(This post was written at 10pm on Saturday, May 30, 2020. Much has changed since then.)

There is no high road.

I gotta go high (gotta go high)
I gotta elevate (I gotta elevate)

Michelle Obama, in her speech at the 2016 Democratic national convention said,

When they go low, we go high.

I agree. when given the choice, I aim to go high. It raises the expectations of the people around you, it usually means you won’t look back with any regrets.

But.

As I sit here during the week where George Floyd’s death at the hands of a police officer is amplifying waves of simmering racial unrest, and there is no high road.

Earlier in the day, I watched protesters take the seeming high road in Philadelphia as they walked through the city, demanding racial justice. It was all shades of skin tone calling attention to inequalities that have become clear to anyone involved. It was the supposed high road, causing traffic to back up, and bicycling police officers clear the way. But as the news comes out tonight, tomorrow and in months to come, we will see that the high road is being populated less and less.

But tonight.

Tonight I sit and watch the small section of Wilmington, DE I can see suffer.

Teens are bored.

The weather is warm.

Actions are amplified by the amount of social media followers you have (or can gain) by one-upping the next person.

And.

Now I see windows broken on shops outside our window that have nothing to do with happened in Minneapolis.

When the sound of glass breaks without drawing sirens, another breaks.

When everyone has a camera, and everyone is in a crowd, it is a feeling of invisibility that makes invincibility the next logical step.

Another window breaks, and another, and another.

With a street full of struggling businesses and “for rent'“ signs more common than sales ads, teens quickly take what’s available now that the windows are broken.

Up the street there are sirens and more attention for higher-earning stores like Starbucks and a popular Italian restaurant, which means our street, still in the shadows, is only getting closer to that feeling of invincibility.

Rapidly, the teenagers move onto another glass storefront, a business that has slashed its hours in half already due to the pandemic demand being kow, and here, they break the windows as well.

Any pre-tense of protest is gone, and now it’s just a party.

A convenience store with broken windows means quick access to sugar, to adrenaline, to validation that they have earned this.

Soon after, a large construction dumpster full of discarded renovation remnants has been set on fire. The rebuilding that Wilmington has fought so hard to do is in flames.

At this point, I don’t know what I can do.

I have the privilege to watch all of this take place from my gentrified apartment building that I’m sure took the place of more deserving housing a few years ago. (We are safe, only shaken up as the state police came a little later to break up the congregation.)

But right now, there is no high road.

We have a responsibility to figure out how to get back to any road. To any path that leads to something. We have spent the last three years seeing America fall into exactly what was promised - attitudes and prejudices of the 50s and 60s (if we’re lucky- earlier attitudes if we're not). We have seen Americans turn their back on their borders and call the police on their own neighbors. We have posted protest videos and hashtags and donated to campaigns and fought for a bigger voice and created inspiring music and art and poetry.

But here we are.

Teenagers are protesting a lack of direction, a lack of education, a lack of a purpose.

My last thought, bringing this back to the comic book world where the intro song lyrics originated from ends with the movie The Joker. (Song lyrics introing this post are from Spiderman, I know one is Marvel and the Joker is DC, but stay with me.) I agree with the critics that artistically, The Joker was a captivating movie. But - I hated how i felt after I finished watching it. Yes, it is fiction, yes in the world of the Joker, Batman will come in in another 7-part film behemoth and save the day over and over and over again. But you leave the movie with the Joker reveling in the chaos he has created, with (as yet) no consequences on him.

And that’s how I feel right now. Nicely put, inequalities are the Joker of our times. They exist, and you accept them, doing your best to follow the rules and wait for some miraculous second-coming of Barack… er Batman to propel us forward. More cynically, our current President has set the scene for all forms of race-baiting, fear-mongering and conspiracy-theory-advancing to become common place. And the result is a country standing on top of a police car watching the chaos it has created around it.

I don’t have any sort of solution right now. I just know that there is restlessness, there is fear, there is distrust, there is little truth available.

Forget the high road, let’s just find an actual road.

___

Re-cap - where did these posts come from?

The song “Elevate” from the Enter the Spider-Verse Soundtrack is one of those songs that sticks with you. You can use it on a run for some direct motivation, or just feel pumped when you watch the movie and think, “well that was catchy” and move on with your life.

Or, like me, you can over-analyze it to death and take it entirely out of context.

So here we are.

Today’s lyrics -

I gotta go high (gotta go high)
I gotta elevate (I gotta elevate)

Police gather in the aftermath of the protests in Wilmington