It was my first time in months riding the bus with my son since school shut down. Normally, when I’ve run an errand during the pandemic, I’ll do it on my own, mask on, huffing and puffing to make it back inside. On this errand, my son and I saw a crosstown bus sitting there, so we hopped in the back. Pre-COVID, we rode the bus home from his after-school program, so we were excited to have this sliver of normalcy.
As soon as we got to the next stop, we got a quick education on what happens outside our bubble.
Every stop told a new story. At the first stop, an elderly woman hops on, grumbling underneath her mask about having to wear one and surveying the rest of the passengers to make sure they had one, too. At the second, a man meekly walks in to the front while onlookers wondered why those without canes had to get in the back. At the fifth, a mother with two teenaged children hopped on. The daughter had on her pink plastic covering, the rest of her family members came in uncovered and sneering at the rest of us.
The bus driver yells through his loudspeaker: “NO MASK, NO SERVICE! I WILL STOP THIS BUS IF I SEE ONE PASSENGER WITH NO MASK!” The elderly woman frowns at the mother and the teenage boy. The girl looks at her family: “I told you so.” The masks come on, but not without a few eye rolls.
A few stops later, a quartet of older girls hops on, some with masks, one without a mask. They try to hide behind the numerous adults who’ve boarded but the bus driver takes a long pause before closing the doors. “I DON’T CARE WHO YOU ARE. NO MASK, NO RIDE! I AM NOT PUTTING MY LIFE IN DANGER DUE TO YOUR NOT WANTING TO WEAR A MASK!” Some yell back with a few four-letter exclamations, but we ride along after a few minutes. My son wakes up a bit from his nap. One of the girls who tried to use her t-shirt as a mask hopped off and walked off the bus without much a scene.
The other passengers had their own debates about the mask:
“I’m asthmatic and this mask is too f*ing close to my nose for me to get good air.”
“One minute, they’re telling us we don’t have to wear masks, the next we do, so which is it?”
“Why can we eat outside, but we have to wear a mask to get into a bus?”
“I’m young so I don’t even have to worry about this. I’ll just wash my hands and that’s it.”
“I tried the mask you have on right now and I smoked a blunt through it. All the smoke came out of it and that’s how I know masks don’t really work. That lets you know right there.”
In a few more stops, the arguments would die down, but the things I heard still resonated with me. Even those of us who understood why we needed to wear masks on the bus must point towards our government representatives and hold them responsible for the misinformation, bickering, lies, and obfuscation we witnessed since March that still has ramifications a few months later.
Also, I don’t want to hear what “the people” want because, if the citizens of Harlem, the Lower East Side, and other hoods like mine are any indication, the “people” want to know when they can stop wearing masks so they can get on with their survival. Their family, friends, and neighbors are dying left, right, upstairs, and downstairs. Sirens continue to blare randomly while fireworks keep them up at night. While they rather not die, they can’t trust that any number of government officials won’t send them to slaughter, regardless of what side of the political aisle they sit on. Conspiracy theories for people of color often become conspiracy facts, especially during nationwide protests.
When epidemiologists say we need to socially distance, wear masks, and wash our hands, that rings true for them. “The people” ain’t listening to science if they’ve been given little reason to trust the city, the state, or the country. But “the people” is too ambiguous a term, no matter what side of the politics you land on. “The people” may want schools open because that’s what “the people” wanted back in March. But it depends on who and how many you’re listening to.
None of this makes the school reopening discussion easier. I believe the epidemiologists who’ve said time and again that New York is about as safe as it’s going to get when it comes to this virus. I believe them when they said they’ve thought long and hard about the recommendations they’ve made for school reopening. I’m also listening when they say that schools in New York City can open with the right precautions.
As a parent and an educator, that’s where I must draw the line.
Over and again, we’ve had politicians who’ve wanted to label themselves “The Education Official,” but wanted the title without securing our school’s most basic needs. Now we’re supposed to trust that they’ve bolstered the essential conditions we’ve wanted to be remedied since pre-COVID. We’re supposed to wait for each principal to have a plan for their own schools when they, too, feel overwhelmed and under-supported. We’re supposed to “report” children who don’t wear their masks or don’t follow the CDC guidance, but this may exacerbate the school-to-confinement pipeline we pledged to destroy only a few months ago.
The coronavirus doesn’t care about our politics and how they respond to people. That’s why we must.
Granted, the most popular decision isn’t always the easiest one. When it comes to school reopening and life, the questions we think we’re answering might elicit more questions than answers. Grace, flexibility, and empathy are so critical to moving forward with any level of responsiveness to anyone we serve. Yet, there’s that part of me that literally saw how adults could barely handle a 10-minute bus ride with a mask on in a neighborhood where about 1 in 10 people have tested positive for COVID-19.
If you’re still listening to the president, the governor, and the mayor, they’re still telling you we’re ready to open schools. If you’re listening to people with access to their own healthcare and high-quality hospital care, they might feel ready or they might create their pandemic pods/shadow schools. If you’re listening to people who routinely got ignored before the pandemic, you’d get more humble about how information gets to them.
Too much of school reopening depends on who you listen to and what you heard them say. If representatives led with empathy for the victims, righteousness in our policy, responsiveness in resources, and humility/transparency when they got it wrong, they’d wear a mask for the pandemic and not simply to save face.