Viruses do not care if you’re a “fighter”. Illness doesn’t care if you’re strong or not. Viruses do not strategize against or target its victims.

They’re not something you can go to war with. Using that language is useless, and so is conceptualizing retail, restaurant, and independent delivery contractors essential workers as those on the “frontlines”.

That would imply that they’re volunteering their lives and safety for a cause bigger than themselves. But they’re not. They’re independent-contracting and gig working their individual and familial survival, and it hinges on big tech industry whims and decisions that do not consider their laborers and haven’t for a long time.

We have an opportunity to collectively agree on something. It’s been a minute. It’s not political, I promise you. It’s a fundamental value we hold and it used to be more self-evident. Do you value people, human lives, more than profits? Are all created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights? Yes or no.

Stand with striking workers today. Delete your food delivery apps. Don’t shop Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, or Target today.

Take the extra steps necessary to get what you need safely and remember that someone is doing that full time.

Have you ever been really hungry and drove through your city to pick up food, sit in traffic with it, walked up/down several flights of stairs with it, and wandered an apartment complex maze just to deliver that food you’ve been smelling for half an hour because it never belonged to you? Have you ever looked at a receipt for a meal more valuable than your bank account? Then get stiffed on a tip? That’s what gig working is and what it’s like for so many. Don’t do it anymore until these Americans and human beings earn what they deserve.