Opinion: Taking a look down the road at 2020

While hindsight is 2020, this year is moving so fast it’s a blur. It’s hard to keep up — and yet, if we focus on the bigger issues that have enveloped us, we can get a pretty good glimpse of what’s coming.

So here I am, looking down the road:

A look at national and world trends tells us COVID-19 is not going away anytime soon. In fact, here in the U.S. it will probably get worse before it gets better.

Here in New Mexico, we topped 10,000 cases and 450 deaths just before Juneteenth, with the worst outbreaks in Navajo country. Unlike our neighbors to the east and west, Texas and Arizona, which started reopening their economies faster than we have, New Mexico is holding fairly steady these days, with the number of hospitalizations peaking about a month ago. But with increased travel, coupled with our own complacency, a New Mexico resurgence seems likely in the fall.

From where I sit, it appears that we have collectively decided that the economy is more important than containing the disease, so instead of our new “heroes” (healthcare workers) saving us from the virus, they’ll be working to save us from ourselves. Arguably, that’s what they’re trying to do already.

And when finally there’s a vaccine, expect to see a global conflict over its distribution. If China comes up with it first, it remains to be seen if or how they’ll share it with the rest of the world. And if the U.S. wins the race for a cure, President Trump, if he’s still president, will do his best to sell it to the highest bidder. That’s his thing, you know, maximizing profits.

Meanwhile, expect the Black Lives Matters protests to transform into even bigger demonstrations against a wider range of injustices in our nation. Congress may pass legislation designed to root out bad cops and protect blacks and others from invasive police force, but it won’t be enough.

Defunding the police won’t happen literally but some innovative new approaches to law enforcement and community crisis management are already emerging in cities and a few states — but today’s movement will go far beyond that.

A whole new generation is being energized to take on other pressing issues like military spending, unbridled capitalism, cruel immigration practices and the poisoning of our environment. Get ready for tech-savvy mass demonstrations like we’ve never seen before.

Oh, and I think it’s safe to say the Wall Street will continue to reflect no semblance of morality whatsoever; it will only mirror an economy of the comfortable, and the greedily wealthy.

The burgeoning Poor People’s Campaign, however, will likely bring discomfort to all that, regardless of what the Stock Market does.

The Poor People’s Campaign — which gets its name from a movement that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. helped create and was killed in the midst of its infancy — is determined to be nonviolent, and as long as King remains the primary inspiration behind the movement, it will have to be. But, frankly, whether nonviolence will rule the day depends to a large extent on the outcome of the November presidential election.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

[email protected]