For most of this year, we have watched walls spring up around our nations, our cities, and our homes. In our halting attempts to keep the coronavirus at bay we isolate, close borders, and trace contacts. Like concrete and steel, these walls block out the light, defining who is in and who is out; who will be cared for and who won’t.
But our lives are not so neatly bordered, and now is the time to recognise our interconnectedness and to rethink international cooperation – both economic and political.
From California, I dream of sitting with my best friend in New York, who herself longs to be with ailing family in Bolivia. To visit my mom in Oregon, one large state away, my kids don masks, and we drive a full day with few stops. As I write, my partner is in Australia grieving his father’s sudden death. At a time when family should gather, we cannot be together. It took two weeks of quarantine before he could hold his mother.
