Day 164-5: Flu York City’s Civil War

I’m neither insane nor sick nor murdered. Just bruised and exhausted. I’ve been sheltering Anna from contagious turbulence since I ran down to fetch her from Ric’s Place.

It’s no secret there’s been rioting all over New York and the power system is coming apart. The Internet is so shaky that I’m nostalgic for the dialup days, when everything was reliably slow.

ALL CLUBS ON DECK—WE'RE IN BIG TROUBLEI haven’t much to report. I saw people scared and bleeding and I saw other people armed and feeding. I put on my trademark Ramble face (a blank scowl, I hope) and ran with Anna through streets of glass and metal at a pretty good clip. Once safe at home, I’ve wallowed in whatever rumors I can dig up. It would be irresponsible to share them with y’all, however.

Activity in my ‘hood was rated moderate to intense, which sounds bad. Then—just as a tabloid said the East Village was under siege from depraved mobs—I spotted a tall woman in elegant sunglasses walking her dog, trying to reach someone on her smartphone. Her escort looked like a Husky. She owned the curb.

I doubt she got through, however. Mobile phone service has completely crashed. I wonder if the authorities shut it down so looters can’t correspond while the police chase them. The air quality implies that smoke signals have replaced texting.

NYPD doctrine has long been to overwhelm troublemakers by outnumbering them—to roll them up in a big blue blanket. But the flu leaves the brass without numbers or proven tactics. Here’s one rumor: Private contractors will fill in. Guys who fight for profit in the Middle East will quell disorder here. We the People will be paying double for homegrown mercenaries. Restore America’s Hessians, RAH!

Tribulation Beat says ‘New York’s Finest’ are tasing and gassing everyone in sight. I heard shots and shouts an hour ago, so your faithful eyewitness now shuns windows. If you can, watch our mess online. My fave clip was from a woman who—mugged by armed eight-year-olds—persuaded them to pose for her. They even sing!

I maintain a landline with a plug-in phone, which would be more useful in emergencies if most of the people I know weren’t solely dependent on cell phones—or cordless home units. Telephone companies have giant batteries to support service during brief electricity lapses. They maintain power stations to keep the system up for weeks, if necessary.

It’s great that we still have juice in the East Village. The Midwest is running out of coal and Hawaii is out of oil. I expected New York City would be spared blackouts, assumed the Feds would somehow keep electricity running because of the financial exchanges, the city’s global symbolism. I knew they’d let Philly and Baltimore burn, but the Big Apple? Wall Street would see to it that Manhattan was secure. Now I see that those guys can’t do anything right.

Con Ed gets 40% of its energy from natural gas (whose pipelines seem secure enough if Canada keeps functioning), and 33% from nuclear power, fuel for which is well in hand. Only 20% comes from coal and oil, and the rest is a mix of biomass, wind, solid waste, and Canadian hydropower. Not so bad, so long as the nuclear plants 30 miles from here keep running. In general, the U.S. derives more than 60% of its energy from oil and coal, both extremely vulnerable these days because of sickly coal miners, ailing transport, and spotty oil shipments.

Given that local demand for electricity collapsed because offices are shut and commuters are all staying home, Con Ed has been able to lose a portion of juice without anyone noticing. I feel for city residents who fled to country homes to escape the flu. How will they get heating oil? I may be safer here than I’d have been in that bungalow I rented. Some lucky soul may already have looted it.

Anna and I have plenty of energy.

Day 166: Chaos—Not Quite Pandemic

My sinuses are killing me. There’s smoke everywhere—tear gas, fear—everything but FOOD and HOPE. Sneeky shook like a kitten for hours last night, unless he was faking it so Anna would cuddle him. I’ll keep an eye on those two.

As I’d heard, it turns out there was a blackout three days ago in most of Brooklyn, where the mood quickly turned nasty. Hungry people faced with a depleted police force broke store windows and helped themselves. (That must have been when cell phone service was cut.) So far as I can tell, poor people acted first, but the middle class jumped in.

TORCHBEARER (Kieran McGonnell)The diversion of cops to Brooklyn left the other boroughs further understaffed, inviting all New Yorkers to fulfill their needs. Some neighborhoods burned; others experienced more civilized ‘disturbances.’ I wish I could have seen the khaki-clad mobs on the Upper East Side. (On second thought, they were probably the dullest-looking looters in history.) People in most places took what they needed without resort to injury or fire. Violence seems a generational thing, with kids of all ethnic groups more inclined to raise hell.

Has the proliferation of chain stores made it easier for people to pillage? Photos of old-time riots show proprietors guarding their stores with baseball bats or worse. Neighbors recognized their passion of ownership—the local roots. How can chains elicit empathy? They don’t pay guards enough to die protecting band-aids and oxycontin.

I stayed inside with what I can’t afford to lose. It’s easy to feel powerful if your reality is small enough. Sneeky thinks he controls the world by sprawling in a doorway.

But I needed to see if the city had fetched Ric’s corpse. There was so much noise on Avenue B that I called Bart’s newspaper landline to see if conditions had turned much more dangerous. He said it was just a big fire and added that he won’t talk to me in the future because I talk too much.

“You bloggers think they don’t read you like they read us,” said the professional newsman. “They scan everything. They know I’m talking to you now, and they will know I am not talking to you in the future. Good luck and goodbye.”

OOPS? ...WACOHad Bart not hung up, I’d have responded that I know what appalling things the state can do. I know far more about Randy Weaver, Fred Hampton, WACO, and Gitmo than he does. I know what habeas corpus, and the lack thereof, means. I’ve watched my rights shrink all my life. In the ‘70s, stoned Americans ran naked at public events. Now we get strip-searched for admission.

Under throbbing helicopters, amid whiffs of tear gas, I took a stroll. My immediate neighborhood has lost whatever was available for sale. A lot of honest people must be close to starving. The weak are ever more vulnerable to disease. Exhumations of corpses left by the Black Death show that most were badly malnourished by the time they fell ill. The LES DIY will face record demand when they reopen tomorrow: Ric’s Place was untouched in the violence!

Kidnapping the National Guard

It would be nice if New York’s National Guard were to truck in food and water for us. The governor sent soldiers to secure blacked-out towns and cities upstate, but the NYPD is said to have argued against stationing troops here. I’m not sure how much longer they’ll be available, anyway. They say the president is about to assert Federal military authority.

A little-noticed statute passed in 2006 gave the White House unprecedented power to federalize the National Guard. The legislation permits the president to send in the Army whether or not a state’s governor requests military help. And it broadened presidential authority to suspend habeas corpus—our right to know the charges against us, to confront our accusers, to claim a fair trial.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 (slightly amended a century ago) let a president deploy troops only to deal with “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” The 2006 revision added “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident.” It called for “coordination” between DHS and the Pentagon’s Northern Command, which oversees Defense Department activities inside the United States. Governors have never been convinced that giving domestic law enforcement missions to the military is a good idea.

A demonstration has been called to support New York’s governor against the president. That could include everyone from those who hate federal power to those who want to see the National Guard on the streets now. The governor says anyone who shows up will be arrested: Demonstrations are illegal now. I’ve never been much for marching, but I hate seeing time-honored Constitutional options blotted out.

Pass the Pepper (Spray), Please?

Still, I say the East Village can survive all this. It survived crack and yuppies. I didn’t even feel extremely afraid when I went out. The worst thing that happened was that I seem to have exacerbated my back injury climbing over debris on B. It hurts like heck. No, worse: It feels unprintable.

I should breathe easier, but my throat is heavy. I feel light-headed. I’m certain there’s something in the air. The cops are spraying all sorts of stuff. They’re always looking to test exotic crowd-control chemicals. I hope I can sleep.

Ric still lies on his bed. Sure, I called to remind the city. We both have landlines.

He waits in silence. Someone took his stereo.

Day 166 (#2): Help!

Anyone out there who knows where Ric’s Place is, please get there fast. We need people to prevent looting.

Day 166 (#3): Community Spirits!

Talk about DIY: Defend It Yourself! Three bandits tried to steal the food and medical stuff at Ric’s restaurant. Bruno and two other volunteers were in the kitchen when a guy waving an automatic walked in and told them to put down those carving knives and pack up the goodies. (Fortunately the clinic was closed.) A second robber stood by in the front room. Neither spotted Anna in Ric’s basement office, calling people with landlines. (She keeps a list.) Everyone responded fast ... except the cops.

RIC WAS THEREBy the time I arrived, breathless, about a dozen men and women had gathered on the sidewalk, next to where flowers and religious and cultural artifacts commemorate the deceased patron. The partisans were yelling through their masks and throwing street trash at the driver of the getaway SUV. The third guy had just locked himself in the restaurant with boxes of food and wine he was supposed to be carrying to the car. The driver was craning his fat neck to figure out what the kids huddling behind his car might be doing. He never saw the little ones in front.

As neighbors, members, and passersby turned up or paused out of curiosity and respect for the LES DIY, the throng grew to number about 30 people. Once four kids were in place, the SUV began to sway and settle, its tires deflating simultaneously. The driver started honking and waving at the restaurant door. No sign of his partner. We considered smashing the windows and dragging him out, but he likely had a gun. None of us were armed. He was sweating lead pellets until Vanquisha, the LES DIY’s transsexual Amazon, arrived with keys. When she unlocked Ric’s front door, the crowd streamed inside, eager to free Anna and Bruno and company.

It all ended in seconds. The driver burst out and ran east as little kids called him politically incorrect names and pelted him with my Village’s bounteous refuse. The robbers in the kitchen bolted for the back garden and climbed over a wall. Ric would have been in stitches. Purposeful chaos was his M.O.

I was a lesser performer. All that running inflamed my injuries. I yelled myself hoarse to psych-out the getaway man who got away. It felt great to vent after all these fearful months. Those guys feared they’d get ripped to pieces. They’re accustomed to respect, not contempt. I think I tore my lungs.

In the end, a few of us toasted Ric with his cognac. It was a hyperactive dream, a happy hallucination. Bruno and Anna and the others showed great courage. You could tell they’d been very scared. Anna was drenched in sweat, nearly shivering. When the cops showed up, they seemed excited about the SUV vehicle check, said it wasn’t stolen, vowed to find “the skells.” (I looked it up. It seems inaccurate: Skells don’t carry Glocks.)

Hearty thanks to any readers who came. Imagine how many would have turned out if Anna could have texted and called all the supporters’ cell phones!

Day 167: I’ve Caught Bird Flu

I don’t feel well. Everything is sticky, sludgy. I am dumb as heck. Iced coffee isn’t helping—a sure sign I’m sick.

You know its flu. Death is in the house— heat, wetness, dryness, scorching, burning. You see things, awake and dozing. Big colorful strange bad things.

How many people ever died here? Its an old building. Maybe overdoses too. Crack murders. This room has seen things way worse than I have

PANDEMIC (Gustavo Franco

I see people I didn’t know I cared about. Or remembered. An airline guy was kind to me in Mexico though I was rude. I saw his eyes amused at my panic and then he helped me out of it. I hope he’s OK. I never knew his name.

My head burns. my back is killing me, especially where that guy bashed me. I can’t breathe.

Sure I’m taking Relenza—hope these lungs are still open enough to benefit. Farmers in Uganda said feeding pot to their chickens helped fight bird flu. Making that link nearly did me in. Would Sneeky even want to eat me?

I can’t stop. What if I never post again? My last words are dumb.

You guys keep bugging me about being complacent. You cay I am smug

So what people called me alarmist a year ago? I was right.

That doesn’t make me like the flu deniers.

Its here, in my damn lungs. I dont see any cops here. I dont’ see the state doing anything.

I’m sick of the whole thing. The police arent bothering me. They are dying too.