COVID-19: A Truth Serum
COVID-19 has revealed lies from the rich and those in power. If we’re not careful, the real cure may evade us.
Inequality has been modus operandi — it’s just the way we’ve done things.
We deserved a living wage, we got a minimum wage — a bare minimum wage. Now, those minimum wage workers have been elevated to the status of essential. Their work is quite literally the only reason we are surviving this ordeal.
We deserved universal healthcare, we were told it’s too expensive; yet, our government managed to pull billions out of nowhere for corporation bailouts, millionaires, and even a few dollars for the average person — and did so rather swiftly.
We deserved justice, we were told that punishing even the smallest of infractions, especially if you’re Black or Brown, was justice; we bought into minimum terms, private prisons, and humiliation as justifiable means to keeping the peace. Yet, now we see ourselves scrambling to utilize the same people we threw away to make desperately needed hand sanitizer, and we’re actively reducing the rate of arrests — turns out, we need the people we’ve discarded; turns out, not every offense warrants jail time.
We deserved a flexible schedule and reasonable accommodations in order to manage our health conditions, take care of our parents, take care of our children. Working adapted schedules and working from home was labeled an impossibility and a drain — by extension we accepted pregnancy, childcare, eldercare, and those with disabilities as a drain, as demanding too much. Miraculously though, we’ve shifted across the board to virtual meetings, virtual learning, and flexible scheduling. Companies and schools restructured rapidly as the need for accommodation was changed from a select few to the many — and people have not only managed to complete their work, but somehow accommodating workers isn’t touted as a drain anymore.
Over the past week, protests against stay-at-home orders have been ignited, encouraged, and taken place across the country. Never mind that large gatherings go against every public health advisory, including national guidelines, and will almost invariably lead to a spike in cases in protest cities in one to two weeks — and damage whatever flattening was on the horizon or our chances to get back to “normal”.
