DISABILITY, GENDER, RACE & QUEERNESS: OUR LIBERATION IS CONNECTED Consider... Who has the privilege of working from home? Who can afford tools such as masks and rapid tests? Who can afford to take time off from work? Who is more likely to be believed and given proper treatment by medical providers? Who is more likely to live or work in high-risk, crowded environments? In a Nov. 2023 poll, 72% of Black respondents said they were taking COVID precautions (avoiding large gatherings, travel, or indoor dining; masking in crowded places; taking a COVID test), while only 39% of white respondents said they were taking any of these same precautions. Data also shows that “white people feared COVID less after learning other races were hit hardest.”

Bisexual, trans, disabled, Black and Hispanic adults are the groups experiencing the highest rates of Long COVID. Women are significantly more likely than men to experience Long COVID. And infants (<1 yr) often have the highest COVID ICU rates among all age groups. ALL of us suffer because our healthcare system has abandoned masking/protecting its patients altogether. The government has shown its disregard for queer lives during the (ongoing) AIDS epidemic, and history is repeating itself. Queer, trans, Black, disabled lives are lives worth living and worth protecting! Mask up! Tldr: public health is a collective responsibility. Wearing a mask is an act of community care & resistance against the fascist forces of eugenics, ableism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, biphobia & transphobia.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT It’s okay if reading this information makes you feel scared, angry, confused, or defensive. It can be difficult to examine our complicity, and we have all been subjected to constant messages aimed to convince us that “COVID is over,” that we should simply resume our “normal” lives of unrestrained consumption. Remind yourself: each new day is an opportunity to make new, better-informed decisions. EVEN IF YOU STOPPED MASKING, YOU CAN ALWAYS DECIDE TO START MASKING AGAIN!

Ask yourself. . . Even if you stopped masking, you can always decide to start masking again! Would you rather live in ignorance and denial, or in reality? Are you willing to sacrifice your long-term health, and the health and lives of others, just to eat indoors at restaurants? What is holding you back from wearing a mask on the bus, at work, at the grocery store, to the doctor’s, or to a friend’s house? How can you unlearn internalized ableism? How does the way we allow covid to spread and mutate unmitigated in the U.S. Impact people in the global south? In places like Palestine, where disease is used as a tool of genocidal empires? What does it look like to truly make queer / black / trans / disabled liberation a central motivating force in your daily life?

“The mass unmasking wave has caused irreparable harm, and we cannot allow that to continue.
How can we say we prioritize community care if that care doesn’t include the health and safety of vulnerable communities? How do we intend to wage war on capitalist elites if we all grow weak and fatigued from never-ending re-infections?

The eleventh and final principle type of liberalism Mao Tse-tung concluded was “To be aware of one's own mistakes and yet make no attempt to correct them, taking a liberal attitude towards oneself.” To allow liberalism to win is easy. It demands no accountability for the ways those have rejected fact and reason. Yet there are people in your lives who have never stopped following safety guidelines, wearing a mask, and protecting their health and your health.

We want to see you alive in 30 years. We want to see you persist in the struggle. We want to see you resist the nihilistic acceptance of illness, death and constant grief as the standard of life. We can only live on to fight another day if we’re able to protect the health and safety of oppressed people everywhere.

Combating liberalism can look like taking a breath and recognizing the ways you’ve allowed state-sanctioned violence to pervade into your communities. The people will thank you, even if they don’t all understand just yet. Solidarity with community can start with putting on a mask in the presence of your loved ones and guide them as to why you have started to care again. And with that first step, we will welcome you back without shame, fold you in, if you’ll have us.” People’s Health Education Program

https://maskupactup.substack.com/p/why-you-should-still-wear-a-mask

“The cold truth of the matter is that the motive behind COVID minimization is greed and social control. (…) Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world. Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception.” Let Them Eat Plague! http://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice

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