By Roberta Oster, Communications Director, Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy —
“Quarantining is a privilege,” my friend Yanet reminds me. “My family is undocumented, my parents work in ‘essential’ jobs and have to go to work, and we don’t have space to self-quarantine if someone gets sick. Every day we worry that a family member might contract COVID-19 or get picked up by ICE and thrown into jail.”
Yanet’s words struck deep in my heart as I recognize the disparities between our circumstances. My family has the privilege of living in self-quarantine. Tonight, as we celebrate the first night of Passover, we have plenty of food and a laptop with WiFi to say prayers with family around the country over “Zoom.” Yanet’s parents, like so many essential workers across Virginia in the healthcare, agricultural, or direct service industries, are working.
Tonight, I feel a dual duty to remember the suffering of our ancestors in the past and address the suffering that is going on before our eyes. Millions of our fellow human beings are living in fear. Refugees are trapped in camps, immigrants are locked in detention centers, homeless families are left to sleep on the streets, and people are trapped in their homes, petrified as they watch their food and medical supplies dwindle and family members get sick. Just like in ancient times, people today are wandering the desert with no food or shelter.
At this perilous time, I feel profound gratitude to be able to work from home doing communications outreach for the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP). Our organization advocates economic, racial, social and environmental justice with a focus on Virginians most impacted by inequitable policies. This pandemic has exposed the gross disparities between the haves and the have-nots across the globe. In Virginia, VICPP is fighting for issues such as: changing the law that “exempts” farmworkers from the minimum wage code because of racist, Jim Crow-era laws, and requiring that employers offer paid sick days to the 1.2 million workers in Virginia who have no paid time off.
On the first night of Passover during the COVID-19 pandemic, I hope we can all recognize that we are one people hit by an illness that impacts prime ministers and farmworkers, doctors and sanitation workers, rich and poor, and people of all races and ethnicities. This crisis offers a rare opportunity for everyone to see how interdependent we are, and yet how the impoverished and weakest are hit the hardest. As we strive to survive this crisis, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address the systemic inequities that plague our world.