Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English. UCSB.
Right now, things in our family and community are shifting constantly. One friend, a young Indigenous athlete, model, and environmental activist is recovering from a serious struggle with Covid-19 but was denied testing because she does not have health insurance. Another high risk Pinay activist and her family are waiting for test results and struggling with symptoms. I have a sibling who recently became homeless when his job laid everyone off and is struggling to find shelter under the quarantine in the Bay Area. We are watching the pandemic hit isolated and under-served reservation communities across Indian Country. I am watching my cousins online frantically try to convince vacationers and hikers to stay away from fragile reservation communities where elders don't have consistent access to running water, medical care, or nutritious food. I'm worried about my family because our O'odham people have some of the highest rates of diabetes in the world and that condition is high risk for life-threatening complications from coronavirus.
But what gives me courage is knowing that this is not the first crisis our border communities have organized mutual aid for. The migrant caravans over the last two years saw the emergence of many autonomous mutual aid and rapid response networks especially here in San Diego, from Kumeyaay reservations who mobilized resources to resist the colonial border and welcome refugees to their traditional lands, to Latinx, people of color, and migrante organized clothing drives, community kitchens, legal aid, safe houses, medical support teams, midwives and doulas, and queer/trans shelters, to radical Black community-building beyond the prison industrial complex, to the spiritual resistance of the Border Mosque that emerged to defend the humanity of refugees, to Asian and Pacific Islander mobilizations for housing justice and eviction defense for elders, to anti-racist ally organizing in unions, churches, schools, and activist networks.
While we have urgent needs and urgent demands on government, we are also prepared for caring for our communities and building an alternative world where no one is disposable. These "flowers in the hands of the people" as my compa Gustavo Esteva might call them, give me hope and the will to continue planting seeds.