Dear John,
We’ve all seen the panic surrounding COVID-19 escalate exponentially in the last week. It’s becoming increasingly clear that our hospitals and healthcare providers don’t have access to sufficient resources, such as facemasks, gloves, and ventilators. This pandemic has exposed the deep flaws in the American healthcare system and social safety net (or lack thereof), but it also gives us a glimpse into the cruel reality of our foreign policy.
On Tuesday, it was announced that the United States will be imposing new sanctions against Iran, which has been one of the countries hit hardest by COVID-19. As of now, there are close to 1,300 COVID-related deaths, with tens of thousands of confirmed cases (and thousands of deaths likely still to come). Our sanctions will make it more difficult for Iranian civilians and medical providers to access life-saving tools to reduce the worst effects of COVID-19.
These new sanctions are killing innocent Iranians, but, frankly, the reality is that Iranians have had to face sanctions like this for many years. Our sanctions have crippled their capacity to provide care for their population and have been directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iranians every single year. With the spread of COVID-19, Americans are getting a sense of what it means to live in a society of scarce resources: over the next few weeks and months, countless Americans will suffer from preventable causes. No human should ever have to live like this, and no nation should be actively working to facilitate these inhumane conditions.
Whether it’s ICE taking advantage of local lockdowns to tear families apart, prisons restricting visitation rights of worried loved ones, or US sanctions limiting nations’ access to life-saving medical supplies, our homegrown machinations of cruelty must cease - if not now during this terrible global pandemic, then when?
Sending love and wishing for our collective peace & safety,
Andom Ghebreghiorgis
Democrat for Congress | NY-16
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