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Crisis and Care reveals what is possible when activists mobilize for the radical changes our society needs. In a time of great uncertainty, fear, and isolation, Queer activists organized for health equity, prison abolition, racial justice, and more. Nobody who lived through the COVID-19 pandemic will soon forget the challenges, sacrifices, and incredible loss felt during such an uncertain time in history. Crisis and Care anthologizes not what happened during COVID-19, or why it happened, but rather how Queer activists responded in real time. It considers the necessity to memorialize resiliency as well as loss, hope as well as pain, to remember the strides forward as well as the steps back. Activist contributors Zephyr Williams, Mark Travis Rivera, Jamie Gliksburg, Denise Spivak, Emmett Patterson, Omar Gonzales-Pagan, Kenyon Farrow, and more provide a radical lens through which future activists can consider effective strategies to make change, even or perhaps especially, during periods of crisis.
“Adrian Shanker has emerged in recent years as an urgent and prescient voice on matters concerning queer health. Crisis and Care: Queer Activist Responses to a Global Pandemic is timely, important and shares a message we ignore at our own peril. The response to COVID-19 from LGBTQ communities is informed by our own experience with a deadly pandemic made vastly worse by poor presidential leadership. Our lived experience over the past 40 years has valuable lessons for how we should be addressing today’s viral threats.”
—Sean Strub, author of Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival
“How did we respond? That is the central question in Crisis and Care. Lots of books will look at COVID-19, but this book looks at how LGBTQ activists responded to one of the most challenging moments of our lives.”
—Igor Volsky, author of Guns Down: How to Defeat the NRA and Build a Safer Future with Fewer Guns
“In Crisis and Care, Adrian Shanker and the contributing authors make the bold case that we are defined not by the bad things that happen in our society, but by how our community responds.”
—Robyn Ochs, editor of Bi Women’s Quarterly
“Crisis and Care tells stories about Queer people’s experiences during COVID-19 that needs to be memorialized as another example of our community’s resiliency in times of crisis. This book presents the stories of how LGBTQ community members came together to help one another not only survive the pandemic, but also our determination to thrive despite the failures of the federal government’s response.”
—David Heitstuman, executive director of the Sacramento LGBT Community Center
Foreword: Rea Carey
Introduction: Adrian Shanker
1. Coronavirus is a Drag: LGBTQ+ Resilience and Leadership Through Drag Arts—Sigfried Aragona
2. Eliminating Healthcare Discrimination During a Public Health Crisis—Jamie Gliksburg and Omar Gonzalez-Pagan
3. Macho, Macho Man: What We Learned About Masculinity From COVID-19—Peter Frycki
4. Protest Amidst the Pandemic—Michelle Veras
5. Building our Queer and Quarantined Sexual Worlds—Emmett Patterson
6. From Gloryholes to Vaccine Advocacy: The Journey of Queer Health Activism During COVID-19—Adrian Shanker
7. Queers for Prison Abolition—Zephyr Williams
8. Medicare for All in the Midst of COVID-19 and Quarantine—James McMaster
9. How LGBTQ Centers Kept Communities Connected—Denise Spivak
10. Four Things We Must Do to Fight Medical Mistrust After the COVID-19 Pandemic Ends—Kenyon Farrow
11. Spiraling Into Self-Love: The Wilderness, The Journey, and COVID-19—Mark Travis Rivera
12. Fuck Normal. Reopening The Past or Reimagining The Future?—Adrian Shanker
Conclusion: Adrian Shanker
Acknowledgements
About the Editor and Foreword
Author