By Roberto “Rob” Camacho
In the unprecedented global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has been forced to take a hard look in the mirror and acknowledge societal ills and inequities which unattended have festered for decades.
Over the past twelve months COVID presented a chance to reimagine things such as housing, education, wage increases, access to technology, healthcare, and more. However, due to the actions of the economic elite, and a stubbornly complicit legislature, the lives of everyday people have been crushed to ensure that even in the midst of a deadly pandemic, the status quo has remained the same at all costs. Including the lives of more than half a million people in the U.S. who have died of COVID over the past twelve months.
In contrast, other developed nations – many already equipped with social programs and safety nets not available in the U.S. – such as Canada for instance, which approved a massive C$27 billion COVID-19 Economic Response Plan early in the pandemic to help individual Canadians and businesses by issuing monthly payments of $2,000 for four months.
Responses like this not only made economic sense, they have helped keep the populace of such nations safe and most importantly allowed them to remain at home where they would be less likely to contract and spread the virus.
The United States, however, rather than enact the same bold economic action taken by other developed nations, opted to deputize the poor and working-class, newly christened as ‘essential workers’ to uphold the bottom lines of status quo and to bear the physical, psychological, and economic brunt of the pandemic.