In 2020, ‘Zoom Fatigue’ was framed as a side effect of the pandemic, with “back to normal” as its antidote and community as its cure. This set the stage for the pathologization of any reminder of covid, situating it as a threat to community.

Now, masking is treated as a threat to community - not the eugenic, genocidal, and fascist rhetoric and (in)action that is perpetuating this ongoing pandemic, nor the concurrent national and global crises, such as the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

While the act of putting on a mask may seem small and like the ‘bare minimum,’ in this current political and historical moment, masking is direct action.

Masking is community disobedience against government negligence, social indifference, and corporate greed.

Masking is saying NO to eugenics, genocide, fascism, and government surveillance.

Masking is committing to solidarity and acknowledging of our collective humanity.

It is revolutionary.

Slacktivism is a term that supposedly describes ‘lazy,’ ‘armchair’ activism - activism that ‘doesn’t count.’ Many of us have been told we don’t count - but that doesn’t make it true.

MASK UP means knowing sick people have been activists from their armchairs and from bed for centuries; that we have disrupted, agitated, and sparked transformation from our keyboards since the internet was created (by us); that this is how we have been doing it forever - chronically.

We know that this is why online spaces were abandoned and destroyed by capitalism after the rest of the world went “back to normal”; we became a virus with too much power for capitalism to allow the contagion to spread. Instead, many of us were contained, away from community.

The internet is a space for community - it is a space for organizing - it is a space for us and by us.

With slacktivism, we gain remote control.

With slacktivism, we can start a remote revolution.

Throughout history, pandemics have been used to expedite fascism.

The neurotypism and ableism, and more broadly, the eugenics and colonialism, that pandemics cultivate predictably divides us.

We witnessed through the AIDS epidemic a ‘viral divide’ - an invisible line between the seropositive and seronegative; a line that kept even those who were collectively impacted and devoted to making change - like the members of ACT UP, from achieving solidarity. The viral divide is an “amorphous area [of] concerns about priorities, resources, sexuality and what it means to be a community.”

While political and community allegiance does not always fall evenly along the viral divide, the viral underclass and the structures that maintain it are becoming more and more defined. Sickness and its underclass have always been the foundation on which ‘community’ has been built. This dynamic is not new - and we cannot make it our ‘normal.’

What we need to recognize is that we are all sick under capitalism - and that is how we must organize.

This is why those attending protests and in-person direct action must mask. In this case, it is not brave to show your face in a surveillance state; it is simply the activist version of “we need to see your smiles!” Both types of rhetoric are just as risky and deadly to everyone.

Sickness has a way of deconstructing community - and we must harness that to cultivate and hold ourselves accountable to a standard of revolutionary community-building.