We're both COVID-cautious. We're both exhausted. And we've both noticed something.

The way trauma shows up in our communities sometimes gets in the way of the thing we say we want: more people mitigating for COVID.

What This Is About

Tara is a homeless woman in LA who does mask and test distribution in neighborhoods that often get overlooked by larger organizers. She hears things from people that a lot of us in COVID-cautious spaces don't hear: things about why they're not masking, what's actually stopping them, what would help.

I think a lot about how our survival responses (hypervigilance, us-vs-them thinking, the stories we tell ourselves) make sense and also might be getting in the way of building what we want.

What This Isn't

A call to respectability politics or asking disabled people or their loved ones to be more palatable.

What We'll Talk About

How pandemic trauma shapes organizing • Why perfectionism pushes people away from masking • What street-level organizers hear that we don't • The gap between "doing it right" and actually reaching people • Your questions

What to Expect

Tara and I will talk for about an hour, then we'll open it up to a Q&A.

Logistics

When: Saturday, December 20th, 2025 | 12-2pm PST (with 20 min break)
Where: Zoom
Cost: Sliding scale, minimum $1 | all funds go to Tara and her organizing work
Accessibility: Recorded and live captioned; cameras and mic optional; emojis and chat in use; cross-talk possible
Who this is for: COVID-cautious and COVID-curious folks ready to look inward at how we organize and who we're actually reaching.