Curing the Infection
An open letter to white people from white people in the time of COVID-19
“A lot of people get the word revolution mixed up and they think revolution’s a bad word. Revolution is nothing but like having a sore on your body and then you put something on that sore to cure that infection. And I’m telling you that we’re living in an infectious society right now. I’m telling you that we’re living in a sick society. And anybody that endorses integrating into this sick society before it’s cleaned up is a man who’s committing a crime against the people.”
How are we coping with living in an infectious society?
Some of us have no choice but to go out and work so we can pay the rent. We do whatever we have to do to pay the landlord. We put our bodies at risk, and we help people, and far wealthier people make money off of our labor. Some of us will die from this.
Some of us have organized our lives around accumulating more, and more, and more, so that in a moment like this, we have the best possible options. We can work from home, or not work at all, or even flee to a second home in a remote area. This is exactly why we have always worked so much. Security. Options. Gold standard healthcare plans. Our isolation vacation will eventually end, and our lives will go back to normal (or so we think). We are like the asymptomatic carrier of a virus, oblivious to our impact on others.
Some of us aren’t coping at all. Some of us are freaking out. We’re wringing our hands and bemoaning our powerlessness. Addictions are taking over our lives. We’re harming ourselves, or we’re harming the people we care about the most.
Some of us believe that white society was perfectly healthy until we became infected by so many dark Others. The cure is Nationalism: shut down the border, get those diseased immigrants away from my white family! Coronavirus is a plot planned by George Soros to force Socialism on the American people. WE WANT TO WORK! WE ARE ESSENTIAL!
Some of us can make a lot of money off the virus. We can price-gouge water, food, and medicine. We can layoff all our employees and keep the bailout money for ourselves. Maybe counting our money makes us feel safer, despite the fact that all the money in the world can’t protect us from catching the disease. The pitchforks are surely coming for us, but we can redirect that energy by scapegoating Asians, Blacks, immigrants, and (((globalists)))....
We are staring into the vortex that is our unknown future. It is extremely likely there will be a long and severe recession. We’ve seen this sharp increase in white nationalist organizing activity in just one month of mass unemployment. We know we are woefully under-organized and under-prepared for what is coming, and we know we have to win.
COVID-19 KILLS BLACK PEOPLE MORE - WHY?
Credit: Brooke Anderson Photography
“Our situations haven’t stopped because of this virus, so we’re not gonna stop…..Our people are dying out here….It’s on us to come together. We’re gonna have to be creative now in how we organize, and how we bring our people together. It’s really important that we do that. This is gonna be a continued thing until our folks are off the streets. We’re not stopping until the U.S. constitution recognizes housing as a human right.”
—Dominique Walker, Moms 4 Housing, Oakland, CA, April 11th, 2020
Credit: Rasheed Shabazz for Oakland Voices
7 out of 10 unhoused people are Black
Black housed people are 3 times more likely than white housed people to lack complete plumbing facilities
White people in the hills live 15 years longer on average than Black people in the flatlands
Black and Brown adults are 2-4 times more likely to be hospitalized than white adults
Black children are 10 times more likely to be hospitalized than white children
Black babies are 6 times more likely to die than white babies
How will the pandemic play out in our progressive, apartheid city?
No plumbing? No handwashing. The virus spreads faster.
No housing? No shelter in place. The virus spreads faster.
Highland Hospital has been overwhelmed.
This system has never worked for Black people. Has it worked for us? How is our relationship to this system changing, in this moment?
Will white privilege “save” us?
We don’t believe that it will. This system was never designed to meet the needs of Black people, or most people (remember, whites are a global minority), but it promised us some benefits in exchange for our compliance. Historically, white people have benefitted from this system - but we believe that this system is about to fail us all spectacularly.
Credit: Seth Tobocman
The Virus exposes the lie of white supremacy - that we can get ahead by stepping on the backs of others. It turns out that we’re actually all connected, and we need each other to survive.
“The time has come for us to reimagine everything. We have to do what I call visionary organizing. We have to see every crisis as both a danger and an opportunity. It’s a danger because it does so much damage to our lives, to our institutions, to all that we have expected. But it’s also an opportunity for us to become creative; to become the new kind of people that are needed at such a huge period of transition.”
—Grace Lee Boggs, 2012
So how do we cure the infection?
We seek out the “good doctors” who are working to cure our sick society. These are oppressed people who are experts on how this system fails to meet human needs. The “good doctors” have a thorough understanding of our society’s sickness, and have been conducting scientific experiments for many years, testing hypotheses about what is making our society so sick and how the sickness can be healed. The “good doctors” are primarily concerned with protecting human life and nurturing human development. They are not motivated by the desire to acquire money, fame, or prestige. They are the ones who do what the government fails to do for the community - they don’t ask for permission, and they accept the consequences, “come what may.” They serve the people.
In Oakland, there is a group of “good doctors” called Community Ready Corps (C.R.C.), a Black liberation organization that combats white supremacy and actively builds & supports the self determination of disenfranchised communities, particularly the Black community.
But can Black people and white people work together to fix this - with all of our pre-existing conditions?
“The power is with you. The people always have the power, they have tricked you to believe the counter. They have tricked you to subjugate yourself, to relinquish your power. It’s an illusion....Operate on that premise - and this will stop. ‘Cause, I’mma tell y’all the truth, I’mma ask this question: How many of y’all believe that this can stop?
Really, honestly? Y’all believe it?
I’mma know - by what you do.”—Tur-Ha Ak, Community Ready Corps
CRC has given white folks a prescription for how to organize effectively in solidarity with oppressed racial groups to cure our sick society, which they call “the 5 Methods of Weaponization of White Privilege & Divestment of White Power.” Here’s how it works:
METHOD 1: EDUCATION
Investigate the root causes of our current conditions - and understand that those most oppressed by this system are the ultimate experts. “COVID-19 kills Black people more - why?” How do viruses actually spread? Where do the extremely racialized health disparities come from? What’s the history behind why so many Black people don’t trust the CDC, or the medical system in general? Where did the eugenics movement actually start (hint: not in Germany), and how does eugenics still shape medical triage practices and public consciousness about this virus today? Why are so many people homeless in the first place? How are our opponents exploiting this crisis to recruit and activate their base and advance a Right-wing agenda? As we learn, we have a responsibility to teach other white folks so that burden doesn’t fall on the shoulders of people of color.
METHOD #2: ORGANIZATION
White America keeps us on a steady diet of rugged individualism, which is one of the toxins that’s making us so sick. We can’t survive, resist infection or build immunity alone; we have to come together. Furthermore: any white person we're not actively organizing to fight white supremacy with us is a white person we're offering up to the white nationalist movement. Period. “Operation Gridlock” drew THOUSANDS of white supporters. We can share memes about the Flu Klux Klan to make ourselves feel morally and intellectually superior to other white people, or we could get serious about organizing millions of white people to take action for racial justice and our collective health and safety. It’s time to make the transition from focusing on how we are different or not like other white people to tapping into how we are exactly the same. This transition likely involves facing the parts of ourselves we don’t like, and getting real about our self interest (not just our sense of morality or humanitarianism). We have to be able to set aside our judgements of white people and learn how to love them (and ourselves). You can’t effectively organize people you don’t love.
METHOD #3: CONTRIBUTION (NOT CONTROL)
Centering the leadership of those most impacted by this sick system inoculates us against the persistent re-establishment of white supremacy. Feeling entitled to power and control of social movements is one of the primary symptoms of white privilege and racist domination - and when we act out of this entitlement, we undermine the causes we say we support. The antidote is contributing our skills, relationships and resources to work that is led by the most impacted people without demanding credit or control. Contribution means filling a role that’s actually needed, not inserting ourselves into a role that serves our egos. CRCAA has practiced contribution by cleaning and fixing up vacant homes reclaimed by Black women and their families, cleaning up gas stations to slow the spread of Coronavirus, and so much more that we’ll never talk about publicly because that would defeat the purpose. You can practice Contribution (not control) in this moment by putting your capacities to good use supporting the work of Black and Brown leaders fighting for housing as a human right, organizing to free all prisoners and detainees, demanding a Black New Deal, and fighting for disability justice in the midst of this deadly outbreak.
METHOD #4: INTERVENTION
Structural violence - poverty, criminalization, environmental racism - really is violence. What if we started acting accordingly? A lot of young white people were pretty hyped to punch Nazis a few years back. How can we sustain that same energy when it comes to structural violence? Federal, State and Local governments, corporate landlords, and the for-profit healthcare industry are responsible for far more deaths than the Alt-Right (yes, we need to address them too, but intervention doesn’t stop there) - and white people are well-positioned to politically intervene. The call for white people to intervene is never about advocating for violence - intervention is about preventing and interrupting violence, not participating in it. This weekend, many of us answered the call from the Anti Police-Terror Project to show up for an essential social-distancing-safe action to protest the murder of Steven Taylor (a Black man experiencing a mental health crisis) by San Leandro police. “White silence is violence.” Let’s do something, not nothing - and aim as high on the food chain of white power as we can.
METHOD #5: DIVESTMENT
Each economic recession/crisis tends to make the existing racial wealth gap worse (thanks, Neoliberalism!). If you still have the privilege of earning an income while working from home, do your part by supporting CRC’s Black Solidarity Fund. And if you’re a trust fund kid, for pete’s sake, give the slave money back. The Black Solidarity Fund is a foundation designed to counter the damage philanthropy has done to the Black liberation movement (philanthropy pits Black organizations and leaders against each other in order to compete for financing) by funding a diversity of Black-led organizing around a Black Solidarity Agenda. The Black Solidarity Fund resourced a grassroots first responders effort to COVID-19: the distribution of critical public health information along with free Coronavirus readiness & immunity boosting kits to hundreds of Black families beginning in early March, followed by $100 gift cards to Black owned grocery stores to support 100 Black families when the shelter-in-place came down and folks started losing their jobs and income. The Black Solidarity Fund invests in the safety, survival and self determination of Black people before, during, and after this pandemic. Our role as white folks in this work to divest. Divesting is about addressing disparity that has existed for many generations, and creating a culture, counter to whiteness, that is dedicated to interdependence and connection instead of isolation, domination and control. Divestment is a strategy to detangle our attachment to power and wealth and allow resources to be more available to everyone rather than just those with inherited privilege. Practicing divestment is like drinking a big bottle of water when you’re sick - it flushes the virus out of your system and helps your body heal faster. Divesting stolen wealth is good for your health.
Interested in practicing the 5 methods? Like our Facebook page for more information. You can also check out this recording of one of our webinars.
We have nothing to lose but our chains - and a whole world to win.
#PracticeThe5Methods
#OrganizeOrDie
In Struggle,
Community Ready Corps Allies and Accomplices