As a great thinker and scholar, Dr. Holmes took us through history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and breaking news to challenge the lens we use to view our current state of the COVID-19 Pandemic. And to insist that while we comply with physical distancing, we should simultaneously be striving toward social solidarity.
Some questions to start us off:
- How does the novel Coronavirus pandemic follow the fault lines that already existed in our society-- particularly the inequalities and the discrimination? How does this pandemic force us to look anew at these fault lines?
- Is this an historic opportunity to think about what kind of society we want to be-- to remedy those inequalities so that our health system and our social system can be more healthy, more safe, more truly democratic, and more inclusive for all people?
- While we undoubtedly need to adhere to physical distancing recommendations, how can social solidarity help us survive this and any future pandemics?
In his presentation Dr. Holmes invoked several scholars' work on the notion of SOLIDARITY:
- French sociologist Emil Durkheim, who studied societies and asked the question: How do societies hold together despite social differences and increasing division of labor? His answer: Social solidarity: the sentiment and practice or feeling and action of interdependence between individuals and groups in a society
- Physician and scholar from Martinique, Frantz Fanon: Solidarity can and must transpire in the midst of social difference, including solidarity across national lines (against colonial powers) and between people within the countries against colonization, as well as solidarity across racial lines (against racist social systems)
- Educator and theorist Paolo Freire: Solidarity is a collective project. . capable of changing not only the ways in which society is structured but also has to change everyone who is involved (people with less and more power) . . .Liberation brings about transformation of the exploited and the exploiter.
- Combahee River Collective (Robin D. G. Kelley, Angela Davis): Solidarity as coalition building recognizes connections between different forms of inequity, different forces of exploitation, and highlights the need to stand together for the good of everyone. . .this is difficult to achieve in the US in which individualistic models of health are most common.
And as we ponder our place in this pandemic and many of us work on the front lines in hospitals, clinics, and facilities across Sonoma County and beyond, Dr. Holmes challenged us to ask ourselves the following.
How might we use social solidarity during this pandemic to. . .
- protect our mental health?
- avoid social constructs of stigmatization?
- build systems that benefit the health of all?
- protect the health of everyone, including (and especially) those who have been most marginalized our society?
As former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich pointed out in a recent opinion piece, "In many senses, our country doesn't have a fully functional public health system. Instead we work in a for profit health care system that is disjointed and ill-prepared for this crises and future crises. . .If we want to survive this and future pandemics we must understand how critical our public systems are for everyone in our society.
Let us not overlook the effect of this pandemic our most vulnerable, those who are
- incarcerated
- detained
- homeless
- poor
- people of color
- Recent Atlantic article by Ibram X. Kendi: inordinate numbers of people of color dying at roughly twice the rate of white people in the US (histories of institutional and structural racism) (Ref: What the Racial Data Show: the pandemic seems to be hitting people of color the hardest)
We are all in this together. We must stay connected. We must confront racism, xenophobia, and stigmatization. We must fund our public health and social systems. We must support those most marginalized, stop incarcerating and detaining those on whom our system relies.
With social solidarity, we can change our system.
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