In the face of COVID-19, the political response has been at best temporary relief and at worst indifference. What we need going forward is not just better public health measures, but a response to the economic insecurities and policy failures that it laid bare.
Deference to state governments has severely undermined public health efforts during the pandemic and deepened geographic inequality in the United States.
Decisions about where to build or close a school are not just responses to demographic change. They are drivers of it.
Conservative state governments are rolling back local public health initiatives, intentionally putting their citizens in harm’s way.
Across the country, state governments are passing legislation that grants companies immunity from any liability for their failure to protect workers during the pandemic.
What’s behind the drive to “re-open”? Some state governments just want to return to how they previously used unemployment insurance: not to cushion the blow of job loss but to compel participation in the labor market.
Current unemployment numbers now rival the peak during the Great Depression.
It took just three weeks to hit the number of U.S. unemployment claims that were reached in forty-four weeks during the Great Recession. And that doesn’t include people unable to access antiquated and overwhelmed state application systems.
Most downturns in the business cycle occur over a number of months. This spike has occurred in just a couple of weeks.
The Trump administration didn’t invent the policies that redistribute wealth and income to the top, but it has doubled down on them in characteristically cruel and petty ways.
On the history of dispossession, disinvestment, and discrimination that formed the backdrop to the killing of Michael Brown.
Unemployment “reforms” in Iowa and other states controlled by the GOP fit neatly with a larger agenda: not to protect workers from low wages, unsafe working conditions, and unbridled employer power, but to compel them to accept whatever they can get.
