Why We Need a Covid Memorial Day
How Marked By COVID is organizing to insure we don’t forget those we’ve lost
Yesterday, I shared the first half of my conversation with Kristin Urquiza, the co-founder of Marked By COVID, which she co-founded to organize Covid survivors and long-haulers to fight for recognition, accountability and justice for people most harmed by the pandemic. At this point in our conversation, we turned to the nitty-gritty of their organizing work, how they manage to build human solidarity and capacity. We closed by looking at how the Biden Administration has struggled to develop a coherent response and where that leaves the work.
Micah Sifry: So a typical Zoom meeting is how many people? Is it local? Is it national? What’s going on?
Kristin Urquiza: So I run our national meetings, which are once a week. And then states run their own meetings, which are typically twice a month depending on whether there’s a lot of stuff going on in the state level. And our task forces that are working on specific issues decide how often they want to meet depending upon the priorities they set for themselves. In many ways it’s very bottom up versus top down. We also have a community advisory board that we are working on giving the power to make strategic decisions about the focus of our work. And we’ve been developing a…
