Dear Progressive Reader,
As I write this, numerous local, regional, and national governments are declaring, or have declared, states of emergency in response to the spread of the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes named COVID-19. Here in the United States, Donald Trump did so yesterday, about two months after the first case was identified in North America. It was also the same day a former National Security Council explained in an op-ed in The Washington Post how Trump, two years previously, had dismantled the national office meant to deal with a pandemic like this. Trump, of course, says he knew nothing about his actions or their effects. “We’re doing a great job,” he said. Perhaps he meant to say “were” instead?
As Ruth Conniff notes this week, the spread of the virus has had a major effect on the political landscape. “The hollowness of Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ rhetoric,” she says, “is exposed in a real crisis which is touching all of us directly, as we receive hour-by-hour notifications of event cancellations and new cases in our local communities. If ever we needed steady leadership, now is the time.”
Reese Erlich, this week, chronicles his own experience in self-quarantine in California following a trip to Iran. Megan Giovannetti examines the impacts of the coronavirus in Greece and the ways it is exacerbating anti-immigrant sentiment. “Hyper-militarizing borders will not stop the problem of asylum seekers,” she writes. “Sowing the seeds of xenophobia by augmenting hysteria over the COVID-19 pandemic will not bring Greek islanders’ lives back to how they were.” And, cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates the effects of Trump’s anti-science approach to the global crisis.
In 1722, novelist and social critic Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) published his historical novel A Journal of the Plague Year, probably based on his uncle’s journals of the arrival of bubonic plague in 1665 in London. “The face of London was—now indeed strangely altered: . . . sorrow and sadness sat upon every face; and though some parts were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned; and, as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked on himself and his family as in the utmost danger.”
Defoe wrote in 1722 that “The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased by the error of the times; in which, I think, the people, from what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies and astrological conjurations, dreams, and old wives' tales than ever they were before or since.” Today we do have some dependable sources of good information on the disease and ways to respond. The websites of the Centers for Disease Control (established July 1, 1946) and the World Health Organization (established April 7, 1948) are perhaps the best resources. And please, take care of your neighbors and yourselves.
Census forms for 2020 began arriving in the mail this week. Most people are being asked to fill out their form online (a decision that was made long before the COVID-19 crisis, but welcomed by many wishing to avoid face-to-face contact with large groups of people). This year’s form with nine basic questions is even shorter than the 2010 form, which had been called one of the shortest in history. It does not include the citizenship question that had been proposed by the Trump Administration, but it does ask people marking their race as “white” to indicate their familial origins (German, Irish, etc.), a distinction which had not appeared on previous forms.
Writing in The Progressive’s June/July 2019 issue, Sharon Johnson enumerates the many non-profit and community organizations that have organized to promote an accurate count this year. “Census data,” she writes, “is used to determine how some $880 billion a year in federal funding is distributed to the states for safety-net programs and infrastructure projects.” For instance, in Massachusetts, officials said they “fear that an undercount may cost the state $16 billion per year in federal aid. This would especially hurt some of the state’s most vulnerable residents.” So, stand up and be counted, for the benefit of those in your community who need it the most.
Keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
P.S. – We are offering a special half-price sale on our 2020 Hidden History of the United States calendar! You can order one now, before they are all gone, by clicking here.
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