Post by Nadica (She/Her) on Jul 26, 2024 14:23:52 GMT
Mask Bans Insult Disabled People, Endanger Our Health, and Threaten Our Ability to Protest - Published July 25, 2024
There are days when I am shocked that I am still alive. Like millions of disabled, chronically ill, and older people, I spend an extraordinary amount of effort just existing. Beyond the efforts to keep our bodies from falling apart, we face existential threats from a society that actively silences, diminishes, excludes, and eliminates us. The past few weeks have been full of particularly disturbing news with serious consequences for disabled people, including:
The Health Ministry in Gaza announced that more than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Israel-Hamas war started in October, while a group of UN independent experts said famine has spread across the strip;We can look back to historical examples such as the “ugly laws,” various ordinances across the United States that targeted poor and disabled people. San Francisco was the first city to pass an ordinance, in 1867, centered on begging, effectively preventing disabled people from being in public, especially those who appeared to be unsightly, physically disabled, or diseased.
According to Dr. Susan Schweik’s The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public, public health orders from the Board of Supervisors that “pathologized Chinese people as inherently diseased, maimed, deformed, defective, and infective, profoundly shaped the cityspace of San Francisco.” As a Chinese, disabled San Franciscan, I had to laugh, imagining how these ordinances would have applied to me.
These ugly laws disproportionately impacted people by race, gender, immigration status, and sexuality, Dr. Schweik explained, and influenced and were influenced by policies related to segregation, eugenics, and institutionalization. I offer that proposed mask bans are the new ugly laws.
Today, the mask is the unsightly marker of deviant individuals: the sick, the immunocompromised, the disabled, and the protester who wishes to keep their identity anonymous. (Many demonstrators at pro-Palestine marches have worn medical masks or other face coverings, both to protect their identity from authorities and to protect their health in large crowds.) We’re told such masked individuals threaten the moral order of society, and these bans are meant to keep the public “safe.”
In June, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she was considering a ban on wearing masks on the New York City subway system in response to what she called antisemitic attacks and "intimidating" behavior by masked individuals. She cited an incident wherein a group of protesters, some of whom wore face coverings, engaged in an anti-Zionist chant on the subway after a demonstration against the Israel-Hamas war. New York City Mayor Eric Adams suggested a mask ban on the subway and at protests, suggesting some wearers intend to break the law.
As Alessandra Aoife Muller-Thym, a queer, Jewish, disabled New Yorker, tells me, “As a grandchild of Shoah survivors, I find it abhorrent that the governor is using the safety of Jewish people as an excuse to support a mask ban.… This act is anti-Jewish. We don't want to be used as scapegoats for a mask ban that will not keep anyone safe, especially not Jewish people.”
Across the country, protests on college campuses have shaken leaders who are unsure how to handle such a groundswell of activism. Leaders in some states took the opportunity to go after student mask use, as in Ohio, where the Republican attorney general threatened on-campus protesters with an obscure anti-mask law. Now, with Democratic officials in California and New York also exploring mask bans, we're reminded that ableism is a bipartisan project.
Any mask ban is a dangerous prospect, as many regions are currently dealing with an increase in COVID cases, and these patterns are expected to continue multiple times a year. (Days after Los Angeles’s Democratic mayor Karen Bass said the city would look into a potential mask ban at protests, she contracted COVID.) A mask ban on the subway would endanger a public good that many people depend on — and have a right to — and the ability of high-risk people to participate in society, to be seen, and matter to the broader community.
Mask bans are a labor issue, as well. A resident of New York City, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their privacy, says, “I wear a mask and encourage others to do so because, prior to COVID, masks were a common form of PPE for indoor and outdoor airborne hazards at work.… The criminalization of masks is a criminalization of workers protecting ourselves…." The resident continues, "Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams supporting attempts to ban masks are the latest examples of New York State Democrats trying to destroy the lives of poor and working-class New Yorkers.”
Other New York lawmakers are also eyeing a potential mask ban. For example, proposed legislation in the New York State Senate includes an exemption for health reasons during a public health emergency, but President Biden’s administration ended the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency last year. Similar health exemptions in any of the proposed mask bans would likely be determined by law enforcement, meaning their enforcement could be subjective and biased against people of color. These bans could also force a person to disclose their disability in an attempt to convince a police officer they’re not breaking the law.
It seems that no amount of training will reduce law enforcement’s bias against people of color, especially disabled people of color. In response to these proposed policies, Eman Rimawi-Doster, an immunocompromised New Yorker and disability justice advocate, says she would tell Hochul and Adams: "Your words and actions never line up. All you want is power and votes.... I have no faith in either of you to make sure…disabled New Yorkers will actually have safety and security."
Proposed mask bans may vary, but I’d argue they are all steeped in discrimination based on race, disability, class, and religion. Many people wear masks to protect a loved one, protect themself from airborne pathogens, smoke, and air pollutants, and evade surveillance when practicing civil disobedience.
“Safety” is a key word used by people who mask and those who consider masking a criminal act. But it’s worth asking, who is kept safe by the state or by individual acts, and who is left out? “We keep us safe” is a phrase used by community organizers that view public safety as a collective endeavor. As Charis Hill, a disability activist, tells me, “I take medications that weaken my immune system, so I primarily wear a mask to protect myself, but I also wear it to protect others and to show that we are still in a pandemic. If mask bans become the reality, I have little hope that I'll ever be safe in public again.”
a Supreme Court ruling that allows cities to enforce bans on people sleeping outside in public spaces even when no adequate shelter is available, essentially criminalizing unhoused people;
another ruling by the Supreme Court that weakens the regulatory authority of federal agencies by allowing judges to more easily gut federal regulations, including those that protect the rights of disabled people, and, in turn, destabilize programs such as Medicaid and Medicare;
a bird flu outbreak, with 10 human cases in agricultural workers recently reported, has ignited fears about another potential pandemic, which health experts say the federal government is unprepared for;
another sharp rise in cases of COVID-19 caused by new variants, in regions such as the western United States and New York City;
and mask bans enacted or threatened in states such as North Carolina and Ohio.
As a high-risk disabled person who depends on others to keep me safe, I have written about the importance of masking, and I advocate for mask mandates in health care settings. But those individual efforts seem futile against the onslaught of proposed mask bans that would contribute to the spread of COVID and other illnesses, while also pushing high-risk people out of public spaces and protests, violating their right to assemble under the First Amendment.
There are days when I am overwhelmed with grief and rage at the regressive attitudes toward public health and disabled people. In my opinion, the ableist, fascistic, and eugenic nature of proposed mask bans under consideration in New York City and Los Angeles is bleak. But what is happening now is not new or surprising; the hate is more explicit, that’s all.
A disabled and chronically ill writer, who goes by @broadwaybabyto on social media, views masking as community care, saying she wears a “mask to protect others and show solidarity with all disabled and vulnerable people.… Many of us have sacrificed four and a half years of our lives, going to great lengths to preserve whatever health we have left.… As more and more COVID restrictions were dropped, masks remained as the single best accessibility tool disabled people had.… Taking that away…tells us you want us dead.… You don’t want us in your world. And it hurts.”
What is clear to me is that disabled people have never felt safe. Many of us view masking as a form of solidarity with workers, activists, and people of color all over the world fighting fascism and genocide. But mask bans send the message that it is a crime to be disabled. I think of people who have fought hard to stay relatively safe since early 2020, those who hang on a precipice that feels like it could fall at any moment. Some days I wonder what my breaking point will be.
Since July is Disability Pride month — or Disability Wrath month, more appropriately, as my friends and I call it — non-disabled people can do the following to ally with the disability community: Stop minimizing and denying the pandemic; talk about the pandemic in the present tense, because it’s not over; wear a mask (if you can), and contact your elected representatives if there is a proposed mask ban in your state or city. Most important, listen to and believe disabled people, for we are oracles who have much wisdom to share with the world while we are still here.
There are days when I am shocked that I am still alive. Like millions of disabled, chronically ill, and older people, I spend an extraordinary amount of effort just existing. Beyond the efforts to keep our bodies from falling apart, we face existential threats from a society that actively silences, diminishes, excludes, and eliminates us. The past few weeks have been full of particularly disturbing news with serious consequences for disabled people, including:
The Health Ministry in Gaza announced that more than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Israel-Hamas war started in October, while a group of UN independent experts said famine has spread across the strip;We can look back to historical examples such as the “ugly laws,” various ordinances across the United States that targeted poor and disabled people. San Francisco was the first city to pass an ordinance, in 1867, centered on begging, effectively preventing disabled people from being in public, especially those who appeared to be unsightly, physically disabled, or diseased.
According to Dr. Susan Schweik’s The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public, public health orders from the Board of Supervisors that “pathologized Chinese people as inherently diseased, maimed, deformed, defective, and infective, profoundly shaped the cityspace of San Francisco.” As a Chinese, disabled San Franciscan, I had to laugh, imagining how these ordinances would have applied to me.
These ugly laws disproportionately impacted people by race, gender, immigration status, and sexuality, Dr. Schweik explained, and influenced and were influenced by policies related to segregation, eugenics, and institutionalization. I offer that proposed mask bans are the new ugly laws.
Today, the mask is the unsightly marker of deviant individuals: the sick, the immunocompromised, the disabled, and the protester who wishes to keep their identity anonymous. (Many demonstrators at pro-Palestine marches have worn medical masks or other face coverings, both to protect their identity from authorities and to protect their health in large crowds.) We’re told such masked individuals threaten the moral order of society, and these bans are meant to keep the public “safe.”
In June, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she was considering a ban on wearing masks on the New York City subway system in response to what she called antisemitic attacks and "intimidating" behavior by masked individuals. She cited an incident wherein a group of protesters, some of whom wore face coverings, engaged in an anti-Zionist chant on the subway after a demonstration against the Israel-Hamas war. New York City Mayor Eric Adams suggested a mask ban on the subway and at protests, suggesting some wearers intend to break the law.
As Alessandra Aoife Muller-Thym, a queer, Jewish, disabled New Yorker, tells me, “As a grandchild of Shoah survivors, I find it abhorrent that the governor is using the safety of Jewish people as an excuse to support a mask ban.… This act is anti-Jewish. We don't want to be used as scapegoats for a mask ban that will not keep anyone safe, especially not Jewish people.”
Across the country, protests on college campuses have shaken leaders who are unsure how to handle such a groundswell of activism. Leaders in some states took the opportunity to go after student mask use, as in Ohio, where the Republican attorney general threatened on-campus protesters with an obscure anti-mask law. Now, with Democratic officials in California and New York also exploring mask bans, we're reminded that ableism is a bipartisan project.
Any mask ban is a dangerous prospect, as many regions are currently dealing with an increase in COVID cases, and these patterns are expected to continue multiple times a year. (Days after Los Angeles’s Democratic mayor Karen Bass said the city would look into a potential mask ban at protests, she contracted COVID.) A mask ban on the subway would endanger a public good that many people depend on — and have a right to — and the ability of high-risk people to participate in society, to be seen, and matter to the broader community.
Mask bans are a labor issue, as well. A resident of New York City, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their privacy, says, “I wear a mask and encourage others to do so because, prior to COVID, masks were a common form of PPE for indoor and outdoor airborne hazards at work.… The criminalization of masks is a criminalization of workers protecting ourselves…." The resident continues, "Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams supporting attempts to ban masks are the latest examples of New York State Democrats trying to destroy the lives of poor and working-class New Yorkers.”
Other New York lawmakers are also eyeing a potential mask ban. For example, proposed legislation in the New York State Senate includes an exemption for health reasons during a public health emergency, but President Biden’s administration ended the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency last year. Similar health exemptions in any of the proposed mask bans would likely be determined by law enforcement, meaning their enforcement could be subjective and biased against people of color. These bans could also force a person to disclose their disability in an attempt to convince a police officer they’re not breaking the law.
It seems that no amount of training will reduce law enforcement’s bias against people of color, especially disabled people of color. In response to these proposed policies, Eman Rimawi-Doster, an immunocompromised New Yorker and disability justice advocate, says she would tell Hochul and Adams: "Your words and actions never line up. All you want is power and votes.... I have no faith in either of you to make sure…disabled New Yorkers will actually have safety and security."
Proposed mask bans may vary, but I’d argue they are all steeped in discrimination based on race, disability, class, and religion. Many people wear masks to protect a loved one, protect themself from airborne pathogens, smoke, and air pollutants, and evade surveillance when practicing civil disobedience.
“Safety” is a key word used by people who mask and those who consider masking a criminal act. But it’s worth asking, who is kept safe by the state or by individual acts, and who is left out? “We keep us safe” is a phrase used by community organizers that view public safety as a collective endeavor. As Charis Hill, a disability activist, tells me, “I take medications that weaken my immune system, so I primarily wear a mask to protect myself, but I also wear it to protect others and to show that we are still in a pandemic. If mask bans become the reality, I have little hope that I'll ever be safe in public again.”
a Supreme Court ruling that allows cities to enforce bans on people sleeping outside in public spaces even when no adequate shelter is available, essentially criminalizing unhoused people;
another ruling by the Supreme Court that weakens the regulatory authority of federal agencies by allowing judges to more easily gut federal regulations, including those that protect the rights of disabled people, and, in turn, destabilize programs such as Medicaid and Medicare;
a bird flu outbreak, with 10 human cases in agricultural workers recently reported, has ignited fears about another potential pandemic, which health experts say the federal government is unprepared for;
another sharp rise in cases of COVID-19 caused by new variants, in regions such as the western United States and New York City;
and mask bans enacted or threatened in states such as North Carolina and Ohio.
As a high-risk disabled person who depends on others to keep me safe, I have written about the importance of masking, and I advocate for mask mandates in health care settings. But those individual efforts seem futile against the onslaught of proposed mask bans that would contribute to the spread of COVID and other illnesses, while also pushing high-risk people out of public spaces and protests, violating their right to assemble under the First Amendment.
There are days when I am overwhelmed with grief and rage at the regressive attitudes toward public health and disabled people. In my opinion, the ableist, fascistic, and eugenic nature of proposed mask bans under consideration in New York City and Los Angeles is bleak. But what is happening now is not new or surprising; the hate is more explicit, that’s all.
A disabled and chronically ill writer, who goes by @broadwaybabyto on social media, views masking as community care, saying she wears a “mask to protect others and show solidarity with all disabled and vulnerable people.… Many of us have sacrificed four and a half years of our lives, going to great lengths to preserve whatever health we have left.… As more and more COVID restrictions were dropped, masks remained as the single best accessibility tool disabled people had.… Taking that away…tells us you want us dead.… You don’t want us in your world. And it hurts.”
What is clear to me is that disabled people have never felt safe. Many of us view masking as a form of solidarity with workers, activists, and people of color all over the world fighting fascism and genocide. But mask bans send the message that it is a crime to be disabled. I think of people who have fought hard to stay relatively safe since early 2020, those who hang on a precipice that feels like it could fall at any moment. Some days I wonder what my breaking point will be.
Since July is Disability Pride month — or Disability Wrath month, more appropriately, as my friends and I call it — non-disabled people can do the following to ally with the disability community: Stop minimizing and denying the pandemic; talk about the pandemic in the present tense, because it’s not over; wear a mask (if you can), and contact your elected representatives if there is a proposed mask ban in your state or city. Most important, listen to and believe disabled people, for we are oracles who have much wisdom to share with the world while we are still here.