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During this Covid-19 pandemic, many people are experiencing, for the first time, uncertainties that the most vulnerable communities in our society live with daily. These include worries about job security; missing housing and rent payments; accessing food, child care, health care, and quality education; and a general sense of being trapped in a situation that is beyond their control. For these communities, the outbreak exacerbates an already dire situation. It is a “crisis on top of a crisis.”

Now, more people have a first-hand understanding of just how broken and inequitable our systems are. And we are paying a high price—economically, emotionally, physically, socially, and in lost lives—for that level of awakening. So we must seize this pivotal moment as a chance to recognize our shared humanity and assume the responsibilities that come with knowledge: action and advocacy.

The pandemic has created a frantic willingness to try solutions that advocates have been demanding for decades. Within weeks, we have seen the introduction of expanded sick leave, temporary moratoriums on evictions, and coverage of some health expenses related to Covid-19. Other efforts that would have seemed un-achievable months ago are now underway to address particularly vulnerable populations:

• California’s Project Roomkey and similar initiatives across the country are securing hotel rooms to house people who were living in crowded in shelters or on the streets and who have been exposed to Covid-19 or are medically vulnerable.
• To slow the spread of Covid-19 in overcrowded jails and prisons, some state and local agencies are releasing people who have misdemeanor charges or have been convicted of minor crimes.
• The CARES Act passed by Congress included billions for response in Indian Country, including for health services, resources for tribes, and the Board of Indian Affairs.
• For families living in poverty, Congress has created needed flexibility in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

This pandemic did not create the inequities we are facing as a nation; instead, it has revealed the compounding crises that were already there.

These relief measures are encouraging. However, they are so urgently needed because our systems are inequitable to begin with:

• In many places, governments pass laws that make homelessness and poverty a crime.
• Prisoner releases and other meaningful changes offer models for addressing the fact that 74 percent of the 2.3 million people in the U.S. justice system have not been convicted of a crime.
• Indian Country is especially vulnerable to Covid-19 because of historic injustices, such as the fact that the U.S. seized 1.5 billion acres of native land and carried out campaigns to erase Native American culture through assimilation.
• SNAP reduces hunger and poverty among families, yet there are proposals under consideration that would weaken the program and reduce food access.
• While the internet is enabling many to work from home, access telemedicine, and connect with family and friends, approximately 19 million people in America have no access to reliable service, especially in rural and tribal areas.
• Our already-fragile safety-net healthcare system is buckling. More rural hospitals will close and clinics will downsize as Covid-19 places even more demand on these facilities.

All of us must work to ensure that temporary Covid-19 relief measures are preserved and improved as longer-term, comprehensive systems changes. This will not happen unless we are willing to get political, as Vu Le reminds us. Starting today, we must work with decision makers to move from a quick-fix mentality to longer-term thinking. The need for these structural changes has been growing for decades, but the increased public awareness and support for them is new.

Now is the time to create accessible and affordable health care for all, provide universal and quality child care and education, address our housing crisis, better equip our public health system to respond to current and future crises, and dismantle racism across all sectors and systems. The NAACP’s 10 Equity implications of the Coronavirus Covid-19 Outbreak in the United States offers corresponding policy recommendations that are worth a read. The United Nations has also released 17 Sustainability Development Goals that address the interconnected global challenges of poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice—goals we must achieve within 10 years.

This pandemic did not create the inequities we are facing as a nation; instead, it has revealed the compounding crises that were already there. If we don’t address those underlying problems as an integral part of our response to the outbreak, we will not only be less resilient to future pandemics and emergencies, but also miss a chance to create a new and more equitable normal.