In the coming months, as state governments across the country put together their budgets for the next year, the true extent of this immoral opportunism will become even clearer. Sharp declines in usual sources of state funds, like sales and income taxes, along with increased strains on already resource-starved programs like Medicaid and unemployment insurance, will leave states in severe budget crises.
The criminal poisoning of Flint, Michigan is a dire warning about the results of these types of policies. Michigan’s emergency management law allows for the state to determine that a city is in financial distress and then push aside local elected officials and instead appoint an unaccountable, unelected, emergency financial manager with near-dictatorial power. In Flint, it was an emergency manager who decided to switch the city’s water source as a cost-saving measure, refused to take necessary safety precautions, and caused the entire city to be exposed to lead poisoning from their water supply.
Analyzing the situation, Claire McClinton, a long-time Flint community organizer and leader, said: “They could not have taken our water away without taking our democracy first.” As we witness the current assaults on democracy — including emergency manager laws, voter suppression tactics, and now the refusal to fund universal mail-in voting in the face of this pandemic — we must recognize that these measures are laying the groundwork for an attack on the lives of the poor and the rights of everyone.
By turning the public health emergency into a financial emergency, the wealthy attempt to justify circumventing democracy even further, carry out severe cuts to legal entitlements, break the promises and deny the obligations of the government and the demands of justice. We cannot be silent in the face of cruelty masquerading as necessity.
We must go deeper in organizing and uniting people around a visionary and far-reaching agenda that calls for us to reorganize society around the needs and demands of the poor. Just as we refuse to cooperate with immoral and irresponsible calls to re-open businesses, we refuse to allow politicians and big corporations to balance budgets by denying rights.
And not only can we plug funding shortfalls in existing programs, but in fact this crisis is showing us we have to go much further. Medicaid should be available to every resident in every state, and health care should no longer be available as a source of private profits but only to serve the public good. Everyone should have a right to an adequate income, whether through a safe, living wage job or through social programs. Everyone’s right to vote, and to have that vote respected, should be protected. We can provide housing, education, good food, and a healthy environment for all.
We cannot allow ourselves to be controlled by the false narratives of “returning to normal” and managing scarcity. The truth is that normal was already a crisis for the 140 million poor and low-income people in this country, and that even in this pandemic there need not be any scarcity, if we value human life over private profits. Now is the time to expose the lies, to deepen our democracy, and to truly address the profound injustices exposed in this pandemic. Si se puede!
The Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis is the Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.