Governor DeWine and Lieutenant Governor Husted,
I have been following your addresses on the very real Coronavirus pandemic since the beginning. I have joined other Ohioans, across political lines, in celebrating your proactive and lifesaving leadership — a leadership that has set an example for other states. I’ve shared with friends across the world how lucky I feel to be an Ohioan, and to live in a state where working Ohioans’ rights to life and health are protected by proactive measures.
I have been, however, increasingly dismayed , disappointed, and heartbroken by the past three days. I’ve waited each day to hear Ohio continue to lead in taking proactive, critical, necessary lifesaving steps like those taken by Nevada and Pennsylvania: closing all non-essential businesses, to save workers’ lives.
I’ve been disappointed and sickened by the trust you both seem to put in Ohio corporations to protect and care about their worker lives. I am a working class Ohioan, and run an oral history project on working class histories in Marion County, Ohio — the county my entire family is from. Since last week, I’ve been hearing frontline reports from collaborators on our project who work in the Whirlpool Factory at Marion. There are ZERO protections being taken. I called Whirlpool on Monday to inquire about what steps they would take to protect worker lives in the face of the pandemic, and the executive at the Marion factory hung up on me after declaring: “Sounds like you’re trying to get out of work today.”
I’ve spent the week on the phone almost 24/7, calling Senators, trying to call YOU (Governor DeWine, you speak daily about “calls” and “texts” you and Lt. Governor Husted receive; but FYI: your VM has been full all week!), and calling media outlets to report what my friends & family are telling me from the frontlines, on the ground, at the Whirlpool Factory in Marion.
They’re reporting NO precautions: NO spacing on the line, NO mandatory temperature checks. This AM, I received an infuriating message from my friend working the 1st shift on the assembly line: workers found out today that, due to the COVID-19 danger, all office & managerial staff at Whirlpool were sent to work from home; but factory workers are expected to still come in, touching the same parts on the same crowded lines, exposed to & transmitting the virus. Later today, that same friend forwarded me a Voicemail that all Whirlpool Marion workers received. It said that there were no thermometers; and all workers were asked to check their *own* temperatures before or after work if they could.
Governor DeWine & Lt. Governor Husted, these measures assume that our corporations, like Whirlpool, actually care about the value of human life and health and dignity of their workers. I, sadly, don’t share your assumption. And even *IF* companies did, THEY CANNOT GET THE SUPPLIES & EQUIPMENT NECESSARY TO ENSURE A COVID-19 “SAFE” WORKPLACE.
If it wasn’t safe — and trust me, as someone who ran to early-vote on Sunday, after you failed to move the primary then, and was aghast at the conditions — to vote in Ohio’s 03/17 primary; if it’s not safe for us to be out, to eat at restaurants, to get our hair or nails done — then HOW, HOW, I ask you, is it safe to send my friends & family in Marion, and their comrades in small cities across Ohio, to work everyday, on shifts of 100-1,000, at factories across Ohio?
We *know*, from listening to (the amazing!) Dr. Amy Acton everyday, that COVID-19 has an incubation period of up to 14 days, with viral shed all along the way. We *KNOW* that there are “mild to moderate” and even *asymptomatic* cases, and that those carriers continue to seed the virus throughout our Ohio communities. We *know* there are drastic medical supply shortages in Ohio & everywhere: of PPE, of ventilators, of hospital beds.
How, HOW, then, can you expect factory workers to go to work everyday? While telling us all to “shelter in place,” and stay home?
Governor DeWine and Lt. Governor Husted, respectfully: you KNOW who can stay home. Those who can AFFORD to stay home: professors. Managers. Bosses. White-collar workers. Those with wealthy spouses. Retired people.
Working-class Ohioans — as you can see in the hundreds of responses to your tweets gently “asking” businesses to comply with pandemic safety guidelines — DO NOT HAVE THE LUXURY OF STAYING HOME. They cannot ACCESS your expanded unemployment package unless their employers *DECIDE* to close. And, trust me, Governor, they are NOT.
I am so disappointed and afraid to be an Ohioan right now. Afraid. I am terrified for my working-class family, friends, & community in Marion. I am terrified for the Whirlpool employees, who have been threatened with losing their jobs if they preemptively stay home, because, as you and Dr. Amy Acton say everyday, there aren’t enough tests, and they don’t know if they have it or not, since you can have COVID-19 and infect others before you show symptoms. I am terrified, sickened, and heartbroken, because your failure to close all non-essential businesses condemns working-class Ohioans to die.
Millions of us in Ohio are terrified right now. We will not lay down and be told we must die, just because we must work for a living.
Governor DeWine and Lt. Governor Husted, I call on you, NOW, TOMORROW, YESTERDAY, to close factories & all other non-essential businesses. And then advocate immediately for paid time off for all workers — including gig, contract, freelance, tipped, part-time, and 1099 workers. Whirlpool workers told me today their warehouse is full of appliances. Yet they continue working the line, no hand sanitizer available, without recommended social distancing spacing, to produce dryers. DRYERS. For whom??? A country that’s in lock-down?
If you fail to do this, now, you will have working-class blood on your hands.
I heard you today speak, over and over, about the “balance” you’ve been trying to maintain: between Ohioans’ lives, and business’ right to make a profit. I am here, a real, live, working-class Ohioan, to tell you now, in the eyes of us and in the eyes of God, there is no question of balance. It is, it must be, the lives of Ohioans, FIRST, all the way.
History will remember what you have done. Protect the lives of working-class Ohioans. Close all non-essential businesses, now. They will not, or cannot, comply with your soft asks. Mandate it, Mike.
Or we will die. And you will be responsible. Continuing to let non-essential businesses operate as usual for another day will be, as it already is, unforgivable, and unconscionable.
Thank you for your leadership, and I pray for your bravery in making this decision tomorrow.
In solidarity & gratitude,
but really not fucking around right now,
Jess Lamar Reece Holler // Cultural Worker //Columbus & Marion County, Ohio