As families across America mourn the preventable deaths of thousands of their loved ones, more and more of them are calling out their family members’ killers by name: President Donald Trump and the State Governors whose lies and recklessness—and unscientific pronouncements—have put millions of lives at risk, causing particular devastation in Black and Latino communities.
A leading spokesperson for this growing movement is Kristin Urquiza, who burst to prominence in July when she wrote an obituary blaming Trump and Arizona’s Republican Governor Doug Ducey for her father Mark Anthony Urquiza’s death from COVID-19 on June 30, writing:
His death is due to the carelessness of the politicians who continue to jeopardize the health of brown bodies through a clear lack of leadership, refusal to acknowledge the severity of this crisis, and inability and unwillingness to give clear and decisive direction on how to minimize risk. Mark’s daughter Kristin Danielle and daughter-in-law Christine are channeling our sadness and rage into building an awareness campaign so fewer families are forced to endure this.
After Urquiza’s obituary went viral, she formed the group Marked by Covid. On July 27, she wrote an Op-Ed in The Washington Post that began:
‘If you don’t have an underlying health condition, it’s safe out there,” Gov. Doug Ducey told Arizonans in late May, hoping to stimulate the economy. Those words were also a death sentence for Dad, a healthy and exuberant 65-year-young man named Mark Anthony Urquiza. He, like so many others, would not have died if American leaders — President Trump and governors like Ducey — hadn’t been so cavalier about pushing consumers to spend money. They have blood on their hands.
On the opening night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Urquiza gave a powerful and emotional speech, in which she stated: “The coronavirus has made clear that there are two Americas: the America that Donald Trump lives in and the America that my father died in.”
In explaining why she would cast her vote for Joe Biden this November in honor of her dad, Urquiza said:
We need a leader who has a national, coordinated, data-driven response to stop this pandemic from claiming more lives and to safely reopen the country. We need a leader who will step in on day one and do his job, to care.
Other families are also speaking out.
When 79-year-old father of five David Nagy died of COVID-19 in Longview, Texas on July 22, his widow Stacey Nagy wrote a scathing obituary which read in part:
The blame for his death and the deaths of all the other innocent people falls on Trump, Abbott and all the other politicians who did not take this pandemic seriously and were more concerned with their popularity and votes than lives.
When 64-year-old respiratory therapist Isabelle Papadimitriou died in Texas of COVID-19 on July 4, her daughter Fiana Tulip’s obituary read in part:
Her undeserving death is due to the carelessness of the politicians who continue to hedge their bets on the lives of healthcare workers through a lack of leadership, through a refusal to acknowledge the severity of this crisis, and through an inability and unwillingness to give clear and decisive direction on how to minimize the risks of the coronavirus. Her death could have been prevented.
It’s now mid-August and while other countries are crushing the virus and re-opening safely, the U.S. death toll is approaching 174,000 with no end in sight. Meanwhile, instead of working on a national testing strategy, Trump is spending weekends on the golf course and welcoming advice on miracle cures from the My Pillow guy.
On Twitter and through her Marked By Covid website, Kristin Urquiza is encouraging other families to share their stories using the hashtag #HonestObit.
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