MASK UP, WE NEED YOU: Palestinian Solidarity, Covid-19, and the Struggle for Liberation is a collaboration between Sheyam Ghieth and I, a 36-page illustrated primer for those who consider themselves co-strugglers for Palestinian liberation, yet may not understand the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic as both a genocide in itself, and a tool of genocide that perpetuates all others.
What if we told you there was a tangible way you could refuse to take on the empire’s deadly work, every day?
Drawing connections between the underlying forces of eugenics, capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism, the zine is organized into the following chapters:
🧐 “I Know People Are Dying Each Day”
⚠️ Covid Never Ended
🦠 Not Just a Virus, But a Disease: Covid’s Cumulative Damage
💰 An Economy of Death
🚫 Refuse Eugenics
🕊️ Free Them All: On Palestinian Political Prisoners
😷 Masks Offer the Most Effective Means of Protection, Resistance, and Solidarity
❤️🔥 Provide and Require Masks for Our Liberated Future
🌍 A Mask is a Beacon of Global Solidarity
🛠️ Skill-Up Your Covid Knowledge and Protocols
As we build our liberated future, this zine is a call to action and collective consciousness to notice the connections that the empire desperately does not want us to see!
⏰ From 6-6:30pm we’ll invite folks to read the zine on their own, get resources from Mask Bloc PDX, and have conversations with other folks in the space. From 6:30-7:15 we’ll host an informal reading and Q+A, and from 7:15-8 we’ll open up the space for folks to respond to the zine’s guiding questions with other attendees.
💸 BRING some $ to donate to a Gazan family escaping the genocide! We’ll be collecting cash and Venmo donations and selling some risograph-printed zines by donation.
➡️ Come to our zine release if you’re an organizer! Bring your comrades! Bring your pod! Come if you’re curious why solidarity with Palestinian liberation requires us to take to the streets with masks on! Come if you’re skeptical about why our actions HERE (in the imperial core!) materially impact the spread of viruses and disease in Gaza! Come if you want to meet a friend!
🔴⚫️⚪️🟢 ADDITIONAL ACCESS INFO: The space is small, so we welcome folks to arrive at the start of the event if you just want to pick up a zine, grab some free masks and prints, share some $ for a fundraiser for Gazan families, and go. We will have the back door open throughout with a fan running for ventilation, along with multiple purifiers and an indoor air quality monitor available at the front of the room.The bathroom in the space is NOT ADA accessible but the closest ADA bathroom is .1 miles away, one block away from the center at Popeye’s. The center is a half-block from the nearest bus stop, line 6. We plan to host a fully-digital version of the event later this month that we hope will be as engaging and connective as our in-person release at the Center!