My City Council Member Shares about being a politican with MS amdist the Covid-19 Outbreak!
Picture description: CM Juarez speaking to a colleague, leaned backward in a blue dress.
Photo credit: Matt. M. McKnight/Crosscut
I'm happy and thankful to see representation on the impacts of Covid-19 on the disabled community, and for Seattle City Council Member Deborah Juarez to share her experience as a disabled leader in our city, (read the Crosscut article here!) This story highlights a reality that I, and who knows how many more disabled folks -- likely a lot -- are experiencing and navigating through. I'm hoping this will lead to a long-term change in our community in terms of policies and ongoing disability justice and equity work.
The part of the story about juggling work while immunocompromised hit me the hardest. I had gotten plurisy and bronchitis a month ago. I went to the ER and my D-Dimer was positive. They were afraid I was having a pulmonary embolism, but couldn't find anything emergent. That's when I started the Herculean dose of Prednisone, among other things. A week later, my pulmonologist changed my inhaler -- higher dosage of steroids. The cough and fever has lingered, my back and lungs burn like I ran a marathon. My neuropathy makes my left leg feel like it's on a fire ant hill. Still, I tried to do what I could in my work, whatever wasn't rescheduled or cancelled. Wednesday morning, my doctor called and recommended I not leave my home for any non-emergent reason until I've at least finished my steroid course. Then they extended it for 7 more days.
The work I do requires me to leave the home and interact with people. I don't have Covid-19, but I'm very likely to catch it. My higher likelihood of getting sick because of my immune system has always been the case, but now it's different. Now, precautions have been put in place, folks are accommodating and rescheduling when they'd previously protest or ghost, people are suggesting zoom meetings when previously they'd insist on an in-person meeting or "rescheduling for when I'm free" or "filling me in when I'm better."
The starkness of how people -- particularly nondisabled people -- have changed their actions and frameworks around accommodations has been astounding. There's also a growing recognition of the inequitable impacts capitalistic and individualistic productivity culture has on disabled folks and elders, (a truth and reality that existed before Covid-19.) I literally had a workshop participant yell at me from across the room in September because I dared suggest employees should be allowed to request accommodations or take sick leave without a doctor's note.
I'm really hoping we can collectively learn from this situation, begin to infuse disability justice, and begin to strategize how to make our actions today more inclusive workplaces, schools, policies, frameworks, and spaces long-term.
Disabled folks navigate these sorts of paradoxes all the time and have been fighting for more inclusive and equitable communities for decades... Not just when there's a flu outbreak, not just when nondisabled people find it important. We've shown that, collectively, we can change and be innovative and find equitable strategies to threats and barriers. We've shown we can do it. Let's keep going! 🙌🏾