Our response to CDC’s “Everyone’s going to get COVID”
On the heels of CDC’s decision to cut down isolation time to 5 days, as we watch government after government openly embrace the “everyone’s going to get Covid”, and as the west hoards vaccines and blocks patents, Cầu Kiều would like to centre the people who have born the brunt of the eugenicist, ableist public health measures. Those who have been murdered by the state with little fanfare pre-pandemic, but who are still largely ignored in any leftist discourse or seen as worthy of being included in any organising or praxis: disabled people.
Why the disabled are the most impacted
Disabled people who do not have the means to work or cannot afford to isolate least they lose their jobs, who have raised the alarm since the beginning of the pandemic yet for 2 years were told that we were expendable, our deaths an acceptable price to pay for the non-disabled world not to be inconvenienced by caring for others outside themselves. Our illnesses blamed for our premature deaths because it couldn’t possibly be anyone else’s fault.
Why is “live with COVID” is harmful?
“Learning to live with covid” and “going back to normal” has meant that we are no longer able to go outside or see loved ones without extreme precautions if at all. Some of us have been in isolation for close to 3 years.
Disability is a socially created category derived from labour relations, a product of the exploitive economic structure of a capitalist society: one which creates (and then oppresses) the so-called disabled body as the conditions allow the capitalist class to accumulate wealth.
Disability is an aspect of the central contradiction of capitalism and any politics that do not accept this are at best, fundamentally flawed.
Disability Justice then is not an after thought or an tack on. It is a central principle that is essential for any type of liberation. @sinsinvalid
Collective responsibility
The government has left disabled people to die but we must recognise that ableism is systemic and interpersonal. We all have a responsibility to do better and understand that our individual decisions have a community impact. We must not normalise mass and preventable deaths.
Many thanks to @disabilityandday6 for allowing us to repurpose their @mia.mingus slides!
