capitalism is the crisis.

For me, capitalism is the crisis. It always has been. And I think what we’re being exposed to in this moment is all of the contradictions and the violences of capitalism, bringing things to light in stark relief. For example, the fact that we’ve had a few years now of a conversation in the country around the need for improved Medicare for All. Every single person is impacted where you can have conversations across differences, where seemingly we could all agree that it would be good to be able to be healthy. And I think we’ve seen just in the current presidential election, a very stark difference in what people are offering as a response to the needs of the community as it relates to health care.
So enter this pandemic, which I think has caught so many people off guard though years and years of the study of epidemiologists and other people suggest that we should not have been surprised about this. The fact that we had Ebola and that we’ve had SARS and we’ve had these other scares that I think Americans or U.S.-ians, in particular, found themselves very disconnected from, that we were in this position of thinking this happens to people elsewhere. It doesn’t affect “us” here in the U.S. And I think that made people very complacent in asking the questions of, you know, are we prepared? What does preparation mean? Who would be most at risk? How would we handle that in a country where some people aren’t seen as having lives that really matter? How are we going to navigate that when we were all hit in this kind of way?

mariame kaba