americans talk about being “woke” it refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice.  Following the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, it became entwined with the Black Lives Matter movement.  

Today, the BLM movement is waking up more people to systemic racism, the need for police reform, injustice in the criminal justice system, and the widening inequalities between the haves and the have nots.

INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND PREDICTIONS

Indigenous leaders tell us that COVID-19 and other health epidemics are directly connected to climate change and deforestation.   

“The coronavirus is telling the world what Indigenous Peoples have been saying for thousands of years — if we do not help protect biodiversity and nature, we will face this and even worse threats,” Levi Sucre Romero, a BriBri Indigenous person from Costa Rica and co-coordinator of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests (AMPB), reported in Canada’s National Observer. 

“Nature, the first people, and the spirit of our ancestors are giving great warnings. If we human beings do not wake up to the warnings, the great purification will come to destroy this world—just as previous worlds were destroyed,” is a warning that Thomas Banyacya, a Hopi spiritual leader gave to the United Nations in 1948

What we are experiencing is life out of balance. Those who understand nature and natural law, who can still feel the heartbeat of our relations and their connection to land and life, will have a better chance of surviving as Mother Earth cleanses herself of the greed, violence, and pollution that is destroying our world,” Cultural Survival reports.  

https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/life-out-balance-it-too-late

Today we see fires raging across Mother Earth, oceans are dying, the Arctic is melting, sea levels are rising, communities are flooding, rivers are rerouted and dammed up, the largest mass extinction of plants, medicine flowers, and animals since the loss of the dinosaurs is well underway, world hunger is on the rise, and war is endless, Cultural Survival reports.  

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves,”  Chief Seattle said in the 1800s   

 “I see a time in seven generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the sacred tree of life and the whole earth will become one circle again,” Crazy Horse predicted. 

The Seventh Generation Principle is based on an ancient Iroquois philosophy that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future.  

Today, the seventh generation is calling for an Earth Revolution; an opportunity to create a better world, a sustainable and renewable world, a world that honors natural law and the rights of Mother Earth and all living things. 

GLOBAL AWAKENING

There are global movements happening as more people are realizing the cruelty, injustice, division, and environmental destruction happening in the world today.

We see the change in Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg leading a global youth climate movement.  We see it in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe closing the Dakota access pipeline.  We see it in the Black Lives Matter movement to end systemic or institutional racism. 

Younger leaders are emerging all over the world with new ideas, values, and styles of leadership to change the world.   They know that a better world, a more humane world, and a more just world is possible.

If we are to avoid the catastrophic consequences of climate change, more people must become aware or woke to the damage being done to the environment and stop raping and polluting Mother Earth.

written by Gloria Tatum