The CARES Act passed fails to meet a simple moral test - that we protect the most vulnerable among us because it largely excludes immigrant and mixed-status families, including their U.S. citizen children, from stimulus payments.
COVID-19 is a threat to everyone, but the economic damage resulting from medically necessary quarantines and shelter-in-place orders is neither random nor equally distributed.
This pandemic is revealing the deeper inequities for Black and brown people that have always been present in our economy and democracy but that are often papered over in ordinary times.
“These are folks who are serving [and] preparing food for all of the rest of us. It's a recipe for contagion when...the people preparing your food cannot afford to stay home when they have a contagious disease.”
"Like in previous moments of crisis, whether it's the Great Depression or the 2008 financial crisis, we will need new governmental bodies to address the public needs at this scale."
It’s crucial that the U.S. Congress and the Department of Education act swiftly and aggressively and provide states and institutions with much-needed support before it’s too late.
