Since the beginning of February 2023, a grassroot collective of disabled artists, activists, and advocates for justice “Sick in Quarters” (SiQ) have launched a community mask redistribution initiative. Anyone interested could sign up if they can hold a quantity of masks to give freely in their area.
By the beginning of April 2023, SIQ have compiled a public access database with all the private people and organisation participating in mask sharing initiative. The network span as far as NYC, Pittsburg, Baltimore, Austin, Chicago, Oregon, Vancouver and Ontario, among other cities in North America.
The collective stated that “it’s crucial to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep each other safe, especially when our governments repeatedly fail us with nonexistent mitigations or precautions in place.” The action resists the U.S. government’s decision to end the National COVID Emergency on May 11 “actively slashing what limited protections and precautions we had left as we move into year 4 of the Covid pandemic.”
—Sasha Kurlenkova