Coronavirus, Capitalism and other diseases
The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting nearly every facet of life in many communities. We must practice “social distancing” as one of the tactics to contain —or at least slow— the outbreak but we must also practice solidarity and mutual aid wherever conditions allow. For this public health crisis is simultaneously an economic crisis for countless people impacted by the virus and corresponding quarantines.
And the reason for that is simple: our political system (the two-party cartel) and economic system (capitalism) have utterly failed us. But it didn’t have to be this way. For years the Green Party has campaigned for:
- Medicare-For-All, which would not leave countless families terrified of the cost of COVID-19 testing — to say nothing of treatment.
- A Green New Deal investment in public infrastructure, which would have granted us a Centers For Disease Control and Prevention prepared to track down and contain the virus when it hit the U.S. in January.
- Worker protections that would not leave people agonizing over how to pay the rent or mortgage when their ability to work has been shut down by quarantines.
Please give to the Green Party today, because even as we battle today’s crises we have no idea what tomorrow might bring. We do know what kind of society we need to build to take on those crises humanely, justly and effectively. We’ve always said this was a fight for our lives — could the picture be any more clear?
The current picture is a disgrace: Trump’s lies and incompetence, price-gouging for hand sanitizer and tremendous, stifling fear. But the Trump presidency itself is a kind of opportunistic infection, born of decades of bipartisan corruption, austerity and abuse of democracy.
The two-party cartel is again demonstrating how it functions to discredit and smother solutions that would benefit millions of everyday people just to preserve the vast fortunes of a wealthy few.
Be safe and be kind to each other,
Gloria Mattera
Green Party US Co-Chair
P.S. Green Party Monthly Sustainers keep us strong! If you can contribute $5, $10 or $20 per month —whatever you can support— we can run even stronger campaigns to put Greens in office who will fight for the real solutions that can’t wait.