What is it about?

This article was written during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, a moment that was at once bleak and lit with possibility. The lockdowns coincided, not only with an intensification of racial profiling that partly occured in the name of COVID safety, but also with the biggest global protests against racism of all times. Grounding itself in the activism of multiply marginalized communities in North America and Europe, the article argues that as in previous crises, queer, antiracist and other self-organized movements are leading the development of new societal visions and norms that bear the potential to transform safety for all.

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Why is it important?

This is a moment where visions of transformation are being formulated with increased clarity. In the autonomous spaces of mutual aid and direct action emerging on the conjuncture of pandemic and protest, marvellous grounds appear where new possibilities of care and of collectivity are being rehearsed that open up worlds beyond racial capitalism.

Perspectives

We need an urban environmental justice that is neither technophobic nor punitive of those taking back public space. Where we nurture safer ways of leaving the privatized moulds that capitalism has designed for us, as visionary cyborgs or as bodies that engage in the necessary risk of commingling. Where our children grow up loving bats and people and learning to share space as interdependent earthlings. Where our youth teach us how to take down drones and hate pages and grow foods that withstand droughts. As this moment reminds us, our methods must be as queerly expansive as our dreams. They require us to be both safe and promiscuous.

Jin Haritaworn
York University, Toronto

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: #NoGoingBack: Queer leaps at the intersection of protest and COVID-19, Journal of Environmental Media, August 2020, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/jem_00033_1.
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