A Year In Assessed Risks

One year ago, I was gawking at the concept of a communal cheese and cracker table in a quirky New Hampshire restaurant as our waitress appeared, delivering the message that another table had anonymously put $20 toward our bill because they spotted the Bernie 2020 gear we were sporting. My co-leader of Temple (University) for Bernie, her friend who had graciously put forth his car for this trip to NH from Philly, and I had spent the frigid, freshly February afternoon knocking doors in a town so spacious it’d be a miracle if the neighbors knew each other’s names. New Hampshire was one of two New England states I had not set foot on before that day (the other ironically being Bernie’s own Vermont), so experiencing this sliver of the country via podunk residents shutting their doors on me in the blistering cold felt like the truest form of tourism. It was the kind of day I dreamed of replicating dozens of times over between then and November 3rd, but preferably in the sunny sprawl of Southern California, as I planned to migrate there in May to close out my film degree and start my career in Los Angeles.

The risk of joining this New Hampshire trip and going solo on a canvassing route on completely alien terrain felt real. Was I susceptible to frostbite because I needed to keep my fingers bare to operate my phone and locate the next residence I was assigned to interrupt? Yes, and I think it’s best that I don’t consider how ferociously rural the roads I traversed were and the risk I posed to the residents as they debated answering the door to an unexpected visitor at dusk. However, even past the immediate reward of $20 from a openhanded, fellow Bernie supporter at dinner, the potential reward for a trip like this was enormous. Having a figurehead who would stand with workers and benevolently address intersectional crises and domestic divisions would signal the birth of an entirely new America.

28 days later, I would find myself on an even more spontaneous canvassing trip on Bernie’s behalf. This time headed to the Carolinas with 17 peers. We knocked on over 5000 doors, but upon the loss of both states to Joe Biden, the movement that had just a moment before felt unstoppable was pinned to the ground by an establishment hungry to snuff out any rumblings of national change. As a leader, the risk involved with this highly volatile trip had me pulling at the roots of my hair. Although at the time such a frenetic trip felt monumental, it’s clear in retrospect that no matter how many scrappy college kids sacrificed their Spring Break for it, the Bernie campaign would never have made the titanic institutions that are designed to spit on rising hope feel they were taking a risk in crushing us.

Then, there’s how the risks of those canvassing adventures feel sentimentally small in light of the way the world imploded in mid-March. As sports leagues canceled games and Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson shared their harrowing diagnosis of the bubbling virus, the risks of enjoying life as-is still felt manageable, but in the subsequent days, when schools sent their students packing and people were getting uncomfortably familiar with their governors’ faces, our universal conceptions of risk were exploded. Picking up groceries, meeting with friends, and looking for new companionship could lead to debilitating illness for ourselves and our households.

In April, after a month of the Democrats gleefully ignoring health officials’ warnings and instead ushering crowds of people to the polls to finish squeezing life from his campaign, Bernie conceded. Momentum for change had been successfully strangled for the time being and I numbly accepted it in the confines of my parents’ home, looking for comfort from left-wing podcasts that would share my grief over a million missed opportunities.

From late May through much of the summer, intergenerational fury at institutional failures and collective fatigue of isolation boiled over when cops murdered George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Taking to the streets, protestors looped mask-over-ear and banded together under the summer sun to chant, scream, and commiserate. What happened on streets across the country for months was unlike anything witnessed in this country’s tirelessly exploitative history. I joined Philadelphian crowds for several protests and marched on the receiving end of tear gas on an interstate highway, inhaling the poisonous secretion of our broken country. Contagious virus aside, the risk of gathering in the streets in defiance of the pigs was high, and even higher was the risk attached to setting fires and breaking windows, which were the acts that stole the headlines and stoked the anger of the populace that had already cared little for Black life. Who knows exactly what fueled some people to utilize property destruction to express their fury? Was it outrage over the latest grotesque murders at the hands of police? Could it have been the result of months of dismal economic relief for unemployed Americans during a pandemic that was killing 1 in every 1000 Black Americans? Maybe it was merely a factor of season, with it being the contentious summer before a presidential election in which both candidates refused to atone for their virulently racist pasts? Or wait, could it have simply been the spilling of centuries-distilled retribution over the way slavery had segued into Jim Crow-era horrors, which in turn paved the way for the current status quo of Black Americans making up 40% of the national incarceration rate? Could be anyone’s guess! Any which way, what is risk to a generation watching their elders fumble crisis after crisis without consequence?

Amidst the protests, I picked up a restaurant job in the city, dashing pricey vegan dishes to outdoor diners. The health risk was immense, and as numerous co-workers fell ill during my 5 month stint there, I was luckily spared any of the symptoms. The job, perversely enough, represented freedom to me. It granted me a return to Philadelphia from my parents’ home in the suburbs, and thus more opportunities to join the summer’s protests. Maybe the sheer stress of working during the restaurant’s record-breaking summer of sales made the time all the blurrier to me, but in my now-unemployed hindsight, I struggle to wrap my head around why so many people insisted on defying health precautions just to sip margaritas and munch on $12 orders of empanadas in an alleyway. Was this hazardous semblance of a return to the “before times” the best that America could offer to people as every single institution prioritized profits and consistently botched the containment and elimination of the virus at every turn? Were these diners not sufficiently educated on the risks of dinner outings during a pandemic, or did they deem the risk trivial, either consciously by result of pervasive, false indoctrination or subconsciously in sheer exasperation over the never-ending national nightmare?

Months later, after I limped across the digital finish line of my college education, January 6th happened. As surreal as the event was, it’s worth considering the real risks that the Trump rioters posed that day. Future historians will almost certainly fail to make appropriate sense of the Capitol raid, but in the current moment, I can’t shake how the entire day made perfect sense. No other protest group, pre-meditated or not, would have made it within 200 yards of the Capitol. The only group who could possibly be granted the special treatment to make such a groundbreaking display of power would obviously have to be the ostentatiously-armed one waging a nonsensical war in the name of their god-king whose shallow, fake-it-till-you-make-it machismo is as emblematic of white America as the national flag itself. While other countries regularly see their citizens take to their streets or scale their nation capitols with molotovs to protest oppressive policy, if the American mob lusting for a coup had instead been part of a movement demanding any sort of tangible benefit, like universal healthcare, fair wages, or, god forbid, substantial stimulus checks through a pandemic, the activists would have been gassed, beaten, and cuffed en masse somewhere between the Memorial Pool and the Smithsonian. And so, people like myself who would have supported an insurrection for any cause beneficial to the general public were captivated by the feeds of footage, provided by both the media and rioters themselves, of armed forces offering tours of the Rotunda to the conspiracy theorists and speedboat-owning suburban scum — I apologize for the triple repetition. In these depraved Trump supporters’ eyes, they were doing what 74 million other voters were too afraid to do. The risk factor of this siege wasn’t discernible in their adrenaline-pumped minds, because the extent of their prior run-ins with the law ended at Donuts with a Cop or with the amicable payment of DUI fines. If these members of the petty bourgeoise could just stand to stomach a more muted racism, they would see there’s no existential threat to them at all, and that Joe Biden is the perfect president to deliver on all their wishes of carrying out austerity measures for the poor with increasingly kneecapped governance.

For those of us who merely ask that human life be valued over the bottom dollar, how should we assess our risks as we strategize to have our voices heard over the pillow talk between politicians and corporations wielding K-Y palm greaser? With the outwardly antagonistic force of Trump away from the nuclear codes, many feel inclined to sit back and give Biden a chance to “unify,” “heal,” or “be a smidge less abrasive.” However, with much of Trump’s base still insistent that the election was stolen from them, it should be obvious their anger will continue fomenting as the Democratic establishment tries to scrub away their dear leader’s legacy without offering immediate support to the working class, and they will strike, metaphorically, at the next election or before then, physically. It’s up to us, namely the younger, overwhelmingly progressive generations, to ensure we’re ready to combat them. By continuing to stake their identity in ever-chaotic and now-unstylish Trumpism, they have determined they have nothing to lose.

On our end, we were born into a lifetime of isolation. As the nihilism of the internet has chipped away at our mental health, the country has continued sinking into its decades-long death embrace in the arms of the ultra-wealthy, leaving us remnants of a future to enjoy. And so, we have everything to gain if we take risks. If we step outside our comfort zone and risk our employment to talk to coworkers about unionizing, if we risk temporary defeat to run for office on bold ideas, if we risk our ego to put our individual talents on display in fortifying our campaigns for change, and if we risk our lives to continue showing up for each other with unflinching solidarity the way so many did over the summer, we can continue mounting pressure on the exploitative systems that are doomed to collapse.

Now it’s nearly been a full cycle around the sun since life’s expectations plummeted, and while it feels silly to admit as a 22 year-old college graduate, my friend has convinced me to direct my attention to skateboarding. As a hobby, it nulls the scorching boredom of this deadened pandemic winter, and as a vessel of hope, it keeps me optimistic about my ability to pick up surfing once I can safely move to L.A. I still have yet to do more than an ollie, but my daily treks to a local skatepark keep me grounded in the reality that no reward comes without risk. And for better or worse, the best rewards are hot fraternal twins to the highest risks. Balance on the balls of your feet, pop, jump and slide, is the chain of command rattling around my brain these days as I steel myself for ollie-ing on and off of platforms. Soon, I’ll move onto pop shove-its and then to the unforgiving kickflips. When the next trick feels impossible to land it’s easy to take pride in what’s been accomplished so far, but an ollie won’t impress anyone, and in eking out the next reward, the board will continue chopping our ankles until we bare down on it with our fullest intentions. And when the time comes, I’ll finally make my way to L.A. and start the learning cycle anew, trading pavement for waves and wood for fiberglass.