Talk Policy To Me

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought America to a screeching standstill, with most non-essential businesses shutting down, events being cancelled and postponed, school systems going virtual, and skyrocketing unemployment. And on top of it all, we’re technically in the midst of an election season, which has also been severely disrupted by the shelter-in-place measures implemented across the country.  In this Q&A-style episode of Talk Policy To Me reporter Reem Rayef interviews former Labor Secretary and economic inequality scholar Robert B Reich on the subject of democracy in the era of COVID-19.  In other episodes for this series on democracy, we discuss barriers to the voting booth and distortions in our electoral system that suppress the will of the people -- particularly black and brown people, and young people. In this episode, we dive deep into what happens when a pandemic is layered over these persistent issues. What happens when candidates can’t campaign? When polling places are shut down due to a lac