My 25 year old daughter, my oldest of 3, just texted me that her boss, the owner of the restaurant where she works as an assistant manager here in Memphis (and she’s a full time college student, paying her own way) has shut down his locally-owned business indefinitely. So she’s now out of a job. Fortunately, she has several thousand dollars in a savings account that will keep her solvent for a couple of months, maybe. But she has rent and bills to pay and she’s also getting ready to be without health insurance when she turns 26 in 2 months. Most of the other employees live paycheck-to-paycheck and she fears for them greatly. She also fears for the owner, who is a small businessman who runs a very nice restaurant in the Cooper-Young neighborhood but has seen revenue basically cease because no one is eating out.
My wife, who works full time for a publicly traded retail clothing and houseware chain, is now sitting at home, because her company has shut down its retail stores in response to the pandemic. They are committed to paying their employees for 2 weeks but after that, it’s probably gone. So that’s likely about $30K in annual income that we won’t be seeing until who knows when and even when this thing is over, who knows if she’ll get the job back. My job is pretty secure, I earn a decent salary and we have good health insurance through my work, so we will tighten our belts, forgo some planned home repairs and improvements and get through this. I’ll help my daughter out as I can, and my other 2 kids, college students, will be finishing this semester online. So, I’m fairly sanguine about our family situation, for now.
But I think about all the other people, less fortunate, working people, who CAN’T stay home from work, self-employed folks, small business owners, people working in restaurants, hotels, retail, entertainment venues, musicians, etc., that this is affecting and how devastating and frightening this economic disaster must be (not even addressing the fear of the actual pandemic) and all I can say is, my heart goes out to them. In a time when they need FDR-like leadership, they get a grifting, buck-passing illiterate boob spouting lies and nonsense. These people are the folks who do most of the working and living in this country and it’s time we threw out this criminal band of Republicans and their grifting coward of a “leader” and put in power someone who will repair this mess. Your preferred candidate might not be Joe Biden, he wasn't my first choice, but we absolutely have win in November in order to have any chance at all to make this nation a better place for all citizens. In short, I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK.
Let’s come together as Americans, beat this thing and then throw Trump out of office, and hopefully, directly into jail.
