Park Slope Reader

Sally Kohn

Dara Kass On the Pandemic Frontline

By Filed Under: Pandemic Diaries Tagged With: , ,

Dr. Dara Kass gets at least a half-dozen calls every single day from friends and neighbors in Brooklyn and across the country.  She is, for the people who have her phone number, like a “Covid concierge” — there to allay fears with facts and guide tough decision-making with science.  And if you’ve seen her on MSNBC or follow her on Twitter, you may have also been soothed by the balm of her steady voice and sage advice.  

An emergency room physician, a mom with young kids, and someone infected early on during the Covid pandemic — who has had to navigate the same challenges and questions and doubts as the rest of us, but armed with the medical and scientific insights most of the rest of us lack?  Who the heck wouldn’t want her on speed dial?

Kass is a doctor in the Columbia University Medical Center E.R., and also an associate professor of emergency medicine.  She’s been politically active for some time, as an advocate for increasing gender representation and equity in emergency medicine, and as an early and vocal supporter of Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and now Andrew Yang’s campaign for New York City mayor.  But it was Covid that made her phone, literally and metaphorically, start ringing off the hook.

“In the beginning of this pandemic, we all thought we’d watch it from far away,” Kass told me over the phone in late February 2021.  But then it started getting closer… from China, to Italy, and then Seattle.  She’s in all these online groups and email chains with emergency medicine doctors and by late February 2020, “all the channels were on fire.”  People were getting infected, hospitals were filling up.  “I was realizing this would hit us like a tidal wave.”

The next part of the story feels very Park Slope.  Kass was walking back with her husband from their ritual Saturday morning Soul Cycle class on March 7, 2020.  She was processing all of the information she was hearing about the disease and what they would do if she got infected.  Suddenly, Kass stopped in her tracks and made a decision.  They would move their kids to live with Kass’ parents in New Jersey on March 13, the day before Kass had her next shift at the E.R.  A few days after that, Kass started experiencing Covid symptoms.  

“I started making all these decisions for my family probably a hot minute before everyone else had to do it for theirs,” Kass says.  “And being very public about the decisions I was making.”  It was early, not much was known about Covid, how it was contracted and spread and the risk to various age groups.  She did what was most prudent at the time — in a way setting up a clear contrast with her foil throughout this pandemic, the Trump Administration.   While Kass and — thanks to her leadership and the leadership of others — many of the rest of us were taking the virus seriously and being as cautious as possible, Trump and his Administration were dismissing the threat and being reckless.  Kass was making the smart decisions for herself and her family, and using her platform to share information about those decisions.  Trump’s decisions was making dumb decisions — that ultimately destroyed us.

“Once we knew more and had an idea of how it was spreading,” says Kass, the Trump Administration could have put out “very specific, consistent guidelines of what people had to do.”  But they didn’t.  That was just one of many failures that compounded the crisis.  “By the time New York was in the thick of it in April, we had an idea of how to stop it… but Trump was saying we’d be back by Easter, that the economy needs to open.”  That’s when it became clear to Kass that the federal government was being what she calls “criminally negligent” in the face of this pandemic.

But did liberal states and cities, like New York, over-correct with extreme lockdowns?  No, insists Kass.  “What appeared to be an overreaction was supposed to be the only reaction.  The goal was to have this be the time to react strongly and shut it down.”  Yet because the national response was so spotty and inconsistent, the shut downs didn’t shut down the virus — ”and we didn’t have a lot of tools left in the toolbox.”

New York, fortunately, turned around.  “We had a horrific March and April,” says Kass.  But by the end of May, E.R. departments were mostly empty, she says.  “We got a reprieve over the summer.  And in the fall, patients didn’t come in as sick as before.”  That’s not because the virus was better but because our preparedness was.  There was better testing, people were coming into the E.R. earlier, there was more information on how to treat them, better medication options.  And doctors and nurses felt more confident, too.  “There’s a trauma about taking care of patients where you don’t understand what’s coming next.”  Living through the first wave, including many health care workers surviving infections themselves, removed a lot of the sense of uncertainty.  

That’s not to say it was easy.  Kass recounts friends who spent weeks in the ICU, another who died by suicide.  Her own symptoms were relatively mild.  She feels fortunate.  Though of course the lasting effects of working frontline during the pandemic may leave scars for generations.  

At least, Kass says with a relieved sigh, things are getting better.  For one, we have a competent president who believes in science and is mobilizing the full weight of the federal government to address this crisis.  And second, we have vaccines.  

“The process of vaccinating people is healing,” says Kass, who has spent time working at vaccination sites.  “Getting vaccinated is great, you feel protected… less nervous,” she says.  But also, “Working at the sites, it’s life affirming… really rewarding.”

Kass thinks that soon New York will have enough supply to have walk-in vaccination spots all over the city.  And she echoes President Biden, who recently predicted that every American who wants a vaccine will be able to get one by the end of May.  What does that mean?  The vaccine was tested to keep people from getting sick from the coronavirus and dying, and it does just that — very effectively.  Beyond that, Kass uses the metaphor of a forest fire.  We don’t yet know how well the vaccine prevents vaccinated people from spreading the virus to others; that wasn’t what it was tested to do.  It likely does that well, says Kass — we’ll know more as more data become available.  But in her forest fire metaphor, “If a tree can’t catch fire, it doesn’t matter as much if other trees are burning all around it.”  And the more trees are fire proof, the more the blaze will be under control.  

Beyond that, I used the opportunity with Kass to try to ask as many of the “Covid concierge” questions I thought might be on the minds of my fellow Park Slopers.  So here, edited for length, is a rapid-fire Q&A with Dara Kass:

If I qualify to be vaccinated, should I nonetheless wait until higher risk people get their turns?

No.  Everyone who is qualified to get vaccinated should get vaccinated as soon as it’s available.  And that helps protect other people.

If my parents are vaccinated, can my kids hug them?

Yes.  Your parents are protected from getting sick and dying.  Which is remarkable.

If I’m vaccinated, can I go on vacation?

Yes.  In fact, if you can find three other vaccinated people, you can all go on vacation together.  You can start to incorporate reasonable risk back into your life.

If I’m vaccinated, do I have to quarantine after a possible exposure?

If it’s two weeks after your second vaccine shot, then no.  

Can I get whatever vaccine is offered to me now and then another one later?

Maybe.  This is an issue for people living in other countries where an inferior vaccine is available now, but they might want to get another when they’re back in the States.  My advice is for now, take whatever vaccine is offered.  It’s likely that, eventually, we’ll have enough supply or booster shots if there’s reason to believe you need or want it.

Can I send my kids to summer camp?

It’s very possible and likely — but will take parents engaging in reasonable quarantining, testing protocols and good strategies for well-controlled environments.  It’s good for kids to run around outside and be healthy.  

Should I feel okay sending my kids to in-person school?

Of course.  In-person school is governed by things that have nothing to do with teacher vaccinations — but spacing requirements, quarantines, etc.  But teachers should be a high priority for eligibility.  I actually think we should have pop-up vaccination sites in schools, meet people where they are.  We’d have everyone done in a month.

Once I’m vaccinated, do I still need to wear a mask?

Yes.  Until we get it under control better, that’s the smarter, no-risk thing to do.  And people are unevenly vaccinated right now.  It’s important we all model mask wearing.

What kind of mask do you recommend most?

The most important thing is that it fits tightly.  An unmasked gap undoes all the protections of whatever fancy mask you use.  If you have a cloth mask, then you should have a disposable surgical mask under it — so the cloth mask generally helps create a tighter fitting seal.

What would you say to people who are worried the vaccines are too new and untested?

So is the virus.  Let’s be honest, we’re in a pandemic.  Every vaccine is new at some point.  But it’s not untested; it’s been tested thoroughly.  I do understand the anxiety about the speed, but I feel more anxiety about the speed of the pandemic.  

Do you think fall will be normal?

Redefine normal.  I think movie theaters will be open but a third of people will be wearing masks, even if they’re vaccinated.  We have to figure out how schools will stay open, etc.  But by Spring 2022, this won’t be the thing we’re talking about.  

Maya Wiley Runs for Mayor of New York City

By Filed Under: Feature, Part of the Solution, Sally Kohn Tagged With: , , ,

“We all see the world from the prism of our experience. The question is: How broad are our experiences? How deep are they?” Maya framed this fundamental question over the phone in the Fall of 2020, just weeks after announcing her groundbreaking – and unconventional – candidacy to be the next mayor of New York City.

Maya Wiley framed this fundamental question over the phone in the Fall of 2020, just weeks after announcing her groundbreaking — and unconventional — candidacy to be the next mayor of New York City. Wiley is a human rights activist and civil rights attorney with a decades-long record of leadership at the forefront of movements for social, economic, and racial justice. She is many other things, too. A black woman. A Brooklyn mom. A child of political icons.  

But what Maya Wiley is definitely NOT is a politician. Which is probably both her greatest asset and her greatest challenge in the mayoral contest.

Wiley was born in 1964 in Washington, D.C., to politically active parents who met in Syracuse. In many ways, her birth was a testament to the complexities of our nation, then as now. Wiley’s father, George, was a professor of organic chemistry who became a leading figure in the civil rights movement. He rose to national leadership in the Congress of Racial Equality and then founded the National Welfare Rights Organization. As a Black man organizing mostly women of color to agitate for dignity and justice in public assistance, he was an early pioneer of what we now call intersectionality — how gender and race and class compound and connect.  Wiley’s mother, Wretha, was a white woman from a Texas town Maya describes as “all white and very racist when she was growing up” who understood the injustice of exclusion and myopia and left to blaze a different path. I should clarify here that Maya Wiley is my friend from years of movement work together, and I met her mom several times before her passing. I can’t help but think that Maya’s candidacy to be the first Black woman mayor of the City of New York represents their daughter but also their hopes for our nation — that we could be the kind of place, the kind of people, who would choose their daughter to lead. 

Because who Maya Wiley is is central to understanding what kind of mayor she would be. After graduating from Columbia Law School and then clerking in Philadelphia, Wiley moved to Brooklyn in 1991 where she’s lived ever since. She held positions at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the ACLU, in addition to being a Senior Advisor on Race and Poverty at the Open Society Foundations, advancing human rights and justice around the globe. But perhaps the defining role in Wiley’s career was the one she created for herself when in 2002 she founded the Center for Social Inclusion, one of the nation’s first action-oriented think tanks focused on dismantling structural racism and inequity. With a tiny bit of seed money and, initially, running the organization without paying herself a salary, Wiley created applied research projects led in partnership with communities of color to develop and document transformative policy solutions in housing, food systems, technology access, and more. Yes, Wiley was also a prominent legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC until recently, a Senior Vice President and professor at The New School. Wiley may not be a conventional candidate but she is keenly aware of how city government works, how to manage within it, and what needs fixing to make us fairer and more just. She obviously has the chops to do the job.  She served as the first Black woman to be Counsel to a New York City Mayor, serving early in  Bill de Blasio’s administration. And after leaving in 2016, Chaired the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board, sending the case of the officer who killed Eric Garner, former Officer Daniel Panteleo, to the NYPD to get him off the force.

But the formative part of Wiley’s career was spent not just talking about bold solutions to our biggest problems — but actually developing them.  When most politicians were still struggling to use words like “intersectional” in a sentence, Wiley was working with grassroots communities and leading innovators to actually put intersectionality into practice — and policy.

And that deep track record from her past shows up in her campaigning today. “I am running because this city can and must do more than recover from Covid,” she told me over the phone when we spoke. “It must reimagine itself as a place where we can all live with dignity. That means a place where we develop without displacement. That means a place where we put the public back in public safety. That means a place where the government is a partner and not a pariah. That means a place where communities of concern get the investments they need in order to become whole.”  

All of which Wiley insists is possible if we stop making bad choices forcing unnecessary trade-offs between helping affluent New Yorkers and Wall Street versus everyone else. “We can be a city that holds onto what we all love about New York,” Wiley says. “We love the fact that New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the world. That brings so much culture and innovation and makes us a place everyone wants to be. We have to hold onto that. But we can’t do that unless we reimagine the city as something that can include everyone.” In other words, Wiley argues, we don’t have to choose between fairness for all versus opportunity for some. There’s another way, where we “come together and have a real, honest conversation about what will make us stronger, what will make us more fair and more just… and bring this city back even stronger.” Wiley points to examples where we can make the city government more principled and more efficient and effective, invest in innovative affordable housing strategies and infrastructure investments that benefit us all.

But can we really do both?  Yes, insists Wiley with her characteristic mix of gumption and faith. “That’s why we need a non-traditional leader. Because we always could do both. We just haven’t had that option.”

Women of color in particular, Wiley explains, have never had the luxury of just “sticking with the status quo or reacting to it. We’ve always had to create.” She makes the case for why we need more diverse and inclusive leadership not just based on principle but practice — the real, concrete difference that leaders with broader perspectives bring to the table.

“I don’t embody every other,” Wiley explains, “but there’s a recognition when you are forced by society, the way we’ve structured society, to have to see many different experiences. Not everybody is forced to do that, but if you are black and female and have been fortunate enough to see what it’s like to be in a segregated, overcrowded, underfunded public school and to see what it’s like in a private school with small classrooms… to have the privilege of living in a black neighborhood where folks could barely get by and living uptown where people are living in mini-mansions… you have a sense of what other experiences are like.”  Which, to Wiley, is the point. We have constructed a society in which some of us, especially those of us often represented in positions of leadership, are distinctly less likely and even insulated from the experiences of others in our society. Electing Black women leaders isn’t just important because it makes our government look more like the people it represents but because diverse leaders can actually understand the lives and needs of all our communities.  When we talk about leadership and say “experience matters,” we also have to broaden our understanding of experience. Actually having lived the plights of ordinary New Yorkers should be a political prerequisite for any leader professing solutions for those plights. 

Which also may be the doorway to a different type of leadership altogether.  Wiley isn’t just positing herself as some sort of singularly unique and therefore singularly able savior, in the vein of ego-centric messiah-like political figures before her. She wants to bring her intersectional experiences and ideas into governing but she doesn’t want to stop there; she also wants to reimagine governing to be inherently more inclusive, participatory, and transparent. To this end, as part of her campaign, Wiley is organizing “People’s Assemblies” that bring wide ranges of New Yorkers together to discuss their priorities and needs and challenges and concerns — ”no matter which candidate they support,” Wiley notes — and come up with shared solutions. “So we’re not just telling folks, ‘Here’s what we’ll do for you.’  We’re starting a democratic practice of coming together and having these conversations.”  

In the first of these People’s Assemblies on the subject of gun violence, participants ranged from an Afro-Latina woman who grew up in public housing and a white man who was a former cop. The conversation — just the fact of them coming together and talking, and the shared struggles and solutions they and others were able to connect over — was, as Wiley describes it, “fantastic.” Several more People’s Assemblies will be organized by the campaign in the coming weeks and months.

“We’re not just asking for votes, we’re asking for community, we’re asking for folks to be in conversation,” Wiley adds. In this sense, Maya Wiley isn’t just a transformational candidate, she’s also running a transformational campaign.  

Which in so many ways makes sense given Wiley’s community organizing roots. In 2014, as Wiley was preparing to work in the de Blasio Administration — where she would ultimately experience how the transformative potential of city government could be wasted under an ineffective, visionless mayor — Wiley spoke to then Politico-reporter Maggie Haberman about the move. “You could have gone and made a million dollars,” Haberman noted, asking why Wiley wanted to work in city government instead.

In response, Wiley shared a memory from her father. “[A] friend of his once asked him, when do you stop, George And his answer was, ‘When no one else is hungry. And his friend said, Well, that’s never going to be the case. And he said, Well then you never stop.’”

Let’s hope Maya Wiley never stops fighting to bring her transformative experiences and ideas — and the experiences and ideas of all New Yorkers — to the fore. If that fight ultimately takes her to City Hall, we’ll be a better city and a better community because of it.

To Get A Dog Or Not To Get A Dog

By Filed Under: Sally Kohn Tagged With: , , ,

One thing leads to another

Building a more perfect Park Slope!

I’ve written my first two columns for the Park Slope Reader about whether to get a family dog and, if so, what dog to get.  Suffice it to say that we don’t have a dog yet, but I believe it may happen any day now.  Which led me to start thinking about things like dog beds and dog walkers and the general dog infrastructure of Park Slope.

And then I realized what’s missing—Why aren’t there any dog runs besides Prospect Park?  Am I missing something?  Is this just one of those things you don’t notice until you have a dog, sort of like how I didn’t notice kid’s menus until I had a kid?  Or are there unofficial, underground dog runs about which only the chosen few in the neighborhood know?

I’m not saying dog runs are great things—I remember when I lived in Manhattan thinking they were dusty, smelly wastes of otherwise-nice park land.  But I suspect if/when I have a dog, on those days when I just don’t feel like slogging up to the park or can’t get there in time for off leash hour, it would be nice to have a place to let the dog run a little closer to home.

And this, in turn, led me to thinking about other things our neighborhood lacks.  Let me be clear, I love Park Slope.  If I were the tattoo-getting type, I’d have 11217 written somewhere on my left bicep below “Sarah Forever” and above a portrait of Cher.  So I think Park Slope is damn near perfect.  But what might make it even more perfect, beyond the obvious things like more affordable housing stock and racial and economic integration in public schools and social spaces?  Here is a rough list of ideas:

• A co-working space.  Or maybe a co-working café, where you could buy a day pass and nab a desk and not feel guilty because you’ve only drank one cappuccino.  There are so many transient hipster creatives working “at home” crammed into the current stock of Park Slope coffee shops, I can’t believe someone hasn’t created this.

• A coffee shop with a kid play and programming space.  There are things like this in Manhattan, where moms and dads can grab a drink and a snack while the kids take in a puppet show or something.  Again, there are so many parents with young kids crammed along side the hipsters trying to get their work done, I don’t know why this doesn’t exist either.

• More mimes.  Silent but entertaining.

• More places with prepared foods.  There’s the BKLYN Larder, which I love, and at the other end of the slope, Gather, which is also great.  But what about when I’m feeling really lazy and only want to walk one or two blocks to get a dinner somebody else pseudo-home cooked?

• A place that opens early for brunch.  I love you, Dizzy’s and Cousin John’s, but I mean a more fancy brunch establishment that caters to the fact that my child us awake and hungry at 8:00 a.m.

• Participatory budgeting where community residents get to prioritize how city money is spent.  Oh wait, we already have that in Park Slope!  Thank you, City Councilman Brad Lander!

• All the chains to go away.  You can get your books for the same price at the Community Bookstore instead of Barnes & Noble.  You can get your coffee at Grumpy or Gorilla for less than Starbucks.  Local businesses are what make a community unique.  Plus when we spend money in local Park Slope-owned businesses, that money stays in and strengthens Park Slope.

• Bike racks on residential blocks.  I would love to park my bike on the street but my neighbors aren’t so keen on the aesthetics of my bike locked to our front gate.  Want to encourage more biking?  Put up more bike racks, everywhere.  And some Citibike stations would be awesome, too.

That’s just a quick list.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Except about mimes.  Please don’t send or post your thoughts about mimes.  They’re very divisive, I’ve learned.

Dog Aspirational, With Lingering Doubts

By Filed Under: Park Slope Life Tagged With: ,

 

Well, it’s been decided that my daughter will indeed get a dog. Which means we’ll all get a dog, since we all know the idea that the dog will be “her responsibility” is a fiction at any age, but certainly at six. So now it’s just a matter of when and what.

I find that big life decisions are best made in two phases. Take, for instance, having a child in the first place. This is the purpose of gestation. You first decide you want to have a child, and then you wait a while — however long it takes to get pregnant and then grow and deliver a baby, or to adopt or use a surrogate or what have you. The waiting period is strategic. It’s the world’s way of helping you come to terms with the reality of your decision and start to grasp its full implications. I remember in the movie Baby Boom when the Diane Keaton character is suddenly, unexpectedly given the baby of a distant, deceased relative, and her life falls into complete chaos. Of course, even if you had months or years warning, having a child leads to complete chaos. But less, I think.

And so I’m imagining that anticipating the having of a dog will help prepare the way for the real thing. I’ve noticed myself now thinking things like, “I guess now would be a fine time to walk the dog if we had the dog,” and “That looks like a sturdy brand of carpet cleaner for when we have the dog.” This is like how world-class runners prepare for a race by visualizing the route over and over again in their heads. I’m picturing the carpet stains.

But at the same time, I’m also making excuses. Especially when it comes to when we actually cross that threshold from fiction into reality. We can’t get a dog now, I think. It’s summer. It’s too hot. And we already have vacation plans that are dog-less. That beach rental doesn’t allow dogs, and it would be negligent to leave it alone so soon. Which leaves the fall. But that’s back to school, hectic enough. And piles of leaves mean ticks, right? Winter? No way! Too cold, wet paws, plus I hear that salt on the sidewalks really hurts them. So spring it is! It seems far enough away to not be anytime soon.

As for the kind of dog, this is a matter of much contention. First there’s age. Do we want a puppy or a more seasoned, broken in year-or-so-old dog? From what I gather, each has distinct advantages. Older dogs are already mellowed out and, apparently, sometimes come housebroken. Hence no stains, or fewer anyway. But what the hell is the point of getting a dog if you don’t get a puppy? Sure, they’re difficult, but they’re also adorable as all get out and they’re cuddly and they smell good. My six-year-old has stopped smelling good. It would be nice to have something good smelling in the house. At least until it stains the carpet.

Lastly, we’re up in the air as to breed. Me, I want a mutt from the pound. That seems to me the most socially responsible option as well as the best statistical bet, combining the best of several breeds into one better-than-average result. My daughter wants an Irish Wolf Hound. This, in case you didn’t know, it a dog the size of a small convertible. It is literally bigger than her bedroom. And it is not cuddly, though it doesn’t require much exercise which is a definite plus. But to me, Wolf Hounds look sort of the dogs that might accompany the grim reaper and I worry that in the middle of the night, catching its passing shadow might cause me to have a heart attack. I don’t want to have a heart attack.

Meanwhile my partner wants a Bernedoodle. This is a Bernese Mountain Dog crossed with a Poodle. They are absolutely as cute and cuddly as they are expensive, which is to say very. Plus there’s a not small part of me that worries that if I start by giving into a designer dog, next thing my partner will want a designer handbag or something, and we can’t really afford that either.

All of which leaves us, I suppose, in the category of “Dog Aspirational, With Lingering Doubts.” Suggestions welcome.