Are we essential?
Is it just me or is the paternalism of our politicians’ rhetoric especially tiring? If there is one thing the COVID-19 crisis has made patently clear it is the lack of leadership among today’s political class — everywhere, geographically and ideologically.
A few days ago, while listening to CBC radio with my morning coffee, I found myself getting angry, and then weary: The Toronto Mayor John Tory was addressing the concerns of Torontonians about the COVID-19 pandemic. Like an upset parent, Tory pleaded for empathy: ‘this hurts me more than it hurts you’ was his message. Having to impose harsher measures to enforce social distancing hurts him. Cordoning off parks and playgrounds hurts him. Administering fines hurts him. We must understand the difficult position he is in as a leader in a time of crisis. We must understand the seriousness of social distancing, we must do our part to be responsible citizens.
We must stay home.
Absolutely we must stay home! This is not a rant about civil liberties, as one caller had preached. My intention is not to throw in question our rights as individuals. No. What I am wondering has to do with how the collective we is being delineated. I am questioning the word essential. Essential to what? Essential to whom?
More than three weeks have gone by (I’ve lost track of time) and I think it is pretty safe to say that we do indeed grasp the gravity of the situation. It might also be safe to say that we are feeling uncertain, worried and nervous — the makings of a collective anxiety attack. I believe that most people want to be socially responsible. I believe that most people are willing to do whatever it takes to prevent others from getting sick, or worse. I am not a believer of innate selfishness, nor innate evil. I believe we become selfish, we become evil — individuals are made into we’s.
Not far from where I live there is a condo being built, and every time I walk by it I have to fight the urge not to curse and spit. The workers in their construction garb mingle together on the sidewalk as cement trucks are directed in and out. Lackadaisically hanging about, they appear to be totally indifferent to the new rules of social distancing. What’s more, they seem totally oblivious to the pedestrians trying to pass by while still maintaining distance and yet without deviating into oncoming traffic.
Out for a walk, I pass by yet another construction site where the crew there, with their Timmies in hand, stand chit chatting in a small circle. The words of the mayor come flooding back: To remain open are only the sites where safety measures are in place (access to clean water and hand sanitisers) and where the workers are not “shoulder-to-shoulder”. Essential then is a housing market for those looking to buy luxury condos. As if the lack of affordable housing in Toronto were not bad enough, now we are being told that these luxury condos are essential.
Essential to whom?
Scowling, I carry on — for the time being we are allowed to go outside for walks. I take a deep breath, trying to get to the matter of what is upsetting me. A little further along I feel my fists start to clench as the sound of machinery grows louder behind me. I turn around to see a man in a florescent vest haphazardly blowing leaves from the sidewalks and gutters. I cross the street and fight from screaming, ‘what the f**k is so essential about leaf blowing!’
Veering right, I turn down a side street, heading towards the water. But as I do a sense of uneasiness sets in, could I be fined for walking along the boardwalk? It’s not my intention to be a jerk, and I do consider myself socially responsible. I don’t have a dog, and I don’t have kids, so perhaps there’s little reason for me to walk by the beach. And yet, I want to be by the water. I want to breathe in the horizon. And, if truth be told, I am curious to see what is happening, to see how we are behaving?
As I weave around the garbage and compost bins that litter the quiet street, two vans emerge from the bottom of the hill, each one pulling up on either side of the already cluttered sidewalk. One is a U-Haul van, the other is City, and each driver unloads packages from Amazon. Scratching my head, I think to myself, I should apply for a job as a courier.
Approaching my apartment I see a neighbour, and so we chat from a responsible distance. His handyman company, with a small staff of six, has been busier with jobs than ever. It strikes me as odd that this work still goes on, and his proud tone I find rather unsettling. He is an essential worker, or so it seems, who is providing an essential service.
Back at home my husband’s fit to be tied, he’s just come back from picking up groceries. Standing in queues, no one really knows what to do, nor are we clear about social distancing. We’re all doing out best to follow the rules, and yet no one is too sure how to do so. The longest queue extends from the LCBO — by week three (day two, really) we know booze is an essential commodity. Yet, what had angered him the most was not the confusion or the line-ups, but rather the benches outside our trendy cafés on which people stretched out with their coffees.
My husband is from Spain where the crisis has hit hard, and for the past three weeks the people there have been confined to their small pisos (flats). The government, some say, was too slow to respond to the emerging crisis — a familiar narrative by now in Spain — and so by the second week of March had to set down what some have called Draconian measures. It reminds me of 2010 when the European Troika set out the terms of the Spanish “rescate” (bailout). So today the Civil Guard is there to patrol the streets and there are checkpoints going in and out of each city. Going for walks or getting fresh air has for over three weeks been totally out of the question. Children have been forced indoors, seniors found dead in abandoned nursing homes, and small businesses are going bankrupt.
What has happened in Spain (and Italy, too) is now making its way across the Atlantic. Of course! There is nothing culturally particular about this virus. More interesting, though, is the way the rules have been imposed and abided by culturally. Perhaps the nearly forty years of dictatorship in Spain has made it more palatable to use coercion over persuasion. In Canada, however, it seems to be that persuasion is the tactic of choice for engendering collective submissiveness. Employing a moral discourse of responsibility, we are called on to do our part — as individuals we’re in charge of public shaming.
As we chatted together, I pulled out a scrap of paper to sketch what I felt was angering me. I drew a horizontal line and at one end I wrote down individuals, households and family, and at the other end I wrote politicians — the ‘jefes’ (bosses) of the collective. In between, I started to rhyme off all of what to me are essential services: schools, daycares, senior’s care, hospitals, churches, libraries, community centres and universities. In the rhetoric of moral responsibility, our politicians speak to us as individuals, as households and as families and they tell us to stay at home, but they do not speak to the essential services that have been neglected, undervalued and now closed — the entirety of what makes us a we.
To be clear, my contempt is not for the workers — not the ones who are working construction, not the slaves in Amazon’s warehouses, not the delivery agents, uber drives or taxis. Not the supermarket cashiers or our LCBO gods, not the healthcare workers or the cleaners, and not the pharmacists or the farmers. Rather, my scorn is aimed at the cohort of those who have been deemed essential by politicians looking after their own self-interests. The essential workers of today are essential it seems to the interests that they serve. So our condos will continue being built, though few of the we can afford to live there. Our online shopping will become the new norm, and Amazon our new feudal lord. And we the bearers of social responsibility will be…
Perhaps it’s better not to finish that thought.
