Climate change, disease, solidarity, and learning from from the Global South

Climate change can often be annoying to talk about because of the scope of the problem. Literally the entire surface of this planet is changing, which means everything about our lives is being affected in some way. There are direct effects on our bodies, changes to the behavior and location of the fish we eat, to the weather events we deal with, and to the lands where we grow crops.

One of the changes that has long been predicted is a shift in the ranges of various diseases. Just as scientists were warning us for decades about the danger of a global pandemic like the current COVID-19 outbreak, they have also been warning that as the climate warms, we’re going to start seeing diseases that used to be confined to regions like the tropics, spreading to new areas as the temperature becomes more hospitable to the diseases themselves, or to the vectors – like mosquitoes – that transmit them.

An example often given is malaria, the spread of which is generally limited by where the Anopheles mosquitoes can easily survive. That has meant that historically, cities like Nairobi, Kenya, have had little problem with malaria, despite the prevalence of that disease throughout the country at large. Nairobi has a pretty high elevation, and consequently low temperatures, and the mosquitoes that spread malaria don’t do well in lower temperatures. As the climate has warmed, the highlands of east Africa have started to see an increase in malaria.

A word of caution here – it’s easy to assume that current disease ranges are the result of natural factors, but it’s often more complicated than that. When Europeans first began colonizing the Americas, there was malaria in Boston, MA. The current absence of that disease in the United States has far more to do with a mass poisoning campaign than with the protection of a cooler climate, and that obviously applies to regions further south as well. If malaria spreads up into the United States again, it may be aided by changes in weather patterns helping the mosquitoes spread, but that will be a return to their historical territories.

That said, climate change forecasts are about probability and general trends. All the data seem to point in the same direction – warmer global weather will mean a broader array of diseases threatening the population of the global north. While that concern hasn’t been totally ignored, I’d say it has been addressed with slightly less urgency than the threat of a global pandemic was, and I think we can see the degree to which that has been a problem. As with all the other dangers of climate change, this is one that we can predict, and that we can prepare for. It is sometimes said that diversity is our strength, and this is one example of how that can manifest.

Countries in Africa, Latin America, and south Asia have long experience in wrestling with the challenges of living along side disease, and many have done it with few resources, and under economic and/or military attack from colonial countries like the United States. When it comes to dealing with widespread infection as a factor in daily life, there’s a lot we in the north could learn from people who have been dealing with high temperatures for their entire history.

As we work toward greater solidarity as a species, that knowledge and experience is something that we should be valuing highly, and paying for.

There’s a great deal of concern right now about how the COVID-19 outbreak is going to affect Africa, primarily because of the lack of resources suffered by most countries on that continent due to ongoing exploitation. It’s a valid concern. At the same time, that manufactured poverty has forced Africans to cope with a variety of persistent diseases under difficult conditions.

For one thing, a for-profit system that shuts people out of health care for lack of money, like the one used by the United States, will not be sustainable as new diseases crop up. Without treatment being available based on need, the working population will have high death rates and constant loss of work time as people are infected, re-infected, or insufficiently treated. For those diseases – like malaria – that can be cured, taking a partial course of medication to save money will not only result in a relapse, it will also accelerate the rate at which the organism causing the illness evolves a resistance to the treatment.

It will also mean that those who can’t get treatment will become reservoirs for disease, re-infecting other portions of the population as they try to go about their lives, or seek emergency room care. America is already crippled by its healthcare system, all for the benefit of a few rich ghouls, but that will get far, far worse as the climate warms, diseases spread, and new diseases arise. I owe my life to the socialized medical system of Tanzania, and the thought of facing a dual diagnosis of malaria and typhoid in the United States is frankly horrifying.

Senegal has been making some ripples in western media in the last few days for their rapid development of a cheap COVID-19 test kit, using facilities designed around dealing with HIV and Ebola, and for their ambitious and comprehensive approach to dealing with the outbreak at a population-wide level, using many of the tactics being advocated by experts around the globe – social distancing, widespread testing, quarantine, and financial/material aid to ensure that those who need to be in isolation can afford it.

Macky Sall, the current president of Senegal, offers an important message:

[…]
Returning to COVID-19, it should be remembered that we are confronted with a pandemic, i.e. a worldwide epidemic. Efforts made so far in the four corners of the world have not yet revealed all the secrets of this great unknown, which has exposed the limits of all national systems, even the most sophisticated ones. All countries, taken by surprise and overwhelmed, found themselves in a kind of rescue situation, revealing the each other’s shortcomings on a daily basis.

The first lesson to be learned from this major crisis – where the infinitely small shakes the whole world – is that in the face of cross-border threats, big or small, rich or poor, we are all vulnerable.

The new world order that I am calling for requires mutual trust and a sincere willingness to cooperate on issues of common interest and shared values, while respecting our differences and diversities.

The second lesson is that COVID-19 reminds the world of its own contradictions. We are indeed living in an era of paradoxes. The earth is certainly round, but something, somewhere, is not right.

Humankind is constantly making progress in all directions, pushing back the limits of science and technology every day, including the conquest of space. Meanwhile, on earth, there is a shortage of masks, test kits, personal protective equipment, beds, ventilators; so many products, materials and equipment that are crucial for the treatment of patients and protection of health workers, true heroes engaged in a risky and potentially fatal struggle against an enemy invisible to the naked eye. It is therefore time to come back down to earth!

And thirdly, without being exhaustive, the COVID-19 pandemic, just like the threats to the environment and the scourge of terrorism, confirms the objective limits of the nation-state in responding to cross-border threats.

Let us come down to earth and return to the wisdom of the elders, as invited by our compatriot Cheikh Hamidou Kane, who, in his best-selling novel L’Aventure Ambiguë, published 59 years ago, delivered this premonitory message: “We did not have the same past … but we will have the same future, strictly speaking … the time of singular destinies is over … no one can live on self-preservation alone.” (L’Aventure Ambiguë, page 92).

This means that any nation-state, whatever its power and means, can no longer be self-sufficient. In the face of global challenges, we all need one another, especially when our common vulnerabilities are added to our individual frailties.

So the time has come to learn from our mistakes and our limitations, to redefine the order of priorities, to give full meaning to the real economy, by investing more in agriculture, sustainable energy, infrastructure, health, education and training, in order to achieve a development that cares for the well-being of all of humanity.

The time has come to work together so as to bring about a world order that puts human beings and humanity at the centre of international relations.

Africa, as the cradle of humanity and a land of old civilisation, is not a no-man’s land. Nor can it offer itself as a land of guinea pigs. Gone are also the doom scenarios that try to draw an apocalyptic future for the continent. This continent has undergone far more perilous and crueller trials. It has remained resilient and is standing stronger than ever!

The time has come to consider public health issues on equal footing with peace, security, the environment and the fight against terrorism, and other cross-border crimes.

The new world order that I am calling for requires mutual trust and a sincere willingness to cooperate on issues of common interest and shared values, while respecting our differences and diversities.

Above all, it demands a new mindset that recognises that all cultures, all civilisations, are of equal dignity; and that there can be no superior civilisational centre that dictates to others how to behave and how to act.

As a wise old African saying has it: “The rainbow owes its beauty to the varied shades of its colours.”

With respect to global public health issues, this new world order will have to exclude all forms of discrimination, stigmatisation and prejudice, especially towards our continent.

What is important today is to learn the lessons from the crisis and to pool our resources and our intelligence in order to confront, in the same spirit of human solidarity, our common enemy: a silent killer which scoffs at borders, ideologies and differences between developed and developing countries.

Though lagging in development, Africa abounds in quality human resources, including eminent experts, practitioners and competent researchers, who contribute daily to the progress of medicine.

With the establishment of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which works in conjunction with relevant national agencies and qualified laboratories such as Institut Pasteur in Dakar, whose origins date back to 1896, the continent has a qualified scientific network connected to the global alert and management mechanisms for international health crises.

The leadership of the World Health Organisation is also to be commended. It would be more effective in fulfilling its mission with an increased mobilisation of resources in its favour, better support for its Global Alert and Response System, and greater support for national public health systems.

[…] (See the link above for Sall’s full remarks and more news and information from The Africa Report)

Every major challenge shows the same pattern – while some people will always seek to exploit others for personal gain, humanity, as a group pulls together and works together to face challenges. It’s how we’ve survived, and reached our current level of scientific understanding. If we are to truly deal with this pandemic, it will require global cooperation, despite historical, economic, and political disputes. We will have to work together, and adjust our societies to account for the fact that we are a global species. Nobody is exempt from this disease.

And future outbreaks will come. It really is a question of when, not if. As changes in climate force animals to seek out new territories, and as habitat destruction drives them out of old territories, they will come into greater contact with humanity, and with that will come diseases we’ve not seen before. Global solidarity and a society designed to work for all of humanity, not just a handful of monarchs and aristocrats, will be essential to our survival as a species, as we learn to cope with a planet that is increasingly unlike the one on which we evolved.

Unfortunately, life costs money, and my income from this blog has yet to meet minimum wage for the time I put into it. If you can afford to, please consider pledging a couple dollars per month or so through my Patreon. This will help me continue creating and improving this blog by keeping a roof over my head, and food in my carnivorous pets so they don’t eat me. Crowdfunding requires a crowd, so if you can pitch in a little, it would help a great deal!

Animal crossing, and confronting mental health in the face of DOOM

There’s a lot to be said about dealing with mental health as a leftist sort of person in the 20th century, particularly during this pandemic. Many articles have been written already, and I might even write about it a bit more in the future myself.

An important part of that has always been the various forms of recreation we engage in both by ourselves and collectively. As a species, we seem to have a need to do activities that have little purpose beyond the joy of doing them, and I think that’s a good thing. Insofar as human life has a purpose, I believe happiness plays a big role in that purpose, which makes the dizzying variety of ways in which we seek that happiness vitally important.

Video games have long been a major feature in my own entertainment landscape, sometimes to the point where they’ve crowded out other stuff I needed or wanted to be doing. As with anything, proportion is always key.

During the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a great many people have been turning to video games to help pass the time, and to interact with friends, families, and strangers. At the same time, many of us are also fighting to grapple with the massive, systemic problems, and the hugely powerful people and organizations who seem hell-bent on turning the surface of this beautiful planet into, well, a hellscape.

It’s important to fight the forces of evil, and it’s also important to take some time to do things like putter around, interact with animals, and seek peace.

I feel this video is a useful effort to find that balance:

Unfortunately, life costs money, and my income from this blog has yet to meet minimum wage for the time I put into it. If you can afford to, please consider pledging a couple dollars per month or so through my Patreon. This will help me continue creating and improving this blog by keeping a roof over my head, and food in my carnivorous pets so they don’t eat me. Crowdfunding requires a crowd, so if you can pitch in a little, it would help a great deal!

You should read this book, and the audio version is free.

Content warning: Descriptions of torture re: CIA, MkUltra, Cold War torture programs, and so on.

I’ve made this pitch before, but I’m making it again, and I’m going to keep making it. The audiobook for Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine is youtube, and EVERYONE should listen to it, or read a paper or e-book copy. It provides historical context for a lot of what has happened in the world since the 1970s, for what’s happening right now, and for what we can expect from the current COVID-19 crisis, and from the crises we will be seeing from climate change in the coming years. If you believe that healthcare should be available to all, or that everyone should be free to pursue happiness in their own way, then understanding what’s in this book is essential. People with an unimaginable amount of power continue to carry out the tactics described here, and resisting their efforts will require us to be able to understand what’s going on as it’s being done to us. This book is probably the best way to get that understanding.

Unfortunately, life costs money, and my income from this blog has yet to meet minimum wage for the time I put into it. If you can afford to, please consider pledging a couple dollars per month or so through my Patreon. This will help me continue creating and improving this blog by keeping a roof over my head, and food in my carnivorous pets so they don’t eat me. Crowdfunding requires a crowd, so if you can pitch in a little, it would help a great deal!

How much do you know about May Day and the Labor Movement?

If you live in the U.S.A., (and Canada, apparently), you might not know why the first of May called Labour Day in some parts of the world, or why it’s not called that in those two countries.

Fortunately, Thoughtslime is here with an important – and very relevant – history lesson, and a bit of info about the movement for a general strike.

You should watch this video, check out the sources in its description, and consider supporting Thoughtslime on Patreon.

Unfortunately, life costs money, and my income from this blog has yet to meet minimum wage for the time I put into it. If you can afford to, please consider pledging a couple dollars per month or so through my Patreon. This will help me continue creating and improving this blog by keeping a roof over my head, and food in my carnivorous pets so they don’t eat me. Crowdfunding requires a crowd, so if you can pitch in a little, it would help a great deal!

 

Update and a funny video of a man making bad decisions

Apologies for the gap in posting.

There are some ways in which the lockdown has been OK for me. It’s forced me to spend a great deal more time writing, and I honestly do pretty well with a degree of solitude. That said, time has lost all meaning, and most of the people I interact with regularly live in various parts of North America, which means I’ve been slowly becoming nocturnal.

This is not sustainable. For whatever reason, when it’s been dark out for a certain amount of time, I can’t shake the feeling that my day is “over”, and no matter how late I stay up, I utterly fail to do anything useful with a huge portion of my time. It may be that despite all evidence to the contrary, I am not a raccoon.

So, to rejoin the ranks of my fellow ape-creatures, I’m applying a somewhat drastic jet-lag treatment. With one short nap of about an hour and a half, I’ve been awake since yesterday afternoon, and will remain so until some time tonight, after which I’ll be trying out this whole “get up in the morning” thing.

I’m working on a blog post about living with serious diseases, lessons that the global north can learn from the global south in that regard, and some of the lessons we can take from all this for the increasingly hot and chaotic world we now inhabit. That said, I’m not entirely functional right now, so that post is going to have to wait until my schedule re-adjustment has been completed.

In the meantime, here’s a video of someone who filmed themselves making a terrible mistake for our entertainment:

Unfortunately, life costs money, and my income from this blog has yet to meet minimum wage for the time I put into it. If you can afford to, please consider pledging a couple dollars per month or so through my Patreon. This will help me continue creating and improving this blog by keeping a roof over my head, and food in my carnivorous pets so they don’t eat me. Crowdfunding requires a crowd, so if you can pitch in a little, it would help a great deal!

Mexie’s points about capitalism and disability apply to human society as a whole.

Capitalism does not work.

It relies entirely upon endless lies, fantasies, and propaganda to excuse the ways in which it doesn’t work, to convince people that they don’t count. It relies on pretending that humans aren’t a social species that function collectively. It pretends that everyone is an individual without any responsibilities to other individuals, or any right to expect anything from other individuals. Capitalism relies on a constant stream of messaging to convince people that the problems they see around them are caused by literally anything other than the economic system, and that there is nothing that can be done to make the world better.

The wars, coups, death squads, assassinations, and genocides carried out or backed by capitalist regimes? Those aren’t about capitalism, they’re about stopping socialism, which is so evil that it justifies any atrocity.

The people dying because they can’t afford life-saving medicine? That’s just because they don’t work hard enough, or because the evil government isn’t letting us do capitalism hard enough.

Disabled people being unable or barely able to scrape by? That’s not the fault of capitalism, it’s just, you know, “the way of the world”, and for every place that does do it better, there’s some reason why that doesn’t count. What matters is that nothing be allowed to interfere with the endless generation of profit for the richest people in society.

As Mexie says, capitalism does not give a damn about disabled people, and it doesn’t give a damn about anyone else.

 

Human life comes with risk, and people become disabled for a myriad of reasons. Some are born with disabilities, some are injured, some get sick – it doesn’t matter. Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said that the first sign of civilization was the discovery of the skeleton of a person who had broken their femur, and healed it. An injury like that prevents a person from going out and getting food and water for themselves, and takes longer to heal than any person can go without sustenance. It requires the existence of a society, however small, with the resources and desire to care for those among them who are not able to fully care for themselves. That is, and always has been humanity’s greatest strength. It’s also one of the most essential parts of human nature.

Capitalism relies on the lie that human nature is all about greed, competition, and aggression. That is not what drives civilization, it’s what constantly tries to dismantle it. Every advance we have made in human wellbeing has come from the mass of people working together against those obsessed with competition and power to create a world that’s better for everyone. Capitalism does not give a damn about you, but fortunately those obsessed with capitalism are wrong – it is not an inevitable result of human nature, it is a perversion of it. A better world is possible, and we can move in that direction the same way we always have – by expanding the “tribe”, by pooling our resources and efforts, by caring for each other, and by using our collective power to force change.

Hey everybody, I am once again asking for your assistance. I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!

If any of my blog posts are bad, it’s because of climate change making my brain not think good.

Well, maybe not. Still, there’s been some research into how the changes we’re causing to the planet’s surface may affect our cognitive ability. The first stuff I saw on this had more to do with heat waves. Simply put, when the weather is hotter than we are used to or comfortable with, it impairs the function of our built-in meat computers:

Students who lived in dormitories without air conditioning (AC) during a heat wave performed worse on a series of cognitive tests compared with students who lived in air-conditioned dorms, according to new research led by Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health. The field study, the first to demonstrate the detrimental cognitive effects of indoor temperatures during a heat wave in a group of young healthy individuals, highlights the need for sustainable design solutions in mitigating the health impacts of extreme heat.

Now to add to this, we have research indicating that by the end of the century, elevated global CO2 levels could combine with poorly designed buildings to result in high enough concentrations to impair cognitive function, in some enclosed spaces.

“It’s amazing how high CO2 levels get in enclosed spaces,” said Kris Karnauskas, CIRES Fellow, associate professor at CU Boulder and lead author of the new study published today in the AGU journal GeoHealth. “It affects everybody — from little kids packed into classrooms to scientists, business people and decision makers to regular folks in their houses and apartments.”

Shelly Miller, professor in CU Boulder’s school of engineering and coauthor adds that “building ventilation typically modulates CO2 levels in buildings, but there are situations when there are too many people and not enough fresh air to dilute the CO2.” CO2 can also build up in poorly ventilated spaces over longer periods of time, such as overnight while sleeping in bedrooms, she said.

Put simply, when we breathe air with high CO2 levels, the CO2 levels in our blood rise, reducing the amount of oxygen that reaches our brains. Studies show that this can increase sleepiness and anxiety, and impair cognitive function.

We all know the feeling: Sit too long in a stuffy, crowded lecture hall or conference room and many of us begin to feel drowsy or dull. In general, CO2 concentrations are higher indoors than outdoors, the authors wrote. And outdoor CO2 in urban areas is higher than in pristine locations. The CO2 concentrations in buildings are a result of both the gas that is otherwise in equilibrium with the outdoors, but also the CO2 generated by building occupants as they exhale.

Atmospheric CO2 levels have been rising since the Industrial Revolution, reaching a 414 ppm peak at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii in 2019. In the ongoing scenario in which people on Earth do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts outdoor CO2 levels could climb to 930 ppm by 2100. And urban areas typically have around 100 ppm CO2 higher than this background.

Karnauskas and his colleagues developed a comprehensive approach that considers predicted future outdoor CO2 concentrations and the impact of localized urban emissions, a model of the relationship between indoor and outdoor CO2 levels and the impact on human cognition. They found that if the outdoor CO2 concentrations do rise to 930 ppm, that would nudge the indoor concentrations to a harmful level of 1400 ppm.

The idea that we could end up with outdoor CO2 levels at 930ppm is, frankly, horrifying, and seems over the top, at a gut level. That said, the current level is 414ppm, and while the rate of human CO2 emissions has slowed a bit, we’re still adding HUGE amounts to the atmosphere every year, and the warming we’ve seen so far is both interfering with natural CO2 sinks’ ability to pull the stuff out of the air, and is causing the permafrost to thaw, rot, and release even more CO2 and methane.

930ppm, unfortunately, is not out of the question, and with the general consensus that 350ppm is the “safe” maximum we should be aiming for, it’s not good news that by the end of the century, we could be facing not just apocalyptic levels of warming, but also changes to the atmosphere sufficient to mess with our ability to think, which is the primary tool we have to survive in an increasingly hostile world.

At this point I think it’s unlikely that we’ll stop warming in that time frame, partly because of what has already been set in motion, and partly because while some countries are starting to take the issue seriously, it’s nothing like the scale we need to actually deal with the problem. That means that as we work to mitigate this threat, we also need to be working to redesign our society to be better able to cope with it. No adaptation strategy will be effective or sufficient without dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, but making massive, global, systemic changes to how our societies operate will be a lot harder if we’re constantly recovering from one avoidable catastrophe after another.

My regular readers will be shocked to hear that I don’t see how we’re going to be able to take the action needed while the global economy is still almost entirely centered around generating profits for a vanishingly tiny fragment of the population. Relocating cities or redesigning them to function as sea levels rise will not be profitable. Ensuring that everyone, regardless of personal wealth, has access to air conditioning not powered by fossil fuels will not be profitable. Building nuclear power that is both able to withstand unprecedented heat waves, droughts, floods, and storms, and that won’t be mismanaged for the sake of cutting costs and increasing profits, will not be profitable. Building widespread renewable power, and widespread power storage that meets our needs will not be profitable. Re-designing the global agricultural system to continue producing food in a rapidly warming climate will not be profitable.

Or if any of these are profitable, those profits will come at the cost hundreds of millions of lives – a cost I think is far too high to justify. Just as placing profits over human life is resulting in disaster as we try to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, doing so is already causing huge amounts of damage through environmental destruction and a warming climate. We need to change how we operate, and we need to do it fast.

Hey everybody, I am once again asking for your assistance. I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!

Capitalism, feudalism, and plagues: Another Wolff take

I’m sure you’re all shocked to discover that I think Richard Wolff said a thing worth considering again. The history of capitalism has come with a long series of disasters that were, on the surface, not “caused” by capitalism. Upon closer inspection, for many of them, we can see how capitalism works to turn problems into catastrophes. The Irish Potato Famine, the Dust Bowl, Hurricane Katrina, and the list goes on. Many have pointed out how that same dynamic has been at work in the current pandemic crisis, particularly in the United States, and in this video, Wolff is drawing a useful parallel between the current circumstances, and the Bubonic Plague.

 

Hey everybody, I am once again asking for your assistance. I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!

Sources of aid for those who need it, 4th edition

With the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, joblessness is increasing, and people are in need of help. This is particularly a problem in the US, but many others in other countries are also struggling, and it’s likely the number of people needing help will be increasing as the crisis continues. This isn’t going to be over for a year, or possibly more, and the economic impacts are going to last even after vaccines have been widely distributed.

To that end, I’ve put together a list of different resources for people who are struggling to make ends meet. This is a mix of both ways to seek help, and ways to give help to those in need. I will update and re-post this at least once a week while the pandemic and associated economic fallout continue. This is currently mostly focused on the U.S., with some UK resources, but I want to expand it to cover anyone needing help anywhere if possible. There’s a lot here, and it’s currently not particularly organized, because I don’t currently have a system for doing so. I also haven’t included much about things like PPE crafting or distribution – this is mostly focused on aid relating to  food, housing, and other things that currently require money.

I’m also starting to look harder for resources for places that haven’t been hit as hard yet (based on the reporting I’ve seen) but that are expected to be in trouble around the world in the coming months. If anyone has resources I’ve missed, please include them in the comments and I’ll add them in to the next round. 

  • From Bigdoorbrigade.com, who have done a great job pulling this stuff together. Look at this stuff, but check them out too, because they’ve got more on how to help, how to organize, and so on:

https://www.mutualaidhub.org/ – a map of mutual aid projects and requests around the United States. FYI, McAffee flagged this site as somehow worrisome. I’m not sure why.

https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/ – Mutual Aid Disaster Relief – solidarity, not charity. This is an opportunity to help, for now. If I find a way to ask them for aid, I’ll update.

It’s Going Down  is a digital community center for anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements. They have a list of mutual aid efforts focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic across the United States as well as some in Canada.

This is a US-based google doc with a huge amount of resources linked, from guides, to counter-propaganda, to existing aid efforts. Tactics and info are relevant across the board, most of the linked aid efforts are centered in the US.

Coronavirus resource list “This kit is a collectivized document that will be updated as more mutual aid projects and resources appear online. Recognizing that not everyone will have access to great internet to access some of these, I encourage you to apply these offline as well as online.”

COVID-19 Mutual Aid UK – Mutual aid resources in the United Kingdom

For those interested, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now did an interview with Dean Spade, who created Big Door Brigade.

The Human Network Initiative is a collaboration between Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They have put together this collation of local and state resources

Likewise, the Massachusetts Jobs With Justice group has put together  of resources and mutual aid groups

The Asian American Resource Workshop has created a wider ranging sheet of resources and mutual aid groups. It includes a lot of information on how to combat prejudice and xenophobia in this unprecedented situation

A Facebook group titled “COVID-19 Greater Boston (mutual aid and resources)” has been set up

The folks behind the news site Boston.org have set up the Boston Helps network

A neighborhood group has been organized for Jamaica Plain and Roxbury, with similar groups in many Boston neighborhoods

The staff, faculty, and students of Tufts have created their own mutual aid group for their community, as have other schools

Just outside of the city, communities like Cambridge have also seen mutual aid groups being set up

Wildcats want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us so far! With your solidarity, we have raised just enough to take care of the basic needs of all 80 graduate student workers who were recently fired for grade withholding. Thanks to you, we have been able to rest assured that our rent, food, and other needs will be covered. Your donations also fed thousands of strikers and our allies on our month-long picket line and covered medical and legal expenses of those who were violently arrested by University of California police. This fund continues to be the foundation for our ongoing fight for a cost of living adjustment (COLA).

MAP staff are already doing all we can to support local medical services who are serving Palestinian communities living under occupation and as refugees. We have already provided emergency hygiene supplies to 1,200 vulnerable Palestinians living in Gaza. We anticipate further need for an emergency medical response in the weeks and months ahead. Please help us be there for Palestinians during this crisis with a donation today.

Your donation can help pay for:

  • Hygiene Kits
  • Antiseptics
  • Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
  • Medicines and medical supplies

The chancellor’s announcement now helps millions of hospitality workers, but sadly still so many are not protected by this as they don’t have contracts, were paid off pay roll or dismissed by employers before the announcement. We decided to take action to help those that are still hurting. We have the technology, contacts & understanding to make a difference quickly.

We have created ‘The Hospitality Workers Emergency Fund’ to allow the kind hearted, altruistic & caring UK public to donate to an emergency fund to help the most vulnerable & in need in our sector during this time. Our mission was always to champion hourly paid tipped workers, we never imagined in this way…

Here are just a few other places to donate that I’ve seen floating around. There are likely more local efforts where you live.
Nationwide: Cinema Worker Solidarity Fund
Nationwide: UNITE HERE’s fund for impacted workers
Nationwide: Coronavirus Care Fund for domestic workers
NYC: Emergency COVID Relief for Sex Workers in New York

 

And some of the resources from this and other videos:

Thai Farm Kitchen is providing free meals for those who need it in Brooklyn

The Valley Labor Report is putting together a left-wing show on a right-wing radio channel – needed info in a needed location! Help them if you can!

UPS workers organizing to protect themselves (since the corporation apparently doesn’t give a shit) Also check here.

Elizabeth Coalition to House the Homeless (NJ) Covid-19 relief fund

Renaissance Economic Relief Corporation: Emergency Small Business Relief Loan Fund (NYC only)

Chicago-based remote mental health services on a sliding scale with some pro-bono options. 

Inclusive Action for the City has a relief fund for street vendors in LA

Asian Americans for Housing and Environmental Justice has a mutual aid fund focused on LA

Ayuda Mutua: Support families in Milkwaulkee – Support for Latinx families in Milwaulkee

Mutual Aid NYC

Restaurant Workers Community Foundation has a fund to help restaurant workers

Co-op store was broken into and robbed, and needs help recovering

Tele-health services

Chester County COVID assistance network (Facebook)

musicalartists.org/membership/relieffund

actorsfund.org

NYC DSA mutual aid/relief fund

Mutual aid efforts in Australia

Michigan City mutual aid

Fund to help housekeepers and day laborers

Thinklab list of gofundme efforts

Career Onestop on finding government help in the U.S. 

AFL-CIO federal and state resources for workers (U.S.)

Info on applying for Medicaid and CHIP (U.S. healthcare assistance)

COVID-19 Collections PPE mutual aid effort

I’ll keep updating this as I find new stuff, and as always, let me know if you come across things I’ve missed, and please consider donating to my patreon!

Cornell West and Richard Wolff talk about Capitalism and White Supremacy

I had been talking with a friend about alternatives to capitalism, and discussions of socialism and communism, and I recommended looking up videos by Richard Wolff. She sent me a link to this clip of a discussion between Richard Wolff, Cornel West, and Laura Flanders, that I think is well worth your time. It’s from a few years ago, but definitely still relevant amid everything that’s going on right now.

Hey everybody, I am once again asking for your assistance. I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!