We all have our part to play in stopping COVID-19, yes. Mask up, socially distance, think critically about your interactions.
But I see too many liberals and even leftists hyperfixating on perceived individual failings and not talking enough about prisons.
But I see too many liberals and even leftists hyperfixating on perceived individual failings and not talking enough about prisons.
This isn't trivial. The latest numbers as reported by the NY Times show *8 of the top 10* identified COVID-19 clusters in America are prisons and jails. The other two are meatpacking plants. 
As you go down the list, you see warships, more meatpacking plants, nursing homes, and a whole lot of prisons. In this moment, as policing faces long overdue scrutiny, we need to be talking about how America's prison industrial complex has been the nuclear core of our pandemic.
COVID-19 is a clustering disease. While it's important to mitigate risks at bars etc. as a recent widely reported on case in Jacksonville demonstrates, we remain overly fixated on poor individual choices.
Prisons, warships, meatpacking plants, etc. are the responsibility of governments and corporations; they are the ones whose failures have left this country in such a sorry state. And we lose sight of that in hysteria about which of your neighbours isn't "staying the fuck home."
If ever there was a moment to advance the conversation on prison abolition, this is it. A moment when we're not only questioning the foundations of policing, but a moment where a pandemic has seized on America's prison fetish as a weak spot.
