Blog: Hope, Leadership, and Humanity During the Covid-19 Pandemic

For some, COVID-19 has changed our daily lives and how we interact with each other. For others, COVID-19 has made the impacts of existing societal, economic, and health disparities even worse. The truth is that we must navigate the unique challenges brought about during these uncertain and unprecedented times, and come out of this pandemic with a greater sense of how we are all connected.

As we hear stories about how community leaders are responding to the pandemic in thoughtful ways, we are hopeful that we will emerge from this in a better place. But that takes leadership and an understanding of our humanity. As an example, in Santa Fe County, NM, Commissioner Henry Roybal recognized the economic impact that solid waste disposal fees were having on some residents after seeing trash being dumped on the land. In response, he led a county effort to suspend solid waste disposal fees during the pandemic to reduce barriers for appropriate trash disposal.

As we publish this in mid-June, we acknowledge a lot has happened since early May, when the HECHO team met virtually to have a conversation with some of our Advisory Board Members about what is giving them hope, examples of local leadership that they’ve witnessed during this public health crisis, and what problem (either their own, or global) they wish they could solve.

While the subsequent conversation was powerful, and one we thought our readers would enjoy, we were not able to discuss how the Movement for Black Lives and the support behind it is giving us all hope during this time. It certainly does give us hope, and we will be writing and sharing about that in blog posts to come.

Some highlights from our May 8, 2020 conversation:

HECHO: What’s giving you hope right now?

Evi Steyer: I spend a lot of time thinking about the food system, and I’ve also felt down since there’s such a breakdown in getting food to people who need it so badly. But this week, I’ve been lucky to speak to land producers who are working hard to innovate and to support the people that need it, getting food directly to consumers. That entrepreneurial spirit makes me feel excited about the potential to help hungry communities beyond the crisis. I know it’s tough to scale, but to some degree, that feels positive to me and it’s inspiring to see those efforts happening.

Mark Cardenas: What’s giving me hope right now is still being able to work. I’m grateful to have a job, despite setbacks with budget restrictions, because it’s important for my family. At home, things are safe and healthy.

Representative Donald Valdez: What gives me hope right now is seeing the flowers bloom. They bloom despite the water shortage my community is experiencing. Witnessing farmers and ranchers with their new calves and livestock, gives me hope. Tensions can be high with folks ready to open businesses up, but we’ve got to do it in a manner where we remain safe and healthy. Coming together in this crisis, the spring blooms and livestock remind me of the good.

Elizabeth Archuleta: What gives me hope is seeing my community caring for one another by being very cautious and staying at home to flatten the COVID-19 curve. It also gives me hope that a lot of people are concerned about the Navajo Nation and are asking what they can do to help through donations to support our Native American brothers and sisters on the Navajo Nation.

Lynn Cordova: What gives me hope is seeing people come together during this time. As you know, working for the congressman, we’ve been getting a lot of calls from constituents and people are desperate. Whether they’ve lost business or don’t have food – hearing about individuals uniting and joining forces, bringing each other food and sharing tips has been nice to see. Seeing how the country is coming together gives me hope.

HECHO: What examples of local leadership have you witnessed during this public health crisis?

Rebecca Chavez Houck: I have been inspired by the leadership of our local legislators of color here in Utah. They are working hard from behind the scenes, putting together funding requests to expand community health care. They’ve planned free COVID-19 testing in Utah’s Fairpark neighborhood, a neighborhood where communities of color are located. A lot of people aren’t necessarily comfortable going to the testing centers because there’s a lot of misinformation circulating, so they’ve worked around the clock to establish free testing in the communities that need it.

Evi Steyer: This question is tough for me since I live abroad, but I am impressed with the efforts in my home town to replace and supplement school lunches for kids. Their efforts have been well organized and concerted, providing upwards of 100,000 meals a day. That has been so uplifting to me, and I’m so glad that there are people thinking of community members who have the potential of falling through the cracks.

Mark Cardenas: The mayors in Arizona’s major cities have been leading the way in keeping our community safe. All of them are women and their leadership has been strong and powerful. There are some who are applying pressure to open businesses up again and lift stay-at-home orders, but our mayors are using science and data to continue to protect us. It has been encouraging to see them go toe-to-toe with our governor and see their success with that.

Representative Valdez: The local leadership I’ve witnessed that inspires me surrounds education. We’re hearing important questions being asked like how we can continue to effectively educate our students online. We’ve also seen community members donate food. This March, I helped my district give meals to students, and that’s something I hope that we can continue to do since our students still need meals.

Elizabeth Archuleta: I’m very proud of Coconino County’s leadership. We’re doing amazing work. We were the first county in Arizona to open up drive-through COVID-19 daily testing sites and the first county to lease a 120-room hotel to assist community members experiencing homelessness and at-risk of the virus. There are so many signs of great leadership taking place in my county through our responsiveness and by anticipating our community’s needs. We aren’t afraid to be the first ones to take action to protect the public’s health.

HECHO: What problem – either yours, or something more global — do you wish you could solve?

Rebecca Chavez-Houck: There are short-term things we want to fix and long-term issues we’d like to address. In the short term, we’ve been able to pull together a multicultural committee that is bringing light to the disparities our community experiences based on race and class. Our worry is that we’ll deal with COVID-19, but that everything will go back to the ways that they were before. We want to change the paradigm of how things are done in this state so we don’t go back to the old ways of doing things. I hope that’s something we can disrupt and change a little bit at a time in a way that is long term and sustainable.

Elizabeth Archuleta: I would like to address the societal inequities and disparities that we all know exist and are even more pointed during this pandemic. Handling this pandemic is easier for those who have more privilege. Not everyone has jobs that allow them to stay at home, not everyone has sick leave or PTO hours. This pandemic is giving us the opportunity to ask ourselves, “What privilege do I have?” and “How can I be more compassionate?”

Lynn Cordova: A problem I wish I could solve would be the lack of compassion and empathy some have for others. We have workers who are considered essential being treated like they’re disposable, and yet they are on the frontlines of this pandemic, working. Our farmworkers, like the migrant workers in our communities, are being exposed to this virus every day. I hope that people see humanity, and treat others better.