WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th March, 2020) ASHINGTON, March 19 (Sputnik), Barrington M. Salmon - US advocacy groups have been forced to suspend protests and adapt to a new reality in the face of the global threat posed by the coronavirus outbreak, human rights activists told Sputnik.
On Wednesday, the US coronavirus death toll surpassed the century mark as the Trump administration unveiled economic relief packages. Meanwhile, many US Federal, state and local governments have shut down businesses, schools and ordered residents to stay indoors.
"It has certainly changed everything. We no longer have the ability to protest," Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin said. "Recently we were in lawmakers' offices in Congress and protesting at the Saudi embassy and the Treasury. Now we can't do any of that. The news is consumed by coronavirus."
Code Pink is a women-led grassroots organization working to end US wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and other economic and social justice programs.
Benjamin said she and other members of Code Pink "were everywhere" in recent weeks: organizing, protesting, demonstrating and confronting lawmakers where they work.
But as the novel coronavirus has spread to 50 states and the District of Colombia, the veteran activist said she and her colleagues have had to adapt and adjust to a new reality brought on by this global pandemic.
Benjamin said Code Pink was preparing to observe "a whole rollout" around the anniversary of the start of the Iraq War which began on March 20, 2003.
In addition, she was supposed to be in Bolivia now as part of a delegation on a pre-election visit, and she was scheduled to speak before the European parliament. The global pandemic changed all that.
Jacqui Luqman and Netfa Freeman, both veteran DC-based activists and organizers, said since the authorities have prohibited large public gatherings, they and their colleagues have begun to shift their focus to mutual aid.
"With the organization I'm involved in, all of our efforts are focused around mutual aid," said Luqman, who has worked for more than 20 years as a racial and social justice organizer. "We're helping poor people who can't afford to take off work, assisting those without resources to get food, and organized food trees and phone trees with members of my church to check in with people. We're also teaching people about the unequal system we're in. If we had a government who didn't put profits over the needs of people, we wouldn't have to be doing this."
Luqman's grassroots political and community activism immersed her in protests in support of ACT UP, AIDS research, and gay rights and protests with Trans-Africa in the effort to end apartheid in South Africa.
Freeman agreed that the social safety net that should protect the most vulnerable has been shredded.
He echoed a commonly expressed sentiment that a silver lining from this virus is the reshaping of personal and family relationships, more attention on each other and the building of community.
"We're going towards mutual aid which is what we need anyway," said Freeman, the coordinator for events of projects at the Institute of Policy Studies. "We have to refine ways of providing aid to each other, organize help for the elderly and vulnerable, gather supplies, find ways of safely helping the elderly or those with compromised immune systems."
Some groups, Freeman added, have created hotlines for people to call for help.
"Usually we fall through the cracks but Black Lives Matter-DC and other people are trying to fill the gap that the state doesn't," he said.
Some of the activists said it appears as if things will get worse before they get better as projections from medical experts are for the numbers of infected Americans to grow, for millions to get sick and unknown numbers will die.
While they wish no one to die, they said, they hope the presence of the coronavirus will force a restructuring and reexamination by Americans of how they live.
"This comes from problems of the US healthcare system, a disregard for Mother Nature, and building a society that is prone to these types of problems," said Benjamin. "Maybe we will take money from the Pentagon budget and put more money in healthcare. There are many ways to change it from negative to positive.
The next couple of months, the Code Pink co-founder added, will likely be negative with a crackdown on freedoms and liberties and the possible deaths of the poorly-treated elderly.
"But we can change this into positives: look at the way we live and want to live, have conversations about that. With time together, there could be lots of changes in people's personal lives," Benjamin said.
Luqman expressed concerns about how individualistic Americans are and warned that the virus does not care about borders.
"We're going to see infections and deaths all over the country. In the coming weeks, people will start to respond. This is what will get people to stop seeing themselves as individuals, recognizing that this government owes us better. That we're a community. When it comes to public policy, healthcare and the way the government keeps people safe, hopefully people will see capitalism for the problem it is," Luqman said.
