My husband beings home the money so that we can raise our children with one parent as their solid continuum. Except he hasn’t been able to bring home the money for four months now.
The government has ‘supported’ us during this time of COVID-19 with less than a quarter of our monthly expenses (and I mean expenses not frivolity; food, bills, mortgage). We have taken a six month mortgage holiday. And we have had to swallow our pride and ask for money from family. Yet I still know how privileged we are, the fact that we have family to ask, that they are able to give. We are the lucky ones.
Not so a vast swathe of, not only the British population, but in fact the global population. Many of whom will now be facing dire poverty, starvation, homelessness and all the mental and physical health issues that come with those. It sickens me to my core to imagine how people who work hard, strive hard to support their families and loved ones have had this purpose snatched away from them with so little consideration for their plight.
It sickens me to hear people advocate for further limiting restrictions to protect their fears of illness and death. Even if we didn’t know at the beginning, we know now. This virus is over 99.5% survivable. This has been a lockdown of privilege beyond all proportion. It is for those that can comfortably exist without monthly income or can work from their laptops at home. It is for the celebrities hiding out in their estates and telling us to be good and kind people by following their orders.
The people who will come out of this farce and injustice unscathed are the most privileged people on the planet and they seemingly couldn’t give two hoots about the rest of the world. I don’t think I could bear to hear another ‘leader’ of our world pretend to care about the masses when it is so obvious that they only care about their own reputations and well being.
We have been discussing white privilege in society for some time now, but it is the same people that make a show of fighting for this cause that are now silent for those lives decimated by lockdown and the suppression of our liberties. Token gestures.
I am angry.
How have we come to this place where we can so comfortably destroy infinitesimally more lives than we have saved and still be convincing the general public to turn on each other in the name of common decency?
I spoke to six strangers at the farmers market today who were not aware of their rights around the ‘mandated’ rules and regulations. They were all in fear of fines and reprisals despite not approving of or believing in the ‘laws’.
I am fortunate enough to be tapped into a world where we remind each other of the ‘other’ truths, the other possibilities and options rather than that of the mainstream media. An industry that is dictated to by just five or six billionaires, so divorced from real life, it means nothing to them. We have become their pawns, to manipulate at will.
It’s time for the rebellion, for the resistance.
It’s time to explore your rights and hold on bloody tight to them without relinquishing them to the privileged powers that be.
Rise up! Rise up! Rise up!