Watch the New Video HERE
Today, Protect Our Care’s Coronavirus War Room is releasing a new video ‘Loved Ones’ highlighting the stories of families who’ve lost loved ones to coronavirus.
Congressman Joaquin Castro lost his step-mother, Alice Guzman, in Texas; Kristin Urquiza lost her father, Mark Anthony Urquiza, in Arizona; Fiana Tulip lost her mother, Isabelle Odette Papadimitriou, in Texas; Rosemary Rangel Gutierrez lost her father, Juan Carlos “Charlie,” in Texas; and Christopher C. Garcia lost his father, Carlos Garcia, in Texas.
As Donald Trump and his allies concede defeat in their response after downplaying the crisis, ignoring experts and rushing states to reopen, the voices in this video remind us that behind the statistics there are real people and loved ones left behind.
Six months into this crisis, millions of Americans continue to pay the price of Donald Trump’s failure to protect America – with their lives, health, family and economic stability.
Full Transcript:
Congressman Joaquin Castro: Individual stories and people’s lives have gotten drowned out too often by the numbers, the sheer volume and the sheer numbers of what’s going on. And my family lost someone we loved, my stepmom, Alice Guzman. I hope that as a country we’ll remember some of the stories of the people who lost their lives above and beyond the numbers.
Kristin Urquiza: The neighborhood that my parents lived in, the place where I grew up, people were waiting in line that weekend for 13 hours in 115 degree heat to get tested because we were so woefully under resourced in my 70% Latino, mostly immigrant, mostly poor neighborhood where my parents lived for over 40 years.
Fiona Paulette Garza Tulip: There was a spike after Memorial Day – Her hospital became overwhelmed and her rehab clinic where she worked started taking COVID patients. She started feeling sick on a Saturday, the week before the Fourth of July, there was still no mask mandate in Texas only a recommendation to wear masks. And this was during a time when the lieutenant governor had said, ‘there are more important things than living.’ And that Fauci doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Rosemary Gutierrez: My sister got sick, and then they all lived in the same household so that’s how my mom and my dad got sick. His oxygen levels had declined and we decided to get him to a hospital. We called EMS. EMS said it would be an hour wait. Then EMS called us back again and they said they couldn’t pick him up, you know, just do self care at home. And essentially, they rejected taking my father into the hospital.
Christopher C. Garcia: This disease has highlighted all the other inequalities. My sister and I are fortunate enough that we have professions that allowed us to take all this PTO, paid time off, while he was in the hospital, while we’re answering these phone calls and you’re in a situation of stress trying to make these decisions, basically, for your loved one. I can’t imagine what it’s like for all other Americans, all the other people who are going through the exact same thing, but they can’t take the time off of work. All this was completely preventable had leadership just done the right things at the right time.
Kristin: My dad was a supporter of the governor. He was a supporter of the president. And he did what we are trained to do, in times of crisis it is our social order to follow the direction of people in charge. And that’s what he did, and for that he paid with his life.
Fiona: We here are doing what we can to be safe. We’re wearing our masks. We’re staying inside, we’re socially distancing ourselves. We’re doing everything we can, but that might not matter in a few months from now because all those people who are rejecting this virus are out there. And they’re around us, and they’re putting us in danger. And they’re telling us that our lives don’t matter. And that makes me so angry.
Congressman Castro: I just think the president and a lot of the people around him are just living in denial. In some ways, pretending that all this suffering and all this death hasn’t happened. And there is a human cost to that. It’s just been remarkable – just remarkable chaos out of this administration.