COVID-19

Sara Bennett photographed 20 women in New York state prisons who are serving life sentences. In this excerpt from her project, five women write about the impact COVID-19 has had on them.

The pandemic has forced us to confront uncomfortable and longstanding realities about the health disparities facing racialized and otherwise marginalized communities throughout the country. Here’s what we do about it.

The rhetoric surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine has been optimistic, suggesting that it will end the pandemic and bring the US back to “normal.” Yet… we are already seeing a process that will systematically favor those with access and resources.

In approximately 500 B.C., The Greek city of Sybaris encouraged inventors to register their creations with a grant of monopoly for one year. Thus began human civilization’s practice of patenting, a system that is now synonymous with free markets. Now as the world waits with bated breath for a pharmaceutical lab to develop a vaccine […]

COVID-19 exposes injustice in the workforce. Frances Perkins offers a model to fix it. We are only beginning to understand the economic repercussions of COVID-19. In less than two months, more than 30 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits, eliminating all of the jobs gained since the 2007-2009 Great Recession. The pandemic has brought unprecedented […]

A hand-written sign on the front door of Bell’s Market, a small South Boston grocer, asks patrons to cover their mouth and nose while shopping. But the store’s owner, my father, says they have had trouble with compliance. “Ninety percent of the people are great, but five to ten percent give us a hard time. […]

Students with disabilities were already on unequal footing before COVID-19. Now, the pandemic is putting their civil rights at risk. The $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill grants Education Secretary Betsy DeVos the authority to ask Congress to waive key protections for special education students afforded by the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), the federal education […]

As countries across the world struggle to contain and mitigate the spread of COVID-19, Iran’s battle with the virus has been compounded by the lack of access to adequate medical supplies imposed by the U.S. government’s crippling sanctions on the country. Iran is amongst the countries most impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19. As of […]

The pandemic is revealing the severe inequities caused by our nation’s digital divide. It is crucial that we invest now to address them. Long before COVID-19 shut down physical campuses and banned in-person gatherings, my life as a graduate student relied heavily on the internet. Due to swift action taken by my school’s leadership, faculty […]

The conversation about coronavirus covers the impact on the economy and healthcare system. What is absent from this conversation is the impact on those most burdened by COVID-19’s global disruption – women.  Coronavirus coverage is starting to feel like a wall of noise – a hum of threat, change, and fear that is hard to […]

I am worried about Africa’s preparedness for the COVID-19 outbreak, and so should everybody else. As at the beginning of March, there were only four cases in Africa spread across Egypt, Algeria and Nigeria. Since then, at least 46 out of 54 countries in Africa have reported cases of COVID-19. On March 28 2020, roughly four […]