COVID Statement

In the interest of mass movement-building, Southern Vermont for Palestine seeks to enable everyone in our community to safely join and remain engaged in the struggle for justice in Palestine. This must include disabled, immunocompromised, and high risk people, who have been instrumental in liberation movements throughout history and experience heightened violence, marginality, and oppression as a result of ableism1. We are committed to building an accessible movement which refuses to replicate the systems which undergird the violence we are fighting.

We recognize Israel’s actions not only as mass murder and displacement, but as mass-disablement2, compounded by the systematic targeting of vital healthcare infrastructure. As activists in solidarity with the people of Palestine, we are called to interrogate the co-constitutive forces of ableism and settler-colonial violence. These systems operate in collaboration to form a logic whereby state actors are empowered to exclude, maim, incarcerate and kill populations deemed disposable to secure an exclusive future for a select population. These throughlines weave from the colonization of this continent, through Vermont’s eugenics movement, to the settlement/apartheid and genocide of Palestine, and to the COVID-19 pandemic as well.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that over seven million people have died of COVID worldwide3. In Palestine – where the occupying force of Israel delayed and denied access to COVID vaccines despite receiving international praise for record-setting vaccination rates for its own people4 -- transmission rates have increased dramatically since the current assault began in October5. In the United States, where over 100 million total cases have been reported, hospitalizations and deaths are disproportionately high among low-income, disabled, immigrant, Indigenous, Black and/or Latine people6. The CDC has estimated that 1 in 5 COVID cases results in new, long-term health issues7. And despite the hundreds of thousands of new cases that the WHO continues to report each month, the US government has stopped tracking cases, terminated free access to home tests, and refused to adequately subsidize Paxlovid/other treatments. These disastrous failures, among many others, have rendered the pandemic both a mass-disabling event – particularly of already marginalized people – and an exacerbating force on existing systems of exclusion and oppression targeting sick and disabled people.

To struggle in true solidarity with the people of Palestine demands that we incorporate anti-ableist analysis and praxis into our organizing. As one small piece of this commitment, we encourage COVID testing before and ask that masks be worn during all Southern Vermont for Palestine events and actions. Whenever possible, we will create both in-person and remote access to events and actions to provide a variety of ways to engage. This is part of a broader approach to maximize safety for all involved and protect our capacity to continue this work.

1. https://handicapcenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Encyclopedia-of-American-Disability-History.pdf (See page 1, “Ableism”)

2. https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2024/01/26/palestine-is-disabled/

3. https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/deaths?n=c

4. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/01/denying-covid19-vaccines-to-palestinians-exposes-israels-institutionalized-discrimination/

5. https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/01/1145327

6. https://peoplescdc.org/2023/02/14/preserve-and-expand-the-public-health-resources-under-the-covid-state-of-emergency/

7. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7121e1.htm?s_cid=mm7121e1_e&ACSTrackingID=USCDC_921-DM82414&ACSTrackingLabel=MMWR%20Early%20Release%20-%20Vol.%2071%2C%20May%2024%2C%202022&deliveryName=USCDC_921-DM82414#contribAff

Additional Resources

COVID Safety Resources:

What's Up with COVID and How to Protect Yourself: 2024 Edition (Zine) by Hazel Newlevant

The People's CDC

Why I Take COVID Precautions by Olivia Belknap

Long COVID Info Sheet by Olivia Belknap

Local resources:

Free at-home COVID tests are available at the Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro.

Recommended Reading on COVID, Disability and Palestine:

People with disabilities not spared by Israel’s war machine on Gaza Strip

The forgotten rights of Disabled Palestinians

Statement of Solidarity with Palestine from the ADJC

Why Palestinian Liberation Is Disability Justice

The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (book by Jasbir K. Puar)