ABOLITION
EVERYDAY SH!T: THE PILOT ISSUE
Content Notice: disability justice, health justice, environmental racism, mutual aid
Image ID: Pictured is the Philly Breathes logo. The logo has a Black person on the left holding hands with a Brown person on the right. The Black person is wearing a light purple tank top and dark purple pants. The Brown person is wearing a long sleeved medium pink shirt and a magenta colored pants. Both people are wearing white masks. Above their clasped hands is another white mask. The word "Philly" is arched above the two people and the word "Breathes" arches below their feet. The logo has a light pink background.
“Hey. A needs 50 KN95s, black would be ideal if you got em and 100 duckbills, drop off on their porch, can you text them? hey S can pick up at your place! 215- xxx-xxxx, confirm they're requesting 30 auras. Do we want to meet this week or are we all too tired? I’m joining from the Megabus on my phone so I might crap out. Does anyone have the key to the storage unit? How many masks are at your place?”
In September 2022, 60 Minutes aired a clip of Biden saying, “while we still have a problem with COVID, [...] the pandemic is over.” Nobody contested what he said, or what he meant. In Philadelphia, the residents of Rittenhouse Square and University City had already begun their wave of unmasking. The airing of the 60 Minutes show pushed this wave further into the peripheries of Philadelphia.
By the spring of 2023, the Omicron variant of COVID-19 had surged many times, causing long term illness and death. Instead of doing any public health, the CDC staunchly blamed the surges and deaths on “the unvaccinated.” But the propaganda had worked. People associated masking with sadness, death, and isolation rather than mitigation practices designed to keep people alive and together. An awareness of “the unvaccinated” being children, or people unable to vaccinate due to medical, financial, or other reasons, was nowhere to be seen. Since “anti-vax” sentiment was only associated with right wingers, legitimate questioning about the efficacy of a new vaccine against a global airborne pandemic was dismissed and repressed. People wanted to be with each other, especially during the holidays, which meant they did not want to think about COVID-19 or the mitigations it would still require. When disabled people warned against mass infection, they were (and are still) seen as conspiracy theorist right wingers. In our homes and on our screens, we watched this new reality unfold in horror – people embraced repeated infection as a new normal that allowed them their personal freedoms, and in turn practiced mass collective abandonment of themselves and their most vulnerable.
Philly Breathes started with a desire to connect through mutual aid. As the horror unfolded, two things dawned on many of us at the same time: 1) many people who needed high-quality respirators and air purifiers could not afford them, and 2) information and resources about COVID-19, respirators, and air purifiers online was not reaching people evenly. In a living room, on an exhausted spring evening, a family of queer, migrant disabled people sent out a message in some local chats. “Hey, we would like to come together with a few people to form a sort of mask bloc. We would like to focus on distributing masks and educational resources, with a focus on Philadelphia’s BIPOC communities. Would you like to join us?”
So started a chapter of slow, intentional, disabled organizing in mid-2023. Many of us have said some version of “we organize slow, and thank god” at different moments. We are a collective founded and led by Black and brown disabled people in Philadelphia. Many of us were sick and disabled before 2020. Many of us have long COVID. One of our members had been in disability justice for fifteen years; others are just beginning. Many of us have been doing disability justice work in our lives and activism, whether we called it that or not, for a long time. Some of us have been pushed out of other organizing spaces and social spaces because of people’s unwillingness to wear a face mask, grapple with how disability shows up in everyday life, and struggle with the political questions it brings up.
We wanted to distribute masks, other personal protective equipment (PPE), and popular education materials (e.g. zines) about why COVID is still real and a thing, getting your mask to fit right, masking with protective hairstyles, wildfire safety, and how to make a rapid test work as well as possible. Our goal is to reach the people who need free masks and information most: low income Black and brown people in Philly, many of whom are disabled/chronically ill.
We also wanted to be different from other mask blocs. We knew that the focus had to be on the air that we breathe, and how safe and clean air was being systematically robbed from us. Philadelphia is not new to poisoned air – environmental racism and the resulting medical neglect has impacted generations of Philadelphians. We wanted to invoke a sense of community that offered respite and slowness, and reflected the community’s power back to them. We share the air. Caring that we have clean air is a shared community struggle. Every individual taking a step towards it is a seed in the community. We knew that we could seed change in our communities. We just had to reach them and be patient. The rest would ripple out.
“We wanted to invoke a sense of community that offered respite and slowness, and reflected the community’s power back to them. We share the air. Caring that we have clean air is a shared community struggle. Every individual taking a step towards it is a seed in the community. We knew that we could seed change in our communities. We just had to reach them and be patient. The rest would ripple out.”
Disability justice people in 2010 created the idea of “collective access.” Instead of how access is often thought of (as something non-disabled people give to disabled people, in a model of “caring for the cripples” or charity, often as an afterthought that disabled people are expected to be grateful for) they wanted to put out an idea of access as something we collectively create together. In collective access disabled and chronically ill people are not just passive recipients of care – we create and give care and access to each other and broader communities. This is a principle that underlies how we work in Philly Breathes.
Looking around, we knew that Philadelphia is unique because generational Philadelphians already embody collective access. This is a city where many everyday people – not just middle class transplants – never stopped masking on SEPTA, where people are not surprised by systems breaking down or never working in the first place, where people share what they have. We grabbed as many masks as we could from a now-shuttered non-profit and worked with a community partner to store them.We spread the word through local chats, walked up to people on SEPTA wearing blue surgical masks and offered them KN95s, and tabled to meet community members. “We can give you however many masks you want,” we would chant like a mantra. “You have to find us on Instagram. It’s Philly Breathes, you know, like breathing.” And we would take a deep breath to illustrate. “It’s all free, tell your friends!”
And they told their friends! A lot of the time people wear blue medical masks because those are cheap and easy to find, and when we’re able to provide higher quality masks, like KN95s, duckbills or N95s, people wear them. People reaching out to us are often disenfranchised in multiple ways. They are poor, racialized, of marginalized genders, unhoused or precariously housed, caregivers, elders, and disabled. We build relationships with them, and they tell us about what they need and their concerns. Internally, we build slowly and we are honest about this externally. Many of our community members appreciate us for our slowness and our transparency.
Disability justice is not an academic or abstract framework or a bunch of empty statements. It is the real everyday work of getting our people (which includes us) what we need. That includes masks, information about what masks work on faces with broad nose bridges or big or small shapes, how to wear masks without breaking your hair, how to care for yourself and your family during a smoke or toxic air emergency and detox after. In a world increasingly pushing people into daily isolation, the daily acts of getting people those things break isolation and are real acts of solidarity, relationship building, and love.
When air emergencies hit, we pop up on local Signal threads and social media reminding folks we can get them masks for free. Air emergencies both happen in a newly intense way due to climate change fueled wildfire smoke – whether it's from Canadian fires or fires in Jersey or New York – and is a regular thing in Philly, where the air quality is regularly in “moderate or yellow” on the AQI (Air Quality Index) chart, asthma is common, and where bad air coming from tire fires or travelling east from Pittsburgh is a regular occurrence. When the plane crashed into Northeast Philly, we drove up in P100s and tried to give out masks. We make cute Instagram reels about how to make an air purifier from stuff you can get at Home Depot.
We distro at local gatherings like the monthly zine fest in Clark Park. We take a special focus and joy in talking to other Black and brown people about masking. Sometimes we know that people have different emerging needs so we even fundraise for things like drinking water. People know us and say “hey” when we run into them. We're a small, disabled, multiracial group of everyday people.
OUR “THEORY OF CHANGE”
We find it important to caution our readers to not treat the crisis of “COVID-19” as a unique chapter of United States history. The United States is born out of genocide of the Indigeneous people of Turtle Island and the Black people stolen from their homes in Africa. Disease is a weapon the United States government has wielded innumerable times. The arc of COVID-19 is simply a chapter of it. Philly Breathes situates our mutual aid work in the long arc of resisting this genocidal government.
Philly Breathes recognizes that the air we breathe is laden with airborne viruses (plural), allergens, smoke, and more. Even before the current rise of facism, factors of environmental racism have meant that Black and brown populations are primarily disabled and killed. Air is an inalienable human need and Philly Breathes’ mutual aid work is to provide resources that keep us safe and aid in building networks of care.
In engaging this, Philly Breathes does the double work of keeping people alive and countering the very propaganda a genocidal government forwards. The United States government says: “go back to normal” and Philly Breathes’ work asks: “why?” Philadelphians have already known the impact of fumes from refineries, tire shops, paint factories and more before 2020. Our work helps us ask: “is the normal worth going back to?” The United States government says: “only the elderly and the immunocompromised will be impacted” and Philly Breathes counters: “well, that’s us and even if we weren’t the elderly and immunocompromised, why should we leave our own behind in isolation? Why should we accept that our most vulnerable and our most disabled are not valuable simply because they cannot labor? Why should we leave our own kin to die?”
As more information emerges about how we keep ourselves safe from poisoned air, Philly Breathes asks: “why not engage with this information? Why not mitigate both our individual and collective risk? Why not practice safety with one another when we know how?” When the CDC says: “it is individual risk assessment and everyone doesn’t need to participate,” Philly Breathes counters: “the responsibility of communal safety belongs to every single individual in said community. Why let the most disabled of us carry the burden of their own protection by themselves? Why not share the burden altogether? Is that not community defense? Is that not mutual aid?”
Philly Breathes asks: “is it not the work of everyday abolition to fiercely and visibly commit to the protection of our most vulnerable and our most disabled, regardless of the “capitalist value” they bring to the table? When we commit to the continued everyday care of our most disabled and vulnerable, do we not automatically destabilize a genocidal empire? Does the abolition of a settler colonial empire not necessitate the presence of those who cannot and will not fit into the white supremacist, capitalist molds?”
“When we commit to the continued everyday care of our most disabled and vulnerable, do we not automatically destabilize a genocidal empire?”
People often find these questions destabilizing. Often, it is because they have not engaged with the work and theory of Disability Justice, especially as discussed by Black and Indigenous peoples and scholars. After all, even people who understand the United States government to be Not GoodTM have an inherent trust in institutions like the CDC and other scientific, medical, and public health institutions. And yet, even as more people report disability, each institution forwards the same narrative: that COVID is over and we don’t need masks. In popular media, the only people questioning these institutions are fascist themselves, hell bent on taking away what little safety has been carved out by decades of labor rights and civil rights organizing. If you, A Bona Fide LeftistTM, also questions these institutions, are you in bed with the enemy? If you question these institutions, are you rejecting scientific inquiry?
Philly Breathes invites you to examine the role scientific inquiry has played in the genocide and enslavement of peoples across centuries and continents. We invite you to consider how important critique of scientific inquiry is to the work of abolishing an Empire held up by the veneer of “scientific and technological advancement.”
As you think through this, we also invite you to examine your assumptions about what mutual aid is and what surviving the oncoming collapse looks like.
In a world that is becoming scarier by the minute, mutual aid is necessary. Philly Breathes invites you to understand mutual aid not as something you “give” to someone else but as the work of fierce commitment to each other practiced everyday, with every breath. Regardless of your own risk, regardless of what you believe is in the invisible air or not, are you committed to the safety and protections of the vulnerable around you? Then wear a mask. Even if you’re not breathing out virus, the psychological impact of seeing someone else committed to community safety has a ripple effect. It inspires courage and strength in an increasingly harrowing world. It situates us in our own power and helps us build connections of care with each other. It reminds us that all is not yet lost, that resistance is not futile and just one consistent action can open up terrains of complex possibilities. So why not practice wearing a mask? Why not model community care? Why not go about your everyday life wearing a simple, effective, and practical accessory that decries the propaganda and the actions of a genocidal government? Isn’t this where the revolution starts? Not only when enough of us understand our conditions, but when enough of us take action in our everyday lives?
“Isn’t this where the revolution starts? Not only when enough of us understand our conditions, but when enough of us take action in our everyday lives?”
Philly Breathes invites you into this action of solidarity – not only through declarative statements but by also offering tangible resources. The link is on our Instagram @phillybreathes and we offer various kinds of masks for free. Try them and consider: just as you would practice for a marathon, so should you practice for the revolution.
As ecological collapse becomes inevitable, the mask becomes a necessary tool of individual and communal safety. If you are out of practice wearing it, it is time to start practicing again. If you are ashamed that you put your mask down, tomorrow is the perfect day to pick it up again. After all, the worst revolutionaries are the ones who refuse to own their mistakes and learn from them. As you build up the muscle to resist the Empire, why not practice this necessary skill too? Why not practice the skill of working through your own shame, grief, and rage to join in on an everyday revolutionary practice?
Nobody is coming to save us; we keep us safe. This is not just a feel-good slogan. It is an everyday practice of fierce commitment and solidarity, an act of everyday abolition. Wear a mask.
Philly Breathes is a mutual aid group distributing resources for safety from air pollution in so-called Philadelphia (Lenapehoking). Air pollution includes airborne viruses like SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19), allergens, smoke, and more. Air is a fundamental human need, and our work is to keep us and our communities safe. For more, please visit: https://linktr.ee/PhillyBreathes