Tag: essential worker
Learning The True Value Of Work Amid The Pandemic

Learning The True Value Of Work Amid The Pandemic

Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch

In two weeks, my partner and I were supposed to leave San Francisco for Reno, Nevada, where we'd be spending the next three months focused on the 2020 presidential election. As we did in 2018, we'd be working with UNITE-HERE, the hospitality industry union, only this time on the campaign to drive Donald Trump from office.

Now, however, we're not so sure we ought to go. According to information prepared for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Nevada is among the states in the "red zone" when it comes to both confirmed cases of, and positive tests for, Covid-19. I'm 68. My partner's five years older, with a history of pneumonia. We're both active and fit (when I'm not tripping over curbs), but our ages make us more likely, if we catch the coronavirus, to get seriously ill or even die. That gives a person pause.

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nurse

My Mother The Essential Worker

On the eve of my junior year in high school, my mother returned to the job she'd held before she became pregnant with me, at age 19, and married my father, who was also 19.

At age 36, Janey Schultz was once again a nurse's aide at the public hospital in our small town of Ashtabula, Ohio.

Today, we would call her an essential worker.

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