Kimberly Delbrune-Mitter, a cardiac nurse, cares deeply about her patients and remains steadfast in her desire to help them, even as COVID-19 spreads across America. What plagues her about the new disease isn’t that she might encounter it. It’s the lack of guidance, vital information that would help her balance quality care and her own health. Medical professionals looking to the Trump administration for leadership will hear nothing but a resounding silence. Instead, people on the front lines have to fight for their own health and safety even while they care for their patients. A group of labor unions, including the United Steelworkers (USW), sent Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia a petition demanding that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) implement an emergency safety standard to protect health care workers, first responders and others at risk of contracting the virus on the job. So far, they’ve received no response. The unions and the workers they represent want OSHA to specify the types of equipment employers must provide and the procedures they must follow to keep workers safe. While the Trump administration fiddles, hundreds of health care workers already are quarantined because of possible exposure to COVID-19, and many others have questions about how to do their jobs without contracting the disease.
Within two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American auto factories were already converting to make tanks instead of cars. The government needs to treat the Covid-19 pandemic like a war - except the enemy is an invisible virus rather than a foreign power. No, President Trump, the enemy is not China. On Wednesday, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law, that empowers the federal government to direct private companies to meet national security needs. But for inexplicable reasons, Trump said he has no immediate plans to use it. Instead, he told states and municipalities to find supplies on their own, and tweeted: “I only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese [sic] virus should we need to invoke in in a worst case scenario in the future. Hopefully there will be no need…” Meanwhile, health care workers are facing this crisis heroically, even if our president won't. In New York, Boston and Seattle, nurses and doctors have set up their own makeshift assembly lines to create protective kits with donated sports goggles, bandannas and parts purchased at Home Depot. Is the President a moron? Please, don’t bother answering that question. Rather than predicting the virus would miraculously disappear, Trump should have been preparing infrastructure to save lives, and ordered American companies to step up manufacturing and distributing life-saving equipment weeks ago. It can’t wait another day!
As the crisis around the novel coronavirus has unfolded, sending shockwaves through the U.S. economy, President Trump and his allies wasted no time casting blame on China. On Thursday, March 12, Republican Senator Tom Cotton even openly threatened China over the coronavirus, vowing in a public statement that “we will hold accountable those who inflicted it on the world.” On Twitter he confirmed that he meant that “China will pay for this.” Cotton’s belligerent position is all too reasonable within the framework of rightwing nationalism in the U.S. In the weeks to follow, escalating belligerence against and scapegoating of China will increasingly appear to be the only politically viable response for Trump and the rightwing nationalist movement that he leads. Consider that before long, we could see millions of people in the U.S. infected by the coronavirus, large numbers of people dying, a recession and widespread economic suffering, and other severe disruptions to social life, including disruptions to voting that could overwhelm the electoral system. As the country watches in horror, Trump’s opponents will be able to point to clear signs that the President spent weeks downplaying the coronavirus and blocking stronger action in service of the stock market and his re-election campaign. At that point Trump will feel backed into a corner. And yet there is little chance that Trump will accept responsibility for this immense disaster. (“I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump told reporters March 13 in response to reporters’ questions about the Administration’s bungled response.) Instead he will (he must) attempt to shift the blame elsewhere — to China.
There are times in history when sudden events — natural disasters, economic collapses, pandemics, wars, famines — change everything. They change politics, they change economics and they change public opinion in drastic ways. Many social movement analysts call these “trigger events.” During a trigger event, things that were previously unimaginable quickly become reality, as the social and political map is remade. Right now, lots of people are formulating action plans and policy demands, focusing on how the government should respond or measures that elected officials might pass by way of emergency response. What’s missing is a platform and vision for mass participation — a means through which people can join in and collectively take part in a movement to create the type of just response our society needs. A movement can support, amplify, and fill in the gaps left by government and the health care infrastructure. If we know that we need a mass social movement response, how do we make it happen — especially in times of social distancing? Given the activity currently percolating, we cannot know what efforts will gain traction or what overarching frameworks for unity might take hold. But we can assess the possibilities that have presented themselves. One of the most potent is the prospect that the Bernie Sanders campaign could pivot to become a movement focused on pandemic response. The Sanders campaign has built one of the largest and most sophisticated grassroots organizing campaigns in American history. Whether the Sanders campaign seizes this opportunity, or an alternate framework for collective action arises, a mass movement response to the coronavirus pandemic cannot come too soon. For our own sake, and that of our society as a whole, let us help the drive toward solidarity emerge.
A core lesson from this primary season is that it’s not enough for a candidate to have the right message if there is not sufficient organization on the ground. Fortunately, last week’s primary election in Illinois showed that the movement has a path to win governing power—by organizing to elect candidates to a variety of offices who share a broad progressive platform. Despite an election day marked by low turnout amid the COVID-19 pandemic, The People’s Lobby and other progressive groups knocked out the most right-wing Democrat in the House, Dan Lipinski. We re-elected progressive Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx in the face of vicious attacks by the forces of white supremacy, the Fraternal Order of Police and a private equity billionaire. And we elected to the Illinois Senate Robert Peters, a candidate who came straight from the movement. Common to all three of these stories is that they combined movement energy from the current political moment with a longer-term history of grassroots power building.
Top Democratic Party officials are scrambling to figure out how to handle voting by crowds at their next big event of the 2020 presidential season: the county conventions where Democratic National Convention delegates start to be named. The national health emergency surrounding the eruption of the coronavirus has raised many questions about how 2020’s forthcoming elections will be held. In the three states that will be holding primaries on March 17 - Arizona, Florida, and Illinois - state officials have been taking last-minute steps to minimize exposing voters. Those steps include moving polling places away from senior centers and regularly wiping down touch screen computers used by voters to cast ballots. Government officials in Ohio, where voters were slated to go to the polls March 17 - as well as Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana - have postponed their primaries due to the virus, and New York is considering a delay. In Congress, Sen. Ron Wyden has proposed allocating funds to help states to vote by mail in the fall, as a way to lessen exposure to the virus during the voting process. Ironically, some states are eyeing the use of electronic voting systems—even after digital systems failed or delayed the results in some important early 2020 contests. The uncertainties unleashed by the pandemic have raised many questions about whether the 2020 national election will be held as scheduled—or how the voting would be done. The decision by Georgia’s Republican Governor, Brian Kemp, to cancel a state Supreme Court election and appoint a conservative justice, followed by Louisiana’s postponement of its 2020 primary, has underscored that concern.
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