and market the service and we hope people
respond to that market. Health care is not a
consumer good, it’s an essential service.”
The United States has, per capita, the
world’s most expensive health care, and yet
we get so little for that money. We’ve invested
heavily in fancy technology but not in primary
care, resulting in the developed world’s
lowest life expectancy, the highest chronic
and preventable disease burden and the
highest suicide and obesity rates. COVID
has disproportionally affected the poor, Fine
says, revealing something about “who we are
and who we’ve been. We have the highest
case incident rate, because the government
decided not to shut down manufacturing.
Only 20 percent of people of color can work
home. Ninety percent of people in Central
Falls went to work and got the virus at work
and bought it back in minivans from Cowden
Street to their over-crowded triple-deckers.”
COVID ripped super-sized holes in an
already frayed social safety net. The Rhode
Island Foundation, which has long played a
complementary role in funding social welfare
nonprofits, realized that business as usual
— distributing the funds already budgeted for
grant-making in 2020 — was not up to the
demands of the moment; it needed to do more.
By early June, its COVID-19 Response Fund,
established with the United Way, raised and
awarded $7.6 million. Foundation President
Neil Steinberg says “We have started a current
use fund. We’ve developed a new approach
to go out and raise the money right now.”
As generous as the state’s corporations and
individuals have been, their contributions
cannot replace the deep erosion of government
benefits to needy families and individuals.
For example, the current unemployment
insurance benefits system, designed in the
wake of the Great Depression, does not address
the realities of the gig economy. (Under the
federal CARES Act, passed in the midst of the
crisis, self-employed workers whose income
has been affected can collect unemployment.)
Rhode Island’s Temporary Assistance to
Needy Families has one of the most restrictive
time limits in the country; the cash payments
have been frozen for thirty years.
“One of the things COVID has shown is
that we should be taking care of all of our
residents because everyone is affected by this
virus. The people we are now calling essential,
one in five of them earns less than 200 percent
of poverty level,” says the Economic Progress
Institute’s Executive Director Rachel Flum.
Higher taxes on the wealthy may return
to the table, she says, as “people realize we
need a serious conversation about how to
afford the goods and services we all need.”
“One of the things COVID
has shown is that we
should be taking care of
all of our residents
because everyone is
affected by this virus.
The people we are now
calling essential, one in
five of them earns less
than 200 percent of
poverty level.”
COVID-19 and the Spanish flu have not
run in perfect parallel. Each exploited the
population and the human body differently.
Today’s medical community understands
viruses and vaccines much better than it did
in 1919. But both pandemics have plotted a
rough line to the rotted spots in society’s
infrastructure.
The summer of 1919 should have been a
time of jubilation. The Great War was over
and the great pandemic had receded.
Instead, racial tensions exploded. Returning
African-American soldiers competed
in the post-war economy with their white
counterparts. And the latter reacted with
violence that spread across the country:
twenty-five riots, ninety-seven lynchings
and, in Elaine, Arkansas, white mobs killed
about 200 African-Americans in a threeday
rampage. The streets ran so bloody,
historians call it the Red Summer.
“One thing is crystal clear,” says Grow
Smart RI’s Executive Director, Scott Wolf.
“All of the racial and economic disparities
that we’ve all known about will have to be
addressed more aggressively and creatively.
It’s not just a matter of job access or wealth
distribution. Now it’s a matter of life and
death.” �
Ellen Liberman is an award-winning journalist
who has commented on politics and reported on
government affairs for more than two decades.
RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l AUGUST 2020 33