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On My Diagnosis with COVID-19 and This Disaster of a Month

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Hello friends and family, so much to say, so I have no particular order to this. I apologize.

How September Went

I couldn’t believe that a sinus attack from under an overhead fan on 9/5 would lead me to be stuck in bed so much for the next month. I couldn’t believe that it would lead me to being so hard to breathe beyond shallow breaths when I stand up, thanks to what I thought was just fluid build up in my chest (Tree of Life Healthcare helped with azithromycin, which helped Quite a bit). I couldn’t believe that, on the night RBG died, my making the mistake of sitting up (or laying on one side) the wrong way in bed would twist my Left shoulder and rib cage so bad I could barely breathe in bed without pain, erasing any gains I had made. That sent me to the inevitable (likely expensive) Emergency room visit at Piedmont on Sunday 9/20, an x-ray of my chest and at least six different neddle stickings, where they stated 1) I was COVID-negative (again yay) 2) I was running an internal fever (maybe because I was in a heavy jacket in a hot car, but that wasn’t even caught when I walked in front of the waiting room fever thermometer), 3) I didn’t have pneumonia but I was close to it because of the fluid build up from all the muscle coughing of the phlegm (Whoops) 4) I have bronchitis (damn).

So Tylenol greatly helped with the shoulder (the ribcage, at least until 9/22, stopped being an issue), and I was switched to Medrol to clear up the bronchitis (and post-nasal drip?), and I was on Zyrtec and Flonase for the sinus. Still coughing sometimes, breathing hard when I stand up.

The election news was part of my waking fever dreams in bed as I fought this back and shoulder pain. I did not sleep even a bit, and Sunday night was only a bit more restful because I was sweating bullets the whole time. Hopefully tonight is better.

But I teared up this afternoon when thinking about everything – the sinus attack, the cowardly unsuccessful drive-by shooting on our building, the deaths from COVID-19 hitting the families of people I know, the death of RBG. So many people have it worse than me, than us, and I don’t deserve the help I’ve received. I should’ve gone earlier to the ER, but I felt like I could sleep this off, and surprise surprise, it did not help.

I sincerely felt like that weekend was a good moment to give up on life, to just F off and die. I was not good with this pain, and not with this news, and not with this future. Mom and RJ and everyone who donated anything to me pulled me though this. I did not want to go to the Emergency room because of the expense. The doctor at Tree of Life and Pops both said to go, even as I literally grasped to the sheets and fought the urge.

(I really don’t know if it helped or was more depressing that the assistant who processed the prescription after they had finished with me said that she herself is on the hook for $1500. This is also the first time I’ve been in Piedmont’s Emergency Room since Connie died there in 2013, and I’m surprised that it didn’t mess me up like I feared it would.)

But then I spent a week of forcing the blood sputum out onto tissue, but finding it difficult to breathe when standing up or walking around, the pain had moved significantly from my left shoulder and ribcage to my right chest and right shoulder blade.

So Mom was worried that the Medrol and Tylenol wasn’t helping me enough, and the next Sunday she took me again to Piedmont North Columbus for a second opinion. They performed a CT scan for a blood clot on my lungs, and to see if it may be COVID-19.

Aftermath

And that’s how I have been diagnosed with COVID-19. I have also been diagnosed with “moderate” (in the view of St Francis-Emory) blood clots on my lungs resulting from COVID-19. I was ambulanced to St Francis that night, and I underwent a battery of IV injections (two of which were azithromycin IVs in which the IV “needle” was blown after 24 hours of usage, and the skin was burning and reddening). Heparin and azatacam IVs, pills of decadron and vitamins later, and I was finally released on Wednesday to a new, maybe reduced lifespan.

I am scared for my life, for my Mom’s life, for my nephew’s life. Since May 17, I did the most to stay at home – I have no car – and to stay away from people, but somehow I caught it early in September and it may have done a number to my lungs. Did someone bring it to Mom’s church? Did my nephew get it from CSU or his friends? Did it get it from Columbus Police when they were questioning me about that shooting, since CPD OFFICERS NEVER WEAR A MASK?And what about my life after this?

From so many posts I’ve read on Twitter, people test positive, then quarantine themselves for two weeks or so, then get released when they stop exhibiting the symptoms for another two weeks, and are classified as “recovered”. But then so many of those who are listed this way come back with blood clots and strokes out the wazoo, ending up in ICU and often dying or having amputations from COVID-caused clotting all over their bodies.I don’t know how significant it is that they caught the COVID while I was already clotting. I was weeks into feeling lightheaded when standing up and walking when they caught it on Sunday.

So I’m facing not only the likelihood that I’ll be taking blood thinners such as this expensive Eliquis for $500 that they want me on for at least the next 3 months for observation, but also the likelihood of long-haul COVID complications (like a stroke) for anywhere between the next year to the rest of my life, even after I test negative for the virus and the pandemic begins to fade, whenever that happens. This majorly sucks, but I also have some decisions to make about how I’m going to live my life after this. I can’t be sedentary like I have been since May, because pneumonia may very well set in, and will have to be outside a lot more, while at the same time I’ll have to be careful about any accident I make, such as biting my tongue or lips while eating. I need a 9-5 job. I need health insurance and Medicaid. I need help, but so do so many people. I think of Demetrius and how this hit his family so bad.

I don’t know what this is going to do to me. I admit to having suicidal thoughts in the past because of some mistakes in decision-making. Now that this catastrophe has happened to me, I have thought about going the disgraced Korean politicians’ route and simply dying in the woods away from everyone.

But seeing so much pain and death and destruction this year, the sound of people screaming in pain in the waiting room and throwing up buckets of blood while I was coughing up mere clots of blood in my sputum in another room, and now worrying about my Mom and nephew (even though they both have Tricare), I guess have to fight this now, no matter what happens in the election and afterward.

I’m hovering above hell, and I’m divided on whether I want to fall and give up. But so are so many people right now. So many are hurting right now, and we’re not the only ones out here wondering what will happen to us, or to this species.I read that Joe Biden mentioned at the first (shitshow of a) debate that 1/1000 African Americans have died from this disease (and he was right). How do you put that back together? We’re already punching above our brokenness as a community. We didn’t fucking need this disease.

Yes, we have an even more fucked-up election season than 2016, and we have so many people who are in power who want to screw their fellow citizens out of their civil rights by any means (un)necessary and flagrant (if they can’t kill them outright). Yes, RBG is dead, SCOTUS might as well be dead to us, Democrats are fighting their damnedest for more than a 50-50 Senate and keeping Warnock in a January runoff while trying to protect the franchise across all 50 states. And our hopes to save the ACA, legal abortion, LGBT rights, the VRA and so many other rights now hinge more on winning the other two branches in one month from now and holding on to them for more than a 2-year interim. Easy peasy.

But we are once again wondering whether the fires out west, or the fires and warming out in Siberia which fit the modus operandi of their fucked-up president, or the fires in the Amazon and the Pantanal which are encouraged by Brazil’s fucked-up president, are the ending of the species as much as COVID-19. So many of those houses, undoubtedly, shouldn’t have been (or shouldn’t have had to have been) placed within or near combustible forest areas.

And we are wondering when we as a country will fess up to the fucked-up, inhumane way we built our cities and municipal governments, from how the police are built (incl. What they were built for, the hardware they demand for their share of the city budget, the lack of investment into other sectors which could prevent or mitigate crime before it happens like adequate housing, healthcare, food, etc.) to how city governments are elected and structured, to how they build cities in zones to keep single-family homes away from the multi-family housing and taking up the vast majority of land, all of which are destructive to the indigenous, to working class, to health, to the environment, to affordability.

Where am I in all of this? What can I do in all of this?

Because these fights will last after the election. These fights will last beyond the next 2 years.And I wonder whether I want to stay on and fight – or even to be a part of the network of solutions to seek a new status quo after this fight is resolved. Or do I want to slow my pace and pick my fights. But numerous people in their own situations reached out to me with donations to help us pay rent and electric this month, and I’m reaching out to them privately. If I can’t get your name on Facebook please PM me. I didn’t expect that this would happen to me despite my best efforts over the last 4 months to stay away from everyone. But so many of you donated to help us stay above water. Thank you so much.

And some advice for when you get treated: if the IV has been in the same spot for over 24 hours, don’t let the nurses use that same IV to inject azithromycin, because no matter the speed of the injection it will burn and redden like hell. Tell them to take the needle out first and find another vein to inject azithromycin, and it will not be an hours-long pain afterward.

This will haunt me for the rest of my life. And despite everything that is happening to this species (and planet), I want to live a long life, into my old age, and fight this shit. I want to recover. I feel like I’ve been robbed.I also wonder whether this treatment will convince me to become religious again, like, progressive religious. Or it may commit me to be even more humanist.

But most of all, this is forcing me to take time more seriously. This is putting me on edge. I’m more irritable and angry that this is how I will spend the rest of my life, running from this fucking disease when so many are trying to do the same thing at this exact moment.

And will I survive my 30’s?

Will I survive whatever will happen in October? November? January? Should I volunteer for the vaccine and chance my life?

I am wondering whether anywhere is safe in this world to live, or will be safe to live even after a vaccine is found and distributed to the masses.

You see? I’m now swinging between despair over myself and resolve for those outside of myself. I may go crazy because of this.

Anyway, this will continue to be a struggle. My links are below:

Abolish Legislative Districts

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In which I explain why I’m radicalized on legislative districts:

We talk about the need for nonpartisan redistricting of state legislatures and the U.S. House, and Republicans see it as a way by which they slightly loosen their intense grip on power in many states. We talk about greater competitiveness in elections as a virtue to pursue.

But nonpartisan redistricting is a band-aid on the egregiousness of first-past-the-post methods of voting, including two-round FPTP elections, whether for single- or multi-winner at-large elections. Nonpartisan redistricting of single-winner FPTP elections has to be incredibly precise to accomplish the goals of minority representation and partisan competitiveness.

Even with the proposed Fair Representation Act, which combines nonpartisan redistricting with ranked-choice voting and multi-winner elections, the job of nonpartisan redistricting is made somewhat easier with fewer, larger super-districts, but the premise of even having districts becomes questionable beyond a mere demand for geographical representation.

Why should geographical representation matter for legislative elections anymore? The long-running argument is that geographical representation through districts helps the legislature pay attention to legislators’ particular corners of the polity. But the laws which these legislators write have reverberations – direct or not – upon the entire polity.

I’d argue that we should simply bypass the need for districts altogether, and have all legislators elected statewide and at-large through party-list proportional representation, in which voters vote for their preferred party, and parties become members of the legislature by how much of a percentage of the vote they receive.

Such a method removes geographical jockeying for legislative power from the table, and places the focus squarely upon legislating for the entire polity. No more redistricting, no more fear of partisan competitiveness, no more zero-sum single-winner two-round legislative elections, no more pitting rural and urban areas against each other through structural capture of elections.

Most Latin American nations have made party-list PR work as presidential republics, and have mostly switched to party-list PR since 1908. Few have switched back to majoritarian legislative elections, even with brutal, bloody interruptions to constitutional orders by military coups. It works well, and most of these countries who retain party-list PR don’t have this “eternal” question of carving up geography and property as a tool to gain and retain partisan dominance, nowhere near how bad we have it.

This is what I mean by evolving past the need for legislative (and congressional) districts, beyond redistricting, beyond single winners, beyond electoral colleges of any type, and beyond first-past-the-post elections. Throw it all out.

The Fair Representation Act’s combo of RCV+multimember districts+nonpartisan redistricting is just a compromise.

Hot Take: Montgomery Bus Boycott Was Also a Strike

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Hot take:

The Montgomery Bus Boycott also had aspects of a strike.

They didn’t just withhold their patronage and money. They withheld their participation in the monopoly over buses held by the Montgomery city government within city limits, and, by extension, denied the bus system and its drivers the ability to deliver services to other residents. Among the reactions by city officials against the boycott was a ban on any bus charging less than the city government’s bus line. The city government and segregationist residents felt entitled to Black residents’ participation enough to brutalize those who boycotted and avoided the bus line.

A boycott only becomes effective when goes from mere avoidance of patronage to outright kneecapping when it harms its ability to deliver its goods and services to other people. But then can we call it a boycott?

And that’s what I’m thinking about regarding the #Strike4BlackLives. The players are denying sports, entertainment and perhaps more to a public and White House which feels incredibly entitled to their performance and presence, hence the attacks against those players who knelt and the admonishments to “shut up and play”.

Denying comfort to those who feel entitled to one’s participation feels more like a strike than a boycott. And that denial will be painful, maybe even more painful than the protests on the street. And that’s the point.

I look forward to seeing what comes from this strike.

The United States as a Police State

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I was just reading this article on JSTOR from right after Jean-Bertrand Aristide was first forced into exile by the Haitian military, and how one way to bring stability back to Haiti at the time is to create a police state, which had already been tried and failed (the other was to build democratic institutions in Haiti through party-list PR elections and an independent judiciary).

I wonder if this applies to us.

Is this how we maintain the semblance of peace while our elections system is below international standards, maintained by at least 50 election regimes who are in jealous, bitter legal conflict with each other, and threatened by a racist party which is willing to sell the postal service for parts and gum up the census returns to exclude noncitizen residents in order to, among other things, ensure their victory at the polls?

Does the larger body of those who have a monopoly on violence – military, reserve, law enforcement and armed partisan civilians – actually maintain a police state?

We have an incredible number of military bases per capita. I wonder if we have the most domestic military bases in the world, in addition to the most overseas military bases.

We have over 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, and we have the world’s largest prison population, maintained largely by at least 50 state governments.

We live with the legacies (and ongoing practices) of redlining and housing discrimination, draw up discriminatory districts for elections and for boards of education, segregate against multi-family housing through downzoning, and create whole cities from non-annexed land so that those apartment-dwellers don’t move near and hurt the property value.

We keep people apart by force, and have built our entire political system upon keeping people apart through geographical isolation of the undesirables. And we’re supposed to be OK with this when we see the destruction, waste and resentment caused by this forced isolation? When so many of us deride any semblance of overriding responsibility to other Americans in the name of convenience because we’re not one of those city people, only to be the recipient or cause of someone’s receiving of COVID-19?

When the Third Reconstruction comes, I hope it means we can opt out of being residents of any state and just be citizens of this country. I hope it means that we can abolish state prisons, create a federal voter roll for a single voter registration website, replace the U.S. House’s elections with party-list proportional representation (or, as a half-measure, ranked-choice voting), move to single-payer healthcare, and establish not only an affirmative right to vote, but also an affirmative right to participate in free and fair elections.

Thoughts on Biden/Harris

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The only one that fit the profile of a typical VP candidate is Harris. She’s relatively fresh to DC politics but has had some DC experience, and has little to no background that could excite the GOP beyond “something something Willie Brown”.

It was never going to be Warren, for one, thanks to the Native American issue (and I say this as someone who supported Warren for President). Rice was problematic because of the “Benghazi” fiction, and because foreign policy experience is an allergen to xenophobic conservatives. Abrams has no federal experience and sat out of two potential runs for Senate. Whitmer literally just got elected Governor. Bass has those Cuba and Scientology comments, making her a liability in Florida. Demings was even more of a cop and had a very exploitable background as a police chief, a potential lightning rod for the left and the anti-urban right.

The safest choice besides Harris was Duckworth. She’s even more boring, Midwestern and cuddlier to veterans. By the time that Duckworth was ruled out, I figured that Harris had it.

The Berniecrats may hate Harris, or hate the #KHive on Twitter (and the feeling is certainly mutual from the KHive). Harris was not the most progressive prosecutor in California. But Twitter is not real life, progressive prosecutors are still carving their way into the punitive prosecutorial establishment against political biases as we speak, and the Trump campaign will be tasked to come up with an attack line against Harris that could actually stick and not slide off like it’s been sliding off of Biden. The polls are still more favorable to a Biden win, at least for now, less than 90 days to the election.

And progressives who are situated to the left of this ticket still have room for being change agents, especially those who have won primaries this year.

So I’m not actually disappointed by this ticket. It’s not exciting, but this is not as much of an excitement election as it is an anti-incumbent election. I made peace with it a long time ago, and I’m thinking of the longer term. If this ticket wins along with a Senate majority (despite all the headwinds of voter suppression), we can stop the judicial bleeding at the federal level. But we need the Senate filibuster to be dropped so that the bleeding can reverse.

The die has been cast. We need to win it all.

VIDEO: I Spoke at Columbus City Council for a Citizens’ Review Board

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Went to the council meeting and spoke in favor of a citizens’ review board with subpoena powers for Columbus, largely from the perspective of Black LGBT people and the high rate of police misconduct we face. Short and sweet speech, in and out.

Touching moments when the widow of Kenneth Walker and the relative of the triple homicide victims in Upatoi area also spoke in favor. I left with Raijeim and Connie when the opposition went on for way too long.

Also talked with the Muscogee County Republican Party chair about, among other things, ranked choice voting. He’s not sold on it but I’d *really* like to talk with him more.

A rare sighting of me outside lol

State Sen. Nikema Williams (SD-39) to Rep. Nikema Williams (GA-05)

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The die has been cast: Senator Nikema Williams will now become the first woman ever nominated as a Democrat to the 5th congressional district of Georgia. This means a seat has been opened in SD39.

Nikema has worked her way up as an activist, from her earlier campus activism with Young Democrats of Georgia as National Committeewoman and Political Director in the 2000s to her work at Planned Parenthood Southeast. She served as Chair of the 13th Congressional District from 2007-2011, the youngest congressional chair ever elected in the DPG’s modern history at the time. She served as the DPG’s First Vice Chair from 2011-2019, stepping in temporarily as interim chair in 2013 upon the resignation of Mike Berlon. She then stepped into the electoral arena with her run for Vincent Fort’s seat in 2017, and then became the first Black woman Chair of the DPG in 2019.

Nikema, as the presumptive winner of the 5th district election, will also be the baby of the Georgia delegation at 41yo. For as long as no primary challenge is whipped up in the coming years, she has plenty of time to grow into the role.

I wonder how many YDG alums have become members of Congress, or have become officeholders at any level. We should be building more more Nikemas and other Democrats who are groomed and trained to run for moments like this. We need a well-oiled political machine.

Georgia Primary Advisory Questions and Results

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Working on a list of ballot questions which were placed on county primary ballots on June 9. I’m looking for the other questions placed on the ballot in 10 remaining counties.

There were 19 counties which had county-level party primary advisory questions on June 9, out which 7 had Democratic entries.

Forsyth by far had the most Democratic advisory questions with 11 questions. Cobb came in second with 6 questions, followed by Oconee and Walton which had 5 each, Dawson with 4, Glynn with 3 and Upson with 2. Clayton and Harris also had the most Republican questions with 8 each; Hart with 7; Barrow, Columbia and Rabun with 5; Forsyth and Glynn with 4; Brantley, Gordon, Henry and Jackson with 3; Union with 2; and Lincoln with 1.

Republicans had at least 6 counties where “2nd Amendment sanctuary county” questions were placed on the primary ballot. A few counties had Republican ballots replete with anti-immigrant language, including anti-sanctuary city, pro-border wall, anti-immigrant-student, anti-driver’s-license-for-immigrants, and so on.

Democrats had their own red-meat questions, ranging from climate change, pre-k education, Medicaid expansion, election reform and immigration reform.

A notable question was one asking Henry County Republicans on whether to legalize marijuana, which was supported at 51%. At least two counties asked Republicans on whether to legalize casino/horse/sports gambling, neither of which were affirmed.

Another notable exception was in Forsyth County, where one party question ended up on both primary ballots: “Should the County invest in beautification projects such as median landscaping, mast arms for stop lights, and upgraded signage similar to John’s Creek, Alpharetta, Roswell and Sugar Hill?” It was supported on both ballots.

A few may have legislative impact at the county level, with Cobb’s Democratic question 11 asking for a county non-discrimination ordinance (in lieu of Georgia’s lack of a civil rights law) being supported 97.41%.

Medicaid Expansion Comes to Oklahoma, Hopefully to Missouri Next Month

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The successful Oklahoma vote on Medicaid expansion, State Question 802, may be a resounding success, but it was overestimated in how wide the margin would be between Yes and No. Pollsters predicted a 60-40 Yes vote, but it barely passed at 50-49. A few points, and how they apply to the Missouri Medicaid expansion vote on August 11:

  • That those 7 counties in which Yes was the majority only sustained half of the total statewide Yes vote. 49% of the Yes vote came from all of the other 70 counties in the state, even the border counties. So that is another reminder that land doesn’t vote, and campaigning to the cities in a state where the urban population at the last census was 66% is not a good idea.
  • That the vote largely reflected income patterns across the state, a bit more so than urban-rural setting. Research is showing that the richest 200 precincts in the state voted in the minority for SQ802, while the poorest 200 precincts voted in the majority for the same, even as both groups of precincts are largely split between urban and rural precincts.
  • That voter suppression played a role in the final vote. Besides the antagonism of Governor Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma Republicans and Americans for Prosperity against the initiative, this primary was impacted by the Oklahoma Legislature passing new requirements for notarizations on absentee ballots, even after the State Supreme Court threw out the requirement as unconstitutional. There’s also the fact that 200k less Oklahomans turned out for this primary than the 2018 primary, when Oklahomans voted 60-40 in favor of medical marijuana.

Also, a crucial minority of Republicans voted for Medicaid expansion, pushing #SQ802 over the top in a state where Trump won 60-30 and Stitt won by more than 10 points. This result shows that the support for these ballot initiatives has swingier, more elastic votes among both party bases than how they vote in elections.

So this brings me to Missouri, which will vote on Medicaid expansion on the August 4 gubernatorial primary ballot. Missouri has a higher urban-to-rural population ratio than Oklahoma, the same as Idaho (which also passed Medicaid expansion 60-40 in 2018), and has had a similar tendency to vote for progressive measures such as nonpartisan redistricting and medical marijuana. But Oklahoma’s razor-thin margin shows that advocates for Medicaid expansion must work for this vote this month. Also, Missouri has the same requirements about absentee voting as does Oklahoma, and the same Republican legislative opposition against Medicaid expansion.

I have family in the St. Louis area, and their health would stand to gain from a Yes vote.

Option: More Blue Self-Governance

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Here’s my feeling about D.C. Statehood and P.R. Statehood.

This is the weakest bid to expand Blue self-governance and representation in the Senate. The Douglass Commonwealth may become a thing if Dems win the Senate, and it would be nice to have the Douglass Commonwealth in the Union, but Puerto Rico is still split heavily between the conservative statehood movement, the liberal (enhanced)-Commonwealth movement, and the left-wing Independence movement. And since their legislature just voted to take LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination protections out of their Civil Code, there’s no guarantee that P.R. will vote for Dems much.

American liberals in the contiguous 48 have shown ourselves to be either arrogant self-sniffers in the Blue states or selfish masochists in the Red states who don’t want to split off into their own states and govern themselves, when doing so could help win 60% of the Senate and help re-write the Constitution.

Instead the Blue staters pride themselves on their Blue state status and don’t want to divvy up some of that power for the Union’s sake, and those of us in red states are shit out of luck.

When are we going to save the Constitution? When are we going to take the Senate seriously and make the necessary sacrifices of clout and comfort to move the Senate forward? When are we going to stop being flaming hypocrites, fight for our own self-governance and tell the GOP to fuck off and die?