Reflecting on September, Looking Ahead to November
Greetings, fellow Conformists.
Originally, I had wanted to celebrate workers in honor of Labor Day in this email. Then, I wanted to honor Ruth Bader Ginsberg. And then, and then, and then… It seems every day brings a new tragedy or outrage, a new trespass against our democracy. There’s been no time to breathe between travesties.
Now it’s time to reflect and regroup. To reaffirm the America we want to live in.
If you are reeling from the past month, and first few days of October, you aren’t the only one. Our nation, supposedly indivisible, feels anything but. Thanks in large part to our partisanship, two hundred thousand Americans have perished from the coronavirus.
Our people are the lifeblood of our nation. America is nothing without its people, who are our workers, our creative voices, our caregivers and volunteers, our inventors and entrepreneurs, our thinkers – yet we have allowed approaching a quarter million people to die in only six months, under the specious argument that closing long enough to slow the spread of the virus would hurt our economy.
Letting that many people die hurts our economy – bluntly, dead people can’t shop or work – and the soul of our nation, because people are more than their productivity. Those of us who survive must live with the losses, and the knowledge that their deaths were preventable. And the end of the dying is nowhere in sight.
Small businesses are part of “the economy” too
While many states have reopened in part, it’s the small businesses that are suffering, not the mega-corporations who have already amassed a horrifyingly large concentration of power and wealth in our nation. The stock market is doing well. Main Street is not.
These small businesses are the shops that give our communities their character. Shopping at locally-owned and run businesses keeps money in our towns, rather than sending it back to distant headquarters of corporations that likely don’t support our nation by paying taxes.
Over the last six months, American leaders have chosen to protect the investments of already-wealthy shareholders, but let independent businesses fail. Stimulus money for small businesses was rampant with fraud, and ran out too quickly. Many small businesses lacked the relationships with banks that would allow them to apply for the aid before it was spoken for, or couldn’t risk the commitments that the loans required for reopening.
We must protect our people
Just so, the wealthy need not worry about health care, but our nation may strip poor Americans of their access to affordable medical treatment in the midst of a pandemic that has affected even our head of state. Meanwhile, many remain out of work (predominantly Black and brown people and mothers, who must now provide childcare) and federal assistance is tied up by politics.
Protecting people from the risk of death or long-term illness should not be controversial. Sacrificing the safety of anyone who isn’t young, healthy, and able-bodied is the kind of injustice and inhumanity America should stand against. Especially when it became clear how much heavier the burden has been on Black, Indigenous and Hispanic people. If our nation wants to move beyond racism, we cannot accept a pandemic response that disproportionately kills people of color. That’s what we have now.
Every early death is a loss to our nation. Another family grieving. Another friend we’ll never see again.
Even those who “recover” from coronavirus may suffer long-term health impacts, like heart issues, lung scarring, and chronic fatigue that could affect their lives for years to come.
We are a nation obsessed with our GDP, when we should be concerned about our people. A nation that’s “number one” doesn’t condemn its elderly and disabled to the choice between lives of confinement or risk of severe illness and possibly death.
If you are angry, if you are sad, about everything that has been revealed about our nation and our leaders over the course of the pandemic, you are not alone.
Channel that rage, that grief, into action. Demand change by voting. Reset our national priorities to put the welfare of our own people and the survival of our communities above corporate profits.
And if the system does not reflect the will of the people, our next step may be to change our system.
Together, we can remake America closer to the idealized America we want to live in.
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Yours in Conformity,
Drake Starling
Director, Bureau of Conformity