Grassroots actions continue to be the answer to government negligence

In the middle of the worst week of the COVID-19 crisis in the US, it is now more apparent than ever that our government doesn’t give a sh*t about us.

Original artwork by Yassir Bayoumi

The United States government has shown its true colors in its response (or lack thereof) to the current COVID-19 crisis. With cases steadily creeping past 490,000, with over 16,000 deaths, experts say the nation wasted crucial time at the beginning of the pandemic by making it so difficult to be tested. Only if you were rich and famous, it seemed, were you able to get a test even without symptoms.

Doctors and nurses are wearing bandanas and trash bags as a massive shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) worsens the situation. The reality of the US’ unpreparedness for a global pandemic of this sort has long been known, and yet, the Trump administration repeatedly attempted to slash funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But of course, we have enough money during a global pandemic to further militarize our borders.

Congress’ mulling over just how many crumbs to give to the public out of a multi-trillion dollar corporate bailout shows above all just where the government’s priorities lay. And while the novel Coronavirus does not discriminate between race, gender, or class with who it infects, the systemic layout of our institutions certainly does.

Exposing what’s always been there

“I think there are failures, really, on every front,” Michelle Lewin, Executive Director of Parole Preparation Project, said of the government. During the COVID-19 crisis, the Parole Prep Project has been mobilizing resources for incarcerated folks and advocating for their immediate release as one of the most vulnerable groups to the spread of Coronavirus.

These prisons abolitionists and human rights activists are not just waiting on the sidelines for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to head their list of demands — which he could do with a simple stroke of his pen. The Parole Prep Project’s network of volunteers is gathering cash, creating care packages of basic necessities in their living rooms, and shipping them to correctional facilities across New York as inmates suffer from lack of adequate food, hygienic products, and medical care.

Source: Parole Prep Project Instagram page

“COVID is just exposing what’s always been there,” Lewin expressed. “[It’s] exposing the state’s attitude toward people in prison, which is that they are disposable and that they are not human beings.”

Lewin has been doing this type of advocacy work since 2013, with hundreds of volunteers aiding in this project. The COVID crisis is not the first time the government has failed to provide basic services and dignity to a vulnerable population, and it certainly won’t be it’s last. To Lewin, the disconnect between a community’s needs and the government fulfilling them is perpetuated by institutionalized racism and white supremacy. “The state doesn’t give a s*** about black people or people of color or poor people or people who are suffering. They don’t care and they don’t want to mobilize their resources for those people,” she said matter-of-factly.

On the other side of the country, California organizers are battling for protection of another extremely vulnerable and racially skewed population: people experiencing homelessness.

“Life doesn’t stop during this crisis,” said Steven Estrada, Chairman of the People’s Revolutionary Party of Long Beach, California. “They still have to rummage through garbage and still have to live their lives in ways other people can stay in home and shelter in place.”

Source: People’s Revolutionary Party of Long Beach Twitter page

Estrada and his team have been servicing houseless folks for months with food distribution and hand-washing stations. During this public health crisis, the party created a semi-permanent hand-washing structure in a location of Long Beach with a heavy concentration of the houseless. Their plans to create more hit a roadblock, according to Estrada, as public authorities put a removal notice on their prototype and threatened to remove any structure in a public place that is there for a certain amount of time.

“The failures of the US are laid bare here in Long Beach,” Estrada described. According to Estrada, the healthcare infrastructure in the city is vastly underfunded when compared to its police force. Though the City of Long Beach allotted quite a sum of money for their 2020 budget to alleviating homelessness, Estrada hears from the folks his team services that police raids and harassment continue, Coronavirus or not.

“What the COVID-19 crisis has really exposed is that the city and the government do not really have an investment in people — in keeping people safe and keeping people healthy,” he continued.

It’s up to us

Time and time again, it’s the everyday people who fill in the gaps left behind by government neglect. In the time of COVID-19, we are seeing mutual aid networks popping up all over. From Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office setting up a mutual aid toolkit in New York City to a group of med students creating a network of volunteers to shop for high-risk folks, we are seeing local people finding local solutions.

This phenomenon isn’t only in the US, either. Skilled workers trapped in the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island Lesvos are making their own protective masks as the absence of authority intervention exacerbates already desperate conditions there. In Israel, Palestinian citizens are mobilizing efforts to relieve harsh effects of COVID-19 on their communities as Israeli authorities continue to ignore the needs of 20 percent of their population — not even publishing public health announcements in Arabic.

Though local responses to local needs are amazingly efficient, networks can be created to scale the level of aid regionally or even internationally. In a crisis like COVID-19, this is crucial. Mutual aid networks are nothing new, but in a situation where every hour is critical to face a rapidly spreading virus, there is no time for asking questions or making simple trial-and-error mistakes that might be made when establishing a network in calmer times.

Source: Masks for Docs Instagram page

“One of the main benefits of the grassroots network is how quickly it can move,” said Sara Lönegård, co-founder Distribute Aid. An online platform connecting grassroots refugee aid groups in Europe, Distribute Aid teamed up with the newly formed coalition of medical aid groups Masks for Docs to better coordinate local efforts in distributing PPE for medical professionals and essential workers on the front line.

Distribute Aid shared the open source code for their advanced grassroots logistics platform with the Masks for Docs coalition, and the two organizations are working together to adapt the code to the needs of the medical-aid community. Dozens of volunteer web developers and designers came together to contribute to the code in just a couple weeks, which will service hundreds of grassroots organizations throughout the US and the world to quickly fill in desperate PPE needs.

Watching the quick responses to the COVID-19 crisis by grassroots communities is beautiful, empowering, and devastating all at the same time. Devastating because really, we shouldn’t have to be doing this if our governments acted with our best interests in mind. Beautiful and empowering because we are capable of stepping up and alleviating some suffering as we wait for those in power to stop twiddling their thumbs.

“We know what we need to keep ourselves safe,” Lewin noted. “We’ve been making these demands for our needs to the government and they’re not being met, so this is really about taking on the role of caring for each other.”