What a horrible week. There is no other way to put it. While hope that there may be some control over Covid-19 just glimmering on the edge of the horizon, racial brutality and reciprocal mass protests break out while looting, hobby anarchists and white supremacists posing as anarchists attack. And I probably have that wrong, too. But idiocy and bigotry have had their say and its been ugly.
So what to say about beer? Robin and Jordan didn’t say anything about it and kept the focus where it should be. Good. Others spoke out. Good. Ren offered help. Good. Garrett Oliver wrote a gut-wrenching Twitter thread last Saturday on his personal experience including this harrowing detail from when he was a child:
My father got quieter. “If you turn on a flashlight in the dark inside the house, the police will think there’s a burglar in the house. And they will come and bust open our front door and shoot us in our own living room. “We’re kids”, I said. Dad looked us in the eyes. “They won’t care. They’ll shoot you like a dog, right here. And when we come down the stairs they’ll shoot us too.” He took the flashlights and put them back in a drawer. “Go to bed”. We thought he was exaggerating. It didn’t take long for us to understand that he was not.
Others wrote sad, pathetic things. The Twitter feed for the now apologetic something called Bristol Gin had this message up for a while:
When the shooting starts the looting starts. Voted No 1 gin by rioters for its complex botanical mix and high flammability.
It boggles the mind. It also boggles the mind that something called Steam Hollow Brewing triggered first a flame war over who and what is racist in all this and then seemingly engaged in one of the saddest, most bizarre alt-reality neverneverland projections I’ve witnessed in all this. Was that person drunk and scared, too, or just opening up? I don’t care. Either way, as stated by @afrobeerchick, this can be the only response.
There is no grand summation I can offer. Humans have the capacity to be monsters. We also have the capacity to overcome and shine. I hope more of that is what the next seven days bring, even if just a growing glimmering of justice on the edge of the horizon. This is a long, long road. Be safe and know that all lives cannot matter until black lives matter.