Hi there,

The word “quarantine” comes from the Italian word for “forty,” because forty days was the medieval standard for public-health-related isolation. 

Today, we are past forty and counting, and it’s far from obvious when we will emerge from the emergency isolation and dramatic measures that define our lives today.

As we try to see past this moment, every question leads to more. 

Asking when things will reopen means asking what it will look like when they do. Is there a halfway state between the current lockdown and business-as-usual? How will reopening unfold differently in different parts of the country? Which businesses will come back, and which will not? Which of our daily habits -- commuting, using an office, traveling, shaking hands -- will return as we once knew them, and which will never be as before? 

The more we visualize what comes next, the clearer it becomes that the future won’t look like the past. Nor should it. 

With Win the Era PAC, we’re working to support leaders who believe in bold solutions and structural transformations to help us build a better future. If you can, please consider making a donation today.

So many unsustainable features of our old status quo were both exposed and exploited by this pandemic: the disempowerment of workers, the racial disparities in health care access, poor coordination with other countries and international bodies, the reduction of believing in science to a matter of political preference. 

Unacceptable to begin with, these facts have also proven to make America weaker at this crucial moment. 

So amid the uncertainty of this time, one thing we know for sure is that the path to recovery is not as simple as going back to an old normal. 

Our recovery will include decisions that shape America for the rest of our lives. We won’t simply be reinstating all of the political and economic arrangements we knew before, with the same winners and losers, and the same weaknesses. We can’t, and we shouldn’t try.

This is a daunting thought, but it should also be a compelling one. 

We should realize that if some of our old habits cannot survive the pandemic, perhaps some of our problems can be shed too. In fixing these deep weaknesses, we can create new strengths -- and a better future. 

More than at any moment since the New Deal, this is a moment of opportunity and obligation to create a new and better set of arrangements and institutions, social and economic, that will last for the era to come. 

It is a season for imagination, for local as well as national leadership, for boldness and inclusion and empathy. In other words: while our campaign, which ended just two months ago, now feels like something from another lifetime, the spirit and values that motivated this community of supporters over the last year will be more relevant than ever over the years to come.

Through political action and outside of politics, I’ll be working to be part of these changes and hope that you -- the extraordinary group of Americans I have come to know over the past year -- will join me. 

Thanks and more soon,

Pete