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No one is going to take this piece, but who wants to hear about what it's like to live while constantly worrying about your income, your safety, the health and mortality of your family members, your access to housing, pandemic or not? This turns into a policy reflection:
Truth is, the new realities for some people (losing work, becoming more vulnerable to death or disease), are the everyday realities of so many people (who are unhoused, underpaid, precariously employed, ill, have a disability... ) and while I am seeing some policy responses...
ultimately, no one is talking about how these changes will be sustained if/once COVID-19 is resolved. I am able to understand that a bit because I know that many who sit in ivory towers are out of touch with the lived experiences of the underprivileged.
Be wary when ppl tell you their policymaking is "inclusive". When I worked at an org, leading policy innovation, I was jokingly called a Syrian refugee, social housing was called "slums" and I was told that my talking about racism was too "political".
I will also always be the first to tell you, if you see a person of colour in a senior policy/government role, do not be too confident that they will be advocating on behalf of others like them. 1. So often, ppl benefit from sticking to the status quo and will not shake it up and
...2. All POC do not share the same experiences. Just because an individual might come from a community, it does not mean they represent the views of ALL those in that group. People always forget that.
Folks are rushing to influence decision-makers. First -- look hard at who is making the decisions. Often, important voices are missing, because these voices are working hard on the front lines getting immediate support out to their communities.
Second -- where voices are missing, those WITH power should continue to push for radical, long-term changes to be recommended and implemented. Not unrealistic ones, but policy changes that we are able to see can be maintained.
Over the years, I have taken myself out of conversations around inclusion/diversity and have been pushed out of policy spaces. It is not up to those who have the burden of living with their realities, to convince the more privileged that they need support.
So anyway, this is to say: I am happy to write about the realities of people who always live with the burden of what can feel like a pandemic around them... But I am also writing to those who work in policy/hold decision making power that if you CAN advocate for long-term changes
then you should. Don't write takes on what COVID-19 means right now/for the near future. Instead, look at some of the measures being taken and ask, how can we sustain them? Why have we kept things from ppl for so long? How can we make sure Cdns are supported long into the future.
