1983

1983

As Sam Sanders recently said during his NPR podcast It’s Been a Minute, “It feels like we’re living in three movies at once: a satire, and a horror movie and a Spike Lee Joint.” The recent national wave of conversations about the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, systemic racism, unemployment, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings protecting LGBTQ employees and supporting the DACA program makes the first six months of 2020 an historic and momentous time. Peter Kilmarx, M.D., writes that since March 13 he has been working from home in Bethesda, Maryland, and alternatively fro m his farm in Lyme, New Hampshire. In his role at the National Institutes of Health he is supporting global Covid-19 research partnerships, S ARS - CoV-2 genomic surveillance, contact tracing challenges, and many other projects. Peter has given many updates on Covid-19 research and epidemiology including a webinar, “What’s Needed to Re-open Safely” forthe Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Since May, people have been vigorously coming together worldwide in record numbers in response to multiple video recordings of police officers and white supremacists brutalizing and sometimes killing Black people and other people of color over minorviolations, suspicion, or simply living while Black. These protests also shine alight on increasing violence against trans women of color. Brian Roy, attorney for UnitedLex in Richmond, Virginia, likens the recent profound bipartisan, multiracial, interfaith union of people to two earlier events he experienced firsthand. In the early 1990s Brian arrived in Los Angeles within days of the Rodney King beating on March 3.1991. Ten years later Brian was a newly appointed attorney for Morgan Stanley, with offices in the World Trade Center in New York City. Fortunately, on the morning of 9/11, Brian and his new wife were in Maui, Hawaii, on the second day of their honeymoon. In New Jersey, Maddie Thomas of Glen Rock resonantly marched in a Black Lives Matter protest and last week celebrated Juneteenth, a tradition passed down through the generations of her family. As a senior writer for Bloomberg News focusing on business and economic news and global equality, Karen Toulon writes: “It’s essential to include voices and perspectives from all communities and cultures—in our newsrooms and as sources in our stories.” Dave Wallinga and his family live in St. Paul, Minnesota, just a few miles away from the site in Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered. Dave reports the official lines of communication among the city, police, and citizens have been almost nonexistent for years. Dave has worked at two nonprofit organizations dealing with agriculture and the environment. Both organizations are now intensively addressing race-based and non-racebased inequities in their policy arenas. After the popularity of the N.Y.C. and Boston first Friday lunches organized by Dave Ellis and Patty Shepard, respectively, other regions have recently begun following their footsteps. In May Elliot Stultz and Becky Ankeny hosted the first virtual lunch for classmates living in Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Not to be outdone, Maren Christensen, Shanta Sullivan, and Ian Wiener hosted the first West Coast virtual cocktail hour in June.

—Shanta Sullivan, 1541 North Sierra Bonita Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90046; shantaesullivan@gmail. com; Elliot Stultz, 421 West Melrose St., #8A, Chicago, IL 60657; elliotstultz@yahoo.com