Protest in the time of COVID-19
Catching coronavirus was an afterthought for some at historic march
As social-distancing strategies go, at a protest, it’s hard to beat riding a horse. “You’re definitely going to be 6 feet away from anybody,” laughed Chanika Baity.
Baity was one of 30 or so black riders who drew cheers at Houston’s George Floyd protest on Tuesday, and whose image defined the Houston gathering across the world.
Most ride with one or another of the Houston rodeo’s trail rides, but they weren’t officially representing those organizations. They were there on their own, having heard the call in different ways. Jas Prince, of Rap-a-Lot Records, put out a flyer; some saw that on social media; others heard about the ride through Turkey Leg Hut, that temple of blackness and Lousiana food.
On Facebook, Baity’s fiancé, Robert Goodson, had been posting a lot about Floyd and the Minneapolis protests. Goodson is normally a joker, a laugher, but Floyd’s death hit him hard. He’d known Floyd a little. They were both Southsiders, both big men who used to play basketball at the South Park Baptist Church.
A friend called Goodson Tuesday morning: “You going to the ride today?” It felt right.
They loaded up their trailer — the quarterhorse Bella for Baity, and the Tennessee walker Biba for Goodson — and drove to the meetup spot, Emancipation Park. It’s in Third Ward, Goodson was thinking: the neighborhood where Floyd grew up.
Lots of the riders wore face masks, but Goodson didn’t. Of all the awful things that could happen to a black man, the coronavirus was not the one troubling his mind.
‘Thank you for marching!’
Gathering downtown at Discovery Green, most pro
testers didn’t have the natural social-distancing advantage of being on horseback. Volunteers were handing out free masks, and off-the-cuff estimates suggest between 75 percent and 90 percent of protesters wore masks. But it was beastly hot, so people pulled their masks down to drink water or chant, or just to breathe. In the heat, some protesters passed out.
Staying a safe distance from other people was nearly impossible. Pen Morrison, a 60-yearold white artist, had been avoiding restaurants and going to the grocery store only when she saw very few cars in the lot. But for this, she couldn’t stay home.
She wore a homemade fabric mask to the protest, and when an unmasked person drew near, put her sign in front of her face as a shield. At Discovery Green, when people thought the parade might be beginning, the crowd grew uncomfortably dense.
But it moved her, seeing all those people, united. At the end of the day, as she walked back to her car, a black guy on a bike shouted, “Thank you for marching!” They spoke a few minutes. She wanted to hug him, but because of the virus, didn’t dare.
Now she’s waiting, giving the virus time enough to show up on a test. After 14 days, she figures, she’ll know whether she caught it.
She has no regrets.
‘We got it’
Police cars escorted the horse riders to Discovery Green. When the crowd there caught sight of the cowboy hats, the horses and the riders’ black faces, they cheered. Cowboys were heroes, and Houston needed them.
“You could feel the energy of the people,” Goodson said. “They’re tired of things, and they hadn’t known what to do.”
After the speeches at Discovery Green, during the march to City Hall, the riders were up front, near the dignitaries.
A police officer — a short black guy, Goodson remembers — was struggling to escort Floyd’s family to City Hall. He said to Goodson, “Hey, man, we need to clear the way.”
“We got it,” Goodson said. And the riders did, in fact, have it: The protesters parted, making way for the horses, and opening a pathway for the family.
“That was history yesterday,” Goodson said.
He meant it in the larger sense: In the sense that Houston made history, that the U.S. made history, that Floyd’s name will be in our grandchildren’s textbooks. But maybe there was a little history, too, in Goodson’s own small moment with that cop — an exchange between an officer and a large black protester in which each assumed the best of the other, an exchange that quietly, efficiently went right.