At roughly 8 p.m. on the eighth consecutive night of protest in Memphis, DeVante Hill stopped the roughly 200 Memphians marching with him along South Main.

A few blocks earlier, the group had gone still for 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence in honor of George Floyd, the Minneapolis man whose killing at the knee of a police officer sparked coast-to-coast protests. 

This time, it was an impromptu break as one marcher began to overheat. While resting, Hill asked those assembled, nearly half of whom had earlier signaled that it was their first night to join him, if they’d seen video of the group chanting “We ready for change” under a railroad overpass the night before? 

“Do you want to do that, too?” Hill asked. 

They did, and so minutes later these 200 Memphians weren’t spread out and on the move but huddled together in front of artist Kyle Taylor’s Memphis music mural on G.E. Patterson, between Main and Front, half-singing, half-chanting together: “We ready, we ready, we ready for change.” 

And in that moment, as an observer on the edge of the cluster, I thought not about issues of policing and racism and the crippling intersection of the two, which had previously been top of mind, but instead about what we think we know about the spread of coronavirus:

Being outside, especially in warmer weather seems to carry less risk: Good. 

Being in close proximity to others for an extended period is risky: Bad.

Wearing masks, as most, though not all, of the protesters were, limits spread: Good. 

Singing together in a group is a classic “superspreader” event: Uh-oh.

With these different factors working against each other, how risky was this moment in regard to a virus that is growing, not disappearing, in our community? I don’t know, but as someone who is significantly more concerned about the issues that sparked these protests than about the health risks of being outside while masked or distanced, it was the one moment this week when our other ongoing crisis popped back to the surface: Singing together makes you feel good, but might also make you sick.

COVID has dominated our lives since at least mid-March. Coast-to-coast demonstrations have dominated our lives over the past week. And they’ve come crashing together in ways expected, unexpected and definitely awkward. It’s put Memphis under separate, overlapping states of emergency, even if the more recent one seems to be an overreaction.

A convoluted institutional statement for our times from National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver, announcing the league’s plan for return on Thursday:

“While the COVID-19 pandemic presents formidable challenges, we are hopeful of finishing the season in a safe and responsible manner based on strict protocols now being finalized with public health officials and medical experts. We also recognize that as we prepare to resume play, our society is reeling from recent tragedies of racial violence and injustice, and we will continue to work closely with our teams and players to use our collective resources and influence to address these issues in very real and concrete ways.”

A headline for our times, from Huffington Post: 

Law Enforcement Seizes Masks Meant To Protect Anti-Racist Protesters From COVID-19

Another, from The Daily Memphian:

Memphis tourism keeps eye on protests as COVID-19 recovery inches forward

And another:

Health care leaders: Racism is another pandemic

This last one is key to the tension between these twin crises: Both impact black citizens more dramatically, and public action on one risks worsening the other.

What to do? 

That’s largely an individual decision, another more profound and more fraught layer to the value/risk assessments we’re all making as we navigate through the pandemic. But we should acknowledge that there’s a real assessment to make. 

We need our public health officials now more than ever. But mixed messages over mask usage hurt their standing. And, to many, fairly or not, so did ever-evolving modeled projections of COVID spikes and surges that haven’t quite happened. Now, police-protest critics – and even plenty of sympathizers – have raised legitimate questions about some public health officials and politicians reacting differently to the health risks of these protests than they did to the health risks of protests against so-called shutdowns and social-distancing decrees.

Officials may feel that this second wave of protest is more righteous and necessary than the first – I do – but a virus has no moral sense. It does not care about justice. 

Our COVID cases in Memphis haven’t spiked, but they keep rising, the water inching up but not yet at risk of overflowing.

Earlier this week, my friend George Lord wrote a guest op-ed that I think mischaracterizes my previous column on this issue. I have never celebrated “good news” about coronavirus in Memphis, but have consistently waved a caution flag. My take was and remains this: Our case level remains manageable but bears close scrutiny. And that sense of caution should influence not only the decisions of politicians and public health officials – who have been right to tap the breaks on a move to Phase 3 of loosening restrictions – but individual citizens. 

Yes, the public protests of the past week would seem to violate the current directives against mass gatherings of 50 or more. Given the substance of what these gatherings are, it would be a mistake – philosophical and pragmatic – for officials to use that as a pretext for breaking them up. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t worry about them. You could have said the same about the anti-shutdown rallies, if that many Memphians had been interested in gathering for them. 

This weekend in Memphis, the protests likely aren’t going away, and neither is the virus. Activist leader Frank Gottie vowed to be in the University District, at Poplar and Highland, on Friday. Hill has plans to lead another march from I Am a Man Plaza on Saturday. Those two likely won’t be alone.

City and county leaders have signaled a move toward more police reform, but a signal is only that, and citizens who want these reforms will want to keep applying pressure for them. 

The best American movie made about issues of police violence and protest – and about summer heat and maybe just about anything at all – is Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” The paradox of the movie is that at the end, it’s not exactly clear what the film thinks the right thing was. That’s left for the viewer to decide. 

We’ve all had to make decisions through this pandemic and they’ve only grown more complicated. So good luck to Memphians this weekend as everyone tries to do the right thing, whatever you decide that means.

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