✰PREMIUM
Brooklyn-based New York Magazine journalist publishes book on ‘the underclass’

Full of heavy reporting, “Disposable: America’s Contempt for the Underclass” blends Sarah Jones’ first-hand experience with the COVID-19 pandemic and rigorous reporting on the long-term impact of the international health crisis on working class Americans. 

Jones is a Bedford-Stuyvesant-based journalist for New York magazine who covers politics and religion. In her reporting, Jones began to recognize the dangers that essential workers were facing during the pandemic. Jones highlighted the buried stories of working class Americans whose needs were disregarded for years, coming to a head due to the pandemic. 

Jones interviewed essential workers, seniors and people with disabilities who were impacted by the nation’s systemic inequality and late stage capitalism. The stories from people harmed by the pandemic could reveal solutions, Jones realized, and she sold the manuscript for “Disposable” in 2021.

“The basic premise didn’t change, but the contours of the story kept changing,” said Jones. “There was new information emerging all the time about the virus, how to protect yourself from it, what the death toll was. That just meant a lot of revisions over the three year period, and of course, the reporting took a lot of time.”

“Disposable” is the result of years of reporting, research and Jones’ personal search for justice for those disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Jones engaged with first hand stories, reporting from other journalists and publications and social media initiatives that aimed to highlight the impact of the pandemic.

“Local reporting was really important to the book,” said Jones. “We have such outstanding examples of local reporters, and they were really doing incredible work during the pandemic, documenting it and documenting what had happened to their communities. That was really important to draw on and also credit these reporters while I was working on the book.”

Jones added that social media initiatives like Faces of COVID, run by Alex Goldstein. “I reached out to him for an interview about his social media presence, where he was highlighting the faces and stories of people who were lost to COVID,” said Jones, who was introduced to Johnnie Jae who told the story of his mother, Anna Mae Morris. 

“There’s a generational component to that story that I find really moving,” Jones added.

Jones also spoke to activists and organizers from organizations like Marked by COVID, which led the book to cover the national scope of the pandemic’s impact, and to essential workers. 

“The workers I interviewed summed up everything,” said Jones. “A lot of the organizing efforts that I talk about when I’m talking about essential workers on how they responded to the pandemic — it was the culmination of just years of resentment and frustration and anger building up for for such valid reasons, then the pandemic happened, and it really crystallized things for a lot of workers. Like, ‘Oh well, our lives are on the line, and our employers really aren’t going to do anything for us.’”

But Jones believes that solutions exist and hope persists. 

“It takes a combination of things. It takes pressure from the public to say, ‘We’re not going to stand for this anymore. We need a better system,’” said Jones. “But it also comes from the left saying, ‘Here are some ideas about what that might look like,’ and it comes from our political class responding to that pressure and saying, ‘Okay, here are the changes that we could make so that we could have a more humane political economy.’”

“I’m not a policy journalist,” Jones added. “But I principally think of a more humane political economy. I think of things like universal health care, for example, and what that might look like. Even universal basic income.”

Jones noted that “Disposable” aims to be accessible to everyone, even if they don’t closely follow current events or keep up with the news. 

“I was coming at it from a particular perspective, but the stories in the book come from people who are from all walks of life and all beliefs and have different convictions,” Jones said. “I really wanted it to feel like just an American story in that way. I hope people, whatever their views on COVID, can agree that it was just this enormous tragedy that we haven’t really dealt with and approach the book in that light.”

Jones is originally from Virginia, and she spent some time in Washington, DC when she worked for the New Republic. After some time in Jackson Heights, Queens, Jones now lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant with her husband, where she spends a lot of time in the city’s public spaces. She described the city’s public spaces as places where communities are able to come together and accessibility is more prioritized.

“I spend a lot of time in Bed-Stuy, my neighborhood,” said Jones. “I read a lot in Herbert von King Park, and it’s relaxing. It’s where the neighborhood really comes together in that public space. I find that really beautiful to be around.” 

The New York book launch for “Disposable” will be on Wednesday, Feb. 19 at The Strand.