Links: Covid and other difficult topics

[sonia]

I've had these tabs open for a while. My sense is that people are burned out on reading about difficult topics. Or maybe I'm projecting. Anyway, here are a few links.

Is Our Pandemic the Ghost of the 1889 Russian Flu? by Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee, 14 Feb 2022.

Now, 133 years after that event, virologists and historians suspect that a novel coronavirus triggered the so-called “Russian flu pandemic.” Many view this pandemic as a dramatic historical preview of the current one — complete with variants, waves and longhaulers suffering from chronic neurological complications.

The People's CDC. Weekly reports on Covid transmission and other useful info.

The People’s CDC is a coalition of public health practitioners, scientists, healthcare workers, educators, advocates and people from all walks of life working to reduce the harmful impacts of COVID-19.

On Reparations by Emily Nakashima. "I am a beneficiary of reparations. Here’s why I support reparations for Black Americans."

I also know that for many Black Americans, the road to reparations may seem impossibly long and uncertain. To some who feel this way, perhaps the Japanese American story can provide at least a tiny spark of hope. While the struggle for Japanese American reparations took place on a smaller scale and grappled with a less complex series of events, it also seemed wildly improbable and impossibly hard at the start, when people first began organizing around the idea a few decades after WWII. I hope that my family’s story and the stories of thousands of other families like mine — and the knowledge that many of us are invested in fighting for Black reparations, just as many Black activists, scholars, and ordinary people were for us — will give some hope that the long road may not be infinite.

12 Things to do Instead of Calling the Cops by May Day Collective, Solidarity & Defense. A good list as a starting point for thought. Mutual aid is key - we need to have people we can call on to help with complicated and dangerous situations.

Calling the police often escalates situations, puts people at risk, and leads to violence. Anytime you seek help from the police, you’re inviting them into your community and putting people who may already be vulnerable into dangerous situations. Sometimes people feel that calling the police is the only way to deal with problems. But we can build trusted networks of mutual aid that allow us to better handle conflicts ourselves and move toward forms of transformative justice, while keeping police away from our neighborhoods.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

*copies down the dozen suggestions*

[sonia]

I feel like some of the suggestions are easy - mind my own business and don’t make trouble for others - and some require a whole infrastructure of trust and community support to be built along the way when there’s a problem that needs addressing.

[minoanmiss]

On Mon, 16 Jan 2023, sonia - DW Comment wrote:

[jesse_the_k]

These are all important resources -- thanks for sharing them.

[sonia]

\o/

[silveradept]

Those are all good pieces. I especially like the proving that reparation is not impossible, and has already been done, and the twelve things to do instead of involving the State's violence and white supremacy arm.

[sonia]

Yes, it's good to see that progress is possible on dark fronts.