Feeling powerless? Here’s how we can all take action during COVID-19
Customs Cure
As coronavirus upends our lives, community organizers aren't waiting for the government to assistance us—supporting each other is the merely style through
Mar. 24, 2020
Everybody is scared correct now.
Is information technology possible to be scared and not alone?
That'southward a question that'due south been occupying the thoughts of Talia Immature, founder and director of Fishadelphia —a educatee-run community supported fishery that provides fresh New Jersey seafood to Philadelphians.
On March 12 (what feels similar a decade agone) the Fishadelphia team decided to cancel their upcoming share pickup, and to give their members means to await out for each other during the stressful and uncertain weeks ahead.
Through their porch pick-up arrangement, where members selection up their fresh seafood at a concern or residence near their habitation, Fishadelphia has congenital networks in neighborhoods across the city. And they are diverse—the plan offers a lower toll to people who have a student enrolled at the schools in which they piece of work, are eligible for SNAP or Medicaid, or are referred past some other community discount customer. Folks who pay full price help subsidize the toll of those accessible shares.
"Function of the goal of Fishadelphia is to connect people who wouldn't be connected otherwise, and to create an economically diverse community," says Immature.
Which ways, at a time when the pandemic is hitting people with fewer resources and less cushy safety nets—or none at all—especially hard, the Fishadelphia community is made up of both those who need extra support also equally those who tin can give it.
So they're connecting folks who can offer services like grocery pickup for more susceptible neighbors, or parents who tin can't get out their kids domicile lonely. They also started a common aid fund to share resources among students, seafood harvesters and customers who demand extra financial support.
"The modern era involves moving around all the fourth dimension and beingness disconnected and not knowing our neighbors," Immature says. "Let's leverage the networks that we accept, because so many of the organic ones accept been cleaved."
They've received about $500 in community contributions so far, and are taking any requests—no questions asked. They transport financial support via Venmo or paper check. And when someone in their West Philly network requests a grocery delivery, they connect them with a fellow member nearby that offered to help.
"The modern era involves moving around all the time and being disconnected and not knowing our neighbors," Young says. "Permit'due south leverage the networks that nosotros have, considering so many of the organic ones have been cleaved."
Humans take long good mutual aid—whether naturally in communities built on cooperation, or intentionally in social movements and every bit alternative systems to mainstream individualism. Clearly, individualism won't work correct now; we have no option but to cooperate.
The nature of a highly contagious virus hits us over the caput with the fact that we're all in this together. The only way we can lessen the impact of the coronavirus is through cooperation, and the only way we can come out of information technology not entirely devastated is by helping each other out.
We're seeing examples in communities effectually the globe, and right here in our city. The Kidcare Coop, a Due west Philly parents' group for meetups and babysitting swaps, is working to connect healthcare workers with babysitters. Alchemy Nascence & Health is compiling resources and collecting extra birth supplies, medications and protective gear for pregnant women and midwives (email hither if you lot have extra to donate). Check in with your neighborhood Facebook page or Friends Of group to see what efforts are underway near you—or to start one yourself.
A group of community members who are involved in social justice organizations throughout the city created this Philly Common Aid—Neighbors Helping Neighbors form, modelled later i created by Seattle's Mutual Help Solidarity Network which was launched earlier this month in response to COVID-19.
" Our goal is to prioritize those about vulnerable and affected by COVID-19 : the 
sick, the elderly, disabled, undocumented, queer/TGNC, Black, Ethnic, and or people of color, those quarantined without pay, express in work/income, parenting/care taking," the organizers wrote in an outreach e-mail. Philadelphians are signing up to share resources and expect out for those of u.s.a. who need actress support.
"I call it community crowdsourcing aid," says Due Quach, founding chair of the Collective Success Network (CSN) a Philly-based nonprofit that supports low-income, first generation college students through mentorship, professional evolution and leadership opportunities.
When higher campuses made the determination to evacuate, many—especially get-go generation college students—didn't accept the ability to comply with the academy's demands.
Over the last 2 weeks, CSN's pupil-led campus groups at Temple, Drexel and UPenn has been sending updates, keeping the organization informed about university announcements and the panic they're seeing from students trying to figure out what to do. (Penn announced on March xi that students should leave just four days afterwards, by March 15.)
"Their families didn't have the budget to cover moving costs, to aid them put things in storage, help them hire a car," says Quach. Some students just couldn't return home because their families couldn't support them or, in the case of some LGBTQ students, they wouldn't exist welcome. "All of the things that other students tin can have for granted, our students were panicking because there'south no one they could turn to ."
The nature of a highly contagious virus hits us over the head with the fact that we're all in this together.
The student needs informed the way the Collective Success Network set up their customs crowdsourcing forms . Folks tin offering fiscal back up to help cover the costs of a student'southward car rental or airline, train or bus ticket habitation; airline miles to wing a student home; utilize of a car to assistance a student movement back home; storage space to keep students' holding; or a spare room or couch to temporarily house a pupil. The form asks specific follow-up questions to ensure the organizations tin can match students in need with the right support. Students tin asking help using this form.
"As offers come in and as requests come up in, nosotros're kind of a go-betwixt broker," Quach says. "Just at that place's likewise a lot of need for clarification because students' situations are changing day by solar day."
That's one of the benefits of community crowdsourcing: it's fast, nimble and flexible. The more transactional, time-consuming processes larger organizations might take to implement in order to provide support don't work in times like these.
1 community member Venmoed a student $250 and so he could rent a car and drive dwelling house to Connecticut. Another picked up a pupil and provided housing to a student whose family unit isn't able to support her.
"One of the great things in this type of work is learning how many smashing people are out there wanting to help," says Quach. "Information technology's reassuring when you lot put out a telephone call for help and people start to reply and offering."
"I'1000 a formerly homeless mother and the merely way that I survived that 30 years ago was through a mutual help process," says Cheri Honkala , anti-poverty activist cofounder of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign . "I've been pressing that, what nosotros call the politics of beloved," she says. "While we're cash poor, we take developed a lot of social majuscule in terms of relationships with people all over the place."
The organization, which has its roots in Philly, started the Poor People'southward Army—a network of organizers across the country working to fight poverty and injustice. "Nosotros have boots on the ground here practicing this politics of love," says Honkala.
And they've mobilized the army through a common help page and form where you can sign up to aid support folks who are being hit peculiarly difficult during the pandemic.
"We've turned ourselves into social workers, considering people are just flipping out," Honkala says. "The kickoff thing we can exercise is listen and tell them they're not alone." One woman Honkala spoke to lost iv jobs in 1 day, she says. She was a schoolhouse coach commuter and a driver for eldery people at care facilities and disabled students.
Across emotional intendance, people need food, access to computers, and—the number one need— cash assistance. "People talk about the folks who have less than $400 in savings," Honkala says, "Most of the people I know don't have five dollars in savings."
The unavoidable fact is that these folks needed money earlier COVID-19 happened—the pandemic is only some other factor that makes their situations fifty-fifty more precarious. Here in Philadelphia and across our country, COVID-nineteen is shining a blinding light on disparity.
"This moment is exposing the ways in which our systems are not working," says Young. "And therefore it'due south super of import to have models of inter and codependency and support that nosotros can utilise that enable us to be less dependent on the systems that we use everyday but that are broken."
Organizations like Fishadelphia, the Collective Success Network, and the Poor People's Army have already been working to create these models. We tin can plug into those efforts, or learn from them to create our own mutually beneficial ways to substitution resources and services.
"This is really about people figuring out how to share what they take," says Honkala. "At the end of the day, regardless of what the crisis is, all we take is each other."
COVID-19 may feel like the end all be all crisis at the moment. But information technology's not. There will certainly be more to come—more than pandemics and more extremely devastating and wider reaching catastrophes every bit our climate crisis deepens.
So it's about time we start to take very seriously the work of building truly equitable communities we can all depend on.
"This is really about people figuring out how to share what they have," says Honkala. "At the end of the mean solar day, regardless of what the crisis is, all nosotros accept is each other."
Header photo courtesy Poor People's Army 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/philly-orgs-help-coronavirus/
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