Pandemics Are Chronic: A statement of commitment to Long COVID justice

We must end practices and policies that ignore, marginalize and deprioritize chronically-ill and disabled people.

Pandemics are chronic. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, our world is significantly more disabled and chronically-ill.

As we saw with HIV/AIDS, disease outbreaks expose the need for large-scale change in healthcare, public health, and other unjust structures.

Yet even as the pandemic continues to claim lives, we are pressured to return to a “business as normal” that has never centered the needs of disabled and chronically ill people.

>>> Commit to Long COVID justice: sign the pledge >>>

We must end practices and policies that ignore, and further marginalize, disabled and chronically-ill people. Long COVID Justice asks you to join us in a pledge:

• To include Long COVID in the narrative of the COVID-19 pandemic; we cannot tell the story of COVID without discussing Long COVID.
• To center, platform, and resource those with Long COVID, complex chronic illnesses, and other disabilities at the forefront of policy, advocacy, and action related to these issues.
• To work to end the marginalization of disabled and chronically-ill people, which is a constant and widespread harm, existing outside of and across all aspects of pandemics.
• To recognize that the COVID-19 pandemic and Long COVID have disproportionately impacted already marginalized communities, including Black, Brown, Indigenous, and transgender communities.

We are experiencing a mass disabling event, and disabled people and those with Long COVID must be at the forefront of addressing this unprecedented moment.

(Read the full version of the pledge here)

>>> Commit to Long COVID justice: sign the pledge >>>

List of Initiating Endorsers (in formation; affiliation for purpose of identification)

• Ann Northrop, Co-Host, Gay USA
• Asia Russell, Executive Director, Health GAP
• Autumn Brown, Host, How to Survive the End of the World
• Bamby Salcedo, M.A., The TransLatin@ Coalition
• Cara Page, Cultural Organizing Director of Changing Frequencies
• Celia Alario, National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach
• Cecilia Chung, Founder, Positively Trans
• Cecilia Maria Gentili, Trans Equity Consulting
• Charles Stephens, The Counter Narrative Project (CNP)
• Chiara Francesca, Chiara Acu
• Dazon Dixon Diallo, SISTERLOVE, INC.
• Dean Spade
• Emi Kane, Long COVID Justice
• Gregg Gonsalves, Yale School of Public Health
• Jaden Fields & Amita Swadhin, Co-Directors, Mirror Memoirs
• JD Davids, Long COVID Justice
• Kenyon Farrow, Managing Director of Advocacy & Organizing, PrEP4ALL
• Laurie Jones, Interim Executive Director, #MEAction
• Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Disability Justice Movement Worker, Writer, Cultural Worker
• Lisa McCorkell, MPP, Co-Founder, Patient-Led Research Collaborative
• louie ortiz-fonseca, gran varones
• Lucky Tran, PhD, Managing Director, March for Science
• Meghan O’Rourke, Author, The Invisible Kingdom
• Moya Bailey, Associate Professor, Northwestern University
• Naina Khanna, Co-executive Director, Positive Women’s Network USA
• Oni Blackstock, MD, MHS, Founder and Executive Director, Health Justice
• Scot Nakagawa, 22nd Century Initiative
• Stephen Kahn, MD, President, Abundance Foundation and Harvard Medical School Global Health Advisory Council
• Steven W Thrasher, PhD, Northwestern University, Medill School of Journalism/Institute of Sexual and Gender Minority Health, and Wellbeing
• Susan Raffo & Cara Page, Core Team Co-Leaders, Healing Histories Project
• Tina Habib, The Action Lab
• Uché Blackstock, MD, Advancing Health Equity
• Vanessa Johnson, Ribbon
• Yolo Akili Robinson, BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective)