Vermont-NEA News

Don’t Just Reopen Society: Reimagine and Reconstruct It

Vermont-NEA June 2020

(The following statement was approved by the Vermont-NEA Board of Directors)

Over the past three months, educators have witnessed the struggles that children and families are facing across Vermont.  In our connections with families, we’ve heard countless heartbreaking stories of the real consequences of this pandemic.   Stories of job loss, food insecurity, and an inability to make ends meet have become routine.  Families are worried about an uncertain future.   With distance learning in place and many families unable to meet their basic needs, our job as educators has become much more difficult.  We cannot ignore the problems that children and families are currently experiencing and just continue to teach.

The COVID-19 pandemic, horrific in its own right, did not cause grave economic destruction all by itself. More than anything, it exposed the vast chasm of inequality and injustice that is an ugly hallmark of nearly a half-century of budget cuts and austerity policies that, by design, have starved our governmental and social institutions of funding and sowed misery and deprivation across the land.

From our unconscionably expensive and wasteful healthcare system to decades of stagnant and too-low wages for working Americans, the suffering wrought by the worst pandemic in a century is laying bare an economy that works well for the rich and for corporations and virtually no one else.

We are seeing massive lines – sometimes thousands long – of people seeking food. We are seeing an unprecedented number of Americans – mostly low-wage, predominantly female, precarious workers who suffer in the best of times – lose their jobs, their health insurance, their security, and, for some, their homes. We are seeing the continued injustice of racial discrimination in the effects of this virus; infection and death rates, and unemployment are disproportionately affecting communities of color and our native communities. We are seeing small businesses go under while corporations with huge amounts of cash get even more from the Trump administration and Congress.  We’re seeing wealthy families flee to second or third homes to wait out the pandemic in comfort and security. We’re even seeing a Wall Street giddy with anticipation of great corporate profits, even while the economy on Main Street is experiencing the greatest economic collapse since the 1930s.

We have a choice

Ninety years ago, our government and its people forged a bold and uncertain path out of the social and economic wreckage of the Great Depression.  It was far from easy, the results far from perfect.  But many working Americans and their families were compelled to act decisively, in common struggle, to break with the past and to build a more just and equitable society. 

They reimagined a government that worked with and for the people and distributed wealth fairly.  Then, they set out to win new public programs and legal protections for workers, the poor, and the elderly – like the Social Security Administration, unemployment compensation, and disability insurance.  The right to form a union and collectively bargain in many industries was enshrined in federal law.

Subsequent generations pushed onward, inspired by radical aspirations and social movements.  They/We won stronger labor laws, civil rights and voting rights, Medicare and Medicaid, Head Start and federal funding for public education, the Clean Air Act, gender equality and disability rights, and much more. 
 

These transformative popular struggles are a shared legacy we must carry forward.  Even in the shadow of COVID-19, we, too, have choices.

Social solidarity in a time of physical distancing

We cannot – and must not – fall into the trap of thinking that we can return to the way things were before the virus, as if the pandemic is just a passing storm or bad dream.  COVID-19 has transformed our world profoundly.  Our collective task now is to transform our economy and society profoundly, to one where everyone is afforded a living wage, dignified and secure work, and decent housing; universal, affordable, publicly financed health care; access to a strong public education; functioning infrastructure, including clean water, public transportation, maintained roads and airports, and affordable high-speed internet; and basic benefits like paid family and medical leave, free public college, and robust unemployment benefits.

Reimagining and reconstructing our society and economy begins with the acknowledgement that the producers of this country’s unprecedented wealth are not corporate CEOs, but the millions of workers whose labor creates the goods and services that propel our nation’s Gross National Product.  It is the working Americans who, sadly, get to keep very little of the wealth they create, while those at the top are showered with unseemly amounts of wealth, shockingly low tax rates, power, and perks.  It is time our society rewards and serves the working Americans who are the muscle and heart of our economy and communities, but, as the pandemic has shown, are almost always the first to lose when economic activity contracts.

We must recommit ourselves to serving and protecting the public good: strengthening public schools, public universities, public parks, public water and power systems, public hospitals, public transit systems, publicly funded healthcare, public retirement systems, and public housing.

We must rebuild our roads, bridges, and airports, and invest in newer, cleaner, renewable energy to replace the fossil-based system. We must win a higher minimum wage that actually allows a full-time worker to live a secure, dignified life. We must make it easier for workers to form unions.  We must eradicate the systemic racism and bias that keeps millions of people at a perpetual and humiliating disadvantage, and we must reform our unfair, racist and cruel criminal justice and penal systems.

We must invest more – not less – in our nation’s public schools, so that no matter where students live, they have access to a quality public education. We must invest more to ensure that schools will only reopen when they are safe, and when they reopen, students must have access to the resources they need to succeed.

A fair and just economy requires a strong and vibrant democracy.  We must make it easier to vote, so that EVERY citizen can cast a ballot, and we must organize voter registration drives.  For decades, we’ve seen the effects of voter suppression and low voter turnout: a government that does not represent the vast majority of people but the few and powerful.

To reimagine and reconstruct our economy and social institutions, we must dream, organize and sacrifice together. There is no other way. 

We must lead the fight, as educators, support professionals, and unionists, for an America that values hard work, equality and justice, public education, public service, and community with more than platitudes.

We owe it to all those who fought for us, and to those who will come after us.  Most of all, we owe it to our students.