ShrevesSamrawit

IU School of Social Work – BSW Student

In complete honesty, I want to admit my struggle in writing this reflection while in the comfort of my home. I fully acknowledge my privilege, while processing how my neighbors and community are worried about how to make their next rent, put food on the table, try to access medical care, and hold worry about their family and friends who are incarcerated in an overcrowded jail.

“The United States job market has the lowest unemployment rate since 1969” stated a headline I read earlier this year. In March, the Labor Department reported that 701,000 people lost their jobs as a result of COVID-19. On April 3rd, the Labor Department reported the number of unemployed persons rose by 1.4 million, making the number 7.1 million. People who became unemployed due to COVID-19 experience not only economic distress but also emotional strain.

With a global pandemic compounded with a financial crisis, I hope we will evolve toward being a different world with a desire to increase justice and care for others. This pandemic, I hope, will help people in power think; Who is important? What is important? How are we, as individuals and as a society, enhancing the well-being of individuals? Are the basic human needs being met? As incoming social workers, I invite my fellow graduating class of 2020 into a conversation about how we can organize to pay attention and contribute to the fight for equity during this pandemic with our colleagues, family, and friends.

I want to leave you all with the wise words of political activist Arundhati Roy:

“Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

 In Good Health – Samrawit Naomi Shreves, BSW Class 2020