Pictures by William Morse
Coming up to Thanksgiving, I heard a lot of talk about how Seattle, oh so liberal Seattle, was going to show its stuff last Friday ..the day called “Black Friday.”
Our synagogue even devoted Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement, to atoning for how we (Jews) have hurt Black people. That was where I heard about the plans to protest Black Friday by demonstrating for Black Lives Matter. Come Black Friday there was to be a demonstration, re-purposing thing the term “black” as applied to a shopping day to “black” as in “Black Lives Matter.”
I gathered our protest was to join with protests led from the Black community and, I. assume, the usual folks from liberal churches.
Now, as a Jew, I found this confusing because I do not understand the symbolism of Black Friday. For example, I have always suspected some sort of thematic tie between Black Friday and Good Friday. (I think the term Schadenfreude may apply to both. ) Is there pleasure in celebrating Jesus’ death knowing he will be resurrected in two days? If so, I guess the same thing may explain opening the Christmas season with a shopping frenzy.
As a Seattleite I was even more confused. With our real estate market afloat on the rents paid by Amazon workers, we don’t go out to shop. We sit at home, browse the offerings at Amazon, and stuff appears.
Was the idea to shop first at home and then protest?
Okay, going downtown to protest in person is a good idea. But our son was in town and had other things to do. Fortunately my friend Bill went and took a camera. Seems like not so many folks showed up to protest Black Friday. One merchant even remarked that the publicity brought in more customers who came to see the demonstration but ended up shopping.
As for Black Lives Matter? Seattle has become a pretty nearly all white city so Black faces were few and far between.
