Several labor unions have embraced the conviction of Derek Chauvin — the former Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd — while committing to continue the struggle for racial and economic justice. Among others, the CWA described the ruling as a “step toward justice,” and the MN AFL-CIO pledged to “continue [its] work to bring racial and economic justice to all workers in our state.” This display of sensitivity to the threads linking systems of racial and class subordination is encouraging. History demonstrates that intersectional solidarity propels all social justice movements.

In political news, Senator Angus King — a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats — has, reluctantly, signed on as the latest cosponsor of the PRO Act. He was reportedly spurred into action by a flood of calls from working people expressing support for the bill, a campaign orchestrated by a coalition of labor organizations. King is the second centrist lawmaker to lend his support to the measure in recent days, as Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) agreed to back the bill last week. The Act now has 49 cosponsors in the Senate, who collectively represent a considerable majority of the country’s population. Impressive, yet insufficient to overcome the antidemocratic minority-blocking mechanism known as the filibuster.

A recent Gallup report surveying the economic fallout of the pandemic underscores not only the devastation and dislocation the virus unleashed but its disproportionate impact on the marginalized. The study uncovers that furloughs and income loss were overwhelmingly concentrated among the poor. And, strikingly, it finds that nearly half of all furloughed employees struggled to secure food, fuel, or shelter.

Moments of intense social upheaval, while destructive and disorienting, can serve as vehicles for transformative change. Let us hope this collective trauma — and the poverty, inequality, and atomization it exposed and deepened — motivates policymakers to reshape our economic order.