President-elect Joseph R. Biden proposed a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package. The proposal is a quantum shift from Trump’s laissez-faire approach to the plague’s monumental destruction of the economy and national well-being. It’s an aspirational declaration of purpose that the incoming administration will craft the necessary political coalitions and marshal the political will to resuscitate the economy and revitalize a much-needed sense of national resolve.
The relief package represents a new version of government activism. It’s a Keynesian driven version of American social democracy that calls for addressing income inequality by redistributing income to those in dire need and by using fiscal and monetary policy tools to combat low unemployment and steep revenue short-falls in states and local governments. The initiative’s NorthStar is the distribution of $1,400 distribution individuals/households. As a whole the program attempts – via an economic multiplier effect – to reanimate economic demand and growth.
Nonetheless, Biden’s initiative falls short in addressing immigrant America’s ethnic and socio-political diversity. Case in point, we know, that Latinos were disproportionately devastated by the plague, especially undocumented immigrants. Many undocumented folks are essential workers that work and reside in neighborhoods devastated by the virus. Undocumented migrants, many from mixed households which include U.S. citizens and young children, are excluded from the $1,400 direct payment to individuals. This is inequitable, short-sighted, and reinforces the notion that undocumented immigrants are an intrusive economic burden and free-riders.
This exclusion underscores the rabid anti-immigrant bias that defined and crystalized the Trump’s ethno-nationalist administration. So, one might ask, what happened to the so-called morality that president-elect Biden constantly espouses? Is this a mainstream liberal rhetorical embellishment in the discourse regarding the public good, or will it be chalked up to political pragmatism that bows to right-wing nativism? Moreover, by excluding undocumented immigrants, that tend to cluster in dense and economically impoverished front-line communities, this policy is a noxious form of geographical redlining that reinforces structural income inequality. In effect, as policy it’s morally and politically myopic and begs the proposition that we are all in this together. It begets the reality that the Covid-19 divide is simultaneously an ethnic and class divide. And because of the pandemic’s fog these systemic fractures may be shrouded and not addressed. Thus, endangering the crafting of political coalitions that are essential in rebuilding the economy and civic life with an arch of equity and social justice.
The Covid-19 driven proposal is the Biden administration’s moment of truth. Success or failure will have long-term repercussions. The outcome will frame the nation’s ability to comprehensively address any future crisis that will undoubtably emerge — i.e., climate change. This clearly requires robust rebuilding of hollowed-out inter-governmental relations at the federal, state, and local levels. In short, the federal government must recapture its tutelage functions across the national landscape. Federal revitalization initiatives – in effect – must revolve around indicative collaborative planning functions that are meaningfully linked to local conditions and needs of all of its inhabitants. Top-down exclusionary dictums will not foster trust or cooperation, they will only harvest unnecessary political resistance from historically aggrieved segments of the population. Moreover, impositions from the commanding heights will only add to the simmering local resentments that churned the right-wing Trumpian tsunami. Inclusive, collaborative, and deliberative public partnerships that fosters trust between all levels of government is the Rosetta stone for achieving national revitalization. Yet this will require the full endowment and participation of everyone, including the explosive immigrant multitudes that are restructuring the nation’s demographic profile.
One way of viewing the Biden pandemic initiative is to approach it as a dress rehearsal for the upcoming climate crisis. Environment disruption, because of the order of magnitude, have a cascading effect — disasters are linked, overlap, and generate cumulative impacts that ripple throughout the system. Consequentially, combating the prospective climate crisis will require comprehensive state-driven intersectional policies that traverse traditional lines of demarcation. Neoliberal policies and habits of the mind that exalted a laissez-faire disdain for interventionist public policies must be expunged and/or reinvented.
As we live under the shadow of death the ancient regime crumbles. In this context, Biden’s Covid-19 proposal, if fine-tuned along more proactive and inclusive lines, can be activated as a window of opportunity for revitalizing the public sector, civic life, and meeting current and upcoming challenges. If the nation is to be reinvented and revitalized then our approach to government must change, but change will not be easy. To paraphrase the philosopher, Rene Descartes: it’s essential to move beyond the “inventory of the possible.” Transformative inclusive change – in short – must be animated and evaluated by differences in kind and not by differences in degree.
Arturo Ignacio Sánchez, Ph.D. is an urban planner and the former chairperson of the “Newest New Yorker Committee” of Community Board 3, Queens. He has taught at Barnard College, City University of New York, Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, Pratt Institute, and various Latin American universities.
