After almost 40 years as an activist, I’ve never seen something that has the power to transform our priorities as fast as COVID-19.

Community empowerment advocates who have been working for over a century to remove greed, corruption and injustice from our democracy have always known that lasting change takes time to create. But now, with COVID-19 wreaking havoc on our health system, food system and economy, people are forced to see the weaknesses in our behemoth systems.

There’s a spotlight on the fragility of our centralized systems as they can’t cope with a catastrophe of this magnitude. Meanwhile, the rapid response on the ground to COVID-19 is accelerating positive change because fast and efficient action takes grassroots collaboration and cooperation.

This is an opportunity to change our priorities and create resilient local economies. For example, there is absolutely no reason why we in the Four Corners can’t grow an abundance of what we need to feed ourselves, thereby creating self-reliance for critical supply that is currently out of our control.

Right now we have a lot of time to hang out at home and dream about how things ought to be. Once this lesson from Mother Nature is over, our challenge will be to learn from it. Back in early January my daughter said to me, “Huh, 2020. The year of clarity!”

Laurie HallMancos