In the early hours of January 29th, some disabled anarchist attacked Worker’s Tap through tagging it and damaging a window. Due to the bullet-proof glass, the window’s damage would only consist of small dents. However, multiple phrases were thrown up. A circle “(A)” to signify that this was an anarchist who did this action. A “161” to call out that it was fascists forces whom originally paved the path of COVID as a genocide since April 2020 through the blood of primarily Black and Indigenous disabled people, a road of bones which now many liberals and ableist anarchists goose-stomp on in collaboration with the fascists to maintain a “normal” for keeping bars and other viral-friendly entertainment operating at the expense of disabled lives. Finally, “COVID Kills!” was written twice to address how this bar inherently operates with unmitigated COVID spread, murdering disabled people in the process; its funnily hypocritical that the place has bullet-proof windows to protect patrons from CHUDS but no air ventilation inside the building to reduce COVID spread. The lethal violence which Worker’s Tap, along with every bar, restaurant with indoor dining, club, etc, enact on disabled people is absolutely unacceptable and needs to be fought back against.
This action was also in retaliation to the event organizers in the anarchist scene who contribute to the COVID pandemic by organizing super-spreader gatherings that, in the end, lead to more disabled people dying. Whether a fundraiser at a coffee shop or at a punk show with no mask requirements, these actions contribute to the ongoing mass death of disabled people going on right now via unmitigated COVID spread. In a country that has always sought to eliminate disabled people since its founding due to their bodyminds being deemed as “unproductive for labor”, the COVID pandemic has been weaponized as a genocide against disabled people through the fascist measure of treating COVID as “endemic”, the concealing of the violent impact which refusing to mask carries, and the mass rejection of planning social events with meaningful COVID safety measures. At its core, COVID “endemicity” is a fascist political project that seeks for eternal genocide against disabled people. It is for this reason why the COVID pandemic will be referred to as the COVID genocide for the rest of this communique. While every genocide is spearheaded by the state and/or other authoritarian organizations, they cannot be carried out alone without large segments of the country’s proletariat collaborating in the effort. The Indigenous genocide throughout Turtle Island needed large segments of the white proletariat to plunder land and transform it into private property as a vital element to maintain hegemonic white supremacist rule. The Shoah went as far as it did because of the non-Jewish proles whom sided with Hitler and the bourgeoisie, snitching on Jews in hiding or enacting zero resistance to the concentration camps. The COVID genocide is the same in needing proletariat support to persist, to massacre disabled people by attending super-spreader events and refusing to mask with the heinous excuse that the fascist project of “endemicity” is somehow “inevitable” or is somehow immune to being defeated by grassroots resistance. Events at consumption sites designed for eating and/or drinking, as well at “mask optional” places, all contribute to the COVID genocide no matter if funds go to “good causes”.
For too long disabled people have been treated at best belittled and at worst slain. Our accessibility needs are treated as afterthoughts and burdens, even though they Literally Keep Us Alive! This capitalist society have always hated us, especially BIPOC disabled people as medical racism and the state is especially brutal in its various racialized ableisms. The intense difficulty to acquire an income when your bodymind can’t work a job and when doctor’s are unwilling to support you getting on Supplemental Security Income (which the state has made it a grueling long process to acquire) is why so many disabled people end up living on the streets. And the escalating criminalization of street life has thrown too many disabled people into the prison industrial complex where they are treated worse than literal shit. And the COVID genocide is exponentially intensifying the eugenicist motions of this society. The sweeps are becoming more intense and COVID safety gear has been getting harder to acquire if lacking an income. Meanwhile, the absence of ventilation in prisons has made COVID flow like a lethal chemical in a gas chamber: impossible to dodge especially with the lack of COVID safety equipment and the fact that COVID is as contagious as measles and attacks the immune system in the same manner as HIV. Too many disabled people have been dying while incarcerated or on the streets as state violence grows whether through peddling COVID minimization or via heightening police brutality. And its has gotten worse as so many people whom are able to mask have been instead embracing anti-masking practices, all while attending super-spreader after super-spreader event with no safety measures in action which ultimately cause more disabled people to die. The infliction of COVID from these “fun” activities end up leading that virus to the streets and prisons where so many disabled people are forced to live in, making their lives worse or terminating them altogether. These excuses that engaging in activities which contribute to the COVID genocide are merely “acts of practicing autonomy” are no different than fascists arguing for free speech to be oppressors or parents arguing for their “autonomy” to determine their kid’s gender: they are all justifications for the subjugation of the people they marginalize. Disabled people are being murdered in mass right now and its getting worse.
This is a call to fightback against the COVID genocide. These periods of mass slaughter have only been mitigated or halted altogether when the people of the targeted demographic fight back and flip it into a social struggle for liberation. Right now disabled people are cornered, and the only way we will get out of this corner is through pushing back against those oppressing us. This could come in a variety of forms: whether mutual aid to keep disabled people alive, giving anti-maskers shit for their ableist violence, shutting down super-spreader sites and events by any means which stops the COVID spread, etc. We should stop playing nice to the people whom are willing to kill us for beers and yuppy indoor dining, because playing nice has never won any person freedom. The COVID pandemic is a genocide with no bystanders, it is about time we give hell to those on the side of eugenics no matter the state of their bodymind or their political ideology.
AMAM (Anti-Maskers Are Murderers) 151 (Anti-Eugenics Action)!
Disability Justice Now and Forever!
– Anonymous
P.S.: Rip Tort and solidarity with the Weelaunee Forest Defense. This action would had never took place if not for their inspiring militancy. As one of them beautifully said: its either we goose-stomp into the apocalypse or fight back, and in that process of fighting back create a new future of life and liberation.
submitted anonymously