Serious question. Amidst all the uncertainty that the pandemic has wrought, the fear of getting sick, the outrage over personal freedoms, the thing that stands out to me the most, the thing I will never get over, is how openly hostile we are to those who have the least.

Apathy is one thing. Given the extreme stressors of the last year I can’t completely fault anyone for choosing, or wanting to, ignore the suffering of others. Particularly where one might feel helpless to do anything about it, pushing empathy out may be a legitimate defense mechanism to preserve oneself and one’s sanity. That’s not what I’m talking about here. What I’m talking about is an active, participatory hostility. Things like bulldozers destroying homeless encampments; eviction proceedings being deemed “essential” in order to allow them to continue through a global public health crisis; district attorneys calling into question support for judicial candidates that did not manifest in the form of money; and I’m also very much talking about $600.  

We learned over the weekend that Congress is likely to soon pass a second stimulus package, providing much-needed economic support to millions of folks struggling due to the pandemic. There’s much in the measure that is welcome and necessary: rental and nutrition assistance, increased unemployment benefits, small business loans. Of course, much of the focus has been on the direct stimulus payments designated for distribution to eligible individuals and families. The amount set for these payments is a cool $600 per person, down 50 percent from the checks cut last spring. I can’t help but find this figure a wee bit confusing. Are people less in need now than they were in April?

Or maybe politicians are just out of touch. Median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Las Vegas hovers around $1,200. According to the Department of Agriculture, a low-cost food budget for a family of four can reach up to $850 per month. For utilities (gas, electric, water, internet) add another $200-$300. Then you also have to account for transportation costs, clothing, phone bills, credit card bills, etc., etc., etc. Someone tell me, please, how $600 is supposed to help anyone over this insurmountable hump?

Quite honestly, I don’t think anyone legitimately thinks it is supposed to. Perhaps we are meant to be grateful for the scraps we are offered. They toss the money on the floor and we get on our knees to pick it up, because we have no choice, right? I mean, that’s what this feels like. It feels like an insult, a joke, a profound disrespect for the people most impacted by the decisions that men in expensive suits make behind closed doors.

I am not surprised by this. Our system is built around the accumulation of wealth, or at least the promise of it. It is typically the sole measure of a person’s success in our society. We treat the absence of money as a moral failing and the absence of a desire to pursue money as traitorous to our way of life. It is the reason we so easily dispose of homeless folks, toss them around to keep them off of the Strip, throw them out of residential neighborhoods, destroy the small homes they are able to make for themselves — all in the hope that they’ll one day do us a solid and become invisible, I guess. It’s also the reason our district attorney, himself an elected public official, can make disparaging comments about newly elected judges who didn’t sell themselves to the highest bidder, questioning the legitimacy of an election wherein the votes reflected the voices of the people and not the donors.

It is what it is, and we are who we are. I know this, and like I said, I’m not surprised. What I am, is deeply offended. We are all in this together, after all. That’s the rallying cry, is it not? I guess some of us are just a little more in it than others. I will forever question whether real, actual people and their lives are even a factor in political decisions about the economy. Or about anything, really. I bet you $600 they are not.

Martha E. Menendez, Esq. is the Bernstein Senior Fellow at the UNLV Immigration Clinic.