Urgency is not married to panic. To organize in an urgent situation, we must be functional, and panic impedes function.
Some people are lashing out at each other for not taking the outbreak seriously, but they can’t communicate what help they need from their community. I’ve been seeing people desperately ask for money, but forget to inform the payment information. There has been a lot of false, often alarmist, information going around, which we are inclined to believe because we don’t take the time to think about where the information comes from and what it means. Being consumed by the fear of death and of not making ends meet is blinding us to the practical steps we can take to not only manage this situation but also envision a world in its aftermath.
Catastrophizing is what leads people to think that a world-wide campaign to #staythefuckhome somehow means there will be no toilet paper for the next 6 months, and we will all be covered in shit if we are not all dead. I call this — not functional. Mental health management sometimes requires us to focus on being functional. Eat, sleep, don’t expose ourselves to triggering situations, find ways to self-soothe, and take it one day at a time. It does not mean going out of our way to convince everyone around us that they should be as anxious as us, or worse, hoarding resources to come out on top on some Social Darwinistic scenario.
Once we have our head back on our shoulders, let’s talk strategy. There have been some wonderful initiatives of resource distribution. A lot of people with savings are sending money and food for those in need, and there is world-wide solidarity.
The most effective initiatives, though, tend to be the ones that already existed before this whole situation hit the fan. Feeding the homeless, for instance, has been crucial for a long time, and with the coronavirus outbreak, the organizations that already provided this service were ready to adapt their operations to the new set of circumstances (and this work will continue to be essential after this whole thing blows over). So, for those who already lived in the context of crisis management, this ‘state of affairs’, is a new disaster that only highlights ongoing disasters.
Although this virus is new, hunger, homelessness and the poor state of our health system under capitalism are not. It has never been anyone’s fault that they couldn’t pay rent, eat healthy or go to the doctor; marginalizing and exterminating those who don’t benefit the system has always been the policy, one which has only become more apparent under today’s circumstances.
While trillions of dollars circulate in the stock market daily, hospitals already operate at almost full capacity when there isn’t a pandemic. The kind of help the United States government is planning on offering is for the system, not for the people. They would rather help the bosses to continue employing people instead of helping the people survive in spite of their bosses. It’s not about preventing homelessness, it’s about making sure the commercial mortgage market stays afloat. In other words, it’s not about ensuring a life of dignity to everyone, it’s about protecting the structure that ensures profits and keeps money flowing. Not surprising.
How about we try to use this as an opportunity to show that life after capitalism is possible? How about we show that mutual aid can be more effective than the free-market? If even the Washington Post argues that “Coronavirus will radically alter the U.S.”, can we bet on it too? What about that thing we used to talk about — sudden change to the system brought by the people, aka, revolution? Haven’t we been preparing and hoping for change?
It’s too soon to succumb into helplessness. We have barely begun the fight, let’s make the best of it. Let’s get organized to demand an end to exploitation, and to show that mutual aid is what ensures a life of dignity to everyone — not the free-market.
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text: Mirna Wabi-Sabi