Tag: solidarity

What if Renee Good had been a jerk? (guest post)

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Below is a message from a migrant and scholar of migration. She has restrained from publicly speaking her mind on the horrors that are happening to the migrant community in this country and the anxiety that she lives with day to day because she is keenly aware of the risk in doing so under a regime that does not recognize her humanity. 

Yet she also understands that the fear she feels is a carefully calibrated tool to keep her silent and isolated and that her silence will not protect her (or anyone). So in a desperate attempt to encourage herself to exorcise the fear out of her body, she requested that I share the following words on her behalf. She hopes that if each small drop of anger can find one another and become a raging torrent, it may tear open the dark reality and bring a ray of light.

I have seen so many posts going around highlighting what kind of a person Renee Good was. She was kind, a mother, a daughter, a U.S. citizen, and (unspoken but probably most importantly) white. In other words, she is, or is made to be, a perfect victim. Having studied media discourse surrounding immigration, I recognize and understand this pattern—it’s an effort to “humanize” the victim and make her more “relatable” so more will rally behind her and take action. 

But I cannot stop wondering: what part of “being shot multiple times in the face right next to your partner and in front of your dog” is not condemnable enough that we need to add qualifiers to the deceased so we can dare to act and demand actions? What if she had not been kind? Had no children? Weren’t white or citizen? Would her murder not be worthy of grief or outrage? Why do we have to humanize a human being with adjectives that exclude other humans? 

Maybe we all can and should relate to Renee Good not because how amazing and white she was but because she once lived and was murdered by a state yielding violence granted by its citizenry.

A brightly colored piece of art depicts a line of people linking arms under the words "Summon Your Courage." In the foreground, 2 people with light brown skin and feminine features blow whistles while a third raises their fist. One wears a pin that says "Abolish ICE."
Credit: Monica Trinidad. Instagram: @itsmonicatrinidad. Image available from Justseeds.

Repression of Palestine Solidarity on Campus Enabled Anti-Migrant Escalation

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Photos of Palestine solidarity encampments have disappeared from the news, replaced by pictures of immigration agents kidnapping university students and community members, but the campus-based battle to force universities to divest from Israel and weapons manufacturing is still underway.

This a long-term, smoldering battle. “The campuses are definitely as active as they were a year ago from my purview,” says Akin Olla, communications director for the anti-militarist youth organization Dissenters. But, he adds, “The actions look different and are generally less media-friendly.”

While this struggle continues, its shape has shifted, as students who were initially on the front lines of pro-Palestine activism experience additional vulnerability due to the Trump administration’s attacks. Many of these students are Muslim immigrants or from immigrant families, while others are queer or trans and confronting a different series of attacks. As a result of these changes, the shape of the work has changed. For one thing, faculty who spoke to Truthout said that campus student groups are working more in coalition to provide some shielding to targeted students, like Students for Justice in Palestine or Muslim student associations.

Faculty across the United States continue to organize: They’re supporting students and their movements; organizing their own events; building aboveground and underground safety networks in response to the presence of immigration police on campus; and pushing their own unions and scholarly associations to take political positions.

I found it so healing to talk to folks on campuses all over who are creating new networks of solidarity and who see the clear connection between Palestine and other attacks on campus. I am not alone, you are not alone. There are many of us.

Read the full story at Truthout: https://truthout.org/articles/repression-of-palestine-solidarity-on-campus-enabled-anti-migrant-escalation/

And consider signing up as part of the Sanctuary Campus Network: https://www.sanctuarycampus.org/

Amid Growing Health Threats, Nurses Are Still Fighting for Basic Protections

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Five years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic caught our health care system unawares, nurses and other health care workers say we are no more prepared for the next threat.

“It’s scary,” says Tatiana Mukhtar, a nurse in New Orleans. The exposure during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic “was horrific, for patients and for health care workers” she says, “and having been there and having experienced that, I feel like we have learned nothing because [health care systems] are still not doing what we need to do.”

Although the emergency feeling of spring 2020 may have faded, the need for public health measures to combat the spread of disease remains urgent. COVID is still circulating widely, and studies show that at least 35 million adults have experienced Long COVID, and that COVID increases the risk of heart disease in both children and adults. This has also been the most dangerous flu season in 15 years, with up to 92,000 people dying of the flu between October 1, 2024 and mid-February this year.

The U.S. also faces a resurgence of both tuberculosis (TB) and measles, the latter of which is one of the most contagious viruses on Earth. Meanwhile, with the threat of a bird flu outbreak among humans also looming on the horizon, the Trump administration is eliminating what Mary Bowman, a nursing assistant professor, refers to as our “already meager public health infrastructure.”

“In truth, what was laid bare by the beginning of COVID was how disinterested capitalism is in people caring for themselves when they’re sick, when they could be sick, when they could get other people sick, when their families are sick, when someone dies,” Bowman told Truthout. “There’s just no space for humanity in it.”

My latest at Truthout is up now. This piece is about the lessons that were learned from COVID that have been forgotten or rolled back, but it’s also about how those lessons — like high quality masking in the hospital — were only ever implemented in the first place because of the hard organizing work of nurses and others. In other words, we have to keep organizing!

safety planning and reacting to ICE kidnappings: some concrete steps

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In the last two weeks there has been an escalation in the impunity with which state forces can and will kidnap people off the streets in the United States. Of course, arrests are always a kidnapping of someone from their community (a great example here is picking people up with open warrants they may not even know about), but it is also fair to say we are seeing significant escalation in who will be picked up and how little advance notice they have that they are being targeted as we watch noncitizens be snatched by masked cops. Spreading terror is clearly the point here, and it’s effective. Unfortunately, trying to comply is not any better of a strategy than hoping it won’t happen to you or your friends, so our only real choice is to face the fear and work together.

I put together a list of ideas based on my experiences and training related to copwatching, human rights accompaniment, jail support, and anti-stalking safety planning. Some of these make more sense for the people targeted by ICE, while others are more for bystanders who want to try to disrupt these nabbings and the terror they are sowing. None of these are guaranteed to work. The main idea here, taken from human rights accompaniment, is that in a bad situation we can try the slim odds to see if sometimes we can stop the worst from happening.

These are not exhaustive tips, and I’m sure there are things I haven’t thought of. Please feel free to reach out if there’s something you think should be added!

  • Make sure someone knows where you are supposed to be at all times. This is so that people can start making calls and publicizing quickly after you are grabbed.
  • Alter routes and routines as much as you can – this makes it harder for ICE or other state agents to predict where to find you
  • Try not to be alone, especially when in public spaces.
  • Make sure that someone trusted has your birthdate, your A-number, the list of stuff you need taken care of ASAP (childcare, pet care, medication), and your other emergency contacts (like lawyer). This person should be someone who is not likely to be arrested or detained with you, and you should memorize their phone number. (This is jail support protocol.)
  • We should probably ALL get busy making sure we have at least one phone number really memorized that we’d call if we are detained.
  • Make sure you have the phone number of a decent immigration lawyer, who can file a habeas corpus, and that your emergency contact has it. It is likely hard to get set up with a retainer for a lawyer right now, as most are swamped with similar requests, but you can at least get the name and number of a recommended person and give it to your emergency contact. Another idea could be for a group of people to pool resources and engage a lawyer together. A good place to start looking for trusted immigration lawyers is your local National Lawyer’s Guild chapter, or a local agency that does immigration defense (even if you can pay, they may have a referral list).
  • Be ready to call/yell/make a disturbance, especially if you are a bystander. The idea is to disrupt all secrecy.
  • Sometimes it works for targets or witnesses to appeal directly to the humanity of people who are doing the violence.
  • Think of the audience you’re appealing to as international at every point in this process. Public support can create more pressure on the state, but if you do not want your situation, still make sure that a significant number of people know what is going on with you so they are ready to step up.
  • Never talk to the cops! If you are bystanding, you can try talking directly to the person being detained, for example asking “do you consent to this search?”
  • In particular for bystanders, be mindful of not escalating a volatile situation, even as you may be trying to disrupt secrecy.
  • Bystanders may also want to make it clear that you are accompanying the victim, and not just gawking at their terrible moment. I do this by yelling some support or a question, and I also hold my phone visibly in my hand, whether or not I film.
  • It’s also helpful to be clearly marked as who you are, especially if that involves privilege: neighbor, professor, manager, etc.
  • Finally, rehearse these incidents mentally. Go over exactly what you might do, and where this would have to be happening for you to intervene. Rehearse what you will say if you are the one stopped on the street. We experience deep conditioning to go along with authority that kicks in when we’re shocked and confused, and all of us need more practice with disobedience.
Tall, bold text in black is oriented horizontally: “IMMIGRANTS ARE NOT THE ENEMY," created by Kevin Caplicki.
Image by Kevin Caplicki.

Writing about the “pandemic of abandonment”

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My latest piece, for The Sick Times, is one that was borne out of my own experiences, and especially my frustrations. The five years of the COVID pandemic have been difficult, but it was really 2022 and 2023 that were the most difficult for me. This was the period when so many people I know and love, the same people who were helping me process and keep going throughout the very dark periods of 2020, gave in to the push to “move on.” I have been watching in shock and horror as people close to me have returned to most or even all of their 2019 behaviors, discarding anything we might have learned about protecting each other from infectious disease and making the world a safer place for chronically ill and disabled folks (not to mention preventing more chronic illness and death). These years were also hard because as fewer and fewer people took basic precautions like spacing out risky events or waiting at home when they felt sick to determine if they had a cold or something much more deadly, the world outside got that much riskier. This increased riskiness coincided with my own health getting worse, making me feel that one serious infection could tip me right into disability. In 2020 or 2021 we were working with a shared understanding, but by 2022 all of the burden even in small social settings was shifted on to me if I wanted to be careful, limiting my social world. Suddenly someone not wearing a mask might say “oh yeah, I’m feeling sick, I’m not sure what’s up with me,” as if that didn’t have any bearing on the people around them. I had to start assuming that someone with an active case of COVID was in almost every social setting, drastically reducing my own range of action.

I think regularly about what I did not know, or more precisely, what I did not accept and commit to, prior to the pandemic. I had certainly heard that the flu kills some people every year, but it honestly never occurred to me that the corollary was that I should do everything in my power not spread the flu. This was wrong, and honestly, I’m pretty sure it was rooted in some eugenic thinking that is the status quo. People that might die from the flu, I thought, are people that are vulnerable to all kinds of stuff and something will get them anyway. I’m not proud of this, and I’m not advocating this line of thinking, but I also do not think this is uncommon. I didn’t specifically have this thought consciously, but I felt entitled to a certain range of motion in the world and it didn’t make sense to me to limit that for a small minority. My view on this is changed, dramatically. It is possible to do so much more for each other and to create a world where the flu and COVID and other infections kill so many fewer people each year. Huge institutional change is needed to make this a reality – like paid sick leave and supports for child care beyond the nuclear family – but that’s no different from a range of other social justice issues where I believe fervently that it’s important to fight for institutional change AND to act and live within my values as much as possible. (I want to add, too, that this growth is part of living an examined life. In the future I will probably look back on something I do now and regret the harm I caused, maybe even something comrades are already doing around me.)

Feeling this dissonance with friends and comrades over COVID practices has generated a lot of grief, as it has for thousands of others. This article, which draws on a survey that was responded to by more than 2,500 people, helped me work through that grief. It is helpful (and hopeful) to know that I am not alone, that none of us are alone. That it matters to keep pushing in the direction my values compel me. And it helps to try to make sense of why these deep gulfs have arisen between me and so many people I know rather than remain stuck in the frustration, anger, and grief.

I know the article has been useful to a lot of people who are in a similar situation as me: the COVID-avoidant who are feeling discarded. But I also hope folks who have had their differences with me over COVID practices will find some understanding of how our relationships have changed and why.

The “pandemic of abandonment”: Navigating friendships five years into COVID-19

Over the last five years of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many people have experienced significant changes and ruptures to their personal relationships. People with Long COVID and people taking COVID-19 precautions have lost many friends as they are not able or willing to return to “pre-pandemic” behaviors.

This significant grief has received very little public attention, but the extraordinary response to a The Sick Times survey indicates a strong urge for people to talk about this experience. 

Of 2,586 people who responded to the survey, 81% reported having lost friends.

One woman told The Sick Times, “I don’t see friends often because I hate feeling like the bad guy or like a burden, telling them they have to mask to hang out with me.” Another respondent called this “the pandemic of abandonment.” 

Read the rest here: https://thesicktimes.org/2025/01/30/the-pandemic-of-abandonment-navigating-friendships-five-years-into-covid-19/

After Writing About Prison Censorship, I Got Blocked From Messaging My Sources

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Afew months ago, I logged into my online Securus account to send an electronic message to a friend in a Washington State prison. To my shock, I found the word “blocked” on my account and I was not able to send any messages. The block came just a few weeks after I had published an article with Truthout on censorship inside of prisons and had sent the finished article to some of my sources over the e-messaging system. It’s hard to know for sure, but the block is either the result of my journalism, or it is a result of facilitating a book club that connects people inside with those on the outside. Since my Truthout article was about how difficult prisons make it to access information, especially for LGBTQ+ people, the block seems ironic, to say the least.

People in prison do not have direct access to the internet or to any standard email services, nor can they generally receive phone calls. Instead, any communication other than paper mail (which is increasingly rare) takes place over services managed by for-profit companies like Aventiv, ViaPath and IC Solutions. If one of these services chooses to implement a block on an account, as in my case, an outside user cannot send e-messages, put money on a loved one’s books or pay for phone calls — for anyone who lives in a prison, anywhere in the United States, that uses the service that has implemented the block.

The only remedy for this is apparently to appeal to the state Department of Corrections (DOC), but unsurprisingly, there is no obvious method for such an appeal available to an outside family member or friend. Figuring out how to appeal required several calls and emails, and in the end, did not yield any change to my situation. This block is inhibiting my ability to do my work, and more than that, it’s isolating my friends in prison from contact with the outside world.

My last article of the year was this op-ed for Truthout, about a problem I’ve been dealing with for the second half of 2024. Make sure you take your blood pressure pills before reading, because the prison system is shameless in its cruelty and the results are enraging. Read the rest of the story here: https://truthout.org/articles/after-writing-about-prison-censorship-i-got-blocked-from-messaging-my-sources/

(Don’t get) COVID for the holidays

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As we’re facing the next COVID surge (brought on by holiday travel), I thought I might try a different kind of COVID post. You can skip to here for some easy to do tips and tricks you might have missed, or you can read down for my discussion of why this is important.

I have recently been writing and thinking a lot about why so many of my friends and family’s actions on COVID are so different from mine. Namely why so many people I know no longer seem very interested in either preventing themselves from being sick or, importantly, not spreading sickness to anyone else.

In my own case, the experience of staying home to stop the spread in 2020 forced me to strongly reconsider my behavior up to that point. Why had I ever thought it was OK to go to work or ride the subway with the flu, unmasked and taking no precautions, knowing that the flu certainly hospitalizes and kills people each year? Even if the flu was no big deal for my body, my behavior had limited other people—particularly disabled people—from comfortably being in public during flu season. I had knowingly spread around an illness. I radically reconsidered a lot of my behavior, and in particular, 2020 pushed me to focus more specifically on disability justice in my activism. A disability justice framework pushes us beyond thinking about individual access to consider how ableism limits us all from liberation.

Getting back to why this reconsideration didn’t happen on a mass level, understanding disability justice also means understanding that ableism is the current social order. And if it’s the order of the day, like other oppressive ideologies, that means we are all drenched in it and it is impossible to avoid ever doing something ableist. Furthermore, most people are going to act in ableist ways, most of the time. None of this are exempt from this, but not even trying is definitely worse!

I am also well aware that good COVID information is hard to come by, especially if you are not on the regular lookout for it. And if you do go looking for it, it can quickly get overwhelming. So I’d like to offer here a very short, distilled list of things people might have missed since 2020. (I’ve not taken the time to track down citations for all of these things; you’ll have to trust me that I got them from trustworthy sources or you can verify on your own. I’m happy to give more info on any of these too.)

Some of these things are easy enough to do. I’m offering this list because from a “stop the spread” mindset, each specific thing you do is helpful. This list is not meant to be comprehensive, and it’s hopefully not overwhelming. You don’t have to be perfect or avoid COVID 100% of the time or make this part of your identity, but I’d like to ask everyone reading this to take one step up in your mitigations for the holiday season, since this is reliably a time with huge increases in virus transmission. With around a thousand people still dying every week from COVID in the US, you don’t know whose life you may save by being a little more careful.

Masking

This is the biggest bang for your buck, precaution-wise. If it’s hard for you to mask all the time in public, consider masking in places that disabled people really can’t avoid, like the pharmacy, the grocery store, and on public transportation.

I’d also suggest that if masks are uncomfortable, try different kinds of masks! The Aura is my favorite mask – it’s tight to my face so my glasses don’t fog and head straps don’t hurt my ears like ear straps do. Wellbefore sells masks in different sizes and colors, and Armbrust has sampler packs. Just try a bunch and see what works for you!

Finally, know that if at all possible, you should wear an N95 or KN95 mask. This is a change since spring 2020 because the current variants of COVID are more contagious.

Mouthwash

Washing your mouth out with a mouthwash containing CPC (cetylpyridinium chloride) before or after seeing people, or just regularly, will kill some of the virus in your mouth and keep you below the threshold to get sick and/or shed the virus to others. This is a really easy one; CVS brand mouthwash has CPC.

Sip mask

These valves will allow you to drink without breaking the seal of your mask. This is great for airplane travel, crowded conferences, or other risky spaces that you need to be in for an extended amount of time.

Airplane

The most dangerous time on an airplane from a virus transmission standpoint is the time sitting on the runway (because of the way they circulate and filter the air onboard). Even if you don’t mask up during the flight, this is the best time to mask. (And if you do mask, this is the worst time to have a snack or drink – try to keep your mask on for all of this period.)

Space out risky or crowded events

Don’t go to a wedding and a concert in the same weekend! Illness takes 3-5 days to develop after exposure, so give yourself time to know if you got sick from the last thing before potentially spreading that to the next thing.

Air purifiers work!

This is a great one for places that you can’t avoid, like school, work, or daycare. You can make your own Corsi-Rosenthal box, but there’s also a variety of high quality air purifiers you can get for $70-100. You want to make sure it has a HEPA or Merv13+ filter on it, and check how quickly it changes out the air in a room. Since COVID is airborne, there can be COVID in a space even after the person has left it. Setting up air purifiers and/or opening windows until enough air has circulated before you remove your mask is a great way to make a space COVID safer

Test before going to events, even if you don’t feel sick

Rapid tests (the kind you’re used to getting from the government and at the drug store)

False negatives from these are rampant but a positive test reliably means you have COVID. The accuracy of these tests also increases a LOT if you take two of them 48 hours apart.

Better home tests are now available

Metrix and Pluslife are both testers you can buy that offer a similar level of accuracy to a PCR test (that is, very accurate!). These devices are expensive, but so is another COVID infection: think of the missed work, cost of Paxlovid, and potential for Long COVID to keep you down even longer.

It’s a good idea to get an updated vaccine 2x a year too; like the flu shot, these vaccines are updated to try to fend off the particular variants that are circling. Be mindful though that vaccination will not necessarily stop transmission, especially of asymptomatic cases. Handwashing is also good for general prevention, but it doesn’t really stop COVID transmission. In the early days of COVID, researchers guessed that it was spread by physical droplets. That’s why we were instructed to wash our hands and groceries. But now we know that COVID is airborne; it spreads more like cigarette smoke than spit!

Of course, no single thing works perfectly. The best model is still the Swiss cheese model, but that also means each thing you do helps. If you’re reading this, please consider doing *one more thing* to take care of yourselves and others. I love you.

A photograph of a sidewalk display in NYC. Approximately 20 mannequin heads wear a variety of colors of KN95 masks, amidst ball caps and other items for sale. Handwritten signs adorn the table saying things like "On sale KN 95. 1 for $3, 2 for $5."
Photo by Sam Stone. Manhattan, New York, on 6th Avenue somewhere between 20th and 17th Street, 2020. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppbd.01588

my interview with Harsha Walia at the Socialism Conference

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The left in the United States faces a series of urgent questions: How do we stop a genocide in Palestine funded by our own tax dollars? How do we engage with or confront electoral politics? How can we get beyond the insularity of our own context to learn from each other?

Truthout caught up with Harsha Walia at this year’s Socialism Conference, a yearly convergence of over 2,000 people on the left hosted by Haymarket Books in Chicago, to discuss some of these questions. Walia is an organizer, anti-violence worker, and the award-winning author of Border and Rule and Undoing Border Imperialism. She lives in British Columbia, Canada, where she is involved in migrant justice as well as feminist, anti-capitalist, abolitionist and anti-imperialist movements.

In this exclusive interview, Walia discusses building supportive containers for new organizers in this moment of heightened mobilization for Palestine, celebrity culture and the U.S. presidential election, and what we can all learn from international struggles.

You, Kelly Hayes and Robyn Maynard designed a session for the Socialism Conference called “World Building Workshop: Abolition, Solidarity, and Decolonization.” At it, you invited participants to discuss the infrastructure our movements need, any recent wins or stumbles, how we can connect across struggles and how we can manage principled disagreements. Can you talk a little bit about why you decided to do that session?

Read the interview, “Harsha Walia: Democratic Party Laid Groundwork for Anti-Migrant Border Policy,” at Truthout here: https://truthout.org/articles/harsha-walia-democratic-party-laid-groundwork-for-anti-migrant-border-policy/

the politics of COVID information

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The pandemic isn’t over. Why is it so hard to find accurate information about it?

This week, Nassau County, New York, passed a mask ban. Those wearing face masks will now face the possibility of up to a year in jail or a $1,000 fine. Angry at the power of anti-genocide protests, lawmakers banned one of the most basic forms of disease protection just as the world is experiencing a record surge in COVID cases. While officials insist that the law will not be used against those masking for medical reasons, disabled activists protesting the move say they were intentionally coughed on during the city council meeting where the bill was passed.

In a world of airborne contagious diseases, everyone has a medical reason for masking. So why doesn’t our public health policy recognize that?

In 2020, at the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, then-President Donald Trump was excoriated for saying that “when you test, you create more cases.” This statement was met with outcry by journalists and public health professionals and pundits from all major outlets.

Read my most recent article here. In it you will also find a list of places you can stay more informed about COVID, critical during this record-breaking surge.

The response to this article has been tremendous. I was especially honored to be a guest on one of my favorite podcasts, Death Panel, to talk about the piece. If you’re not a paid subscriber, you can check out a preview of the first 20 minutes of the episode here.

Finally, I want to officially announce my name change to October! This has been a long process for me since letting go of the past is not always easy, but I am excited to have a name that better reflects who I am in this part of my life. If you have known me a long time, please feel free to continue calling me Meg, but I will gradually be removing Meg and Meghan from my byline and business information, and may change my email address eventually too.

Anti-LGBTQ Censorship Is Endangering Trans People Behind Bars

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The rampant banning of texts about queer and transgender people has been in the news a lot recently, but nowhere is book banning more of an issue than in prison. Trans people, in particular, suffer from prisons’ arbitrary restrictions. Sophia Alexsandra Brett Laferriere, a trans woman living in a Washington state prison, told Truthout via the prison’s online messaging system, “Most of the information we ask for doesn’t get to us, or staff steal it or write over it. They block it from us.”

Although data is not easily available, there are clues that indicate the severity of these impacts. For example, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, a textbook-like educational resource for trans people, is banned in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin for “obscene material,” and being “sexually explicit,” among other related reasons. In Washington State, prisons keep a copy stocked in the library after legal intervention from the American Civil Liberties Union, but individuals are still not allowed to have a copy, says Dillon.

My latest piece of writing for Truthout is up. Read the rest: https://truthout.org/articles/anti-lgbtq-censorship-is-endangering-trans-people-behind-bars/