Dear John,

We are fast approaching 200,000 Americans dead from COVID-19, the largest preventable loss of life in American history. More Americans have died from the coronavirus than in Vietnam, Korea, or World War I.

This pandemic is a national trauma, like 9/11, and the lessons we learn from this experience will have enormous influence on the country for decades to come.

The right wing's message is pushed relentlessly on Fox News. They say COVID-19 is China’s fault and that we could have stopped it if we hadn't been “politically correct” and closed the borders. They say governors and mayors who listen to the science and require masks and social distancing are attacking our freedom and unnecessarily hurting the economy. 

And if those are the lessons that Americans take from this crisis—ignore science, blame the “other,” let unfettered capitalism run wild—that will only set us up for even more tragedy in the future.

So how do we fight back? There is no Fox News equivalent for progressives to come out with messaging day after day, month after month, year after year.

That's why I've teamed up with some of the smartest and most talented filmmakers, storytellers, strategists, and developers in the country at Inequality Media to create compelling and shareable videos for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram, to teach America the right lessons from this crisis.

Lessons like how this pandemic exposes huge gaps in our social safety net and the need for universal health care. How the coronavirus bailouts for airlines and other big corporations prove the lie that we can’t afford to invest in education and clean energy. And how systemic racism kills, with Black, brown, and indigenous people dying of COVID-19 at vastly higher rates than white Americans.

This moment will define a generation of American politics, and we cannot afford to let Fox News dictate how we move forward as a country. After 9/11, the American people learned all the wrong lessons. We can't let that happen again.

Our online audience is growing every day, as we’ve built one of the largest social media followings of any progressive organization on the internet. But it’s not growing fast enough to compete with Fox News and the far-right influencers dominating newsfeeds and airwaves, which is why we need your help. 

Will you donate right now to help make sure Americans learn the right lessons from this national crisis and see the injustices and lost opportunities the pandemic has exposed?

Thank you for helping us guide the narrative,

Robert Reich
Inequality Media