mononoke

It is interesting to see the responses here when the thread about this game from a few days ago was everyone convincing themselves McMillen was "a comrade"...

Hang on, let me ask my Mobilek...

Personally, I am...not hopeful for people overcoming ableism on the whole. There is nothing in my nearly two decades of activism that tells me they will, and I don't expect this to improve in my lifetime. I would be blown away. Everywhere in the world stigmatizes disability, despite it being one of the only things guaranteed to come to everyone as they age, along with death. It is a fact of life no matter how healthy one is while they live. There is still a very unhealthy relationship with death in many places in the world, especially in western culture, and so it is with disability. Regardless I feel like I have no choice but to keep trying to move the needle.

Not to be a dick, but it kind of sounds like you all need to refine your approach to talking to people about masking and figure out how to develop a lot more patience because pushing people to change is really hard.

We have had 6 years and many, many events to refine and tailor our approach. I can tell you with confidence there is no approach that works better than any of the others. If there was something, anything that worked, we would know and would be doing it by now. We've tried being militant, we've tried being patient, we've tried "meeting people where they are," and all of this has had the same efficacy and staying power: zero. We provide everything along with guidance, and we are ignored while business goes on as usual. We give the means to independently assess and handle risk to each individual or group, and we are ignored while business goes on as usual. I am all ears for any actual experience you may have with this!

Are you telling me or American Society in whole? I mask, you think you’re gonna tell me something I don’t already know?

Did you know that? By the rest of your posts you seem more concerned about "scolds" on the wrong side of the fence correctly criticizing a blind spot in your movements than the fact that these cadres exist and do this work you are now telling me is impossible and also not happening. Are you helping to make it happen?

Well you better hope that’s not the case, cause if it’s a battle between your will and the dumb atomized mass of American society, then you’re gonna lose

...and they say I'm a "doomer"! Then what's the point of any of this? You've proven the scolds right.

And the reality is that masks are easily procured and distributed where it is possible, which is a fair amount of places! You can read my other posts in this thread about what this looks like "in reality" if you are actually curious about this and not just doing the abrasive internet argument thing, which I am not hopeful is the case. Just about every urban center in the US and then some has a COVID-aware mask bloc very eager to help any group or demonstration with logistics, supply, and education when it is wanted. Guess when it is wanted, and by which organizations? The answer is never, and none. That is not a matter of logistics and lack of holistic analysis, but a matter of will. None of you think this matters enough to do something about it when the doing is indeed very doable. When's the last time you wore a mask, or did anything to help mitigate the spread of COVID in your organizing? I can probably make a good guess: not anytime in the last...I'll say 4 years, at least? But nothing has materially changed since then, except that disease has gotten even worse around the board, which sounds like even more of an argument in favor of being militant about the prevention of its spread. Respirators are in fact easier than ever to come by. They practically give them away surplus now, and there's nothing functionally wrong with them. Where is your analysis? Where is your action?

"Society doesn't do it so we can't be expected to either" is not the justification I would use when talking about supposed groups of revolutionaries.

What forest is being missed for what trees by saying "I am not safe and cannot participate if you, the movement of the people, do not do anything to prevent the spread of a virus among the people that does cumulative, permanent damage to the whole body and at present has no cure or treatment"? Please tell me.

Fixating on this disappointment is counter-revolutionary and I don’t see anything useful coming from a Reddit post complaining about “leftists” writ-large, telling people that fighting is useless, telling people to stop showing up to the organizations in which they participate.

This would be something worth expanding on if the simple act of merely showing up was accessible, but it's not, and it's due to the actions of the masses which refuse to change! That's the point! For someone like me who is immunosuppressed, who is very vulnerable to severe complications from this virus (though no one is immune, is also the point), I am effectively locked out of participating in a movement that is supposed to be my movement until everyone else gets their act together. "We keep us safe," after all, but do you really? Do you see the problem? Should I just sit at home, then? Does your movement truly speak for me, among the lowest of us, if this is the case? No one can answer these questions. I am already being told not to show up, but not by the Reddit libs.

E.g. fund free masks, mandate masks within leftist organizational spaces, inform without distancing oneself from the masses.

Have you tried doing any of this? Because I have, frequently, along with a bloc of like-minded people, a "mask bloc" if you will, and for 6 years very consistently the attitude among individuals attending protests, demonstrations around my city, and the various organizations that participate in them has been that I am secretly a fed trying to sow discord, I'm bougie for still caring, or that I'm simply a wrecker to be disregarded, and at best, they will tune me out. What other conclusion am I to draw from this reaction? This poster in the linked thread has the right of it:

... the left has always been shockingly terrible on disability awareness/advocacy, and there's a large overlap between that and paying attention to COVID.

We're propagandized from birth to essentially ignore everything related to public health unless you're "at risk" - it's blatantly eugenics propaganda, but the reality is that most people aren't going to confront that until it tangibly personally affects them.

and as everyone loves saying, you are not immune to propaganda. Someone else in the thread posted this, which I also agree with:

Ableism is the most acceptable discrimination ...

Not a single person or group I have worked with IRL that has not already made masking and mitigating COVID a core foundation of their praxis has budged on this in the last half-decade, and it's not because I'm wrong. I wish I was! Thankfully, I believe everyone will come around eventually whether they want to or not, because this level of reckless disregard for health and the constant spread of illness not materially sustainable. The trends since 2020 are consistent and there is a single throughline: COVID negligence. I just wish people would stop being complete nobs about it in the meantime, to put my feelings very, very lightly.

Documentation, bug reporting and troubleshooting is often done through Discord now! It's absurd! The worst format possible for important archival and discovery. We can (we did!) do better.