Hav­ing recent­ly had some suc­cess flat­ten­ing the curve and effec­tive­ly mit­i­gat­ing the spread of SARS-CoV­‑2, the nov­el coro­n­avirus, the states of Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, and Cal­i­for­nia have all announced that they will be send­ing ven­ti­la­tors back east to help New York and New Jer­sey in their great hour of need.

Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon (led by Jay Inslee and Kate Brown) are send­ing ven­ti­la­tors to New York, while Cal­i­for­nia (led by Gavin New­som) is help­ing six states plus the Dis­trict of Colum­bia. Five of the six states are in the East­ern timezone.

Even though COVID-19 remains a grave threat to our region of the coun­try, we’re tak­ing this step because New York and New Jer­sey have it worse than we do, and need the help. This is keep­ing with our val­ues of empa­thy and mutu­al respon­si­bil­i­ty. This is who we are as Wash­ing­to­ni­ans, Ore­go­ni­ans, and Cal­i­for­ni­ans.

(And Hawai­ians!)

We are the Left Coast… and we’re unit­ed in defense of our Amer­i­can val­ues (Art­work by the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute team)

With the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment unable to pro­vide the hard­est hit states with the ven­ti­la­tors they need, we Left Coast states are doing what they can Atlantic seaboard coun­ter­parts, who are incred­i­bly grateful.

New Jer­sey’s Phil Mur­phy declared that Cal­i­for­ni­a’s gen­eros­i­ty and com­pas­sion would not be for­got­ten and that New Jer­sey would pay it forward.

“We are beyond grate­ful to Gavin New­som and the peo­ple of Cal­i­for­nia. From the bot­tom of our hearts, thank you. We will repay the favor when Cal­i­for­nia needs it,” the Gar­den State’s chief exec­u­tive tweet­ed today.

New York Gov­er­nor Andrew Cuo­mo also thanked Ore­gon pub­licly dur­ing a press con­fer­ence, call­ing the ven­ti­la­tor gift “aston­ish­ing” and “unex­pect­ed”.

“I want to thank the peo­ple of the State of Ore­gon for their thought­ful­ness,” said Cuo­mo. “It was a kind ges­ture.” He also not­ed that it was real­ly smart for Ore­gon to help fight COVID-19 in New York, because the dis­ease isn’t coun­tered there, then it will remain a threat to Ore­go­ni­ans’ health and well-being.

Gov­er­nor Cuo­mo is cor­rect. In the words of the late, great Paul Well­stone, we all do bet­ter when we all do bet­ter. Pool­ing our resources to solve prob­lems… pulling togeth­er to over­come obsta­cles, whether a depres­sion or a dead­ly world war or the scourge of ter­ror­ism or a pan­dem­ic… it’s some­thing we have repeat­ed­ly done through­out our his­to­ry as a coun­try. Out of many, one. E pluribus unum.

Sad­ly, that great and noble tra­di­tion of coop­er­a­tion and mutu­al respon­si­bil­i­ty has been under attack for a long time now by the forces of greed, instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion, and self­ish­ness, which have in mod­ern times found a home in the Repub­li­can Party.

With the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment under Repub­li­can con­trol and par­a­lyzed or unable to effec­tive­ly respond due to Don­ald Trump’s regime’s cor­rup­tion and incom­pe­tence, it has fall­en to states like Cal­i­for­nia, Ore­gon, and Wash­ing­ton to lead.

Our team at NPI is proud of the work that Gov­er­nors Inslee, Brown, and New­som are doing. They are forg­ing stronger rela­tion­ships so that they can fight COVID-19 more effec­tive­ly. That’s exact­ly what we want to see.

Now they need to tack­le the PPE short­age prob­lem togeth­er. How can we get our front­line health­care work­ers and first respon­ders and jan­i­tors the tools and sup­plies they need to be safe? Answer­ing that ques­tion is an urgent priority.