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The Stories

M.S., 44, a poet and editor in Jersey City, NJ

“I still remember the afternoon of March 13, 2020, when I started following the official site of the New Jersey Coronavirus Dashboard and the number of cases started to climb up like mercury on a hot thermometer. I was anxious due to the fact that my nine-year-old was in the school playing and socializing with his peers with no fear and awareness about the pandemic. I requested the school for a day off […] my fears were realized when the mayor ordered a state lockdown the very next Monday.

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S.S., 60, a high school teacher in San Marcos, CA

“…And just one commute away, I will be risking my life each and every day at my workplace. I will be a front-line worker, without the personal protective equipment afforded to medical workers, facing students who do not have to follow safety or cleanliness rules for most of the 24 hours in a day. Many of the families in my community believe in magical thinking, believe that God will protect them, and believe in the propaganda spouted every day from President Trump and his corrupted supporters in government and the media. I could not be more disgusted at this willful ignorance. It’s like a death cult…”

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E.A., 19, a student in Sun City, CA

“…This pandemic has ripped apart the façade of what seemed to be a good economy; in reality, this “good economy” was built upon the people who are now disproportionately dying and with no healthcare. I beg my fellow Americans to look at this inequality sternly; why do we have such contempt when we call it out when in reality we’ve pretending like it didn’t exist at all. I have grown so increasingly frustrated to see people think about themselves when I see people that remind me of my father and sisters die on the news for having to work…”

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Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University.

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