Note: Since this blog post was published, there have been a few developments. On March 29, President Trump announced that his administration and the CDC would not continue to push for an Easter deadline on relaxing social distancing guidelines, leaving them in place until at least the end of April. It is worth considering this concession to the realities of the pandemic in the context of his previous statements, and a mountain of evidence that the White House ignored expert analysis for close to six weeks, exacerbating the public health and economic crises.

When I created my website and then started writing the blog, I resolved that the content here would support my artwork, curatorial work, and pedagogy: my “personal brand.” Writing about politics was not something I planned to do, but we are living in strange times. I feel a responsibility to use my platform, limited as it is, to try to effect some change for the greater good. Work-from-home orders, lockdowns, curfews, quarantines: welcome to the new normal. These are things we are collectively doing to flatten the curve, and anyone who values life will abide by these measures. Those in power who support our right to live will do anything to make this period of curtailed movement and remote interaction sustainable, especially for the most economically vulnerable among us. Unfortunately, it is clear our Administration and current Senate maintain other priorities.

Last Friday I “evacuated” myself Brazil and I'm now home in Puerto Rico. I’m working remotely with volunteers from Brazil, and we are adjusting our methods, expectations, and goals to make the best use of internet tools available to us. I'm in self-isolation but it's not so bad. Hopefully I didn't encounter the virus during my hectic transit to flee Brazil; but if I did, I take comfort in knowing that I'm not exposing anyone else. Caring for others by quarantining myself is one of the ways I practice my Pro-Life values. The place where I'm staying is a pleasant AirBnB studio apartment on the ground-level of our building, so I see my partner everyday through the window and door. Sometimes we stand 6 feet apart in the backyard while he tends the garden. He cooks for me and passes homemade meals through the window bars. We are careful not to touch. Every morning I awaken to a fresh thermos of hot coffee. It’s very strange and also sweetly romantic.

But communication from the State Department during my last week in Brazil was inadequate and unclear. Fulbright scholars had no warning about looming border closures which, in hindsight were hinted at but not clearly stated in the first email we received. A second communication “highly recommended” we arrange our own “voluntary departure while there is still time,” or else plan to shelter-in-place for an indefinite period with no recourse to consular assistance. That email concluded with an order to “sign and return this liability waiver releasing the US Department of State…” Very reassuring. The first couple of flights I booked were cancelled, and it was impossible to reach customer service agents on the phone or online because the volume of requests overwhelmed their systems. The tickets I finally purchased were expensive. The crowded, chaotic scene at the airport and on the plane made the possibility of social distancing a laughable fantasy, but I was one of the lucky ones. I made it out of Brazil and back to Puerto Rico just in the nick of time. The State Department’s emails did not feel like affirmations of the sanctity of my life and those of my Brazilian counterparts. Was their “office of knee-jerk reactions” method a Pro-Life approach?

America’s right-wing has succeeded in redefining Pro-Life to mean anti-abortion, yet many elected officials and their appointees do very little to support life for the majority of Americans. And the fact that the GOP has made the anti-scientific ideology of climate-change-denialism a central tenet of their platform is dooming us all, especially our children, to witness a global mass extinction. Since 1980, neo-liberal economic and social policies have effectively shredded the social safety net for working class people. One party, by and large, supports putting people to death when they commit violent offenses, and the USA incarcerates a larger percentage of its population (mostly black and brown people) than any other nation on earth. The system of healthcare in the United States is among the most expensive and least accessible in the world. People beholden to bootstrap mythologies believe that success in contemporary America is determined more by how “hard” one works than the station into which they are born, despite decades of evidence to the contrary. The right-wing has been so successful in eroding meaningful public education over the past 40 years that evidence and facts are unimportant to Republicans in 2020. We now have a plurality of the electorate that believes a reality TV character when he tells them wind turbines are bad, our last President is not an American citizen, and the coronavirus is a hoax -- like Russian interference in the 2016 election -- cooked up by the Democratic Party to discredit him. While Trump's dissembling is matched only by the credulity of his voters, blame for the decline of working and middle class America is not solely borne by those on the right. Much of the neoliberal agenda continued to be implemented by Presidents Clinton and Obama, who oversaw standardized testing, the Common Core, increased financial deregulation, privatization, mass incarceration, deportation, and surveillance. Neither of them were socialists.

The main differences between Socialism and Capitalism are who owns the means of production and how (in)equitably wealth is distributed. Both systems treat the living planet as a stockpile of resources to be unearthed, transformed, and consumed. Both encourage us to colonize ourselves and each other to create “markets” for “products.” Socialism and Capitalism require us to do cost-benefit-analyses to determine which forest we can clearcut, which “habitat” deserves our protection, what is an acceptable level of lead in our water, and how much glyphosate residue is healthy in our food. Both systems compel us to further develop and fragment remaining ecosystems, putting us increasingly at risk for animal-to-human spillovers of novel viruses. Neither system, as of yet, considers that the biosphere is a complex, self-regulating system of which we are a part, nor that there are more homo sapiens alive on earth than the planet can sustain (represented by an exponential population curve we would’ve been wise to flatten a century ago). Based on these facts, a truly Pro-Life approach would consider all available options for getting us off fossil fuels and reducing the human birthrate globally, including guaranteeing everyone access to surgical and medicine abortion; but people who call themselves “Pro-Life” demonstrate that they stop caring about life once a fetus has passed through the birth canal. Leaders who were really Pro-Life would focus on planning how to shrink our populations and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but current economic systems require never-ending growth. Even a planned contraction is anathema. The only other thing that follows such a pattern is cancer.

It should come as no surprise that influential people on the right are arguing that reviving “normal” economic activity in about two weeks -- against the warnings of every public health expert -- is more important than preventing the spread of coronavirus. In other words, several leaders in the GOP, including the President, are literally saying that profits trump life. One wonders how such death mongers can claim a Pro-Life mantle, and even more why any voter of conscience would fall for such a specious declaration; but then, we learn of a couple who poisoned themselves by ingesting aquarium chemicals after the President claimed, without evidence, that Chloroquine cures COVID-19. The misinformation was echoed ad-infinitum on Fox News, of course, until the pair was sickened. The husband died, yet no one at the TV network takes any responsibility for this easily avoidable tragedy, and certainly President Trump does not hold himself accountable for extending the metaphorical equivalent of smallpox blankets to his nativist followers. When asked, on a scale of 1-10 how well he felt he was doing in response to the crisis, Trump responded, "I'd rate it at 10. I think we've done a great job."

The problems are our diverging perceptions of reality and whether or not we possess the ability to think critically. To anyone who continues to support Mr. Trump and his allies, in light of all evidence before our eyes, I ask, are you really Pro-Life? If you are, then you need to pressure your elected representatives to invoke the 25th amendment and remove not just the President, but also many others in the Executive branch, and strip the current Majority Leader in the Senate of his office and title. In this time of crisis, doing anything less would be Pro-Death. After the President contradicted the February 25th warning from Dr. Nancy Messonnier, respiratory diseases specialist at the CDC when she said widespread coronavirus outbreak in the US was “not a matter of if but when,” it became abundantly clear that the President was a threat to the national security of the USA. It’s not just that I disagree with him and find his rhetorical style offensive, it’s that many of the things he says are dangerous and untrue. He is unfit to lead, as are most of those around him. It is too much to expect that, at the very least, our national leadership should not exacerbate problems? Donald Trump told the world that the buck doesn’t stop with him, and I agree. The buck really stops with every person who voted for him, and every politician who has enabled him.

Republican leaders in 2020, know this: history will judge you harshly. Our federal response has already been a disaster and we’ve lost precious time because of the Trump administration's bungling and propaganda. To those of us alive right now who can still tell up from down, it is clear that YOU will soon be responsible for the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, and possibly many more. If Trump successfully signals our state and local governments to lift stay-at-home orders and re-open non-essential services in mid-April, he will put many people at serious risk for very little, if any, economic gain. Or to put it another way, the economy -- which depends largely upon trust -- can’t run if hospitals are overrun and healthcare systems collapse. The economy will not grow when bodies pile up in morgues. Spurring casket sales is not a good way to reinvigorate consumer confidence. It would be a eugenics experiment, which to be clear is a Fascist form of disaster response. Is that a legacy you want to be responsible for?

You can Contact President Donald Trump online by clicking here, or call the White House switchboard at 202-456-1414 or the comments line at 202-456-1111 during business hours. And to learn how to contact your elected officials at every level, please visit this website. I’ve included a sample script below:

“Dear Senator/Representative,

I’m calling/writing to urge you to work with your colleagues in the Senate/House to invoke the 25th amendment and remove Donald Trump and Mike Pence from their respective offices. Many senior cabinet officials, like Mike Pompeo, should resign with them. Invoking the 25th amendment is appropriate because the President and his enablers have demonstrated they are unfit to face our current crisis. They say things that are untrue, they do not seem to understand the magnitude of the problem, and they do not appear to comprehend epidemiological science when it is presented to them.

The president and his enablers continue to make the problem worse by obfuscating facts and dog-whistling to white supremacists. Instead of exercising executive authority with the Defense Production Act, President Trump said, ‘It’s a great point of leverage. It’s a great negotiating tool.’ We need him to do this now to provide enough life-saving supplies and equipment before the peak of the epidemic hits. People should not die so he can prove his negotiating skills, and the Federal government should not be negotiating with States in this time of crisis. During the March 24th White House Press Briefing, President Trump said, ‘You want Ventilators & Masks from the Federal Government’s Reserves to treat your citizens? Well, Governors have to treat me well, it’s a two-way street.’ This alone should be grounds to remove him from office and sue him for negligence. We need a leader who will put the health and safety of all above his own pathological need for adulation.

In this time of pandemic, continuing to have Donald Trump in office is a threat to our national security. Please do your part to secure our nation, and remove Trump and Pence from their offices.”

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