Disability rights are a defining struggle of our time.
Gary Malkowski, Melissa Graham, and Ravi Malhotra have devoted their lives to breaking down barriers and fighting for a society where no one is forced into legislated poverty.
I’m grateful for their support and committed to fighting alongside the movement for real justice.
On March 24, I’ll be joining this amazing online panel on racial justice and transcription.
Tickets will benefit Crips for eSIMs for Gaza & Phoenix City Farm (and my honorarium will also go back to Crips for eSIMs)
Info + registration: https://funnels.academicaudiotranscription.com/transcription-for-racial-justice
We need to talk about anxiety related to wearing a mask.
https://camaradademian.substack.com/p/we-need-to-talk-about-anxiety-related
Masks are something much more than a protection measure; They have to do with a matter of social justice, and this has been evident from the beginning. The social criminalization of the mask does not have so much to do with the protection itself, but with the thrust for capitalism towards the narrative of normality. We have seen it with the floods in the Spanish State or with the Coronavirus globally. The objective of the ruling class has never been care, but to prioritize salaried work and all the machines that turn around.
We face a society that constantly reminds us that the existence of disabled people must be eliminated and that our lives are worth less if we do not meet productivity standards. Therefore, not only what we understand as a working class is created, but also a threat within that class: disabled people. This is used not only to isolate disabled people even more, who are oppressed because they are not exploited by salaried work, but also as a way of strengthening the power of the working class. Thus, many people, both disabled and non -disabled, try to separate from disability as an attempt to be assimilated by capitalism.
The use of the mask is presented as a weakness, as something forgotten, as something that goes against “normality.” But the question is: What really does normality and what political class do it serves? In some cases, the mask, under this eugenic logic, becomes a signal to look at you distrustful, so that your doctor becomes more violent with you, to ask you invasive questions, and to be tangible white of tangible violence, such as harassment. The use of the mask has never been a purely objective issue, as literally nothing under capitalism. It is a political issue, like the use of condom. The activists have been pointing out how science is not at the service of the working class, and how are we who must demand the necessary protection measures, while at the same time we identify who the culprits are.
Science under capitalism will never be free, because it is kidnapped by a ruling class that is not only completely anti -scientific, but also uses science solely and exclusively for oppression.
For people categorized as vulnerable, each exit to the world is a challenge not only physical, but also emotional, because we face all the time to harassment related to the use of the mask. In fact, there are a lot of people who need to use the mask to protect themselves and do not do it as shame.
Here it is important to understand that there are no “vulnerable” in absolute terms, but vulnerable people and more vulnerable people. And vulnerability not only has to do with a purely medical issue, but, above all, with an absolutely political issue. The most vulnerable people are not only disabled people, but also migrants, racialized people, people who cannot miss work because they need money, and, in the end, any type of oppressed group is subject to vulnerability.
For disabled people, that we are aware of what the Coronavirus does to our bodies, our communities and what it is doing for our future, fear of harassment is aggravated. We not only fear for our health, but also because of the way in which we are perceived and is isolated even more. To name something that has literally gone: to be seen as a hindrance if we ask for adaptations or support. They will treat us with condescension, as if we were “special” people for the simple fact of existing with a chronic disease. And, although it seems contradictory, we are also afraid that, when asking for help, we are making life more difficult. This is the paradox that we live: we do not fit into the model of this false normality that is imposed through society. Many of us have spent a lot of time being ashamed to ask that others use mask for our security. Some have managed to put our limits on the table, but others cannot afford it.
Society may tell us that our anxiety is exaggerated, but the truth is that ableist structures and social barriers are those that are leading us to live with this fear. And while the world continues to ignore these realities, our anxiety does not dissipate. He is here, alive and constant, because we know that every day, when we go out to the world, we must face not only our health, but also an environment that tells us that we have no right to occupy space, to ask for help, to be vulnerable.
Masks are community care❤️🔥😷 free masks: maskbloc.org
• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke, think of the people around you and you as people who are all day smoking, it becomes more visual to understand how COVID moves.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system because it is not a muscle. there is a common misconception that exposure to harmful germs strengthens the immune system. viral diseases like COVID, flu, measles weaken the immune system, leaving the possibility of lasting damage. The reality is that you don't build your immunity with repeated infections, vaccines strengthen the immune system by teaching it to recognize pathogens without all the risks. Focusing on infection prevention is key.
• Rapid antigen tests give many false negatives.
• 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. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.
“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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Opinion: Is it time for an ACT-UP for Long COVID?
https://48hills.org/2024/10/opinion-is-it-time-for-an-act-up-for-long-covid/
While I’m far from the only person worried about Long COVID and our society’s general inclination to look away and pretend it’s not there, people like me certainly feel badly outnumbered. It’s beginning to feel reminiscent of how people with AIDS and their loved ones felt circa 1986—and maybe it’s time for the same kind of response.
For those of you lucky enough not to have lived through that era, by the end of 1986, AIDS had killed nearly 25,000 Americans, but president Ronald Reagan had yet to speak the word “AIDS.” His press secretary had joked about it and the White House press corps laughed. While individual scientists were doing important work, the bureaucracies running the NIH and FDA seemed very much to be in business-as-usual mode. Because the casualties had largely been gay men and injection drug users, it seemed like no one with any power cared whether we lived or died.
So, a group of New Yorkers – mostly gay men – decided it was time to start raising hell. Calling themselves ACT UP, they disrupted the New York Stock Exchange and, as chapters sprang up nationwide, they staged protests that shut down the FDA and NIH. Eventually, people like Anthony Fauci began to see they had a point. I joined the Los Angeles ACT UP chapter in 1988 and ended up getting arrested half a dozen times in protests at the LA federal building, the County Board of Supervisors and the U.S. Capitol, among others. We won major improvements in HIV/AIDS care in the Los Angeles County health system, which cared for thousands of people with AIDS who had no health insurance. When I landed in San Francisco in 1993, I connected with ACT UP Golden Gate.
now, we’ve arrived at what seems in some ways like an eerily similar place. When needed precautions to curb a highly infectious airborne virus spurred frustration and political pushback, officials largely threw up their hands and gave up. Even measures that don’t involve mandates or restrictions on behavior have mostly either been dropped or never happened in the first place. (...)
If I sound alarmed, well, I am. As longtime readers may know, I have some first-hand experience with Long COVID, though in milder form than many experience. My January 2022 infection left me with peripheral neuropathy—painful nerve damage—in my legs and feet. It’s incurable and nearly impossible to treat, as conventional pain drugs don’t help. I will likely never live another day without pain and walking more than six or seven blocks at a stretch is a struggle. I used to enjoy hiking, but will probably never do it again. Still, I don’t have the more debilitating symptoms like crushing fatigue or dysautonomia—disruption of the part of the nervous system that controls automatic functions like heartbeat, blood pressure, digestion and breathing—that afflict some Long COVID sufferers. Lots of people have it way worse than I do.
We know that COVID can have lasting impacts on many parts of the body, including the brain. A recent study of 52 COVID survivors—about half with mild to moderate initial illness and half with more severe disease—found that compared to healthy controls, both groups “had a significantly higher score of cognitive complaints involving cognitive failure and mental fatigue” 27 months after their original illness, with no significant difference based on the severity of that initial illness. On a series of tests, researchers found “changes in brain function” that may explain the reported problems.
Just as scary, a study of people aged 65 and up just published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease reports that “people with COVID were at significantly increased risk for new diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease within 360 days after the initial COVID diagnosis.” This review of the medical records of over six million patients found that the risk escalated with advancing age. As with many of these long-term impacts, the mechanisms involved remain unclear.
Survivors of an initial SARS-CoV-2 infection also have increased rates of high blood pressure, now documented in multiple studies. High blood pressure increases your risk of deadly cardiovascular complications like heart attack and stroke.
I can’t help but wonder whether these issues have affected me, but there’s no way to be sure. My blood pressure, well-controlled for a dozen years with a very low dose of medication, began ratcheting upward about a year and a half ago, necessitating three medication adjustments since then. I’m also definitely more forgetful than I was, mostly little things like walking into a room and forgetting why I went there. But those things can happen to older people with or without COVID, and it’s hard to know cause-and-effect in a given individual.
But I sure as hell know I don’t want to get this virus again and risk these and other issues getting worse. Unfortunately, avoiding it is getting harder by the day, and neither government at any level nor public health authorities seem to care.
A RADICAL IDEA: DO WHAT WORKS
We know what to do. As Clean Air Club founder Emily Dupree and co-author Shelby Speier wrote in Sick Times in May, “We possess the technology to make public spaces safer. Studies show HEPA air purification and far-UVC lamps drastically reduce the number of airborne pathogens in a room and therefore lessen the likelihood of COVID-19 transmission. When combined with other layers of protection, these tools have the potential to finally make our shared spaces more accessible during an airborne pandemic.”
A key word here is accessible. Failure to address indoor air quality and other prevention measures makes public spaces seriously dangerous for those at highest risk, including the elderly, the immunocompromised and those with long-term health issues, including Long Covid.
Such simple, factual messages are rarely heard in official statements about COVID. “What I find the most frustrating about official handling of COVID and prevention is the lack of care, education, and honoring the science around COVID,” comments Clear the Air ATX founder and Long Covid activist Katie Drackert. “Telling people to ‘stay home when they feel sick’ for a virus that spreads asymptomatically? Well, they are just straight up ignoring science.”
• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke, think of the people around you and you as people who are all day smoking, it becomes more visual to understand how COVID moves.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system because it is not a muscle. there is a common misconception that exposure to harmful germs strengthens the immune system. viral diseases like COVID, flu, measles weaken the immune system, leaving the possibility of lasting damage. The reality is that you don't build your immunity with repeated infections, vaccines strengthen the immune system by teaching it to recognize pathogens without all the risks. Focusing on infection prevention is key.
• Rapid antigen tests give many false negatives.
• 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. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.
“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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Seeing Avi Lewis say at the equity commission debate that disability is the "last great social movement [that needs to happen]" isn't sitting well with me.
As a disabled person I want disability rights and justice to actually happen!
But I'm tired of people positioning ableism as though it's the final form of oppression to deal with. There are other groups getting left behind, and it's presumptuous to think that we [disabled people] are the "last" minority group that needs rights.
@TVOntario
☝️
“I think about the connections between health and housing… I think at some of the work that Dr. Andrew Boozary has led that looks at those who are really high users of the health system, and making sure that we can connect them with housing. Look at the difference it makes in their wellbeing, but also look at the difference it also makes to other parts of health care and other social supports.”
#CDNpoli #ONpoli #disabilityJustice
I was wondering lately what kinds of music people sang at the 504 protests, capital crawl, & other 70s and 80s disability rights movement actions. And I got in touch with Elaine Kolb who agreed to let me upload her movement songbook from 1981 to the Internet Archive, "Let's Get Together". (More to come later!) https://archive.org/details/elaine-kolb-songbook-1981 #DisabilityRights #DisabilityJustice #History
training:
Covid Conscious people: stop blaming individuals and let this grief radicalize you
March 13
access our discord to see the details!
https://linktr.ee/HealthSelfDefense_
Would you like to receive this training but you cannot do it this day? Email AutoDefensaSanitaria@proton.me and we'll work out the details!
"Nobody cares what happens with Covid" Who benefits from saying there is nothing that can be done? Exact. The same system that is telling us COVID is ‘mild’
"Nobody cares"
There was a time when you didn't care. There was a time when you didn't know. Genocides occurred, and you were distant or distracted by seemingly insignificant or small things.
Instead of dedicating their time to belittle people for their "indifference", let's strive people and find ways to connect with them and connect them with the fight.
The COVID disproportionately affects oppressed collectives such as workers, poor people, homeless, women, LGTBIQ people, migrants, racialized, disabled.
It's about finding ways to fight with them and, through that fight, can help them see the overview.
Your enemy wants to strip you of hope, and begins to make your neighbors look at the worst possible way. Look at them as complete people, humble yourself and start recovering your hope.
#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice
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I've seen so many posts & comments around the Internet/socials that say, "If you [fill in various disabilities, languages, poverty, etc.], you can't play #DnD." That's when we say, "Challenge accepted," and add another accessibility project to our To Do list. #TTRPG #DisabilityJustice #Accessibility
Symptom: Social Security Disability Rejection
61% of Social Security applicants are denied after their first application. I am now on the second appeal, when 49% of remaining applicants are approved, and have hired a lawyer (disability lawyers are only paid if they win your case).
I set a new goal on ko-fi, in order to get more illmarks pieces into the world. The fundraising would cover framing two Med Art Advocacy pieces, and submission fees + professional scanning for the Mütter Medical Museum, a Senior Living Center, a Health Care Center & 3 other shows.
If you are able to comfortably, please buy me a ko-fi. We’re 1/3 of the way to the goal!
https://www.illmarks.com/symptom-social-security-disability-rejection/
#artmuseum #BetterFutures #bodyHorror #chronicIllness #chronicIllness #chronicPain #crowdfund #disability #disabilityart #disabilityJustice #FederalGovernment #kofi #longcovid #medicalArt #MillionsMissing #pwLC #pwme #redesignSystems #socialSecurity #SocialSecurityReform #SSI #systemsFailing #TransformativeFutures #UniversalBasicIncome #US #usa #ushealthcare
• COVID 101: Care, Political Analysis of Normalization, and the need of a popular Response
• Why has the system normalized COVID when it's still dangerous?
Would you like to receive this training? Email AutoDefensaSanitaria@proton.me and we'll work out the details!
Pandemics are a tool of the colonizer. Refuse to do the bloody work of empire.
“Viruses reveal the fault lines in our culture.” - The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide, Steven W. Thrasher
As Steven Thrasher writes in his critical 2022 book, The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide, viruses, and most recently the SARS-COV-2 virus, reveal inequities of society, not of nature.
As we witness US-made and -funded bombs fall relentlessly onto the people of Gaza, while the rubble of Palestinian life and homes is methodically trucked to construct a US port, built inevitably to exploit Gazan oil fields; while aid is blocked and medical kits containing safety scissors are confiscated; while meager airdrops of inedible food fall onto and kill Palestinian children and destroy essential remaining infrastructure like hospital solar panels; while poets, artists, journalists, medical specialists, mothers, fathers, children, and elders are targeted alongside Palestinian culture and futures; while disease, starvation, thirst, and injuries threaten traumatized families who have already survived 75+ years of occupation — we understand these attacks are part of a larger blueprint of american-israeli colonization and imperialism.
By bomb or by pathogen, these attacks on Palestinian life are man-made, intentional policy choices, ones intended to further consolidate wealth for the mis-rulers of the world.
Like the genocide of Palestinians, the unmitigated spread of Covid-19 across our communities is a policy choice — not an inevitability. Viruses defy borders, and when we say We all breathe the same air, we too, are not speaking in metaphor. Gazans report having been infected with Covid multiple times over six months of siege and genocide. And the very strains of the virus that plague Palestinians today directly evolved and made their way to Gaza as a result of the global north’s policies of denial and normalization.
The occupation and its siege on Gaza is an invasion on all fronts. Occupation forces bring new strains of Covid to Gaza with every incursion, simultaneously throwing parties and concerts while leading invasions of Al-Shifa Hospital and Nuseirat refugee camp. Every unmasked sniper, foreign aid worker, and reporter that enters Gaza off an transcontinental flight creates a pathway for novel strains to attack Palestinians made increasingly vulnerable.
Wherever we are in the world, viruses reveal both our inextricable connection and our common enemy — not viruses themselves, nor even necessarily those who spread them, but the larger forces of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism that take root in our psyches and spur us to be their foot soldiers.
To become conscious of the ongoing pandemic and take on the daily, militant practice of wearing a mask in public is to refuse to turn away from the violence our government inflicts upon those deemed disposable. From Turtle Island to Palestine, we must resist mass death and disablement.
—MASK UP, WE NEED YOU: Palestinian Solidarity, Covid-19, and the Struggle for Liberation
Masks are community care❤️🔥😷 free masks: maskbloc.org
• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke, think of the people around you and you as people who are all day smoking, it becomes more visual to understand how COVID moves.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system because it is not a muscle. there is a common misconception that exposure to harmful germs strengthens the immune system. viral diseases like COVID, flu, measles weaken the immune system, leaving the possibility of lasting damage. The reality is that you don't build your immunity with repeated infections, vaccines strengthen the immune system by teaching it to recognize pathogens without all the risks. Focusing on infection prevention is key.
• Rapid antigen tests give many false negatives.
• 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. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.
“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
.
• COVID 101: Care, Political Analysis of Normalization, and the need of a popular Response
• Why has the system normalized COVID when it's still dangerous?
Would you like to receive this training? Email AutoDefensaSanitaria@proton.me and we'll work out the details!
We must declare that life is more precious than capitalist economies.
“Solidarity is a group that stands together, and would do so for even its weakest member. It is that community which resists the intoxicating lie of individualism—we live for ourselves and by ourselves.”
-Cole Arthur Riley.
We must support our inherent right to health and dignity. COVID-19 is not mild, it is not endemic, and it is not "just a cold." COVID-19 is a serious illness that can damage every part of your body, reactivate dormant viruses, permanently damage your immune system, and disable you.
The ruling classes have a long history of witch hunts to scapegoat the sick in response to infectious disease epidemics, rather than meeting the needs of the population.
Under feudal rule in what is now Europe, the bubonic plague was blamed on the Jewish people, accused of poisoning water wells. During the early AIDS epidemic, gay and bisexual men were demonized for their sexuality outside of heterosexual, monogamous, and partnered marital relationships. The denial of the severity of the COVID and long COVID public health crisis is a denial of science based on materialism. Once they have strayed from the paved path of science, medical judgments about people who report illness, pain, and disability have nowhere to travel except in the furrows of already deep historical prejudices.
Without seeking a scientific explanation (which already exists and is still being researched), doctors too often resort to pathologizing those who are oppressed based on their race/nationality, sex, sexuality, and gender expression. This creates more obstacles for those who are oppressed to access medical care. Sick people suffer from denial of credibility, unemployment, poverty, lack of health insurance, institutionalized racism, the requirement for ID, the oppression of women, and other oppressions based on sexuality, sex, and gender. Those who are oppressed and most impoverished are also more likely to be among the countless sick and disabled people who have stopped seeking medical answers or treatment, just as so many millions have abandoned their long and fruitless search for work and dropped off the unemployment rolls.
The COVID and long-COVID pandemic leaves the most oppressed and impoverished without diagnosis, care, or treatment. Institutionalized racism results, for example, in medical photographs and descriptions of rashes and other physical signs related to COVID and long COVID being documented only in light-skinned people. The long COVID pandemic affects oppressed peoples, from Native Nations on reservations to oppressed people living in impoverished rural communities.
Furthermore, the information available on the topic is available once you begin to investigate, but in many cases, the doctors themselves who talk about long COVID give completely erroneous guidelines. Many have even said that people should exercise (not understanding the fatigue of long COVID) and that reinfections are not dangerous (when there is evidence that they are). In the end, it ends up happening like other illnesses: doctors don't center the voices of those affected and don't understand the situated knowledge of people who experience it firsthand.
Women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, people with other chronic illnesses, and people with psychiatric conditions who push for a diagnosis are labeled "hysterical." Those who refute these "diagnoses" that are not derived from a scientific process find themselves medically labeled as "problem patients," rather than patients with an as-yet-undetermined medical problem.
The downplaying of propaganda around COVID has been IMMENSE. None of us are immune to propaganda, especially on that scale.
It's extremely normal to feel defensive when presented with a situation where your behavior doesn't align with the values you hold dear. We often want to protect ourselves from discomfort by dismissing the messenger—it happens all the time around COVID safety where people feel shame, so they accuse the messenger of shaming them. But being shamed and feeling shame are not the same thing. We're not seeking to shame; we're seeking to expose the harm being caused in the community, the facts. If those facts make you uncomfortable, that's your cognitive dissonance to process; that can be the impetus for being able to commit to community care.
We're not seeking to move through guilt. We don't believe shame is an effective motivator; in fact, we know that conviction regarding community care can't be achieved simply in conversation; it's a practice of example where we must continually fight the individualism we've been taught. We don't believe in coddling people or sending indirect messages. We believe in the struggles against eugenics, which have brought together affected groups, such as the Black Panther Party, which recognized that sickle cell anemia was a neglected genetic disease because the majority of those affected were of African descent. There was a rapid detection test based on a simple finger prick, but it wasn't widely used. Or in the case of the fight against HIV, where groups spoke about the importance of not only condom use but also syringe sterilization for addicts, in the case of prostitutes, and the violence experienced with condom use. We believe in learning from our past, practicing it, and looking to the future.
You are at risk for long COVID. It's never too late to start wearing a mask again. We have the power to protect each other. Get involved with your local mask group or clean air club. Reject eugenics, reject ableism, reject mass infection. Wearing a mask is love. Wearing a mask is community care. Wearing a mask is solidarity.
While we understand that COVID and long COVID affect the most marginalized people the most, we understand that the vulnerable/non-vulnerable dichotomy is not only a lie, but propaganda for "us" and "them" in fragility. We are all within fragility; don't buy into the narrative of immunological neoliberalism.
We can't talk about COVID without talking about the politics of desirability. They exist as a hierarchy that determines who deserves care and love. They are based on white supremacist ideals about beauty, youth, and productivity. Anyone who exists outside of these standards—any fat person, any Black person, any "non-conforming" trans person, anyone with disabilities, especially visible disabilities like facial or limb differences, the elderly, etc.—is dehumanized. Desire actively shapes systems of power and oppression. People who are deemed less desirable in a world that is actively constructed and centered on whiteness are relegated to the margins of society—invisible, or worse. This needs to be part of the conversation when we talk about eugenic policies around COVID. When we (especially white people, with invisible disabilities) talk about the ways in which high-risk people have been and continue to be discarded.
We understand the current state of COVID as one part of the larger fight against ableism. It's a much larger conversation. COVID is only one part. Ableism is global and structural. This is why we understand COVID mutual aid not as distributing masks, giving air purifiers, and helping people avoid COVID, but as the study, strategies, and practices of anti-ableism as a whole.
We must declare that life is more precious than capitalist economies. Historically, colonizers and capitalists have used plagues and pandemics as weapons to maintain domination. Today, our government and healthcare systems have allowed many people to die and become ill without doing much about it, especially in already marginalized communities. We are told to ignore how diseases can affect us and to disregard the scientific evidence that shows COVID-19 can be very dangerous. We are refusing to be sacrificed in this situation.
Masks are community care❤️🔥😷 free masks: maskbloc.org
• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke, think of the people around you and you as people who are all day smoking, it becomes more visual to understand how COVID moves.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system because it is not a muscle. there is a common misconception that exposure to harmful germs strengthens the immune system. viral diseases like COVID, flu, measles weaken the immune system, leaving the possibility of lasting damage. The reality is that you don't build your immunity with repeated infections, vaccines strengthen the immune system by teaching it to recognize pathogens without all the risks. Focusing on infection prevention is key.
• Rapid antigen tests give many false negatives.
• 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. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.
#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice
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There is no long COVID without COVID, prevention must be the first step
DON'T WAIT UNTIL YOU HAVE LONG COVID TO LEARN ABOUT IT.
INFECTIONS ARE PREVENTABLE.
Talk about long covid with your community, fight eugenics, wear a mask.
LONG COVID IS PREVENTABLE BECAUSE INFECTIONS ARE PREVENTABLE
The best way to fight long COVID is to fight COVID.
Long COVID is an umbrella term that generally refers to symptoms which persist more than three months after a COVID infection. The definition of Long COVID itself has been a subject of debate and advocacy for years now; the term was first coined by patient and advocate Elisa Perego of Lombardy, who found herself struggling to recover from her acute infection in early 2020. Since then, patients have had to continually fight for recognition from the medical community, as resources initially focused heavily on the deadly acute phase of the illness.
Why doesn't the system tell us that covid is dangerous?
"Actually solving the pandemic was never in the cards of the capitalist world. the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception” Let Them Eat Plague! – The Red Clarion (unity-struggle-unity.org)
We are in a class war, and stopping production due to covid is not an option for capitalist parasites.
There are more than 200 symptoms of Long COVID! neurological: muscle spasms migraines/severe headaches memory loss and mental fog anhedonia, new onset OCD, depression, psychosis. light sensitivity, sound sensitivity vision problems and dissociation POTS/dysautonomia lungs: Difficulty breathing Lung scarring Inflamed lungs Pneumonia heart/blood: Myalgic encephalomyelitis one of the most painful health conditions Extreme fatigue from activity light-sensitive, sound-sensitive, sensory-sensitive most people with MECFS are unable to hold a regular job Myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) Sudden heart attacks Blood clots Cardiomyopathy Stroke High blood pressure EM/SFC. ANTIGENS GIVE FALSE NEGATIVE RESULTS, 50% OF COVID INFECTIONS ARE ASYMPTOMATIC, 10% OF ALL INFECTIONS END IN LONG COVID. YOU WILL NOT SEE THE LONG COVID COMING, IT IS COMPLETELY UNPREDICTABLE!
Masks are community care❤️🔥😷 free masks: maskbloc.org
• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke, think of the people around you and you as people who are all day smoking, it becomes more visual to understand how COVID moves.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system because it is not a muscle. there is a common misconception that exposure to harmful germs strengthens the immune system. viral diseases like COVID, flu, measles weaken the immune system, leaving the possibility of lasting damage. The reality is that you don't build your immunity with repeated infections, vaccines strengthen the immune system by teaching it to recognize pathogens without all the risks. Focusing on infection prevention is key.
• Rapid antigen tests give many false negatives.
• 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. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.
“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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Massachusetts Unseals Records of Abuse of Disabled People in State Institutions
The state is baring the history of generations of disabled people and the violence many faced while institutionalized.Key facts about remote work & disability accommodation in California: (1) FEHA offers broader protections than ADA (2) Interactive process is mandatory (3) Accommodation must enable essential functions (4) Employers must prove undue hardship to deny. 3-year statute of limitations to file complaints. #FEHA #DisabilityJustice #WorkersRights
• You think people don’t mask because they don’t want? You need to elevate your knowledge of eugenics
• covid conscious people: stop blaming individuals and let this grief radicalize you
• Why people stopped masking? The state created consent for protracted mass infection.
• We need an anticapitalistic analysis for fighting COVID eugenics.
• Want to stop blaming individuals and know why people stopped masking?
• Covid Conscious Community: stop blaming individuals and start having a political analysis about eugenics
• Want to stop blaming individuals and know why people stopped masking?
Would you like to receive one of this trainings? Email AutoDefensaSanitaria@proton.me and we'll work out the details!
Masks are community care❤️🔥😷 free masks: maskbloc.org
• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke, think of the people around you and you as people who are all day smoking, it becomes more visual to understand how COVID moves.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system because it is not a muscle. there is a common misconception that exposure to harmful germs strengthens the immune system. viral diseases like COVID, flu, measles weaken the immune system, leaving the possibility of lasting damage. The reality is that you don't build your immunity with repeated infections, vaccines strengthen the immune system by teaching it to recognize pathogens without all the risks. Focusing on infection prevention is key.
• Rapid antigen tests give many false negatives.
• 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. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.
“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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