How do we have difficult conversations about making our events more accessible?

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Hey folks -

Spurred by Healing Justice London uploading their Covid Policy to the RadHR Library, we’ve been talking in RadHR, as a team, about how difficult it seems to be for us (more widely) to talk about the ongoing impacts of Covid in many people’s lives. Beyond this, we’ve been thinking about the ways, as orgs, groups and collectives, we can be learning and figuring out the steps we can take to make our in-person events safer for more of the different parts of our communities, who may not be able to attend public gatherings, unless particular precautions have been taken. Covid can have a long term impacts all of us, and has a disproprotionate impact on a range of already-marginalised communities, so it feels like something we need to grapple with, as part of our wider struggles for a more equitable and just world.

We’ve often found that bringing up anything that reminds any of us of lockdown, sets off a collective response, based on how traumatised many of us were, at various levels, coming out of that wave of the pandemic. When we spent a seemingly-endless period of time facing punitive government compliance measures, while also navigating minefields around our own and others’ health, it’s not surprising that things that remind us of that time, elicit very strong reactions.

And yet, as governments around the world have returned to ‘business as usual,’ many of our friends and comrades have been unable to access the spaces that others among us have been able to take for granted.

This feels like the kind of thing we need to find ways through together, even if doing so brings up really difficult feelings and reaction in us. Not every group will be able to take every step towards increasing this kind of accessibility right away, but hopefully we can start thinking about the ones that are possible, in our own contexts?

We’ve been discussing this amongst the group that are organising this internal policy hack day in London next week, and have agreed to take steps around encouraging masking, making masks available, and improving ventilation in the venue, but we’re aware this is only a start.

Has your group had any experiences of trying to open these conversations internally or at your events themselves? Would be great to think if there are others who are doing similar work to HJL in this area and who would be willing to share any learning about what helps us to navigate the tensions and defensiveness that often arise. @stephanied from HJL has written far more eloquently about some of these questions from a disability justice lens and also produced a report earlier this year about collective care in the aftermath of lockdown(s).

With gratitude for any thoughts and reflections you might want to share,
Liam

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Thank you for raising this question @liam. I think masking has become one of those issues the right have managed to politicise to such an extent that most people now associate it with something threatening - rather than a tool of collective care, which we can use to protect our own and each other’s health (or privacy if you’re using masks to evade live facial recognition!).

For me, recognising the bigger context in which these conversations take place is really important to reach a place of shared understanding. This includes remembering that the Tory government at the time (when covid levels were still really high) decided to make managing the spread of covid a personal responsibility rather than the public health issue it was (and still is).

Instead of installing air purifiers in workplaces, schools, hospitals, on public transport etc. and making masking an on-going public health practice, the country went back to ‘normal’ (aka 2019), while covid was (and is) still very much around.

This has meant everyone has had to figure out how to protect themselves and others with very little public health guidance. For the most part, people have no protection from covid at work and receive minimal state support if they get sick with long covid. It has also meant that disabled and immunocompromised people have become largely shut out of public life because the air we breathe is collective.

In that context, thinking about clean air for how we work and organise together is an act of both refusal to participate in this individualising of a collective issue and one of deep care.

If we can start there - with an understanding that we’re having to figure this out amongst ourselves because of a complete absence of collective responsibility - I think we can have a lot more compassion for how everyone is entering this conversation.

There are also lots of parallels between covid and other issues - e.g. the climate crisis - so there’s a lot we can glean from those struggles too, I think

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Yes I agree with you Julia, I think we need to emphasise the need for a collective response to Covid-19 (as well as broadly other airborne illnesses) which includes masking, testing, air filtration and good ventilation rather than leaving it to individuals to navigate a pandemic alone. I think framing this as collective care is really important, seeing our health as a collective responsibility particularly in responding to polycrisis.

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I think we need to broaden the conversation. This isn’t just about covid. Immuno-compromised folks have never had access to our spaces.

One of the people I organise with cannot risk covid because it might literally kill her. But equally she cannot risk the flu or even a normal throat infections, because it might keep her in bed for a month or more. Which besides the health impact under capitalism means that as a freelancer she’s losing income.

I don’t understand why people flip out about taking a test. Yes it’s uncomfortable, yes it’s money for farma industry, yes it’s a lot of waste. But the responsibility of having caused my comrade to be sick for a month and not having done all I could to prevent that would far outweigh any temporary discomfort. I ALWAYS test before I see her. And if I test negative but I have symptoms or people around me are sick I cancel or we meet outside.

To me that is just simple care, solidarity and responsibility.

One of the most dangerous things I see right now is people having half-measures where they “encourage” people to test. It creates a false sense of safety where you could imagine that people are “taking this seriously”. There are people in our community who just do not take this issue seriously and so they will not test. But probably they are also the ones who took the most risk - so they most need to test.