COVID-19 Series

Beyond the Essential-Yet-Disposable Paradox

Jeremy Posadas

May 28, 2020

In my previous post, I discussed what really makes essential workers essential: they do jobs that keep us alive, jobs without which our communities couldn’t survive. Capitalism needs living communities so that it can extract profit out of them through both the exploitation of most workers and the dispossession of marginalized groups. Yet capitalism abhors essential status for any worker, because an essential worker is a worker with greater bargaining power in capitalist labor markets: capitalism relies on making workers as disposable (by executives) as possible, keeping as many workers as possible from becoming essential to the business. Indeed, many of the workers identified as essential based on stay-at-home orders, workers essential to human survival, are in occupations that capitalism has made the most disposable through low incomes, job-security, workplace safety, and social prestige. Not coincidentally, most of these are also occupations whose work forces are disproportionately comprised of women and people of color (women of color in particular).

Hence the paradox that arises if we try to ensure that capitalism survives coronavirus along with humankind, poignantly expressed in a tweet by Jake Merch, who works as a caregiver for adults with developmental disabilities: “Got a letter that says I’m an essential employee, and a paycheck that says I’m not.” This paradox has been made even more gruesome in recent weeks, as many states have rushed to force workers off unemployment insurance and back on the job — “reopen the economy” is the euphemism — even though they do not have adequate access to protective equipment, testing, healthcare, childcare, or hazard pay.

This essential-yet-disposable paradox is only possible insofar as we continue to accept a founding myth of capitalism: that one of the primary purposes of our care for one other in our families (biological, legal, and chosen) and communities is to enable capitalist markets to succeed. In reality, for everyone besides the small fraction of humanity who own and control most of the world’s wealth, capitalism’s potential value as a social and moral good lies solely in its capacity to enable and sustain our care for each other, and in this regard it has failed more widely and often than it has succeeded.

Humans are not created for the market; rather, the market is created for humans. Nevertheless, the question remains: for which humans — for whose benefit — is the market created? For 600 years, since capitalism began with European overseas colonization coupled with chattel slavery, capitalist markets have continually been created and re-created to benefit those who already own most of society’s wealth while rendering everyone else as fully disposable as possible. But the novel coronavirus once more unmasks realities that lead us to cry out a different answer: an economy only for ALL the people, with ALL of Earth!

Frontline service workers have already begun raising this cry during the crisis. Their voices add to three social movements whose melodies of justice, if they can join in thunderous chords, have the potential to save all our lives with the whole life of the planet. Each of these movements has expanded leadership by women, people of color, and specifically women of color. The first is the reproductive justice movement, which for a quarter-century has bravely stewarded a key moral principle — justice means universal access to the resources necessary for the care that that sustains whole communities — that can be extended from the parent-child relationship to all relationships of mutual care, in all their social dimensions. Corresponding to this is the farmers’ movement for regenerative/conservation agriculture and agro-ecology (exemplified by the Green Belt Movement, founded by the late Nobel laureate Dr. Wangari Maathai, as well as by the farmers profiled in Growing a Revolution, by geologist David Montgomery), which effectively demonstrates the principle that the resources necessary to sustain human communities can be produced in ways that enhance the life-capacities of the whole ecosystem(s) involved. The third movement is the resurgence of “social justice unionism” within the labor movement, spearheaded by progressive unions such as the Chicago Teachers Union and the California Nurses Association; this movement does not limit its demands only to what benefits its members, but also fights for the holistic good of the communities in which its members — as well as their students, patients, clients, customers — live and work. Having energized some of the most successful labor organizing in the entire neoliberal era, it shows us how the power to disrupt capitalist structural inequities lies in organizing everyone whose caring labor, both paid and unpaid, sustains human communities.

As many have noted, we must not let capitalism take us “back to normal.” We must, instead, move the market to the place where the dreams of these three movements intersect and come alive alongside many others, from worker coops to racial justice and beyond. Religious communities can advance this effort by letting these movements lead them to search or re-construct their long traditions for wisdom that resonates with and amplifies them. Moreover, religious communities can educate their members about all three of these movements and stand alongside them when they demand policy-changes by corporate and government leaders. Finally, as they deepen their involvement in each of these movements, religious communities can play a strategic role in fostering cross-connections among them that do not currently exist. This is how we can end capitalism’s rapacious disposal of people and the planet.

Faith Needs Labor to Respond to this Moment

Francisco Garcia Jr.

May 21, 2020

“The state of emergency and the logic of downturn, which are not the exceptions but the rule, teach us that we need to look elsewhere in the world for what truly matters and for what can save us. This will help us shake off not only false rulers but also false gods who demand sacrifice from the many to shore up the power of the few. Those who continue to search for God might be surprised as well.” - Joerg Rieger

In his initial post Joerg Rieger closes with the above paragraph, calling us to find our collective salvation in places beyond the elite class that champions financial capitalism and the corresponding theologies undergirding it. This may lead some to think, “so where do we turn?” Is there any hope in churches, and in religious communities more broadly speaking, to guide us out of this mess?

My answer is a nuanced yes, with some qualifications. Faith communities have within their capacity many powerful values, traditions, rituals, and narratives that are sorely needed during this time--stories of redemption, compassion, and justice. We need to leverage the best of these traditions, and wrestle with those toxic elements that support the status quo. And, I would add, faith communities cannot do it with their customary tools and approaches alone. They need to engage in fruitful, collaborative, and long-haul relationships with strategic social movement partners committed to the work of justice. One key group, as Joerg Rieger and Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger highlight in their book Unified We Are a Force, is the labor movement.

One major obstacle for this collaboration is that, for the most part, faith communities and labor unions operate in entirely different silos. The handful of faith leaders, worshiping communities, and organizing networks that are directly engaged in the question of labor are the exception. This is despite the long tradition of faith and labor moments in U.S. social movement history - from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final act of solidarity with striking sanitation workers in Memphis (that had its roots in an important faith and labor coalition), to the National Farm Worker Ministry that emerged out of the United Farm Workers organizing in California. Today, these events are understood primarily as moments in past history. As a result, rarely will religious communities speak of labor justice or engage in discussions about class.

How do we bridge the gap between faith and labor? Elsewhere I have argued for the need of churches to adopt a social movement ethos and to invest in a relational internal organizing process with their members. This work is essential and urgently needed to get people of faith to a place of what Brazilian popular educator Paulo Freire calls critical consciousness, specifically around issues of labor. This development of critical consciousness is a prerequisite, in my view, to Rieger’s notion of deep solidarity, that is manifested as organized action rooted in an understanding of broader class solidarity while recognizing difference (i.e. the 99%). Moreover, this process is necessary, regardless of one’s economic and social location.

In my work as a parish priest, I have encountered working-class church members, even those belonging to a union, who have never considered the question of how their faith and work relate to each other. Senior pastors of affluent congregations may have supported a local labor action, but never thought of themselves or their own flock in terms of their identities as workers. What are the primary economic pressures faced by members of the congregation? How many religious communities know what percentage of their congregations are union members, and what unions they belong to? Understanding these connections is key to moving from a basic understanding of the interrelationship between faith and labor to one that begins to challenge and transform systemic economic injustices. The current moment, as Jeremy Posadas noted in his contribution to this series, presents a unique opportunity to do just that.

The labor movement also has its own work to do, as Stephen Lerner, one of the organizing masterminds behind the successful Justice for Janitors campaign, recently laid out:

A precondition for a labor upsurge is to develop organizing, bargaining, and political strategies appropriate to a world in which power is concentrating in the hands of fewer actors. Monopolies like Amazon and private equity giants like Blackstone and Cerberus increasingly dominate every part of Americans’ lives. For many millions of Americans, they, and corporations like them, are our employers, even if their name isn’t on our paychecks. They own our apartments or homes, manage our pensions, control data and information, provide all of our goods and services, and increasingly monitor and surveil our purchases and even our daily travel from place to place.

In Lerner’s view, unions also need to adapt to a changed environment; they cannot limit themselves to workplace-only focused strategies. Right now, nearly everyone has their eyes on Amazon, as CEO Jeff Bezos rakes in record profits while front line warehouse and delivery workers are organizing for sick days, personal protective equipment, and other demands in response to worsening health and safety conditions. Class consciousness is brewing at the grassroots level, as workers are organizing formally through their labor organizations, and informally, for safe jobs, secure housing, and other related issues.

If the labor movement is adopting an organizing strategy that includes a broader understanding of worker justice issues and challenges concentrated power and wealth, then there is much resonance with Rieger’s call to search beyond the elite power structure that promotes and sanctions the sacrifice of working people at the altar of economic prosperity. This is fertile common ground to be cultivated with faith communities. Together, labor unions and faith communities can begin to identify the multiple economic pressures that their members and their neighbors in the community face—which include workplace injustices, housing, healthcare, debt, and the impact of race, gender, and immigration status. Through power-mapping and other tools, they can identify trends and strategic points of interest that can lead to transformative campaigns that challenge traditional narratives and systems that are steeped in economic injustice.

The common ground that I have described here is already emerging at the grassroots level in some places. It is my hope that this moment of pandemic can be used strategically by faith communities, in spirited collaboration with the labor movement, to lay the groundwork for larger efforts that can restore greater dignity to the lives of working people.

Deep Solidarity

Ric Hudgens

May 12, 2020

As of May 1, 2020, there were 30 million officially unemployed in the United States. That’s about 20% of an estimated 165 million labor force. The New York Times reports that number could be higher: “A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that roughly 50 percent more people than counted as filing claims in a recent four-week period may have qualified for benefits but were stymied in applying or didn’t even try because they found the process too formidable.”

During the U.S. Great Depression, there were 15 million unemployed, about 25% of the eligible workforce.

At the time when I write this, over 60,000 have now died as a direct result of COVID-19. But that’s also an under-counted estimate as there are indications that some states are intentionally not keeping an exact count. ABC News reported that the number might be off by tens of thousands.

In the Vietnam War, more than 58,300 members of the U.S. armed forces were killed or went missing in action. (But for further perspective I should note that 200-250,000 South Vietnamese died).

And although stay-at-home restrictions end April 30, they have not been revised in 45 days. We have no idea where we are on this indefinite timeline.

This morning I recalled Miss Clavel in the Madeline books, who often sensed that “Something is not right.” Even Cassandra is unemployed because everyone (well, almost everyone) can see that things are very, very bad.

Recently, I finished teaching an ecology-related course where we looked at a recent debate between two climate crisis thinkers on how we should be approaching the societal changes that need to take place.

Two years ago, Jem Bendell from the University of Cumbria in the U.K. wrote a widely disseminated paper entitled “Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy.” Bendell’s thesis is that from now on, we must assume a complete societal collapse is the inevitable result of our current ecological trajectory.

Jeremy Lent made a “deep transformation” response, arguing that to assume collapse was to undercut our motivation to make the necessary personal and societal changes that might avoid this collapse.

Although both thinkers might be considered advocates for what Joanna Macy has encouraged us to call “the great turning,” they approach this calling in very different ways. But what my students noticed was how thin those responses were. Thick elements of our society, such as power, justice, race, class, or gender, were absent from their analyses.

The pandemic is demonstrating how crises like this do not unite us, but further divide us. They are like a wedge driven into and expanding our society’s existing cracks.

The myopia of these “deep” perspectives is also seen in our government. Workers being ordered back to work despite the risks to their health. The speed with which COVID is sweeping through the prison system, devastating neglected tribal communities, increasing the oppression of African-American communities, and most threatening those least likely to get this government’s attention.

So proposals to adapt or transform can be superficial, color blind, and whether intentionally or not, cruel. Both Bendell and Lent are fond of the adjective “deep.” Deep implies that we are looking below the surface of things, underneath the headlines, behind the lies and distractions that suffocate our compassion and solidarity.

If we want to keep the adjective “deep” and go deep, we need to think of “deep solidarity.” Deep solidarity is the term used by theologian Joerg Rieger to go beyond both charity and advocacy.

This crisis is making it easier to see where we are divided and where we are on common ground. We are seeing that the essential workers are not corporate executives, Wall Street traders, or celebrities Instagramming from their retreats. The real foundation of our lives is not what we are led to believe.

I have written before that we are not all in this together unless we are all in this together. Seeing how “front-line workers” are being both praised and discriminated against should enrage us, stir our compassion, and activate something more than just sympathy.

Deep solidarity calls us to see what is going on around us, our shared circumstances, the diseased roots that are making all of us weaker. “The ask is simple,” Rieger writes, “when it comes to deep solidarity: become aware of it, experiment with it, explore it at various levels and above all, resist any efforts to be divided and conquered once again.” (J Rieger & Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger, “Deep Solidarity: Broadening the Basis of Transformation”)

One specific example we can all support: workers from Amazon, Instacart, Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, and FedEx planned a General Strike on May 1. They protested their employers’ record profits at the expense of their health and safety.

I hope you supported them by not shopping at those stores on Friday, May 1. I hope you did not cross the picket lines.

These workers and those in hospitals are the essential workers helping keep us safe. They are our allies. We should be theirs.

We shouldn’t have to live in a society that depends upon division rather than unity. But we should know by now that solidarity comes from the bottom, not the top. Those up above don’t give a damn about us. They will sacrifice our lives to protect business-as-usual. We should join this virus in declaring an end to business-as-usual.

We must adapt. We need to transform. But most of all, we need solidarity. A deep solidarity.

This blog was first published on Ric Hudgens’s blog on April 30, 2020 at: http://www.medium.com/@rdhudgens

Essential For What?

Jeremy Posadas

April 30, 2020

“Already we are beginning to sense who the essential workers, those without whom we cannot survive, really are….” (Joerg Rieger)

The coronavirus pandemic has made more blatant than usual how much our collective survival and well-being depend on various kinds of workers, most of whom do not receive such attention, much less acclaim, in normal times. We are, for example, better able to appreciate, alongside the heroic life-saving efforts of hospital medical staff, the necessary labor of cleaning workers who constantly disinfect treatment areas and equipment, delivery workers who transport crucial equipment and supplies, and those who have initial contact with patients when they must seek treatment. Saving lives would be impossible without these workers’ dedicated service.

Most of us, fortunately, will not need to go to the hospital due to the coronavirus. Yet staying at home — whether with the benefit of continuing income or in the shock of sudden unemployment — is itself only possible because of the work of others who can’t afford to stay at home. Workers on farms and in food plants, workers driving delivery trucks and stocking grocery shelves, workers preparing meals and delivering them to homes: without all this labor, none of us could stay alive. Stockers and cashiers in stores and pickers and packers in warehouses ensure that we can obtain all the supplies we use to keep our bodies clean, clothed, and nourished and our homes habitable: this labor, too, is necessary for us to stay alive. The workers who are continuing to collect our garbage, deliver our packages, keep our water/sewer and electricity infrastructure operating, and manufacture all of the things we need to maintain our households on a day-to-day basis are keeping us alive.

Moreover, there are the workers who continue to assist older adults and disabled people with activities of daily living they cannot do for themselves: this work is essential at all times, but particularly in the face of a virus that preys so easily on those who already have health vulnerabilities. And there is another category of essential workers generally not explicitly named in stay-at-home orders but who are performing an essential service without which humankind could not survive: parents of children who normally attend school or daycare. With schools and many daycare centers closed, the intensive labor of watching after children and organizing and guiding the development activities that fill their day — which parents usually split with daycare workers and schoolteachers — must now be performed primarily by parents (supported by millions of devoted teachers doing their best online). The order for children to stay at home is, in other words, an order for parents to take over the daytime shift from another group of essential workers.

All of this points to one of the most important social questions raised by the pandemic: what are essential workers essential for? Despite many local variations, the stay-at-home orders’ definitions of essential workers (i.e., those who work in essential businesses) center on those workers making goods and providing services that are necessary for people and communities to stay alive. They are essential not because they are the jobs that return the highest profits, but because they are the jobs without which human communities can’t survive — and without humans, there is no market. Essential workers, in other words, are essential for reasons that precede and supersede capitalism, grounded in “ways of valuing that are not constituted by measures of market transaction” (as Rosetta Ross puts it in her contribution to this series).

The capitalist system simply takes for granted that there will be workers with the skills needed for the jobs that create the wealth that capitalists capture, workers who are, within their households/families, simultaneously the consumers whose demand sustains over two-thirds of GDP. Yet these wealth-creating and GDP-sustaining workers are one of two things that capitalist markets cannot supply to themselves (the other being natural ecosystems): they can only be generated through networks of human care, which are not primarily driven by the desire to maximize profit, but the desire to thrive in community with others. Although capitalism has, throughout its history, sought to ensnare these networks of care within circuits of profit — present-day manifestations including for-profit hospitals and charter schools and the absence of publicly financed universal access to high-quality childcare — they persist in evading capitalism’s grasp.

Many religious communities, in fact, have actively fostered networks of care that resist being incorporated within capitalist profit-making. They can play a vital role during and after the present crisis standing in deep solidarity with all who do the labor, whether paid or unpaid, of keeping all of humankind alive. Through practices of moral formation, public witness, and community organizing, religious communities can ensure that essential workers are honored, now and in the future, not with easy platitudes but with greater power over their workplaces and their lives. Such activism will be necessary as capitalism seeks to make essential workers as disposable as possible, as I will discuss in part II of this post.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Sino-American Relations

Kwok Pui Lan

April 23, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic is a wake-up call to look at the world we live in and the global forces that are shaping it. Joerg Rieger, Distinguished Professor of Theology and Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt University, points out that the U.S. is ill-prepared to face the pandemic because we have not learned the lessons from the Great Recession in 2008 by addressing growing inequity at the hands of financial capitalism. Indeed, when the market and stock indexes reached record highs in mid-February 2020, it was difficult to forecast the market’s sharp decline and volatility because of a tiny virus that has brought the world to heel.

The pandemic shines a spotlight on issues of race and class in American society. In the early days of the pandemic, celebrities and sports stars could get tested for the virus, while ordinary people with symptoms could not. Though professionals and white-collar workers can stay at and work from home, service workers and other low-income earners cannot. Staying at home is a luxury for them. While the coronavirus does not discriminate along racial and ethnic lines, black and brown people are affected disproportionately because of poverty, ill-health, and a general lack of medical support in their communities. Additionally, anti-Asian racial incidents are on the rise, exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s labeling the coronavirus the “China virus.”

The COVID-19 pandemic spread at a time of tense Sino-American relations amidst trade wars and political and military realignments in the Asian Pacific. This tension has made global solidarity in combating the novel coronavirus more difficult and challenging. In 2003, when SARS reared its ugly head, scientists in Canada, Hong Kong, and the U.S. collaborated to hunt down the virus. But the blame game between China and the U.S. during COVID-19 has created obstacles in scientific collaborations and the procurement of necessary medical supplies and resources. The pandemic shows how much the world is interconnected, from the production of face masks to travel and migration.

The U.S. has shown itself to be slow and ill-equipped to face the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, having learned from the SARS and other previous epidemics, were spurred to action swiftly. Trump’s botched response and the government’s lack of preparation have been deadly. As the U.S. became the epicenter for the virus, the rush to get face masks, ventilators, and other basic medical supplies highlighted the lack of government coordination. Rapid responses to the pandemic have been hindered by a market-driven health care system, the lack of universal health care, and no provision of paid sick leave for many workers.

Many commentators have compared the Chinese communist system to the American democratic system in assessing which nation is better equipped to handle the pandemic. But there is no time for finger-pointing or the blame game. Christine Loh, a former undersecretary of the environment in Hong Kong, argues that it is simplistic either to attribute China’s success in controlling the virus to authoritarianism or to blame America’s failings on democracy. She argues that the divergent ways that China and the U.S. have responded to the crisis have much more to do with resources and capacities at hand, cultural and societal values, scientific understanding, political ideologies, and their decision-making structures.

The Chinese government did not warn its citizens or the world of a likely pandemic at the beginning of the outbreak in Wuhan, China. Had early warnings been made, many lives would have been saved. Similarly, President Trump played down the severity of the impact of the virus until March and does not want to follow the strategies used by Asian countries to contain and mitigate the crisis. He is halting U.S. funds to the World Health Organization for 60 to 90 days, accusing the WHO of being both “China-centric” and slow in responding to the crisis.

The détente between China and the U.S. has sabotaged global efforts to combat the coronavirus. Countries should not be forced to side with one of these superpowers in order to receive help and resources. When the pandemic is over, the world will need cooperation between the two largest economies in the world for concrete actions to bring about economic recovery. The lives and livelihoods of so many people are at stake.

We cannot forget the valuable lessons we are learning from facing this pandemic: namely, that we depend on each other for survival. Without solidarity with one another and with the least among us, we will fall short in responding to the looming crisis of climate change which will devastate human lives and our habitat on a scale that is hard to imagine. We must commit ourselves to building just and sustainable world systems, for we can ill afford to go back to life as usual.

Value Beyond Measure

Rosetta Ross

April 16, 2020

“…we need to look elsewhere in the world for what truly matters and for what can save us” (Rieger).

The logics of advanced capitalism tell us that it is foolish to look somewhere other than the markets for what truly matters or for salvation. Markets have become so deeply integrated into our lives that it often seems unimaginable to find value in things and ideas that cannot easily be described, with numerical accuracy, on a cost basis. A transactional ethic has become the nature of many relationships. Capitalist ideas permeate elements of religious traditions. In our post-Citizens United era, corporations outrank citizens in vying for attention from elected officials or constituting to whom officials have a sense of responsibility. And the list goes on.

In the meantime, many persons’ lives may be permeated by crisis based on the intersectionality of their “financial” social location with their race, ethnicity, gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, and immigration status. They persist in making meaning in their lives, which are valuable, in spite of ways the focus on markets urges us toward oblivion and to say and live otherwise. It will not be a surprise that financial social location may be a great determinant of lives lost during the current crisis.

Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic is an event that presents an opportunity to see the world in new ways, including to consider and re-consider on what to place value. Movements such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, immigrant rights, anti-human trafficking, and climate justice seek to remind us of this. Because of their continuing efforts and the efforts of groups like them, we know that despite our era of advanced capitalism, there are persons who hold ways of valuing that are not constituted by measures of market transaction. In our era, values such as the common good, and virtues like kindness, care for others, honor, do no harm, assistance, faithfulness, solidarity, integrity, etc., sometimes seem to be markers of bygone times and naïve thought. Yet many of these are being demonstrated by those on the front lines who are seeking to care for the sick and otherwise stem the tide of the virus. The stark reality of the significance of their efforts and of our dependence on them and their holding such values may be a reminder—a nudge—that helps us consider revitalizing our religious traditions as well as reconsidering what really is valuable, beyond the measure of the market.

The Ugly Truth of a Pandemic and the Logic of Downturn

Joerg Rieger

April 9, 2020

“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is the not exception but the rule.” Walter Benjamin

The traumas associated with global pandemics may be once-in-a-lifetime events for some, but they have the potential of nudging all of us to see the world in new ways and to change it. While no one knows for sure how bad things will get with COVID-19, let’s acknowledge for the moment that they are not great: In early April of 2020, tens of thousands have died around the globe due to the novel coronavirus, the United States are headed towards an unemployment rate of more than 30 percent according to the Fed, and the stock market is down about a third of its value. Already on March 13, President Trump was forced to declare a national emergency, changing course from his earlier attempts to downplay the situation.

Towards the end of the last downturn of the global economy, in a 2009 book, I suggested the perspective of what I called the “logic of downturn.” My point was that situations of crisis can help us develop a clearer sense of what the world really looks like, for better or worse. Between 2007 and 2009, we could have learned a lot about how the system works from those who lost the most during the Great Recession, and from the broader effects on the proverbial 99 percent who have to work for a living. Few of these lessons have remained in the collective psyche, although movements have continued to address the realities of downturn, including the Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, immigrant rights, and climate justice movements.

It is still too early to tell whether what happened in the aftermath of the Great Recession is going to repeat itself. After 2009 any semblances of the logic of downturn were quickly suppressed and what was at one time considered a state of emergency that required drastic action was reclassified as an unfortunate exception. As markets and stock indexes recovered, aided by gigantic bailouts supporting financial institutions and corporations, an exuberant logic of success took over. This seemingly made thoughts of downturn obsolete. Financial capitalism was seen as the savior to such an extent that even those who disagreed with it and pointed out its moral shortcomings—among them a few theologians at major universities—did not feel they could dispute its success.

In truth—and this is the ugly truth that pandemic and downturn make visible again—the consequences of the Great Recession have stayed with much of the population over the years, made worse by systemic fault lines linked to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status. While the world’s stock markets kept rising consistently until February 2020, the majority of communities never fully recovered, including religious communities and many theology schools. Moreover, many of the 99 percent who have to work for a living were abruptly awakened to the fact that even the jobs that came back after the Great Recession were not of the same quality than those that were lost. Despite the rising tide of the economy, only a few boats were lifted while most have been stranded on the shore.  That pattern is being reinforced now as the Fed is providing $1 trillion Dollars a day to shore up financial institutions, while individuals earning less than $75,000 will receive a one-time relief payment of $1,200 Dollars.

Amidst pandemic and downturn, we now have another opportunity to discover that the state of emergency is not the exception but the rule, as the Jewish thinker Walter Benjamin realized at the height of German fascism in 1940. Those who have already died and many more who will yet die, their families, and their communities, will not let us forget so easily. Those who lost their livelihoods, their families, and their communities, may want to forget when the worst is over, but they would do well to remember who typically wins and who loses in our current economic system. Those who are down on their investments may feel they have less to worry about, as capitalist markets have usually recovered (at least up to now)—yet the many who depend on their investments for making ends meet or as nest eggs for retirement will find it more difficult to continue with business as usual as they will have to keep working long past their retirement age.

 The more people are awakened to these stark realities, however, the more there is a chance that things will not go back to business as usual. Already we are beginning to sense who the essential workers, those without whom we cannot survive, really are: the food, farm, grocery, transportation, janitorial, cleaning, and of course, health care workers. Many of them are beginning to make their voices heard. Just like Rome was not built by certain Roman emperors, so our cities and our lives are not ultimately built by politicians (of either party), CEOs, or financial wizards. Without working people—in particular the ones now called essential—the emperor has no clothes and even financial capitalism is nothing but a house of cards. Working people from all walks of life should never let the executive class forget it again. That’s where the power of those who have to work for a living lies. 

The state of emergency and the logic of downturn, which are not the exceptions but the rule, teach us that we need to look elsewhere in the world for what truly matters and for what can save us. This will help us shake off not only false rulers but also false gods who demand sacrifice from the many to shore up the power of the few. Those who continue to search for God might be surprised as well.

Note: I want to thank Ph.D. students Francisco Garcia (theology, Vanderbilt University) and Annika Rieger (sociology, Boston College), as well as Vanderbilt Divinity MTS student Elizabeth Welliver for their valuable feedback.