The coronavirus will devastate the South because politicians let poverty to do so first
The coronavirus will devastate the South because politicians let poverty to do so first
But wherever it goes, this pandemic will highlight how poverty — and our willingness to let people remain in it — is a danger for all of us.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/coronavirus-will-devastate-south-because-politicians-let-poverty-do-so-ncna1186691
A volunteer helps direct traffic as food is loaded into vehicles during a mobile market day at Atlanta Motor Speedway on April 17, 2020 in Hampton, Ga.Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images
April 21, 2020, 12:02 PM CDT
By The Rev. Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, author, "Revolution of Values: Reclaiming Public Faith for the Common Good"
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According to a new analysis from Pew's Stateline, the South is poised to see more death and economic loss from COVID-19 than any other region in the country — and not only because so many Republican governors delayed stay-at-home orders, included extreme religious exemptions that allowed large crowds to continue to gather, and now seem poised to reopen everything from beaches to nail salons long before the curve has truly started to flatten. Stateline notes that decades of policies that undercut government programs and left individuals to fend for themselves have led to higher poverty rates, gaping holes in the social safety net and a health care system in which 75 rural hospitals across the region have been shuttered in the last year alone.
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Long before this present crisis, the South suffered from a pandemic of poverty that was broadly hidden from public life. Politicians who preached freedom from government as the heart of American liberty used any assent to deregulate corporations; they preached “individual responsibility” and used that to justify the dismantling of and resistance to public services and anti-poverty programs. If people are poor, they said, it is not the fault of the wealthy who used the labor of the poor with too little care or remuneration; it is not, they said, the fault of the government that failed to promote the common good when it could promote a limited one.
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The former Confederate states — all of which had been subject to federal supervision after the 1965 Voting Rights Act — have passed voter suppression measures targeting nonwhite voters since the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby decision stripped the act of its power to compel those states to submit any voting changes for federal review.
In North Carolina, for instance, the state Legislature passed an omnibus bill to suppress votes as soon as the Shelby decision came down. The North Carolina NAACP sued and a federal court found that the bill had targeted African Americans with “near surgical precision” — but the damage was done. People elected as a result of voter suppression passed policies that denied Medicaid expansion, limited unemployment benefits and changed the tax code in ways that exacerbated poverty.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Since when have humans been rational by nature? 
