Instead, Hernandez wrote that she witnessed Bronx shoppers at her local Dollar Tree stocking up on bleach, a tiny four-pack of toilet paper or a three-pack of Cup Noodles — stockpiles for families that lack cash for day-to-day emergencies, let alone the uncertainties of a global pandemic. She called it emblematic of how hard the coronavirus crisis is for people living on the margins — who can’t simply work from home when their job is cleaning hospital floors or frying fast-food burgers, who can only get around on crowded buses or subways, who can’t take paid sick days or don’t have child care when their kids’ schools shut down.
“The black and brown folks who work for these corporations have to show up on their line or at their cleaning facility, because they’re taking care of the things that can’t be taken care of remotely,” Hernandez told me by phone. I’d called her after reading her op-ed on how a public health crisis has laid bare what so many have tried to ignore for so long — the many ways that the cruel inequalities of modern U.S. capitalism weigh on working people. Continue reading.