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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To add:  I used to think that whole focus on individualism and only taking care of yourself, blaming others for their own problems, was a more conservative stance.  But this whole "you should learn better coping mechanisms to parenting in a global pandemic that has vast material repercussions, particularly for children" is a line I see largely from progressives.

I don't get why we are constantly shamed to think about others (regarding covid spread) but told we have to deal with the ramifications school closures on our own.[/quote]

I strongly agree with you and this aspect of progressive politics in DC, specifically, has been alarming to me over the last two years. For some period of time I chalked it up to panic over the virus coupled with a justifiable response to Trump. So when people I had considered liberal progressives started, for instance, screaming "wear a mask" at people even though masks were not widely available and good masks were extremely expensive (when the actual progressive stance should have been "hey, how can we get free or low cost masks to people who need them most), I was understanding. It was a very hard time for everyone! I get it.

But school closures flipped a switch for me because the rhetoric I saw in favor of closures was not progressive. Sure, there were comments about protecting our most vulnerable. But so much of the rhetoric was openly hostile towards parents, and especially mothers. Especially working moms! It was baffling to me. And there was this attitude in DC that it was only UMC white families who were upset about this, but I know that not to be the case. My family had to go on food stamps for a time during the 2020/2021 school year because I had to decrease my hours for virtual school (until we were able to get into a childcare program that we paid for, ironically, with those tax stimulus checks that Trump sent). It was a deeply difficult year and I was so confused as to why I was consistently told I was entitled for simply saying out loud that I was struggling. Or why our school (Title 1, Ward 5) remained largely shuttered even after vaccines opened schools in NW. Or why the social problem my child experienced during that time (which were the main thing that precipitated me cutting back my job -- my kid was falling apart) were totally ignored so that people could accuse me of only caring about learning loss, and then snidely tell me "they'll catch up." Anytime I spoke up I was shot down. So I stopped speaking up.

I'm a card-carrying member of the Social Democrats. I'm not becoming a Republican and I don't have much tolerance for even the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. But I feel lost, politically, in DC. This is an issue you hear progressives talk about in other places -- we have family in Pennsylvania, California, New York, and Texas, and progressive there will absolutely talk about why prolonged closures can't happen again (and in those places, they didn't happen for as long as they did here, I should add). But something is broken in DC that we can't even acknowledge this. It's crazy to me that we're just going to move on like it never happened when there were people calling for school closures again in December/January and even in April.

If I leave DC, it won't be crime. It will be fear that this will happen again, and the belief that no one in a position of authority seems to care how it will impact family's like mine.[/quote]

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