We Must Offer a Message of Solidarity and Hope
People are losing everything — their jobs, their homes, their health care, their savings. Democratic socialists must articulate the pain and uncertainty ordinary people are experiencing during this crisis or the Right will fill the void.
Health care workers stand outside the Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital on April 24, 2020 in New York City. (Cindy Ord / Getty Images)
This week saw fresh protests against the coronavirus shutdown. In cities across the country, thousands of people staged actions, demanding elected officials put an end to stay-at-home orders and restart the economy.
With their Trump 2020 signs, wacko conspiracy theories and anti-science tirades, and confrontations with counter-protesting front-line health care workers, it is easy to dismiss these protesters. It feels good to write them off as nothing more than Trump-drunk right-wingers who care nothing for the people who’ve died or the workers putting their lives on the line every day to keep people alive.
Many — perhaps even most — of these protesters are exactly what they appear to be.
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