Practicing a Love Ethic in the Ongoing Pandemic Part 2
This is part two of a two-part essay. Read/listen to part one first.
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3. Embodying a Love Ethic in the Ongoing Pandemic
While it is easy to critique settler colonialism, whiteness, ableism, and individualism, it is much more difficult to do the work of resisting these systems through everyday actions.
It is, possibly, an extensive request to ask my fellow abled kin to do this work: to implicate ourselves in abled supremacy, to confront the ways that we have been perpetuating harm through subscribing to individualism, and to feel the collective grief and rage of the ongoing pandemic. And I make this request anyway, because disconnecting from our sense of interconnectedness is an incredibly isolating, and frankly, disembodying experience. I often wonder — what if we could re-member and re-embody the collective spirit that we felt in taking care of one another at the beginning of the pandemic? What if we could re-commit to collective care and collective safety by recognizing our relationalities with, and thus, our responsibilities towards one another? In this dreaming, I invite folks into the possibilities for more liberatory responses, as alternatives to the current norms of abled supremacy.
In Mia Mingus’ essay, “You Are Not Entitled to Our Deaths,” she notes that “If transformative justice teaches us anything, it is that systemic change alone is not enough. There are also many changes that must happen at the community and individual levels as well.” (para. 6). Multiply marginalized peoples who have been either repeatedly abandoned by the state or have been or continue to be explicitly harmed by the state know that the state and institutions can not be relied upon for justice. A crucial part of liberatory work is to embody the world that we want to co-create in our own communities before that world is tangible in its fullness on larger, more systemic levels. Ideally, I would love to live in a world where we don’t need to rely on mandates because we proactively choose to keep each other safe. While some would dismiss these ideals, I want to remind us that we witnessed communities come together near the beginning of the pandemic in ways that were, at least for me, way beyond my expectations of dominant North American society.
The collective spirit at the beginning of the pandemic represented the possibilities in the power of coming together in hardship, and as Goodley et al. note, the pandemic brought forth “the emergence of new kinds of solidaristic relationships” (11) such as mutual aid and more accessible (mainstream) spaces for disabled folks. Communities made use of opportunities to come together and look out for each other, especially when the state was failing to support the most marginalized.
The Auntie Sewing Squad of the US is one example of a brilliant mutual aid project that took part in cross-racial solidarity building while creating masks for disenfranchised communities. The Squad also participated in the types of transformative justice efforts that Mia Mingus speaks of, in shifting culture through interpersonal relationships. Hong et al. describe that by April 2020, before mask mandates were enforced by the government, the sewing collectives had already begun “normalizing mask wearing in many communities [because] emerging data about the high prevalence of asymptomatic carriers of the coronavirus suggested the value of mask-wearing by everyone, not just those obviously at risk of exposure since many contagious people did not know they were contagious” (9).
Masks4EastVan is a local mutual aid initiative led by disabled & neurodivergent QPOC that fundraises for and distributes N95 masks in so-called Vancouver.
These efforts by the Auntie Sewing Squad, mutual aid groups on Facebook, and community-culture-shifting racial coalitions throughout 2020 offer a glimpse into the possibilities of embodying interconnectedness. Now, what if we were to maintain this commitment and sense of collective spirit, by exploring our own roles in and practices for revolution and systemic change? What if, following bell hooks’ definition of love that includes commitment, we were to orient ourselves to a love ethic such that we maintain a commitment to love one another politically? bell hooks speaks about the importance of a love ethic that works to reduce "the gap between the values they claim to hold and their willingness to do the work of connecting thought and actions, theory and practice, to realize these values and thus create a more just society" (47). Commitment to political integrity requires us to embody and practice our values on a daily basis when it’s hard, uncomfortable, and inconvenient. Yet, I think this type of commitment may be more doable when we orient ourselves to a different framework of values than that of dominant Western society.
Yellowhorse describes how amidst the pandemic as she witnessed economic (de)value being placed on disability, she leaned towards Diné ancestral stories of how to relate to one another in a different way. She illustrates the shift in Western values that emphasize the economy, productivity, and normalcy, to “Diné knowledge [that] is established on the practices of building community and caretaking relations” (Yellowhorse 6). When community and caretaking relations are the primary values of a community, a love ethic that involves commitment to caring for one another and recognizes our interconnectedness becomes the norm and daily action.
Inspired by Yellowhorse’s invitation to think about value from her own ancestral perspective, I wonder about what we could learn from our own ancestral and cultural knowledges about “advance[ing] the lifeways of accountability and responsibility rooted in love and care, which propel transformative action” (6). As a part of Korean diaspora, I have learned to value some Korean values with which I had previously struggled. For example, filial piety, as a core Korean value, can be associated with negative connotations of harmful obligation, obedience, and hierarchy. However, Han Soom, a queer Korean diasporic group, also understands its potentiality as “elder care” and “a beautiful, evolved mutual interdependence across generations”. With a large elderly population, South Korea has not only maintained mask mandates for over two years since fall 2020, but most people have continued to mask outdoors despite the outdoor mask mandate being dropped in May 2022 (indoor mask mandates have been dropped since originally writing this piece in December 2022). Masking has also been a normal procedure for decades before the pandemic during winter seasons to prevent community transmission of the flu and the cold.
In Korea and in the Korean diaspora, filial piety/hyodo is a moral virtue. It can be a beautiful, evolved mutual interdependence across generations. Or it can be the shadow form of age-based, patriarchal hierarchy and oppression. It’s the han and jeong of familial relationships.
Care for the vulnerable and for one another is a political act. While political action is usually associated with protests on the streets and policy change, “acts of care and solidarity [in the home and in communities] enable social movements” (Hong et al. 14) and are crucial to liberation. Disability Justice teaches us the importance of care work, the skills required for it, as well as the potential joy of caring for one another and sharing collective responsibility. Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha urges us to continue the collective spirit that we shared near the beginning of the pandemic, writing “… I want to finish what we started. I want us not to abandon the revolutionary dream some of us touched and made in 2020-2021 — of a world where community care, mutual aid for collective survival and a refusal to obey are not just possible, they make up the bones of the new world” (para. 21). Despite state neglect, liberatory world-building looks like reflecting on and then embodying the following questions: What kind of worlds do we want to live in and what might we embody now in order to co-create these worlds?
While it is understandable to experience moments of despair and hopelessness amidst such overwhelming abled supremacy, Yellowhorse reminds us that “The pandemic has become a catalyst for imagining futures for those who refuse to lose hope and refuse to accept these conditions as unchangeable or too vast to fight. In a world that is on the verge of apocalypse, and certainly on the edge of the stinking death of capitalism, our visions to remake the world are here.” (5).
The work of recognizing how we are all socialized into systems of oppression is crucial in not thinking of ourselves in the so-called left as innocent of perpetuating harm. Abled supremacy is incredibly normalized in the so-called left and in social justice spaces, even the ones led by QTBIPOC. While it is difficult to implicate ourselves and confront the ways that we have subscribed to individualism for abled indulgence and convenience, I invite us to reorient ourselves to an ethic of care that centers Disability Justice and is informed by Indigenous and ancestral knowledges that value human life over normalcy or convenience. We must stay critical of the state, even when it seems to align with our values for protecting the most marginalized in moments because the settler colonial white supremacist nation-states of Canada and America will choose its original foundations of violence. Thus, those of us in the pursuit of collective liberation must avoid relying on the state to inform and shape our political commitments.
While working towards systemic change, liberatory world-building can start with our own decisions and conversations with loved ones and community members about pandemic safety practices. We can shift culture by normalizing masking, caring for one another, and making ourselves accessible to immunocompromised and disabled kin. Rather than reacting with all/nothing thinking, we can practice pandemic safety in ways that feel doable and sustainable. And it is just that, a continuous commitment to reorienting our values and practicing embodiment.
May we re-member and re-embody the knowing that resisting abled supremacy is a love practice. Reducing community transmission in the spirit of collective responsibility is a love practice that is liberatory to every bodymind where abledness is temporary.
For an example of my grey-zone approach to pandemic safety practices, check out Still In It: An Invitation to My Fellow Abled Kin. Also shareable on Instagram.
References
Andrews, Erin E., et al. "No Body is Expendable: Medical Rationing and Disability Justice During the COVID-19 Pandemic." The American Psychologist, vol. 76, no. 3, 2021, pp. 451-461.
Arcieri, Amanda A. "The Relationships between COVID-19 Anxiety, Ageism, and Ableism." Psychological Reports, vol. 125, no. 5, 2022, pp. 2531-2545.
“CDC director responds to criticisms on COVID-19 guidance.” Good Morning America. 10 Jan. 2022, https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/news/video/cdc-director-responds-criticisms-covid-19-guidance-82131389
Dickson, Courtney. “B.C. lifts most COVID-19 restrictions as long as masks and vaccine cards are used.” CBC News. 15 Feb. 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/covid-restrictions-update-1.6352614
Farhi, Paul. “A Rochelle Walensky interview sparked outrage. But the CDC says ABC omitted crucial context.” The Washington Post. 12 Jan. 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/walensky-abc-interview/2022/01/12/b5744ad4-73be-11ec-bc13-18891499c514_story.html
Goodley, Dan, et al. "Affect, dis/ability and the Pandemic." Sociology of Health & Illness, 2022, pp. 1-18.
Hong, Mai-Linh K. et al. “We Go Down Sewing.” The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice. Edited by Mai-Linh K. Hong. pp. 2-19. University of California Press, 2021.
hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. William Morrow, New York, 2000.
McLaren, Peter. "Some Thoughts on Canada's 'Freedom Convoy' and the Settler Colonial State." Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 54, no. 7, 2022, pp. 867-870.
Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah. “Abled-Bodied Leftists Cannot Abandon Disabled Solidarity to ‘Move On’ From COVID.” Truthout. 1 Oct. 2022, https://truthout.org/articles/abled-bodied-leftists-cannot-abandon-disabled-solidarity-to-move-on-from-covid/
Larocque, Catherine and Thomas Foth. “Which Lives are Worth Saving? Biolegitimacy and Harm Reduction During COVID-19.” Nursing Inquiry, vol. 28, no. 4 2021, pp. 1-11.
Mingus, Mia. “You Are Not Entitled to Our Deaths: COVID, Abled Supremacy & Interdependence.” Leaving Evidence. 16 Jan. 2022, https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2022/01/16/you-are-not-entitled-to-our-deaths-covid-abled-supremacy-interdependence/
Sostaita, Barbara. “‘My Body, My Choice’ Doesn’t Meet the Demand of this Moment.” Bitch Media. 3 Sept. 2021, https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/the-limits-of-my-body-my-choice
van der Linden, Clifton and Alexander Beyer. “Most Disagree with Convoy Truckers on Vaccine Mandates and Lockdowns.” The Tyee. 4 Feb 2022, https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/02/04/Most-Disagree-Convoy-Truckers/
Yellowhorse, Sandra. "Disability and Indigenous Resistance: Mapping Value Politics during the Time of COVID-19." AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, vol. 18, no. 4, 2022, pp. 1-8.
@han_soom. “Deeply ingrainend in Korean culture and the Korean way of being is the Confucian tenet of filial piety…” Instagram, 6 Aug. 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CDg6lfrpZnp/