Dear Commonweal Friends:
I hope this letter finds you well. This time has been unlike anything we have ever seen. This brave new world has all of us hard at work bringing our programs online, building our resilience infrastructure, and adapting our work to the fierce urgency of now. I’m writing to you with my biannual update about our organization and programs, as well as to ask for your support. I’ll come back to that at the end of this letter.
The United States has failed to COVID-19 test. Other countries have done far better. We have also failed to marshall a skillful response to the financial and economic crisis. And we have failed to protect not only the most vulnerable but also much of the American public.
Black Lives Matter. Systemic racism is real. Neoliberal economics doesn’t work for people or the planet. These three things need to be said. Frederick Douglas wrote:
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”