Why does Rep. Ayanna Pressley want black people to go without paychecks? What does Mayor Marty Walsh have against the workin’ man?
When these allegedly progressive politicians push back against Boston getting back to work, it warms the hearts (and opens the wallets) of their upscale, white-collar, wine-swilling campaign donors. But it kicks Boston’s working families right where it hurts.
Don’t Pressley and Walsh care about the people — and especially the people of color — they’re keeping off the job?
Because while the virus almost never kills young, healthy people who work for a living, the lockdown is absolutely burying them. And low-income black and Hispanic workers are getting buried deepest of all.
As the Washington Post reports: “Black and Hispanic workers are bearing the brunt of the economic crisis because they are overrepresented in industries that were hit first by social distancing mandates and stay-at-home orders, economists say.” And a Post/Ipsos poll found workers in blue-collar industries are more than twice as likely to report being laid off or furloughed as those in white-collar industries.
Last week, Fed chairman Jerome Powell said that around 40% of Americans earning less than $40,000 a year lost a job in March. A Pew Research survey in April found that while just a third of upper-income Americans said they or someone in their household has lost a job or taken a cut in pay due to the outbreak, more than half of low-income families have taken that hit.
And that was a month ago, before unemployment hit Great Depression levels. Imagine how bad it is now?
How many low-income families of color do Pressley and Walsh have to see destroyed before they’ll support lifting the lockdown boot off our economy’s throat?
Walsh is the worst, declaring last week that because the lockdown has kept the level of exposure to coronavirus below 10%, it’s not safe to allow the “unexposed population” to get back to work.
That’s right: Walsh doesn’t want to relax the lockdown because the infection rate is too low.
“There have been many dumb policy decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic, but this is one of the dumbest,” said healthcare policy expert Avik Roy.
Meanwhile, Ayanna Pressley says that it’s wrong to rescue drowning businesses by letting them reopen because the state hasn’t lowered infection rates enough to move ahead.
In fact, the percentage of positive tests is down 65% since April 15. And even that number is misleading because the media insist on referring to positive tests as “cases of COVID-19.” In fact, more than half of people who test positive have no symptoms.
The real numbers are hospitalizations and deaths. And once again, they’re down 29% and 46% (respectively).
You know what’s not down? Unemployment. Business closings. Desperate working families struggling to survive.
Do Pressley and Walsh care? Apparently not. The white-collar liberals who fund their campaigns love the lockdown. They see it as another form of anti-Trump resistance, and since they’re still teleworking, they’re under little pressure to end it.
Where is the voice in the Democratic Party for the blue-collar families who once made up their base? Green New Dealers want to take away their energy sector jobs and stick them with higher electric bills. Nancy Pelosi wants to take their tax dollars and give them to illegal immigrants and college brats who went into debt paying for their degrees in Womyn’s Studies.
Hispanic families in Florida don’t care that their governor’s a pro-Trump Republican. They’re just glad to be back at work — unlike their Bay State counterparts. African-American laborers in Atlanta aren’t fans of GOP Gov. Brian Kemp. But they are bigger fans of paychecks than politics.
Every week the lockdown stays in place, another bodega will close for good. Another restaurant will never recover. Another family will have to find a new job to pay their bills.
And progressives like Pressley and Walsh tell them “just give it one more week.”
Michael Graham is a regular contributor to the Boston Herald. Follow him on Twitter @IAmMGraham.
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Pressley, Walsh want Boston closed, workers lose - Boston Herald
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