Staying Safe and Politically Active as We Respond to the COVID-19 virus

Staying Safe and Politically Active as We Respond to the COVID-19 virus

Due to the threats of the 2019 novel coronavirus, Indivisible SF is cancelling all in-person public meetings for the month of March, including the General Meetings and Pints & Postcards. We are committed to the safety of our members, and to the hard work of organizing that we do every day. Here’s how you can protect yourself and stay active in your community.

Flatten the Curve.

A crucial civic responsibility for all of us is to slow the spread of the virus—to flatten the curve of new cases over time in order to prevent—or, if we can’t prevent it, mitigate—a spike that overwhelms our health-care system.

Those of us who are at low risk of falling seriously ill must do everything we can to protect vulnerable members of our community and avoid overstraining hospitals. Thus far, 80 percent of infections are benign, with the vast majority of fatalities occurring among elderly people with underlying health problems—but even a “mild” case of COVID-19 can still involve pneumonia and at least a week in the hospital.

The most important precautions we can take are:

• Wash your hands thoroughly—it should take at least forty seconds, and follow the WHO’s procedure for actually washing every square inch of your hands.

  • Plain old soap and water is all you need. Soap obliterates “enveloped” viruses like the one that causes COVID-19.

• Regularly clean doorknobs, toilet handles, sink faucets, your phone’s screen, keyboards and mice, and any other frequently-touched surface.

• Avoid unnecessary physical contact (hugs and handshakes).

• Cough in the crook of your elbow.

• Self-isolate when sick.

• Practice social distancing: Avoid public gatherings, especially if you are older than sixty or have respiratory issues; work from home; and cancel nonessential travel.

• Only buy and wear a mask if you feel you have symptoms; masks are good for blocking germs from your own coughs and sneezes from getting out, but are ineffective at keeping other people's germs out.

• Don’t hoard items (such as masks and alcohol wipes) needed by medical professionals.

Check out the CDC’s list of steps to prevent infection.

For more guidelines on how you can help to flatten the curve, visit the website by the same name. 

COVID-19 fears affect voter turnout. Vote-by-mail can help.

Although voter turnout in the Super Tuesday Democratic primaries was up from 2016 in at least a dozen states, experts say that COVID-19 fears—and even the deliberate manipulation of those fears—could affect turnout in the upcoming primaries and the General Election in November . These fears could also keep polling place workers from showing up for their voluntary duty; the CDC has already issued health guidelines for them to keep themselves and voters safe.

This is yet another reason why we need to make vote-by-mail widely available, and encourage voters to make the switch and cast mail-in ballots: in Washington State, which has 75 confirmed cases and 13 deaths, the state’s reliance on vote-by-mail should insulate turnout from heightened fears about the COVID-19 virus.

Sustain your Political Activism from Home

Indivisible SF is cancelling all in-person meetings for the month of March, including the General Meetings and Pints & Postcards.

But you can still do important electoral work from home. 

Join us on Slack.  We welcome your participation as we plan open letters to our MoCs and make calls to our elected officials. This work has already yielded an important win—after our call scripts last week, Gov. Newsom forced insurance companies in the state to fully cover the costs of coronavirus testing. And, the bipartisan $8.3bn bill to fund COVID-19 response passed with no poison-pill riders from Republicans.

Do research. Watching TV news or social media all the time will drive you up the wall. Instead, pick an issue or a singular news article and do research on it. Find out how we got here; explore perspectives and histories that might have gotten lost in corporate moment-to-moment coverage. Write up your findings—if you’re on our Slack, we may be interested in it as a Deep Dive; otherwise, consider publishing it on your own blog or on DemCast. And always think about how to make it actionable: What can be done about it? Are there organizations people can join to work on the issue? Is there a call people can make to their MoCs or other government officials?

Textbank from home. To turn America around after the devastation that Trump has been, we’ll need to win the Senate. Join IndivisiTexting at the Payback Project to help us flip the Senate. Textbanking is proven to improve turnout and is one of the easiest, fastest ways to reach voters—and you can do it all from the comfort of your home, all you need is an internet connection.

Write letters from home as part of the VoteForward campaign. This is the same service we use at Pints & Postcards to reach voters to GOTV. Vote Forward volunteers send heartfelt handwritten letters to progressive-leaning unregistered and low-propensity voters encouraging them to participate in our democracy. The letters have been shown to significantly boost turnout. As long as you have a printer, envelopes and stamps, you can print out letters to voters, write your heartfelt messages, and send them out! To find out more, visit  https://votefwd.org/.

Phone bank from home. Sign up to phone bank with Swing Left by emailing phonebank2018@gmail.com for relevant details.

Electoral work is not the only activism that’s needed in this difficult and chaotic time. 

Help out your local food bank. If you panic-bought a bunch of groceries, consider donating some of the excess non-perishables. If you have some disposable income, consider donating money—money goes farther than donated goods, so it’s always preferable. And if you have some spare time (and you aren’t sick or in a vulnerable population), consider donating your labor.

• The San Francisco-Marin Food Bank has more info on their website about donating goods, donating money, and donating labor.

• In the City, you can volunteer to help plant or harvest the Tenderloin People’s Garden near City Hall/Civic Center.

• Meals on Wheels San Francisco also has volunteer opportunities.

Order Chinese takeout. By now there have been numerous manifestations of anti-Asian and specifically anti-Chinese racism, including some attempts by the right wing to brand the virus as specifically Chinese (as if to deny the fact that a virus this contagious is everyone’s virus). Between racism and social distancing, lots of Chinese businesses are seeing steep drops in business. Consider ordering takeout from local Chinese restaurants, or (when you do venture outside) visiting businesses in Chinatown. And when you do order takeout, tip generously if you can—delivery drivers (including gig workers for delivery app companies) are feeling the pinch, too.