thenation--2020-05-14--Undocumented Workers in Coronavirus Crisis

“ I don ’ t have work right now .
There is no work .
I ’ ve been looking , but there ’ s no work out there , ” says Ana , a 53-year-old garment worker in Los Angeles , who migrated from Mexico City just over 30 years ago .
Then Ana , her brown hair flecked with gray and pulled back tightly in a bun , her tired eyes slightly watery behind oversized , brown-plastic-rimmed glasses , corrects herself .
There ’ s work in supermarkets , she says softly , but when she applies , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are her documents , her work permits .
Since she is undocumented , these jobs are off-limits.1 Thirty years ago , Ana remembers , she earned about $ 250 a week in the garment factories .
Today , she still takes home about $ 250 a week in under-the-table earnings , but in the interim , “ the cost of rent and so on has gone up.
” Her family ’ s expectations of the American Dream have been curtailed .
“ We ’ ve learned to be frugal in this country .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ with dried goods—rice and beans .
We eat the basics , nothing luxurious.
” 2 These days , even the basics are a luxury .
Ana ’ s husband , a construction worker , is still able to get some work , but only a little ; and their adult children try to give them some assistance—but they are also struggling .
Since they ’ re undocumented , the couple are ineligible for unemployment benefits .
They can not get food stamps , and the only health assistance they can receive is emergency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are on their own .
As a result , Ana and her husband have burned through their meager life savings since stay-in-place orders were put in place in mid-March to try to limit the spread of Covid-19 .
As the months without work continue , they worry about how to pay their bills come summer .
While Governor Gavin Newsom has , by executive order , extended the deadline to give tenants more time to respond to eviction proceedings , he has not prevented new evictions from being filed ; after that order @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be accounted for.3 Four hundred miles north , Lourdes , a 54-year old housecleaner and home care worker and a member of the activist organization La Colectiva de Mujeres in San Francisco , is going through the same experience .
Until March , she was cleaning 15 homes a week and taking care of two older women in their homes .
Since then , all her employers , scared that she will unknowingly bring the virus into their houses , have stopped using her services .
“ I ’ ve lost all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” says Lourdes angrily .
“ I don ’ t have savings .
I ’ m not eligible for any kind of benefits , or for Trump ’ s relief funds .
My savings have all been spent on food .
I ’ m worried about how I ’ m going to pay rent , the phone bill , and other things.
” 4 Locked Down and Cast Out : Europe ’ s Migrants Navigate the Pandemic Lourdes has four children .
Her 24-year-old daughter is also out of work , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can not work .
But even though the child is a citizen , Lourdes is terrified of applying for benefits for him , fearful that , in this xenophobic era of immigration raids and mass deportations , it will draw the attention of ICE.5 Undocumented workers tend to cluster in certain industries .
In California ’ s cities , garment and domestic workers are disproportionately likely to be undocumented .
In rural areas , many farm workers also lack legal status.6 Notwithstanding the Golden State ’ s increasingly progressive record on workers ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the immigrant-friendly political climate that has emerged in the state over the past several years , in practice these men and women—from Mexico , from Central America , from the Philippines and elsewhere—are among the most exploited laborers in the United States.7 Those working in private homes are excluded from the workplace protections of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ( OSHA ) , explains Christy Lubin , director of the Graton Day Labor Center , in Sonoma County .
Lubin , who wears colorful embroidered blouses and jeans to her small wooden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that there is currently no requirement for homeowners to provide those who work in their houses with N-95 masks , gloves , or other personal protective equipment .
Many of those who work in private homes are paid low wages ; those who work in sweatshops are paid abysmally .
Garment workers , to take one example , receive piece rates that amount to far below minimum wage .
Most of the workers I talked with earned less than $ 400 for a 56-hour work week ; most , despite working six-day weeks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Some , like 26-year-old Paulina , who left Guatemala as a child and who lives with eight other family members in one bedroom , said that when she first started working , she sometimes earned as little as $ 100 , despite putting in 11-hour days .
None had paid sick leave or health benefits .
Many were terrified of ICE agents and deportation and were desperate to stay under the radar.8 “ Most of our members are undocumented , ” explains Lee Plaza , of the Pilipino Workers ’ Center ( PWC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as home care workers , and those who are out of jobs right now are suffering lost wages .
We ’ re excluded from regular unemployment laws , paid time off , and other benefits.
” Plaza herself , after living for years without legal status , recently received asylum ; but because of the new “ public charge ” rules that were pushed through at the urging of Trump ’ s hard-line immigration adviser Stephen Miller , even she is scared of applying for government benefits , worried that any involvement with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deportation.9 Plaza , 60 , recently had to move out of the apartment she shares with several other home care workers after she and a couple of colleagues who were exposed to Covid-19 while working with clients were , as a precautionary measure , urged to self-quarantine .
They are currently living in a small Airbnb the PWC is paying for .
Plaza says she tested negative , but she isn ’ t convinced the result was right ; in the days leading up to our interview , she explains , she has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ short of breath on a regular basis , common symptoms of Covid-19.10 She tells me about a PWC member who lives with her daughter , her son-in-law , and her baby grandchild , and who has also been showing signs of the virus .
And she tells the story of yet another member , a 70-year-old man who died of the virus shortly after being admitted to the intensive care unit of the Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown LA .
A PWC colleague , Lolita Andrada Lledo , knows of another home care @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than his car .
“ So he slept in his car .
After three days , he put up a tent out back of his apartment building.
” 11 As a society , we don ’ t like to think about the conditions in which these immigrant workers labor , because for us the moral calculus is less complicated if their stories are left untold .
We don ’ t like to think about the fact that our clothes are so cheap at least in part because they are sewn by horrifically exploited @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their counterparts in China , India , Bangladesh , and other nodes in the global garment industry , earn just a few cents for each arm or shoulder of a shirt that they sew .
We don ’ t like to think about the fact that our food is affordable at least in part because so many undocumented farm workers do backbreaking work in the fields for a pittance .
We don ’ t like to acknowledge that if we are middle class , we can afford housecleaners at least in part because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and sweep our floors don ’ t have the power to demand decent hourly wages .
And we shy away from acknowledging that we can hand off to strangers the day-to-day home care work for our elderly and sick relatives at least in part because there is a huge well of undocumented workers willing to take on these emotionally and physically demanding jobs for subsistence wages.12 In the best of times , these workers live paycheck to paycheck , vulnerable to wage theft and other forms of exploitation , always aware that if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under-resourced community health centers to fall back on or hospital emergency rooms that will treat them but may charge them with huge , unpayable medical bills .
And now , in these unprecedented shelter-in-place days , the factories have been shuttered and the undocumented left to fend for themselves , with no access to unemployment insurance .
“ We ’ ve got 45,000 garment workers in Los Angeles , ” says Marissa Nuncio , director of the Garment Worker Center in downtown LA , on the edge of the usually crowded , cacophonous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our members are unemployed .
They lost work overnight or went from reduced hours to no work .
This will hit workers really hard.
” 13 “ I don ’ t have one dollar right now , ” said Paulina quietly .
“ We don ’ t have money for food , because we just paid $ 800 rent to the owner of the house.
” 14 “ There ’ s not a lot of savings , ” says Socorro , a 39-year-old mother of three and domestic worker in Sonoma who ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the logo for the California Domestic Workers ’ Coalition .
Before the pandemic , she took part in lobbying campaigns in DC to pressure her congressional representative to take the issue seriously .
Now , the fear of hunger stalks her .
“ We ’ ve been going to food banks , going to the Day Labor Center , where they ’ ve been giving us boxes of food.
” The $ 4,000 rainy day fund that she had painstakingly stashed away over 18 years of work has been obliterated in two months @ @ @ @ @ @ @ employers simply stopped paying her when they stopped letting her inside their homes.15 “ To be honest with you , I don ’ t have much money , ” says 56-year-old garment worker Francisco , who fled the Guatemalan civil war in the 1990s , as he sits in his small apartment , his face creased with worry .
“ Our salaries are terrible , and they lead to Third World living conditions .
We have no rights as workers.
” Now , unemployed , “ some friends are helping me with groceries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on water , coffee , a box of cereal.
” 16 “ I haven ’ t worked for three weeks , ” says Pablo , a 39-year-old garment worker , originally from Mexico , whom I interviewed on April 8 .
He had managed to pay his $ 800 rent ( reduced from $ 1,500 ) that month , but worried about paying for later months .
He was out of funds for food and was already unable to pay his utility bills .
On top of that , he worried about how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now that he had no money to send them.17 Because Washington has shown no no flicker of empathy for undocumented workers during these lockdown days , California is trying to fill the gap with an array of creative programs.18 At the city level , in April Los Angeles created the Angeleno Card , which is already providing grants of up to $ 1,500 to low-income residents who are able to show they are experiencing economic hardship because of the pandemic .
The money , distributed through debit cards , was raised from private @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on equal terms with the documented.19 At the county level , a number of grassroots organizations are reopening funds through a program called UndocuFund , which was created to help undocumented families rendered jobless and homeless by the rash of wildfires that have bedeviled the West in recent years .
Some families , says Christy Lubin , have received up to $ 1,000 from these funds since mid-March.20 At the state level , in mid-April Governor Newsom announced the creation of a public-private $ 125 million Disaster Relief Fund partnership .
It will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 500 to $ 1,000 , to individuals and families excluded from the provisions of the $ 2.2 trillion federal CARES Act .
The moneys , $ 75 million from the state and $ 50 million from private donors , will be distributed via a network of regional nonprofits that have had long experience working with undocumented communities .
But they are unlikely to be able to accommodate all of those in need—in Sonoma County alone , Lubin says , nearly 4,000 families have applied for relief from the UndocuFund since it started disbursing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Department turning its back on workers ’ rights , California state legislators have also begun paying attention to labor conditions faced by domestic workers .
State Senator María Elena Durazo recently authored SB 1257 , which aims to extend OSHA protections to domestic workers .
Immigrant rights groups and labor organizations around the state are holding a series of “ virtual lobby days ” to try to convince Sacramento ’ s politicians of its merits , and it seems likely that Governor Newsom will support the bill .
If he does sign it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are lifted and people start hiring housecleaners and home care workers again , they will have to follow CDC employer guidelines ( assuming those guidelines stay in effect ) by providing things like tissues and hand sanitizer to limit their exposure to the novel coronavirus.22 These are all good developments , but without federal assistance on a massive scale , it will not be enough to meet the cascading economic calamity facing California ’ s more than 2 million undocumented residents .
And so , with more and more low-wage workers out of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they had , it has fallen to the Garment Worker Center , the National Domestic Workers Alliance , and other groups to get food boxes and cash payments to as many workers and their families as they can.23 “ This is a really big crisis for immigrant workers , ” Marissa Nuncio explains .
“ Our organizers are out delivering food to workers ’ doors .
Shipping food .
We are also fundraising , trying to create an emergency relief fund for our membership .
The majority of our members who are unemployed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” 24 12 Coronavirus Funds That Will Help the Most Vulnerable One of these members is 50-year-old Pedro , who left the Mexican state of Guerrero for California when he was 17 .
He has been undocumented , living and working in the shadows , for more than three decades .
“ I work in garments .
Shorts , shirts , dresses , ” explains Pedro , who , because he can ’ t afford to own a car , takes buses to work each morning .
“ I don ’ t have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s all about how much you work and how much you make .
Normally , I work about 55 to 60 hours a week .
We make very little money .
Every week , I make $ 260 to $ 300 .
I rent a bedroom in a house .
I ’ m paying $ 500 a month and I live with two other people .
My sisters also live in LA , but separately.
” 25 These days he has no work , and he spends his time reading , watching TV @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pedro had saved up over the past three decades is now gone , since he has to pay rent and keep his cell-phone service even while unemployed .
Luckily , he says , somewhat ruefully , “ I ’ m not that hungry these days .
I ’ m cooking two meals a day .
Vegetables .
I don ’ t eat a lot of meat.
” 26 For Lourdes , the out-of-work cleaner and home care worker from San Francisco , the crisis is puncturing a long-cherished dream .
She left Mexico @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had fallen in love with the City by the Bay after watching the TV series The Streets of San Francisco .
“ I told my mom , ‘ One day I ’ ll live in San Francisco .
It ’ s the belly-button of the world , the center of the world.
’ I achieved that dream.
” These days , however , she ’ s having second thoughts .
“ It ’ s still very beautiful , ” she says wistfully .
“ But it ’ s very expensive and very difficult.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in April and May .
Soon , she hopes , she will receive $ 400 in emergency money from the National Domestic Workers Alliance fund , and she ’ s excited about the state ’ s new public-private fund to help the undocumented .
But , longtime organizer that she is , she also worries that it ’ s not nearly enough to meet the needs of California ’ s millions of undocumented residents.27 “ The immigrant community is essential , ” Lourdes notes .
“ Immigrant workers give life , give a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to be taken into account now that we are in this crisis.
” 28

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“I don’t have work right now. There is no work. I’ve been looking, but there’s no work out there,” says Ana, a 53-year-old garment worker in Los Angeles, who migrated from Mexico City just over 30 years ago. Then Ana, her brown hair flecked with gray and pulled back tightly in a bun, her tired eyes slightly watery behind oversized, brown-plastic-rimmed glasses, corrects herself. There’s work in supermarkets, she says softly, but when she applies, the first things they ask her for are her documents, her work permits. Since she is undocumented, these jobs are off-limits.1
Thirty years ago, Ana remembers, she earned about $250 a week in the garment factories. Today, she still takes home about $250 a week in under-the-table earnings, but in the interim, “the cost of rent and so on has gone up.” Her family’s expectations of the American Dream have been curtailed. “We’ve learned to be frugal in this country. We’ve always had a pantry with dried goods—rice and beans. We eat the basics, nothing luxurious.”2
These days, even the basics are a luxury. Ana’s husband, a construction worker, is still able to get some work, but only a little; and their adult children try to give them some assistance—but they are also struggling. Since they’re undocumented, the couple are ineligible for unemployment benefits. They cannot get food stamps, and the only health assistance they can receive is emergency Medi-Cal. Other than that, they are on their own. As a result, Ana and her husband have burned through their meager life savings since stay-in-place orders were put in place in mid-March to try to limit the spread of Covid-19. As the months without work continue, they worry about how to pay their bills come summer. While Governor Gavin Newsom has, by executive order, extended the deadline to give tenants more time to respond to eviction proceedings, he has not prevented new evictions from being filed; after that order expires, the back-rent will still have to be accounted for.3
Four hundred miles north, Lourdes, a 54-year old housecleaner and home care worker and a member of the activist organization La Colectiva de Mujeres in San Francisco, is going through the same experience. Until March, she was cleaning 15 homes a week and taking care of two older women in their homes. Since then, all her employers, scared that she will unknowingly bring the virus into their houses, have stopped using her services. “I’ve lost all the sources of income that I had,” says Lourdes angrily. “I don’t have savings. I’m not eligible for any kind of benefits, or for Trump’s relief funds. My savings have all been spent on food. I’m worried about how I’m going to pay rent, the phone bill, and other things.”4 Related Articles When Undocumented Activists Infiltrated ICE Mark Engler Locked Down and Cast Out: Europe’s Migrants Navigate the Pandemic Luke Butterly Los Angeles’s ‘Eviction Ban’ Doesn’t Protect Tenants Jacob Woocher
Lourdes has four children. Her 24-year-old daughter is also out of work, and her son has a brain fissure and cannot work. But even though the child is a citizen, Lourdes is terrified of applying for benefits for him, fearful that, in this xenophobic era of immigration raids and mass deportations, it will draw the attention of ICE.5 Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Undocumented workers tend to cluster in certain industries. In California’s cities, garment and domestic workers are disproportionately likely to be undocumented. In rural areas, many farm workers also lack legal status.6
Notwithstanding the Golden State’s increasingly progressive record on workers’ rights and labor law, and notwithstanding the immigrant-friendly political climate that has emerged in the state over the past several years, in practice these men and women—from Mexico, from Central America, from the Philippines and elsewhere—are among the most exploited laborers in the United States.7 Current Issue View our current issue
Those working in private homes are excluded from the workplace protections of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), explains Christy Lubin, director of the Graton Day Labor Center, in Sonoma County. Lubin, who wears colorful embroidered blouses and jeans to her small wooden office surrounded by lush trees, explains that there is currently no requirement for homeowners to provide those who work in their houses with N-95 masks, gloves, or other personal protective equipment. Many of those who work in private homes are paid low wages; those who work in sweatshops are paid abysmally. Garment workers, to take one example, receive piece rates that amount to far below minimum wage. Most of the workers I talked with earned less than $400 for a 56-hour work week; most, despite working six-day weeks, earned closer to $300. Some, like 26-year-old Paulina, who left Guatemala as a child and who lives with eight other family members in one bedroom, said that when she first started working, she sometimes earned as little as $100, despite putting in 11-hour days. None had paid sick leave or health benefits. Many were terrified of ICE agents and deportation and were desperate to stay under the radar.8
“Most of our members are undocumented,” explains Lee Plaza, of the Pilipino Workers’ Center (PWC) in LA. “They work as home care workers, and those who are out of jobs right now are suffering lost wages. We’re excluded from regular unemployment laws, paid time off, and other benefits.” Plaza herself, after living for years without legal status, recently received asylum; but because of the new “public charge” rules that were pushed through at the urging of Trump’s hard-line immigration adviser Stephen Miller, even she is scared of applying for government benefits, worried that any involvement with state assistance will make her vulnerable to deportation.9
Plaza, 60, recently had to move out of the apartment she shares with several other home care workers after she and a couple of colleagues who were exposed to Covid-19 while working with clients were, as a precautionary measure, urged to self-quarantine. They are currently living in a small Airbnb the PWC is paying for. Plaza says she tested negative, but she isn’t convinced the result was right; in the days leading up to our interview, she explains, she has been coughing, vomiting, and getting short of breath on a regular basis, common symptoms of Covid-19.10
She tells me about a PWC member who lives with her daughter, her son-in-law, and her baby grandchild, and who has also been showing signs of the virus. And she tells the story of yet another member, a 70-year-old man who died of the virus shortly after being admitted to the intensive care unit of the Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown LA. A PWC colleague, Lolita Andrada Lledo, knows of another home care worker who had nowhere to self-quarantine other than his car. “So he slept in his car. After three days, he put up a tent out back of his apartment building.”11
As a society, we don’t like to think about the conditions in which these immigrant workers labor, because for us the moral calculus is less complicated if their stories are left untold. We don’t like to think about the fact that our clothes are so cheap at least in part because they are sewn by horrifically exploited laborers in LA sweatshops—workers who, like their counterparts in China, India, Bangladesh, and other nodes in the global garment industry, earn just a few cents for each arm or shoulder of a shirt that they sew. We don’t like to think about the fact that our food is affordable at least in part because so many undocumented farm workers do backbreaking work in the fields for a pittance. We don’t like to acknowledge that if we are middle class, we can afford housecleaners at least in part because the undocumented workers who clean our toilets and sweep our floors don’t have the power to demand decent hourly wages. And we shy away from acknowledging that we can hand off to strangers the day-to-day home care work for our elderly and sick relatives at least in part because there is a huge well of undocumented workers willing to take on these emotionally and physically demanding jobs for subsistence wages.12
In the best of times, these workers live paycheck to paycheck, vulnerable to wage theft and other forms of exploitation, always aware that if they fall sick they have only the under-resourced community health centers to fall back on or hospital emergency rooms that will treat them but may charge them with huge, unpayable medical bills. And now, in these unprecedented shelter-in-place days, the factories have been shuttered and the undocumented left to fend for themselves, with no access to unemployment insurance. “We’ve got 45,000 garment workers in Los Angeles,” says Marissa Nuncio, director of the Garment Worker Center in downtown LA, on the edge of the usually crowded, cacophonous Fashion District. “About two-thirds of our members are unemployed. They lost work overnight or went from reduced hours to no work. This will hit workers really hard.”13
“I don’t have one dollar right now,” said Paulina quietly. “We don’t have money for food, because we just paid $800 rent to the owner of the house.”14
“There’s not a lot of savings,” says Socorro, a 39-year-old mother of three and domestic worker in Sonoma who’s wearing a yellow T-shirt emblazoned with the logo for the California Domestic Workers’ Coalition. Before the pandemic, she took part in lobbying campaigns in DC to pressure her congressional representative to take the issue seriously. Now, the fear of hunger stalks her. “We’ve been going to food banks, going to the Day Labor Center, where they’ve been giving us boxes of food.” The $4,000 rainy day fund that she had painstakingly stashed away over 18 years of work has been obliterated in two months, since all but two of her employers simply stopped paying her when they stopped letting her inside their homes.15
“To be honest with you, I don’t have much money,” says 56-year-old garment worker Francisco, who fled the Guatemalan civil war in the 1990s, as he sits in his small apartment, his face creased with worry. “Our salaries are terrible, and they lead to Third World living conditions. We have no rights as workers.” Now, unemployed, “some friends are helping me with groceries. I’m spending money just on water, coffee, a box of cereal.”16
“I haven’t worked for three weeks,” says Pablo, a 39-year-old garment worker, originally from Mexico, whom I interviewed on April 8. He had managed to pay his $800 rent (reduced from $1,500) that month, but worried about paying for later months. He was out of funds for food and was already unable to pay his utility bills. On top of that, he worried about how his parents in Mexico would survive, now that he had no money to send them.17
Because Washington has shown no no flicker of empathy for undocumented workers during these lockdown days, California is trying to fill the gap with an array of creative programs.18
At the city level, in April Los Angeles created the Angeleno Card, which is already providing grants of up to $1,500 to low-income residents who are able to show they are experiencing economic hardship because of the pandemic. The money, distributed through debit cards, was raised from private donations, and the undocumented can apply on equal terms with the documented.19
At the county level, a number of grassroots organizations are reopening funds through a program called UndocuFund, which was created to help undocumented families rendered jobless and homeless by the rash of wildfires that have bedeviled the West in recent years. Some families, says Christy Lubin, have received up to $1,000 from these funds since mid-March.20
At the state level, in mid-April Governor Newsom announced the creation of a public-private $125 million Disaster Relief Fund partnership. It will provide cash benefits, ranging from $500 to $1,000, to individuals and families excluded from the provisions of the $2.2 trillion federal CARES Act. The moneys, $75 million from the state and $50 million from private donors, will be distributed via a network of regional nonprofits that have had long experience working with undocumented communities. But they are unlikely to be able to accommodate all of those in need—in Sonoma County alone, Lubin says, nearly 4,000 families have applied for relief from the UndocuFund since it started disbursing money in mid-March.21
With the federal Labor Department turning its back on workers’ rights, California state legislators have also begun paying attention to labor conditions faced by domestic workers. State Senator María Elena Durazo recently authored SB 1257, which aims to extend OSHA protections to domestic workers. Immigrant rights groups and labor organizations around the state are holding a series of “virtual lobby days” to try to convince Sacramento’s politicians of its merits, and it seems likely that Governor Newsom will support the bill. If he does sign it into law, when the stay-at-home orders are lifted and people start hiring housecleaners and home care workers again, they will have to follow CDC employer guidelines (assuming those guidelines stay in effect) by providing things like tissues and hand sanitizer to limit their exposure to the novel coronavirus.22
These are all good developments, but without federal assistance on a massive scale, it will not be enough to meet the cascading economic calamity facing California’s more than 2 million undocumented residents. And so, with more and more low-wage workers out of work and running through what little savings they had, it has fallen to the Garment Worker Center, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and other groups to get food boxes and cash payments to as many workers and their families as they can.23
“This is a really big crisis for immigrant workers,” Marissa Nuncio explains. “Our organizers are out delivering food to workers’ doors. Shipping food. We are also fundraising, trying to create an emergency relief fund for our membership. The majority of our members who are unemployed are reporting that they are food insecure.”24 Related Article 12 Coronavirus Funds That Will Help the Most Vulnerable Shirley Ngozi Nwangwa
One of these members is 50-year-old Pedro, who left the Mexican state of Guerrero for California when he was 17. He has been undocumented, living and working in the shadows, for more than three decades. “I work in garments. Shorts, shirts, dresses,” explains Pedro, who, because he can’t afford to own a car, takes buses to work each morning. “I don’t have any benefits. Here, it’s all about how much you work and how much you make. Normally, I work about 55 to 60 hours a week. We make very little money. Every week, I make $260 to $300. I rent a bedroom in a house. I’m paying $500 a month and I live with two other people. My sisters also live in LA, but separately.”25
These days he has no work, and he spends his time reading, watching TV, and exercising. What little money Pedro had saved up over the past three decades is now gone, since he has to pay rent and keep his cell-phone service even while unemployed. Luckily, he says, somewhat ruefully, “I’m not that hungry these days. I’m cooking two meals a day. Vegetables. I don’t eat a lot of meat.”26
For Lourdes, the out-of-work cleaner and home care worker from San Francisco, the crisis is puncturing a long-cherished dream. She left Mexico City in her late 20s. She had fallen in love with the City by the Bay after watching the TV series The Streets of San Francisco. “I told my mom, ‘One day I’ll live in San Francisco. It’s the belly-button of the world, the center of the world.’ I achieved that dream.” These days, however, she’s having second thoughts. “It’s still very beautiful,” she says wistfully. “But it’s very expensive and very difficult.” Lourdes was unable to make rent in April and May. Soon, she hopes, she will receive $400 in emergency money from the National Domestic Workers Alliance fund, and she’s excited about the state’s new public-private fund to help the undocumented. But, longtime organizer that she is, she also worries that it’s not nearly enough to meet the needs of California’s millions of undocumented residents.27
“The immigrant community is essential,” Lourdes notes. “Immigrant workers give life, give a pulse, to our economy. We need to be taken into account now that we are in this crisis.”28


thenation--2020-05-14--Reopening: A Chronicle of Needless Deaths Foretold

The president of the United States has made a decision—sort of—that despite the lack of sufficient testing , resources to embark upon the tracing of the contacts of all people testing positive for Covid-19 , and the ability to humanely isolate those infected , we are nevertheless reopening as a country .
Of course , the president can not simply order this to happen ; states and localities have responsibility for these kinds of public health decisions , not the federal government .
But his message is clear : “ We have met the moment and we have prevailed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic at least in his own rear view mirror .
The reality , of course , couldn ’ t be more stark .
Even as the president proclaimed “ mission accomplished , ” the White House was in a panic over an outbreak of Covid-19 at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue , evincing a newfound interest in personal protective equipment like masks , as three of the most senior health officials in the nation went into self-isolation due to exposure to the coronavirus in the West Wing .
But this is what ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Two sets of rules : policies and procedures guided by sound public health principles in the circle around the president , while state governors who heed the president ’ s call to reopen ignore basic advice , even the White House ’ s own “ Opening Up American Again ” guidelines , with more than half of the states reopening seeing rising , not falling , Covid-19 case counts .
Every epidemiologist , every public health expert knows what ’ s going to happen .
As Dr. Anthony Fauci , the director @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Infectious Diseases , said in an e-mail to reporters this week : “ if we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to ‘ Open America Again , ’ then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country .
This will not only result in needless suffering and death but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.
” Already , new kinds of hot spots are emerging across the country , and they aren ’ t the large metropolitan areas across the nation you ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the highest number of cases per 100,000 residents are Trousdale , Tenn. ; Dakota , Ne .
; and Lincoln , Ark .
New York City is 28th on that list now .
How Long Will It Take Until There ’ s a Vaccine ?
Beating Covid-19 Will Take Coordination , Experimentation , and Leadership It ’ s hard for us to make sense of it all .
There are plenty of people who haven ’ t had someone get sick with Covid-19 in their immediate family , while the economic pain for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the conservative model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington is predicting around 900 deaths per day by the end of this month .
That means every three days , we could see a number of causalities equivalent to the death toll in the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11 .
With these deaths spread out across the American landscape , it ’ s hard to feel the impact of Covid-19 directly in our lives .
It ’ s not only epidemiologists warning about the dangers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a double-dip recession is likely if relaxing social distancing measures isn ’ t accompanied by testing , contact tracing , and isolation among other disease mitigation efforts .
Yet , here we go .
No one is going to challenge foolhardy governors .
Like the president , those governors have the deep desire to get “ back to normal ” that all of us feel on their side .
Though many Americans worry about reopening too soon , those fears may wane as spring makes staying indoors less and less attractive , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appealing , and mounting debts make the need to open up stores , restaurants , and other commercial venues a necessity for many business owners and workers .
But the impact of state reopenings isn ’ t going to fall equally on all residents .
Those of us who can work from home will continue to do so , minimizing exposure to the virus even if we aren ’ t in full lockdown mode .
It ’ s those who work in jobs that require close face-to-face contact—and those who can not work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new outbreaks of the coronavirus .
As Simon Mongey , an economist from the University of Chicago , and his colleagues suggested in a recent paper , people who are less educated , have limited health care , and are toward the bottom of the income distribution will suffer most , as social distancing is hardest for them , even when state restrictions are in place .
My Yale colleague economist Zack Cooper is even more blunt : Brace yourselves for a long , slow burn .
We will not get our epidemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states will do better than others , but we really are all in this together .
This isn ’ t a call for solidarity or a “ kumbaya ” moment but a simple epidemiological fact .
You can ’ t put out a house fire in one room , let it keep burning in others , and expect to be safe .
One week after Georgia reopened its businesses , over 60,000 people each day traveled from out of state to patronize restaurants , hair salons , bowling alleys , and movie theaters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ visits , some likely bringing Covid-19 home with them .
Perhaps we ’ ll get lucky and the coronavirus will find the summer heat unpalatable and we ’ ll see a dip in numbers for a few weeks , just in time for schools and universities like mine to reopen on the cusp of flu season , setting us up for a double-whammy in the fall , which we just missed this winter , of influenza and Covid-19 outbreaks happening at the same time .
The United States of America is not going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , blame is shifting to the victims of Covid-19 for bringing this on themselves , with Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar recently suggesting that social habits and living conditions of workers at meatpacking plants were the reason for recent Covid-19 outbreaks there .
In March , Trump said : “ I don ’ t take responsibility at all , ” for the response to Covid-19 .
He may still refuse to wear a mask or practice social distancing himself , but he washed his hands thoroughly months ago .
He @ @ @ @ @ @

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The president of the United States has made a decision—sort of—that despite the lack of sufficient testing, resources to embark upon the tracing of the contacts of all people testing positive for Covid-19, and the ability to humanely isolate those infected, we are nevertheless reopening as a country. Of course, the president cannot simply order this to happen; states and localities have responsibility for these kinds of public health decisions, not the federal government. But his message is clear: “We have met the moment and we have prevailed,” he announces, declaring victory over the pandemic at least in his own rear view mirror.
The reality, of course, couldn’t be more stark. Even as the president proclaimed “mission accomplished,” the White House was in a panic over an outbreak of Covid-19 at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, evincing a newfound interest in personal protective equipment like masks, as three of the most senior health officials in the nation went into self-isolation after possible exposure to the coronavirus in the West Wing.
But this is what’s in store for us as a country. Two sets of rules: policies and procedures guided by sound public health principles in the circle around the president, while state governors who heed the president’s call to reopen ignore basic advice, even the White House’s own “Opening Up American Again” guidelines, with more than half of the states reopening seeing rising, not falling, Covid-19 case counts.
Every epidemiologist, every public health expert knows what’s going to happen. As Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an e-mail to reporters this week: “If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to ‘Open America Again,’ then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.” Already, new kinds of hot spots are emerging across the country, and they aren’t the large metropolitan areas across the nation you’d expect. Top of the list for the highest number of cases per 100,000 residents are Trousdale, Tenn.; Dakota, Ne.; and Lincoln, Ark. New York City is 28th on that list now. More From Gregg Gonsalves These New Alzheimer’s Drugs Are a Travesty July 27, 2023 It's Not “Unreasonable” to Want to Change Our Rotten Health Care System June 1, 2023 Now More Than Ever, We Need to Fight, Not Despair May 11, 2023
It’s hard for us to make sense of it all. There are plenty of people who haven’t had someone get sick with Covid-19 in their immediate family, while the economic pain for millions is acutely evident. Yet even the conservative model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington is predicting around 900 deaths per day by the end of this month. That means every three days, we could see a number of causalities equivalent to the death toll in the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. With these deaths spread out across the American landscape, it’s hard to feel the impact of Covid-19 directly in our lives. It’s not only epidemiologists warning about the dangers of premature reopening. Economists now suggest a double-dip recession is likely if relaxing social distancing measures isn’t accompanied by testing, contact tracing, and isolation among other disease mitigation efforts. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Yet, here we go. No one is going to challenge foolhardy governors. Like the president, those governors have the deep desire to get “back to normal” that all of us feel on their side. Though many Americans worry about reopening too soon, those fears may wane as spring makes staying indoors less and less attractive, the chance to see friends and relatives too appealing, and mounting debts make the need to open up stores, restaurants, and other commercial venues a necessity for many business owners and workers.
But the impact of state reopenings isn’t going to fall equally on all residents. Those of us who can work from home will continue to do so, minimizing exposure to the virus even if we aren’t in full lockdown mode. It’s those who work in jobs that require close face-to-face contact—and those who cannot work from home—who will face the brunt of new outbreaks of the coronavirus. As Simon Mongey, an economist from the University of Chicago, and his colleagues suggested in a recent paper, people who are less educated, have limited health care, and are toward the bottom of the income distribution will suffer most, as social distancing is hardest for them, even when state restrictions are in place. My Yale colleague economist Zack Cooper is even more blunt:
We can reopen the economy without adequate testing, a move that raises the likelihood of a second wave of infections and places the costs of reopening squarely on the backs of essential workers. Alternatively, Congress could allocate more money for Covid-19 testing and the White House could use those funds to test essential workers at the same rates White House staff are tested. This is both economically justifiable and our moral imperative.
Brace yourselves for a long, slow burn. We will not get our epidemic under control in the US. Some states will do better than others, but we really are all in this together. This isn’t a call for solidarity or a “kumbaya” moment but a simple epidemiological fact. You can’t put out a house fire in one room, let it keep burning in others, and expect to be safe. One week after Georgia reopened its businesses, over 60,000 people each day traveled from out of state to patronize restaurants, hair salons, bowling alleys, and movie theaters, all returning home from these close-quarters visits, some likely bringing Covid-19 with them. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and the coronavirus will find the summer heat unpalatable and we’ll see a dip in numbers for a few weeks, just in time for schools and universities like mine to reopen on the cusp of flu season, setting us up for a double-whammy in the fall, which we just missed this winter, of influenza and Covid-19 outbreaks happening at the same time.
The United States of America is not going to do the right thing. Already, blame is shifting to the victims of Covid-19 for bringing this on themselves, with Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar recently suggesting that social habits and living conditions of workers at meatpacking plants were the reason for recent Covid-19 outbreaks there. In March, Trump said: “I don’t take responsibility at all,” for the response to Covid-19. He may still refuse to wear a mask or practice social distancing himself, but he washed his hands thoroughly months ago. He washed his hands of us.


thenation--2020-05-14--Biden Must Let a More Progressive Democratic Party Emerge

Joe Biden is not an inspired presidential contender .
He offers , at best , the promise of normalcy in a moment when Donald Trump ’ s surreal approach to campaigning and governing has worn everyone out .
That might be enough to provide Biden with a win in 2020 , as some polls suggest .
But the operative word is “ might.
” The reality that Biden and his partisans must wrestle with is that the former vice president did not become the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party because of his superior ideas , oratory , or organization @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a coalescing of centrists , and enthusiastic media cheerleading gave him a boost at precisely the moment when he needed it to pull ahead of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders .
If Biden has even a modicum of political sense , he has to realize that he got lucky .
And that luck can run out .
Biden needs something more than ritualistic endorsements from Democrats who feel they have no other choice , a home-studio campaign strategy , and the hope that Americans will remember Trump peddled bleach as an antidote to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ party that is prepared to turn this campaign into a movement .
Biden is not a movement builder .
Neither is the Democratic National Committee as it currently exists .
But the policy task forces announced this week by the Biden and Sanders camps hold out the promise that the party could in this period of social and economic crisis become something that the vast majority of Americans can believe in .
The Labor Department Is Sacrificing Workers on the Altar of ‘ Reopening ’ For that to happen , however , Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the way .
That will be hard ; they will want the so-called “ unity task forces ” to be nothing more than window dressing for a campaign that is struggling to appeal to backers of Sanders and to the disenfranchised , disenchanted , and disengaged potential voters who could turn a close contest into a Democratic win .
But a façade of unity , forged in compromise and concession , will not do the job .
Nor will a self-serving nod to the task forces from a candidate who still takes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and money from billionaires .
What Democrats require is a coherent agenda , and a campaign , that breaks sufficiently from the old politics to capture the imagination of the American electorate at a time when the coronavirus pandemic and an economic meltdown preclude a return to normal .
The party has to propose a new direction .
And these task forces on the economy , immigration , healthcare , criminal justice , education , and climate action could do just that .
While each task force is made up of both Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ figures on most of them are progressives .
A climate change task force co-chaired by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , a Sanders ally who has been the most prominent advocate for a Green New Deal , and former Secretary of State John Kerry , a Biden surrogate who has a credible environmental record and who hails AOC ’ s leadership on climate issues , has the potential to act as boldly as is necessary .
The presence of two other Sanders designees on the task force—Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice founder Catherine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the argument that meaningful agenda-setting could actually occur .
“ A year and a half ago , our movement was joined by then Representative-elect Ocasio-Cortez in Nancy Pelosi ’ s office demanding that the Democrats develop a solution at the scale of the climate crisis , ” says Prakash .
“ Now , together , we ’ ll be helping to write the Democratic Platform on climate.
” The emphasis that Prakash and the Sunrise Movement put on “ building our movement and raising our voices loudly for a Green New Deal ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are charged with forging platform language , which is important , but their real duty should be to help frame a campaign that , as Sanders suggests , “ will unify our party in a transformational and progressive direction.
” There ’ s no doubt that Biden—and other Democratic candidates—could benefit from that connection .
That ’ s won ’ t happen if the task forces function merely as extensions of the Biden campaign , however .
That ’ s not how a movement-driven politics works .
Candidates have to embrace proposals and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and then carry the agenda into the fall competition .
While there will be great attention to the climate crisis task force , several of the others also have the potential to move the party and its 2020 campaign in a transformational and progressive direction .
A health-care task force that is cochaired by Representative Pramila Jayapal , the Congressional Progressive Caucus cochair who has emerged as the leading House advocate for Medicare for All , and it includes Dr. Abdul El-Sayed , the former director Detroit Health Department .
It can and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to move from his tepid approach to health-care issues toward the bolder stance advocated by Sanders , Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren , and other Democratic presidential contenders .
The Most Consequential Decision of Biden ’ s 2020 Campaign The same goes for a task force on the economy cochaired by Sara Nelson , the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants who is an essential advocate for labor rights , and Representative Karen Bass , the Congressional Black Caucus chair and Congressional Progressive Caucus member whose name has appeared on lists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s potential is enhanced by Jared Bernstein , an Economic Policy Institute veteran who served as Deputy Chief Economist for the Department of Labor under Labor Secretary Robert Reich and as Vice President Biden ’ s Chief Economist and Economic Policy Advisor , and by Stephanie Kelton , an advisor to Sanders who is the editor-in-chief of the blog New Economic Perspectives and a savvy critic of austerity .
Task forces are supposed to come up with ideas .
Ideally , new and innovative ideas .
If Biden and his campaign let @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if the presumptive nominee and the party use the agendas that are developed as a cue to move in a sufficiently progressive direction , Democrats might again be what they were in the days when Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal Coalition won overwhelming victories : the dynamic force in our politics and our governance .

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Joe Biden is not an inspired presidential contender. He offers, at best, the promise of normalcy in a moment when Donald Trump’s surreal approach to campaigning and governing has worn everyone out. That might be enough to provide Biden with a win in 2020, as some polls suggest. But the operative word is “might.”
The reality that Biden and his partisans must wrestle with is that the former vice president did not become the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party because of his superior ideas, oratory, or organization. Rather, a convenient primary schedule, a coalescing of centrists, and enthusiastic media cheerleading gave him a boost at precisely the moment when he needed it to pull ahead of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. If Biden has even a modicum of political sense, he has to realize that he got lucky. And that luck can run out.
Biden needs something more than ritualistic endorsements from Democrats who feel they have no other choice, a home-studio campaign strategy, and the hope that Americans will remember that Trump peddled bleach as an antidote to the coronavirus. He needs a political party that is prepared to turn this campaign into a movement.
Biden is not a movement builder. Neither is the Democratic National Committee as it currently exists. But the policy task forces announced this week by the Biden and Sanders camps hold out the promise that the party could in this period of social and economic crisis become something that the vast majority of Americans can believe in. More From John Nichols A GOP Debate Without Trump Is the Definition of Pointlessness August 11, 2023 A Win for Abortion Rights, a Win for Democracy: Ohio Voters Reject Issue 1 August 9, 2023 The Biggest Threat to Donald Trump Could Be the Constitution Itself August 4, 2023
For that to happen, however, Biden and his team need to get out of the way. That will be hard; they will want the so-called “unity task forces” to be nothing more than window dressing for a campaign that is struggling to appeal to backers of Sanders and to the disenfranchised, disenchanted, and disengaged potential voters who could turn a close contest into a Democratic win. But a facade of unity, forged in compromise and concession, will not do the job. Nor will a self-serving nod to the task forces from a candidate who still takes money from billionaires and advice from former treasury secretary Larry Summers.
What Democrats require is a coherent agenda, and a campaign, that breaks sufficiently from the old politics to capture the imagination of the American electorate at a time when the coronavirus pandemic and an economic meltdown preclude a return to normal. The party has to propose a new direction. And these task forces on the economy, immigration, health care, criminal justice, education, and climate action could do just that. While each task force is made up of both Biden and Sanders backers, the most dynamic figures on most of them are progressives. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
A climate change task force cochaired by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Sanders ally who has been the most prominent advocate for a Green New Deal, and former secretary of state John Kerry, a Biden surrogate who has a credible environmental record and who hails AOC’s leadership on climate issues, has the potential to act as boldly as is necessary. The presence of two other Sanders designees on the task force—Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice founder Catherine Flowers and Sunrise Movement cofounder Varshini Prakash—strengthens the argument that meaningful agenda-setting could actually occur. Current Issue View our current issue
“A year and a half ago, our movement was joined by then Representative-elect Ocasio-Cortez in Nancy Pelosi’s office demanding that the Democrats develop a solution at the scale of the climate crisis,” says Prakash. “Now, together, we’ll be helping to write the Democratic Platform on climate.” The emphasis that Prakash and the Sunrise Movement put on “building our movement and raising our voices loudly for a Green New Deal” is the key.
These task forces are charged with forging platform language, which is important, but their real duty should be to help frame a campaign that, as Sanders suggests, “will unify our party in a transformational and progressive direction.” There’s no doubt that Biden—and other Democratic candidates—could benefit from that connection. That’s won’t happen if the task forces function merely as extensions of the Biden campaign, however. That’s not how a movement-driven politics works. Candidates have to embrace proposals and programs that are developed by activists, and then carry the agenda into the fall competition.
While there will be great attention to the climate crisis task force, several of the others also have the potential to move the party and its 2020 campaign in a transformational and progressive direction. A health care task force is cochaired by Representative Pramila Jayapal, the Congressional Progressive Caucus cochair who has emerged as the leading House advocate for Medicare for All, and it includes Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the former director of Detroit’s Health Department. It can and must craft the arguments that Biden will need to move from his tepid approach to health care issues toward the bolder stance advocated by Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and other Democratic presidential contenders. The Race The Most Consequential Decision of Biden’s 2020 Campaign John Nichols
The same goes for a task force on the economy cochaired by Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, who is an essential advocate for labor rights, and Representative Karen Bass, the Congressional Black Caucus chair and Congressional Progressive Caucus member whose name has appeared on lists of vice presidential prospects. The committee’s potential is enhanced by Jared Bernstein, an Economic Policy Institute veteran who served as deputy chief economist for the Department of Labor under Labor Secretary Robert Reich and as Vice President Biden’s chief economist and economic policy adviser, and by Stony Brook University economics professor Stephanie Kelton, an adviser to the 2016 Sanders campaign who served as chief economist for the Democratic minority staff of the Senate Budget Committee and is a savvy critic of austerity.
Task forces are supposed to come up with ideas—ideally, new and innovative ideas. If Biden and his campaign let these groups do their work, and if the presumptive nominee and the party use the agendas that are developed as cues to move in a sufficiently progressive direction, Democrats might again be what they were in the days when Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal Coalition won overwhelming victories: the dynamic force in our politics and our governance.


thenation--2020-05-14--Los Angeles’s ‘Eviction Ban’ Doesn’t Protect Tenants

California is often painted by liberal media as the “ State of Resistance , ” where rationality prevails and the response to Covid-19 has been guided by science .
And Los Angeles might appear to be this progressive bastion ’ s crown jewel : In recent years , media outlets have praised LA ’ s mayor , rising Democratic star Eric Garcetti , for leading what one Economist story proposed as “ the model for a more diverse America.
” The mayor ’ s nightly Covid-19 briefings , streamed on Facebook , “ come from a place of love , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Los Angeles Times .
“ He ’ s tried to come from a place of kindness .
He ’ s trying to build consensus.
” This boosterism obscures the racialized poverty , suffering , and violence that coexist uneasily with astonishing wealth in this paradise of liberal capitalism .
LA has never been a friendly place for tenants , but the situation has worsened in recent decades , as wages stagnated and rents soared .
Now LA is staring down the barrel of what could be the largest wave of forced evictions in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ local leaders—including Garcetti—are refusing to do what ’ s necessary to secure housing for renters and unhoused Angelenos .
Rather than being a model city , Los Angeles has become a cautionary tale : Even under the best conditions that liberalism and the Democratic Party have to offer , those who don ’ t own property will be exploited by those who do .
Of the 10 million people in Los Angeles County , about 5.5 million people live in tenant households .
With one survey from mid-April finding that less than half @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that ’ s a lot of people who won ‘ t be able to pay rent .
On March 27 , the City of Los Angeles passed emergency tenant protections that go slightly beyond the statewide measure ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom the same day : Newsom ’ s order delays eviction proceedings until June 1 for tenants who can ’ t pay rent because of Covid-19 , while LA ’ s provides these tenants with a legal defense to stave off eviction attempts and gives them more time to pay back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lifted .
Both measures have been misleadingly branded by elected officials and some media outlets as “ moratoria ” or “ bans ” on evictions .
But under both California ’ s and LA ’ s rules , landlords can still file evictions against tenants—and tenants can fight back only if they can prove in court that they lost income because of Covid-19 .
California ’ s Judicial Council adopted an emergency rule that prevents courts from hearing or processing nearly all eviction cases during the state of emergency , and for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rule is lifted , tenants will still bear the burden of hiring lawyers or navigating housing court on their own if they want to stay in their homes .
Not only that , but reporting from The Guardian suggests that landlords in LA and across the state are already taking advantage of the confusing patchwork of legal half-measures to serve eviction notices and use other means to force tenants out .
Perhaps these measures ’ biggest failure is that even tenants who can prove they lost income because of Covid-19 will still be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ landlords .
Under statewide rules , tenants will immediately be on the hook for missed payments as soon as the courts start processing evictions again , while LA tenants will have 12 months to pay .
If nothing changes , this will simply kick the can of mass evictions a year down the road , as potentially millions of renters will be saddled with rent debt they can not possibly ever pay back .
We know the impact will not be felt evenly across the races .
Data recently compiled by the Institute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that 68 percent of black residents and 62 percent of Latinx residents in LA County are renters , compared to 46 percent of whites .
Even before the pandemic , racialized displacement in recent years was staggering : LA County has lost over 160,000 black residents since 1990—even while the population increased by at least 1 million—and neighborhoods such as Hollywood have seen massive displacement of Latinx families .
LA County ’ s nearly 60,000 unhoused residents are disproportionately black : About 1 in 40 black Angelenos are unhoused , whereas for white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A recent legal analysis from public interest attorneys , boosting grassroots demands , argues that local governments in California possess the legal authority to cancel rent during an emergency like this—a “ temporary rent suspension , ” in their words .
But elected officials in LA have refused to enact stronger eviction protections , while also asking the federal government to rescue tenants ( and landlords ) instead .
In both March and April , the LA City Council voted against stronger measures that would ban nearly all evictions during the crisis—then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Ilhan Omar ’ s recent bill canceling rent and mortgage payments during the pandemic .
LA elected officials proclaim the need for tenant protections , but they refuse to use their own power to keep people in their homes .
These contradictions extend to plans for unhoused people , too .
In early April , Governor Newsom announced the creation of Project Roomkey , whereby the state would work with city and county governments to get California ‘ s most vulnerable unhoused residents into vacant hotel rooms .
In LA County , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority , and officials have set their own goal of bringing 15,000 people into hotel rooms .
But LA County has a total unhoused population of nearly 60,000 , and authorities are moving at a snail ’ s pace : Fewer than 1,800 people had been placed in hotel rooms as of May 5 .
The program also relies on the voluntary cooperation of hotel owners , who are being reimbursed at an agreed-upon price hammered out through individual negotiations .
Housing advocates have asked elected officials to use @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rooms instead , to ensure that all residents have safe and secure shelter during this deadly pandemic .
“ If you can tell the entire city of Los Angeles that we can shelter in place , then you can tell the hotels they are commandeered and they need to open their doors to the residents of skid row , ” Shayla Myers , an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles , recently told the Los Angeles Times .
But so far , officials have refused .
That ’ s why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are taking matters into their own hands .
On May Day , Davon Brown—a black man made recently homeless in Echo Park—joined with organizers from Street Watch LA to occupy a hotel room in the Ritz-Carlton in downtown LA .
They intended to stay until Garcetti used his emergency powers to provide hotel rooms for all unhoused residents in the city , echoing the demands made by the statewide No Vacancy CA coalition .
They were quickly arrested by LAPD officers that same day and cited for trespassing .
“ We have a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at a press briefing that night in reference to Brown .
But Brown himself says he is not eligible for the existing program ; a week after his arrest , he was still living in a tent in Echo Park .
Garcetti had also stated recently that there was not a backlog for these hotel rooms , a claim that was quickly debunked .
Activists are growing increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of negotiations .
Even if LA ’ s plan works , tens of thousands of people will remain on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tend to dominate local discussions of housing policy , grassroots organizers such as myself have seen the need for a ( socially distanced ) escalation .
The LA Tenants Union and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment are organizing mass rent strikes , and an ad hoc group calling themselves the People ’ s City Council ( PCC ) has held about a dozen “ car protests ” —in which people park their cars or drive in a circle around a set route , with cars decorated and horns blaring—in the neighborhoods where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demanding the cancellation of rent and the immediate use of vacant hotels to house all unhoused residents .
Members of the PCC recently held a May Day protest outside Garcetti ’ s mansion in wealthy Hancock Park , featuring a mariachi band and dozens of cars , creating a deafening and raucous scene in this otherwise quiet neighborhood .
So far , the response from Garcetti and City Council has been disappointing .
In late April , Garcetti proposed an austerity budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 that would make cuts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 6 percent cut to programs that address homelessness—and furlough 16,000 city employees .
The LAPD ’ s funding , however , will increase , rising to a staggering $ 1.86 billion in the 2020–21 fiscal year .
This is consistent with what many local tenant and unhoused organizers say is the city ’ s primary official response to homelessness : handcuffs , not house keys .
The Los Angeles Times reported that in 2016 , one in six of all arrests by the Los Angeles Police Department targeted unhoused residents ; by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of all “ use of force ” incidents in 2018 involved someone experiencing homelessness .
State violence against people experiencing homelessness has continued during the pandemic—including an incident on April 27 , in which an LAPD officer was caught on camera beating an unarmed , unhoused man in Boyle Heights .
The state is likely to make additional cuts , as officials announced in early May that California is facing a $ 54 billion deficit .
Yet elected officials at the local and state level are considering little in the way of tax @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of 2018 , California had 144 billionaire residents collectively worth over $ 700 billion , and over a million millionaire households .
Instead , Governor Newsom , like LA officials , is pointing his finger at Washington .
“ We really need the federal government to do more , ” he said .
Those who are struggling to survive right now can ’ t wait to find out whether the federal government will swoop in .
The current surge of direct-action protests represents the most intense pressure on LA ’ s elected officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and some recent actions do suggest elected officials are feeling the heat .
On May 6 , the LA City Council voted to extend a temporary rent freeze on rent-stabilized units .
The council has also voted unanimously to request a report from county authorities on which hotels have received public subsidies and whether they are participating in Project Roomkey , allowing even the most anti-tenant council members to posture as champions of the downtrodden .
These moves may make for nice press releases , but they ’ re far from what activists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one can open the way for radical possibilities .
We refuse to accept that such a spectacularly wealthy city and state can not take care of its own residents—and until everyone is housed with dignity , both during this crisis and beyond , we will continue to fight .

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service. For that reason, this article, and all of our coronavirus coverage, is now free. Please subscribe to support our writers and staff, and stay healthy.
California is often painted by liberal media as the “State of Resistance,” where rationality prevails and the response to Covid-19 has been guided by science. And Los Angeles might appear to be this progressive bastion’s crown jewel: In recent years, media outlets have praised LA’s mayor, rising Democratic star Eric Garcetti, for leading what one Economist story proposed as “the model for a more diverse America.” The mayor’s nightly Covid-19 briefings, streamed on Facebook, “come from a place of love,” one law professor recently told the Los Angeles Times. “He’s tried to come from a place of kindness. He’s trying to build consensus.”
This boosterism obscures the racialized poverty, suffering, and violence that coexist uneasily with astonishing wealth in this paradise of liberal capitalism. LA has never been a friendly place for tenants, but the situation has worsened in recent decades, as wages stagnated and rents soared. Now LA is staring down the barrel of what could be the largest wave of forced evictions in the region’s history, and local leaders—including Garcetti—are refusing to do what’s necessary to secure housing for renters and unhoused Angelenos.
Rather than being a model city, Los Angeles has become a cautionary tale: Even under the best conditions that liberalism and the Democratic Party have to offer, those who don’t own property will be exploited by those who do.
Of the 10 million people in Los Angeles County, about 5.5 million people live in tenant households. With one survey from mid-April finding that less than half of LA County residents still had jobs, that’s a lot of people who won‘t be able to pay rent. On March 27, the City of Los Angeles passed emergency tenant protections that go slightly beyond the statewide measure ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom the same day: Newsom’s order delays eviction proceedings until June 1 for tenants who can’t pay rent because of Covid-19, while LA’s provides these tenants with a legal defense to stave off eviction attempts and gives them more time to pay back rent after the state of emergency is lifted. Related Article Undocumented Workers in Coronavirus Crisis Sasha Abramsky
Both measures have been misleadingly branded by elected officials and some media outlets as “moratoria” or “bans” on evictions. But under both California’s and LA’s rules, landlords can still file evictions against tenants—and tenants can fight back only if they can prove in court that they lost income because of Covid-19. California’s Judicial Council adopted an emergency rule that prevents courts from hearing or processing nearly all eviction cases during the state of emergency, and for a period of time afterward. Once this rule is lifted, tenants will still bear the burden of hiring lawyers or navigating housing court on their own if they want to stay in their homes. Not only that, but reporting from The Guardian suggests that landlords in LA and across the state are already taking advantage of the confusing patchwork of legal half-measures to serve eviction notices and use other means to force tenants out. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Perhaps these measures’ biggest failure is that even tenants who can prove they lost income because of Covid-19 will still be required to pay back rent to their landlords. Under statewide rules, tenants will immediately be on the hook for missed payments as soon as the courts start processing evictions again, while LA tenants will have 12 months to pay. If nothing changes, this will simply kick the can of mass evictions a year down the road, as potentially millions of renters will be saddled with rent debt they cannot possibly ever pay back.
We know the impact will not be felt evenly across the races. Data recently compiled by the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA shows that 68 percent of black residents and 62 percent of Latinx residents in LA County are renters, compared to 46 percent of whites. Even before the pandemic, racialized displacement in recent years was staggering: LA County has lost over 160,000 black residents since 1990—even while the population increased by at least 1 million—and neighborhoods such as Hollywood have seen massive displacement of Latinx families. LA County’s nearly 60,000 unhoused residents are disproportionately black: About 1 in 40 black Angelenos are unhoused, whereas for white Angelenos that number is 1 in 250. Current Issue View our current issue
A recent legal analysis from public interest attorneys, boosting grassroots demands, argues that local governments in California possess the legal authority to cancel rent during an emergency like this—a “temporary rent suspension,” in their words. But elected officials in LA have refused to enact stronger eviction protections, while also asking the federal government to rescue tenants (and landlords) instead. In both March and April, the LA City Council voted against stronger measures that would ban nearly all evictions during the crisis—then later approved a resolution that stated support for Ilhan Omar’s recent bill canceling rent and mortgage payments during the pandemic. LA elected officials proclaim the need for tenant protections, but they refuse to use their own power to keep people in their homes.
These contradictions extend to plans for unhoused people, too. In early April, Governor Newsom announced the creation of Project Roomkey, whereby the state would work with city and county governments to get California‘s most vulnerable unhoused residents into vacant hotel rooms. In LA County, this effort is being spearheaded by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, and officials have set their own goal of bringing 15,000 people into hotel rooms. But LA County has a total unhoused population of nearly 60,000, and authorities are moving at a snail’s pace: Fewer than 1,800 people had been placed in hotel rooms as of May 5. The program also relies on the voluntary cooperation of hotel owners, who are being reimbursed at an agreed-upon price hammered out through individual negotiations. Related Article How Staples Center Kicked LA Gentrification Into Overdrive Jonny Coleman and Jacob Woocher
Housing advocates have asked elected officials to use their emergency powers to commandeer these hotel rooms instead, to ensure that all residents have safe and secure shelter during this deadly pandemic. “If you can tell the entire city of Los Angeles that we can shelter in place, then you can tell the hotels they are commandeered and they need to open their doors to the residents of skid row,” Shayla Myers, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, recently told the Los Angeles Times. But so far, officials have refused.
That’s why some of those who are most impacted are taking matters into their own hands. On May Day, Davon Brown—a black man made recently homeless in Echo Park—joined with organizers from Street Watch LA to occupy a hotel room in the Ritz-Carlton in downtown LA. They intended to stay until Garcetti used his emergency powers to provide hotel rooms for all unhoused residents in the city, echoing the demands made by the statewide No Vacancy CA coalition. They were quickly arrested by LAPD officers that same day and cited for trespassing.
“We have a room for you,” Garcetti claimed at a press briefing that night in reference to Brown. But Brown himself says he is not eligible for the existing program; a week after his arrest, he was still living in a tent in Echo Park. Garcetti had also stated recently that there was not a backlog for these hotel rooms, a claim that was quickly debunked. Activists are growing increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of negotiations. Even if LA’s plan works, tens of thousands of people will remain on the street.
Protesters from LA’s People’s City Council in front of Mayor Garcetti’s home, May 1, 2020. (Injinash Unshin)
While typically staid nonprofit organizations tend to dominate local discussions of housing policy, grassroots organizers such as myself have seen the need for a (socially distanced) escalation. The LA Tenants Union and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment are organizing mass rent strikes, and an ad hoc group calling themselves the People’s City Council (PCC) has held about a dozen “car protests”—in which people park their cars or drive in a circle around a set route, with cars decorated and horns blaring—in the neighborhoods where the mayor and city councilmembers live, demanding the cancellation of rent and the immediate use of vacant hotels to house all unhoused residents. Members of the PCC recently held a May Day protest outside Garcetti’s mansion in wealthy Hancock Park, featuring a mariachi band and dozens of cars, creating a deafening and raucous scene in this otherwise quiet neighborhood.
So far, the response from Garcetti and City Council has been disappointing. In late April, Garcetti proposed an austerity budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 that would make cuts to a broad array of services—including a 6 percent cut to programs that address homelessness—and furlough 16,000 city employees. The LAPD’s funding, however, will increase, rising to a staggering $1.86 billion in the 2020–21 fiscal year.
This is consistent with what many local tenant and unhoused organizers say is the city’s primary official response to homelessness: handcuffs, not house keys. The Los Angeles Times reported that in 2016, one in six of all arrests by the Los Angeles Police Department targeted unhoused residents; by the LAPD’s own numbers, one-third of all “use of force” incidents in 2018 involved someone experiencing homelessness. State violence against people experiencing homelessness has continued during the pandemic—including an incident on April 27, in which an LAPD officer was caught on camera beating an unarmed, unhoused man in Boyle Heights.
The state is likely to make additional cuts, as officials announced in early May that California is facing a $54 billion deficit. Yet elected officials at the local and state level are considering little in the way of tax increases on wealthy residents—even though, as of 2018, California had 144 billionaire residents collectively worth over $700 billion, and over a million millionaire households. Instead, Governor Newsom, like LA officials, is pointing his finger at Washington. “We really need the federal government to do more,” he said.
Those who are struggling to survive right now can’t wait to find out whether the federal government will swoop in. The current surge of direct-action protests represents the most intense pressure on LA’s elected officials from the left in recent times, and some recent actions do suggest elected officials are feeling the heat. On May 6, the LA City Council voted to extend a temporary rent freeze on rent-stabilized units. The council has also voted unanimously to request a report from county authorities on which hotels have received public subsidies and whether they are participating in Project Roomkey, allowing even the most anti-tenant council members to posture as champions of the downtrodden.
These moves may make for nice press releases, but they’re far from what activists are demanding. A crisis like this one can open the way for radical possibilities. We refuse to accept that such a spectacularly wealthy city and state cannot take care of its own residents—and until everyone is housed with dignity, both during this crisis and beyond, we will continue to fight.


thenation--2020-05-14--Conversations With ‘The Nation’: Ai-jen Poo

Ai-jen Poo , cofounder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance , joins Nation editorial director and publisher @ @ @ @ @ at noon on Wednesday , May 20 , to talk about protecting workers and labor @ @ @ @ @ Register now to join us for $ 10 .
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Dr. William J. Barber @ @ @ @ @ Sign up for Nation e-mails to receive new speaker announcements and invitations to future events @

Ai-jen Poo, cofounder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, joins Nation editorial director and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel in conversation at noon on Wednesday, May 20, to talk about protecting workers and labor organizing during the pandemic. Register now to join us for $10. Or you can purchase a discounted package to this weekly event series.
Our weekly virtual series, “Conversations With The Nation,” helps to support rigorous progressive journalism at a critical moment in our history. Environmental activist and author Bill McKibben, Representatives Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, and the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II have joined us. Sign up for Nation e-mails to receive new speaker announcements and invitations to future events.