Epidemics and resistance: maintaining public trust in a time of unrest

Public trust is now one of the most important challenges facing our governments. Whether they are able to maintain it, in a context of growing social unrest, may well define the history of this pandemic, not just for those most oppressed, who are risking their health to bring about social change, but for us all.

Anti-Black racism protesters, pictured on June 5, 2020, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Are these recent protests against police violence and systemic racial inequality happening during a disease outbreak only by coincidence? In my research, I have looked at the relationship between the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 and the struggle for greater labour rights and social equality that emerged at the end of the pandemic’s ‘third wave.’ Epidemic outbreaks have frequently been accompanied by popular unrest. What we are living through right now echoes the history of epidemics and resistance, writes Esyllt Jones.The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

Opinion

BY ESYLLT JONES

June 15, 2020

WINNIPEG—Perhaps the most potent symbol yet of COVID-19’s relationship to inequality, and to resistance, is the mask worn by some of those demonstrating against racism and police violence, inscribed by hand with the words “I Can’t Breathe.” The mask alludes to the pleas of a Black man dyin...

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