ON PRIVILEGE, INEQUALITY AND THE COVID-19
On privilege, inequality and the COVID-19
by Gabriela Quijano[1]
Rota. Broken. This is how I felt the moment I saw the image of a homeless man, a homeless dog and a wondering pigeon in the streets of Madrid, laying close to a poster of the #YoMeQuedoEnCasa campaign,[2] which resumes the institutional response of governments all around the world mandating people to ‘stay home’ and, in that way, try to 'flatten the curve' of the COVID-19 pandemic that continues to spread as I write these words.
I stopped. Right now. Tengo los ojos llorosos y me duelen. My eyes hurt. I feel a knot in my chest. I think about what I saw in the photograph and I feel enraged: beings without a home, displaced, facing the disease in the streets, figuring out what to do about their thirst and hunger, while politicians enact ‘orders’ only to the ‘citizens’ they are not. I have never understood inequality. Or, to be precise, I have never been able to justify it.
Last night, already in my bed and about to go to sleep, I read in the news that five US senators had “sold millions of dollars’ worth of stocks after receiving privileged briefings about the threat of coronavirus to the global economy” (Democracy Now, “At Least Five U.S. Senators, Briefed on Coronavirus, Sold Stocks Before Market Crash,” 3/20/20).
I just felt the knot back in my chest.
Reading the news, I was trying to make sense of them. To whom did they sell their stocks? Is it truly safe to assume that they deceived others in the wake of a crisis to ensure they would not be economically affected? Did they knowingly sabotage others for their own economic benefit? Did they think they were playing fair? I mean, is the stock market; is a gamble. You want to win, but you may lose. Did they believe that they were above ‘risk’? Truth to be told, they showed they are; they showed what political status in the US can give you: the power to play the game and change the rules in whatever form and at whatever time benefits you and yanks others. I wonder, could they see that what they did was not, in any way, ‘right’? Do they know that they ‘abused’ their power?
I’m enraged.
I just felt the knot back in my chest.
Reading the news, I was trying to make sense of them. To whom did they sell their stocks? Is it truly safe to assume that they deceived others in the wake of a crisis to ensure they would not be economically affected? Did they knowingly sabotage others for their own economic benefit? Did they think they were playing fair? I mean, is the stock market; is a gamble. You want to win, but you may lose. Did they believe that they were above ‘risk’? Truth to be told, they showed they are; they showed what political status in the US can give you: the power to play the game and change the rules in whatever form and at whatever time benefits you and yanks others. I wonder, could they see that what they did was not, in any way, ‘right’? Do they know that they ‘abused’ their power?
I’m enraged.
Last week I called Antonio. Now that he lives in Zurich, he doesn’t see his family and friends often—they are back in Italy. I asked him how was he feeling, how was his family, how were his friends still in Naples. To my questions, he answered disorderly. In what he replied, I heard for the first time someone say, “I feel at war.” He emphasized, “I may now have an idea of what my grandfather lived and felt.” He meant what his grandfather faced in the years of the second post-world war. In what Anto was sharing with me I understood he was experiencing the war by not being close to his loved ones; by not knowing when he will see them again; by not knowing if they will come back alive from all of this; by not knowing if they will be able to find food and care when they need it; by not knowing when this is going to end. Anto made it real for me. Telling me his stories and the stories of his family I knew he was not exaggerating. I felt at war alongside him. And while I was mesmerized by that feeling, he told me, “I’m in Zurich and I don’t know what’s going to happen with my two already-precarious jobs.”
My eyes hurt again.
My eyes hurt again.
In the middle of the quarantine, I have been reading non-stop. And I’ve been preparing to teach online. I’m one of those who have kept their productivity rolling. The uncertainty of what will happen makes me afraid to stop. I’m afraid to take the time to feel the pain, stress, sadness, rage, loneliness and anxiety that comes to me every time I think about my isolation and the isolation of others who encounter this pandemic, not in the privileged position of the US senators that sold their stocks just before the crisis was about to hit, but in the other side of the spectrum, facing the disease in precarity, struggling for food, for healthcare, for companionship. So, I’ve been reading and reading. I read a lot about alternative economic futures and politics of possibility. As an anthropologist, when able to fulfil the essential ethnographic duty of being ‘out’ there (instead of being ‘in’ here because of a political mandate to ‘stay home’ and avoid all ‘non-essential’ activities: #YoMeQuedoEnCasa), I’ve been on the lookout for these alternative worlds I read a lot about. That’s how I know for a fact that they exist. They are not a myth, ¡puñeta! Another world—not at war, not unequal—is possible!
Northampton, MA
March 21, 2020
[1] Born in Puerto Rico in the year 1990, January. I’m currently a PhD Student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. My research develops around alternative food movements in Italy, diverse economy perspectives and critical theories of Europe. My prior work involves worker-recovered enterprises in Argentina and women textile workers in Puerto Rico.
[2] The photo was posted on March 18, 2020 in the Facebook page of photographer Olmo Calvo Rodríguez, under the description “Una persona sin techo junto a un cartel del ayuntamiento de Madrid con la campaña #yomequedoencasa.”
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