Why I still wear an N95 mask indoors and why you should make your holiday gatherings accessible to everyone
You don’t know everyone’s health status, and yours isn’t promised tomorrow
“Are you sick?” is a question I get often when I show up to any event wearing an N95 mask.
For the past five years, I have worn an N95 mask indoors because I’m a worker who doesn’t consent to getting COVID, and I don’t want to violate another worker’s autonomy by giving them COVID. Why is that so hard to understand?
People’s reactions to my mask-wearing range from caution to suspicion to outright avoidance at professional engagements.
But I wear a mask because I’ve seen how quickly someone can become disabled and how people’s assessments of our worth change based on disability.
In what feels like a lifetime ago, the week before I defended my dissertation proposal, I got a call that an immediate family member had just been diagnosed with Stage 2 cancer. Surgery was the following week. I successfully defended my proposal and flew home for the operation.
The following months were a whirlwind—weekly blood tests, biweekly chemo appointments, and weekly injections to regenerate white blood cells that the chemo killed. This person was never sick, and now a seasonal cold could make them severely ill because they were immunocompromised. For the first time, I got a flu shot to reduce my risk of catching the flu that they could catch from me. They were suddenly tired and unable to do the things they could do just three months prior.
While they recovered, their company replaced them. “Don’t worry, we’ll have something for you when you get back,” they said.
We are a union family. We know how management strategically skirts anti-discrimination laws. This company did not care how this uncertainty would affect our family’s finances.
Just weeks ago, this family member was an indispensable member of the team. Now, they were disposable. With a diagnosis no one saw coming, they became disabled. Tossed aside because their employer could no longer extract labor from them. Because our society permits discrimination based on health status—ableism.
They survived cancer, never returned to that company, and took a new job—using the same skill set their previous employer praised—after they had healed fully a year later.
My family moved forward, but that experience taught me an important lesson: fighting for workers means fighting for disabled people too.
Fast forward to the COVID-19 era
I won’t rehash how accessibility as masking, virtual events, and the freedom remote work gave from commuting, buying gas, buying office wear, and interacting with your micro-aggressive coworker went from something many people embraced to something that was mocked as the Biden Administration pushed return-to-office policies for federal workers and white-collar managers followed suit so that Americans who worked on digital clouds could sit in open-office environments emailing each other.
As everyone rushed to “return to normal,” all I could think about was how human lives were being sacrificed to the corporate gods. Instead of fighting for universal healthcare, nationwide sick leave, and indoor air systems that clean the air we breathe—just like how we have systems that clean the water we drink—people fought for their freedom to eat in restaurants and be served by tipped workers making $2/hr without benefits.
All I could see was how people callously disregarded disabled loved ones, elderly relatives, and even their children’s futures…just to return to pre-COVID consumerism without masks.
Today, we know that COVID continues to circulate throughout the year and that millions of people never recover and develop Long COVID, losing the ability to work. Even elite athletes can get Long COVID.
If my family had to navigate a cancer diagnosis today, so many smart and social justice-driven people would simply tell us to never leave the house and just ignore us because accessibility is inconvenient.
As more research on Long COVID comes out, I’m stronger in my resolve to mask. I mask at the store. I mask at the gym. I mask at the airport. I mask at networking events. And I don’t eat indoors.
Is it annoying? Yes. Are people dismissive of me when I’m masked? Yes. But will any of the people who have a problem with it pay the bills if my family or I become disabled and unable to work? No.
Disability advocates have also taught me how disabilities are socially defined. Many of us have a disability that society doesn’t deem a disability at all because it’s acceptable to accommodate: we need glasses. Without my glasses, everything past two feet from my face is blurry. I can’t drive. I can’t work on a laptop. I can’t do anything that glasses enable me to do. But because glasses are a socially acceptable accommodation, even considered stylish, I’ve never been disabled by my poor eyesight. And people don’t avoid me when I show up to events wearing my glasses like they do when I wear a mask.
COVID safety is essential
Investing in accessible programming is not a “nice-to-have.” Resources spent on accessibility on the front end will save you time and, importantly, relationships on the back end.
When you hold holiday events that ignore COVID safety, you undermine the health of your organization and your community.
Think about the last time multiple cross-functional staff called out sick. What happened? Delays. Loss of coverage. Fewer people to execute your programs. General frustration all around. And if your program runs entirely on volunteers, then you know the chaos of finding coverage.
But the cost is greater than simple project delays. The cost of failing to invest in accessibility is trust.
When your events are not accessible, people must make tough choices to support you. Some of your hourly staff, who cannot risk bringing a virus home, must choose between getting paid and protecting immunocompromised loved ones. Some of your disabled staff must risk disclosing a disability and the stigma of requesting accommodations, or getting a virus that could worsen an existing condition. Community members must choose between connecting with you or feeling left out of their own community once again.
Forcing people to make these choices results in lost progress toward outcomes and the erosion of trust between you and people who would otherwise support you if only your events were accessible to them.
Actions speak louder than words
Investing in accessibility helps you align your mission with your actions. A DEI statement in the face of this administration is not enough to show how progressive you are—you must actually fight for vulnerable people.
Disabled people exist in every community you serve. People who love disabled people exist in every community you serve. And ableism often affects people differently depending on other identities they hold—disabled people of color may experience racism at the doctor’s office, and anyone who is not a straight white man may have to fight for friends, family, and doctors to believe their symptoms.
Even with insurance, treatments, prescriptions, and tools that help disabled people thrive are often difficult to access. Are you prepared to support your staff if they become chronically ill because of an event you designed and hosted?
When you invest in accessibility, you show solidarity with your staff and community members. You tell them that even though our government continues to shred what little support Americans have, you will not leave them behind. And your organization is better for it.
A buffet of options to make your holiday events more accessible to your community
While no single method alone is 100% protective against COVID-19 infections, layering your protections with the options below will reduce the risk of people getting sick at your event.
Here are some options from the People’s CDC:
Supply and require the use of N95 masks. Masks continue to provide robust protection against COVID-19. If you’re the ED or the CEO, wear one to model inclusion and accessibility. Find your local mask bloc if you’re short on funds to purchase these.
Require vaccination for attendance. COVID vaccines are still available!
Require negative tests before attendance. Test multiple times for multi-day events.
Host your events outside. If you’re in the South, it’s probably still warm where you are! If you must host inside, open the windows for cross-ventilation.
Additionally, consider running air purifiers indoors. There are a lot of fancy ones out there, but the AirFanta 3 Pro is on the more affordable end and can clean fairly large spaces. You can also build an alternative, Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, which can be made with duct tape, scissors, box fans, and Merv 13 filters.
Prioritize accessibility. For real.
Moving forward, prioritize building accessibility into your events. Budget for supplies. Assign staff to take ownership of ensuring accessibility.
And every year, audit your programs and identify how you can make them even more accessible.
Pick two options from the buffet and learn from disability justice advocates
As you finalize the details for your holiday events, pick two items from the buffet of options above to make your events more accessible and more COVID-safe. Challenge yourself to apply even more layers of protection!
And check out these resources to learn more about ableism and Long COVID:
Alice Wong: COVID Isn’t Going Anywhere. Masking Up Could Save My Life.
Imani Barbarin: Death by a Thousand Words: COVID-19 and the Pandemic of Ableist Media
Need an accountability partner to help you complete this? Reply to this email and I’ll follow up with you.
Kapwa Compass is on a break through January 4. Enjoy the winter months, and we’ll see you in the new year!