Just thinking about the 3.3 million people who filed for unemployment insurance and all the others who have lost their jobs. Because we tether health insurance to employment, these people will now face a pandemic without health benefits. 1/
Thinking about all of those folks in the South--the poorest region in the country. Where generations of divestment in the public sector has left them extremely vulnerable, where rural hospitals have closed, and public health infrastructure is shaky at best. 2/
Thinking about all those people who live in the shadows of the richest country in the history of the world: those who fall between the cracks and wondering what will they do. How will they survive this? 3/
Thinking about how a particular political ideology has strangled this country for at least 40 years and how a caricatured version of it currently has the country by the throat. Listen to how some talk about the poor. Hear the way Trump shifts responsibility to the states. 4/
Thinking about he has, and how those around him have, a limited view of the role of the federal government. Its main purpose is to ensure the efficiency of the economy and maintain the national defense. Nothing else. He wanted to "deconstruct the administrative state." 5/
We should expect little of Trump and his gaggle of mediocre men (and they are mostly white men). Thinking about how we must break free from this ideological frame--how the moment demands that we think outside of this damn ideological box. 6/
Thinking about how much of the current efforts in Congress reflect assumptions about how our economy works based in an ideology that has devastated the planet and the lives of so many people. Wishing they would do more. Knowing that, most likely, they will not. 7/
Wondering who will finally step forward with a set of radical ideas in response to a virus that has revealed the old order for what it is. Who will offer big ideas that match the scale of the crisis we face? 8/
Wondering how we will "be" together as a country once we get pass this moment (and we will survive this crisis). How will we reimagine a sense of mutuality and genuine relationship with our fellows? Can we even imagine living together differently, more justly? 9/
My heart goes out to those who've lost love ones in these dark days: that they couldn't be there to hold a hand, to hear a last wish, to say "I love you" one more time. Let's not let their deaths be in vain. 10/
