COVID-19 RESPONSE DEMANDS

COVID-19 COMING TOGETHER VANCOUVER DEMANDS

COVID-19 is creating unprecedented interruptions to our day-to-day lives and poses a threat to many of our community members. We, as members of society, have a choice as to how we navigate our way forward. We can choose fear and division and toilet paper hoarding. Or we can choose to connect to share resources, support each other, show solidarity for healthcare workers and the vulnerable, build community, and amplify social movements fighting for critical access to healthcare, housing, and workers’ rights. We choose the latter.

This network operates on the unceded, traditional, ancestral, and occupied homelands of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Canada’s violent structures of settler colonialism and displacement have left many Indigenous people without access to stable housing, clean water, or consistent and culturally-informed healthcare. Indigenous folks are therefore disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. As COVID-19 unfolds, it has been highlighting the way pandemics unevenly impact different populations, such as migrants, racialized people, people with precarious work, poor people, housing-insecure people, disabled people, and seniors. Now, more than ever, it is important that we recognize these injustices and work to build networks of solidarity and support that centre vulnerable and targeted communities, and that reverse these inequities.

We understand mutual aid as a practice of caring for eachother and enacting transformative change through the liberatory process of building community and maintaining relationships of trust and solidarity. Importantly, mutual aid necessitates political action and requires us to refuse systems of oppression, hold our institutions to account, and demand justice. We are coming together to demand:

  1. Decolonization
  2. Healthcare for all
  3. No work obligations
  4. Public services for all
  5. Solidarity not policing

In writing these demands, we recognize that this movement is not about us—it’s about the collective power of a community that comes together, about the potential that each and every one of us has to contribute to improving the lives of those around us. This is the time to step up, show solidarity, and amplify social movements that have long been fighting for change that our communities need now more than ever. It is imperative that, in the middle of this health crisis, our governments are responsive to the needs of marginalized and working-class people, and act in a way that ensures workers’ rights, funding to public health initiatives, access to health care and childcare, proper funding to social supports, access to clean water, access to safe, dignified housing, and respect for Indigenous self-governance. Now is the time to build a society that is just, one that values human life more than corporate profits, and one that is grounded in community power and relationships of solidarity.

DEMANDS

COVID-19 COMING TOGETHER

These demands are inspired by and drawn from appeals by a broad range of grassroots organizations advocating for the interest of marginalized communities—this work has been going on for generations. We acknowledge and appreciate the work of COVID-19 Mutual Aid Solidarity Network in Seattle, and we recognize the Vancouver Queer Spoon Share, whose structure we have built on to create this network. In creating the demands listed in this document, we consulted and drew inspiration from the work of Tkaronto Mutual Aid and Caremongers Toronto.

1. Decolonization

So-called Canada is a settler colonial construct that is built on the systemic theft of Indigenous land, violence against Indigenous people, and erasure of Indigenous life practices and socio-legal traditions. Indigenous people are particularly at risk to COVID-19 due to the colonial state’s failure to provide clean water, good housing, and adequate, safe, and culturally-relevant health infrastructure. We also recognize that colonial systems have used disease spread to enact genocide against Indigenous peoples, and that Canadian health systems have long perpetuated violence against Indigenous peoples and sought to eradicate Indigenous health practices. We further recognize that the safety and wellbeing of Indigenous communities is inseparable from the advancement of Indigenous sovereignty. We oppose colonial violence in all its forms, and stand in solidarity with Indigenous land defenders everywhere. We keep our eyes to the frontlines, and follow the leadership of Indigenous people.

We demand:

  • Adequate healthcare and testing kits for all Indigenous communities
  • Medical equipment and supplies for all Indigenous communities
  • Support for Indigenous community-led care and mutual aid practices over colonial social services
  • Clean water for all Indigenous communities
  • The removal of the RCMP from Wet’suwet’en territories, cancellation of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline, and an immediate stoppage of work on the Coastal GasLink Pipeline
  • Immediate stoppage of work on the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project and the Site C Dam
  • The shutdown of industrial work camps
  • Full implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
  • Support for community empowerment initiatives to stop violence against Indigenous women, girls, Trans and Two Spirit people, which constitutes a genocide against Indigenous people

2. Healthcare for All

It is clear that recent neoliberal cuts to public healthcare and decades of undermining our frontline workers have created the conditions for this pandemic to overwhelm our healthcare system at a time when our infrastructure is already strapped. Meanwhile, Indigenous communities, undocumented workers, refugees, migrants, disabled people, queer and trans people, and racialized people continue to endure inadequate access and care within our systems. We understand healthcare as a human right, and call for it to be treated as such.

We demand:

  • Proper funding of healthcare, including ensuring adequate beds, ventilators, protective equipment, testing facilities
  • Provide protective equipment and proper funding to home support staff and family caregivers
  • Access without fear—regardless of migration or disability status—to free, universal, and expanded healthcare, including access to testing
  • Resources for healthcare services to be conducted safely, including resources for them move to online platforms and guidelines for safe in-person care, and the relaxation of regulations around refilling prescription medications
  • Proper funding for mental health and crisis lines
  • Support for people in long-term care facilities and hospital wards, including expanding access to phone and video calls, and exceptions to blanket visitation rules for those who require additional support to ensure safety from potential abuse
  • Accessible public health communications in multiple languages, including ASL/LSQ, and in plain language
  • Regulation of insurance industries to prohibit the exclusion from health benefits due to impact from COVID-19 measures

3. No Work Obligations

There should be no “business as usual” during a pandemic. We want to be able to heed the calls from medical experts to safely physically distance ourselves without worrying about bosses, rent, or basic needs. We call for an end to the hoarding of wealth by a small percentage of Canadians, and instead demand the redistribution of wealth to tend to the needs of those who are most impacted by this pandemic. We have more than enough to lift everyone into decent work, rest, leisure, and safety. We deserve purposeful work that is in line with a liveable planet.

We demand:

  • Paid sick days
  • Funding for all workers losing wages, including gig workers, self-employed workers, part time, seasonal workers, and those with precarious migration status
  • Increased welfare and disability funding, matching the level of funding provided to workers losing wages
  • Hazard pay and protective gear for frontline workers of the pandemic—including but not limited to healthcare workers, grocery store employees, support care workers, drivers, cleaners, TransLink employees, and those working in the Downtown Eastside
  • Universal Basic Income Guarantee for all, regardless of migration status

4. Public Services for All

It is clear that inequitable access to the basic essentials of life—housing, water, heat, and food—is making the most targeted in our communities even more vulnerable to COVID-19. We deserve to live in a world where society is organized around the needs of the many, not the greed of a few.

We demand:

  • Access to food, housing, and other services and supports that are essential for poor, disabled, racialized and other marginalized communities, people with precarious migration status, and youth ageing out of foster care
  • The cancellation of rent, utility, mortgage, and loan payments
  • A moratorium on evictions and utility shut offs  
  • The cancellation of student debt
  • Access to heating, cooling, and clean running water for all
  • The immediate provision of safe and adequate housing for homeless people
  • Free childcare
  • Meal provision to students who regularly rely on school nutrition programs for food security
  • Emergency shelters that can remain open 24 hours a day with three meals a day. Provide 24 hour access to soap, hand sanitizer, water, showers, and restrooms.
  • Free public transit
  • Safe, adequate and survivor-centric support for those facing domestic, sexualized or gendered violence

5. Solidarity not Policing

We refuse any measures that marginalize and stigmatize people on the basis of geography, race, class, housing status, and more. We condemn Canada’s ongoing history of racist immigration and border policies, and we recognize that policing and border militarization in so-called Canada arose for the violent surveillance of Black and Indigenous people, and directly perpetuates white supremacy and settler colonialism. Rather than ensuring safety and wellbeing, increasing policing endangers people; particularly Indigenous people, Black people, other people of colour, trans people, queer people, disabled people, poor people, sex workers, drug users, and other marginalized groups who are treated much more violently by law enforcement. Additionally, we understand that border control and mass quarantines are proven to be ineffective at addressing epidemics, and that those displaced or immobilized by state order often face increased risk of infection. We believe in solidarity and community, not policing and surveillance. We believe in the autonomy of all people, including those sick with or suspected to be sick with COVID-19.

We demand:

  • An end to border controls and increased militarization in response to COVID-19
  • An end to immigration enforcement, detentions and deportations, including to the deportation of asylum seekers
  • Mass clemency, and a release of all incarcerated people
  • Free phone calls and other forms of contact for incarcerated people
  • Humane health care for incarcerated people who test positive for COVID-19, and no solitary confinement, as solitary confinement constitutes torture
  • The decriminalization of sex work
  • The decriminalization and legalization of drug use
  • The creation of new safe(r) injection sites
  • Support and supplies for existing safe(r) injection sites
  • A safe supply of drugs

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