Welcome to the Macroscope
Our world becomes smaller and slower as we shelter in place. We plan the next meal, try to keep the kids occupied, give our partner space, check our supply of essentials, affix a mask before a walk outside, and swipe through headlines and social media to remember what day it is and assess when we might return to normal times.
“Normal” times aren’t returning. This virus — and a uniquely unprepared and unqualified President’s mismanagement of the federal government’s response to it — ripped a gash in history. This year was always going to be consequential because of the Presidential election in November. Now, only mid-way through April, we have more than 2 million COVID-19 cases worldwide, with nearly 800,000 cases and over 42,000 deaths in the United States alone. The economy is in a coma, record numbers of people are filing for unemployment, and there is still no nationally coordinated plan to reemerge from this shutdown. It feels like 2020 may become one of those years, like 1492, 1619, 1810, 1848, or 1989, when the historical timeline cracked open and a new world emerged.
We’re launching the Macroscope because as urban planners and policy advocates, we know we must pull back to see the big picture. As students of history, idealism, and activism, we know that the way to make the world better is to project a vision of the world we want, share ideas, connect with others, and organize. Otherwise, it will not happen.
In this space, the teams at Estolano Advisors and Better World Group outline our vision and share our stories. We are mostly Millennials, with a few Gen X-ers hanging in there, looking to empower Gen Z and follow their lead. Some of us are parents, we are mostly people of color, and a large majority of us are children of immigrants. We are unabashedly progressive and pragmatic. We believe in the inside-outside strategy for change. We are a team of bridge-builders, connectors, unapologetically focused on climate justice, deeply compassionate, earnest, impatient, relentlessly optimistic bad-asses.
We see a post-pandemic United States with universal healthcare, paid sick leave, and access to quality, affordable childcare for all workers. We see a nation that protects working people regardless of immigration status and that ensures wages, hours and working conditions that enable families to thrive, learn, and play together in safe and healthy communities. We see a place that leaves no one unhoused, uncared for, uneducated, or unprotected.
We see a country based on a clean energy economy that reforests and restores its public lands, protects its coasts and deserts, safeguards its natural and cultural resources, and reconnects its diverse communities to the outdoors.
We see a society that cherishes all its children and that respects, compensates, trains, and supports those who teach, care for, and guide them in a manner that reflects the essential, crucial nature of their work.
We see a culture that reveres science, art, literature, history, creativity, and learning, that views and funds lifelong learning as a cornerstone of its health.
We see a reinvigorated democracy, with free, universal access to broadband and the devices and software that allow communities to meaningfully shape policy and resource allocation decisions through new forms of participation.
We can see this future. By ripping through our trajectory of inequality, hatred, and fear, this pandemic has opened a path for us to build it faster. In this space we will plot, scheme, dream, analyze, cajole, and organize to make it so.
Cecilia V. Estolano, CEO, Estolano Advisors and Better World Group
