On a September cloudy day, two anti-maskers were confronted by a disabled militant for enacting the lethal violence of spreading a virus that has been known to be The Major Killer of disabled people in this decade (source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09-covid-deadlier-intellectual-developmental-disabilities.html). One revealed how most of their kind are fucking cowards, and ran away. The other masked up, not willing to throw down for their “right” to be unmasked. This was an action of community defense, making the pharmacy safer for disabled people to receive their bivalent booster.
This was an act of resistance to the genocide taking place against disabled people. In this counter-insurgency effort to resurrect a mirage of 2019, a time before the 3rd precinct burned and before many pigs got their asses kicked in one of the largest rebellions ever, a push is occurring to throw disabled people under the bus for the sake of pretending the pandemic is over. The state and bourgeoisie have been peddling propaganda that the highest form of play comes not from disrupting the social order but rather from governed venues of “fun” such as bars, restaurants, and other places that these days serve as vectors of mass infection. Taking ques from other genocides, a cross-class collaboration is occurring to eliminate the disabled population, a demographic that is overwhelmingly chronically unemployed (Source: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/research-evaluation/statistics). Our masks just need to have enough of an improper seal for us to succumb to the virus in a crowd of naked-face people. Many of us have perished and are perishing, fuck that!
We are tired of this ableist violence. We see all these once “pandemic serious” people now unmasked at the concerts and in the grocery stores, making public space lethally unsafe for us disabled people. We see all of you partaking in this mass viral spread, one which the crypto fascist Rochelle Walensky of the CDC said in January 2022 how it was encouraging that people with 4+ co-morbidities (disabled people) were the main ones dying from the virus. The vaccines have not been enough to protect many disabled people from death via Omicron and onward, and public space has become less and less accessible for us (source: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/covid19-and-other-leading-causes-of-death-in-the-us/). We are tired of the eugenics, of this spectacle of “normal” fueled by the blood of disabled people. It is time for retaliation!
It is easy and fun to confront anti-maskers. All you need is a threat assessment, a self defense tool in case things get hairy, and a safety plan. It is best to do this in a location where it is easy to flee and where the risk of being 86’d is not a big deal (the writer never got banned from anywhere for this by the way). Liberals and progressives are the easiest to confront for they are not willing to throw down for their “right” to be unmasked, and often are the biggest cowards. Chuds and fascists are riskier to deal with, and should probably be confronted with a crew instead of alone; however, removing them from any space only benefits the liberation struggle. Either way, giving a middle finger to that participant of the ableist genocide or yelling at them is truly exhilarating. Going beyond that is even more awesome! As long as they find out that their ableist lethal violence will be answered, whether they mask or fucking flee, the genocidal machine of eugenics weakens bit by bit! Just try to avoid catching charges, as a militant is more effective when not caged.
It is an act of Joy and community defense to confront anti-maskers. It shatters the illusion that masking is an “individual choice”, unveiling its true impact as a communal action with communal effects. It shreds the false equivalence of unmasked vs masked, and then what is shown is an action that is lethally violent to disabled people and one that helps disabled people live. It punches through the cardboard cutout that is the mirage of the “return to 2019”, showing that we the marginalized are able to redirect history from the path of death to that of life! It pierces the propaganda that dining at restaurants, drinking at bars, or attending concerts unmasked are somehow more than pressure release valves to maintain working class complicity, and demonstrate that real play is the entertaining act of disrupting the oppressive social order! Joy is not sacrificing disabled lives to pretend the COVID is “over”. No. Joy arises as a knife against the spectacle and hierarchical domination, ripping at the oppressions that maintain “normal”. Its a liberatory action to counter the anti-masker’s violence, for it allows disabled people to exist in physical space and access their needs without the risk of death. It is not policing, as policing is about controlling people to maintain systems of oppression. Liberatory action, Joy, attacks these unjust power dynamics and bring power to the oppressed. Masking is community defense, but the strongest community defense always includes an element of offense.
The genocide of disabled people will only end when we fight back. Various Mapuche communities have managed to persist through resisting state and extractivist violence, by attacking infrastructure of environmental degradation as well reclaiming stolen land. Many Kurdish communities have been surviving genocide from the Turkish state by nurturing communal care structures and fighting back. What is going on right now for disabled people is a genocide through making basic needs and most space physical inaccessible via COVID spread. The state never gave a fuck about us, and that truth is clear by how hard it is to get on SSI and how little it pays. We can only save ourselves, push for life, by resistance. Confronting anti-maskers helps. Distroing masks helps, especially to populations like houseless people who often do not have access to high quality masks (the writer has found that houseless people are generally very receptive to receiving masks, and has rarely faced rejection on that front while doing direct aid work). Getting your local mutual aid group to follow Mask Bloc’s lead and cancel their bar fundraiser helps too. In fact, doing something about bars, restaurants, and other superspreader sites is key for they are locations that contribute to our deaths. Their violence must not be met un-retaliated. We need not only to attack but to develop communal care structures to keep us alive, as the strongest movements have strong care networks that support and nurture its most militant members through the hardships. The killings will only end when we set our foot down and say no more! Lets turn this genocide into a social struggle for disability justice!
Resistance is Life
May Eugenics Die, and All Disabled People Live + Thrive!
– Anonymous
Submitted anonymously