Pandemic and Protests: A Synchronous Rise
by Melissa Vargas
As the COVID-19 pandemic marks close to a year of global impact, my attention can’t help but also be drawn to the wide range of protests that have simultaneously taken place across the globe.
Why are unprecedented numbers of people taking to the streets and protesting during a global pandemic?
This question has been going through my head a lot during the course of this pandemic and initally sprouted during the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd. Systemic racism in the United States undoubtedly is and always has been just as much a public health issue as COVID-19. Given that systemic racism has always been a public health issue, why are we now, in the midst of a pandemic, seeing people rally together to protest longstanding injustices? As the Black Lives Matter protests spread both throughout the US and globally, I witnessed people who normally wouldn’t attend a protest take part and was frankly, surprised.
The concept of ‘normal’ is key in this discussion. The pandemic has poked holes in the fragile notion of normal that we have come to think of us as fixed and have in many ways accepted. While the pandemic has globally altered what we see as normal ways of life, it has also unlayered a multitude of inequities as well as the detrimental weaknesses of our current social, political, and economic systems. I purposefully use the word ‘unlayer’, as these inequities and weaknesses existed well before the onset of the pandemic. The disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women, low-income individuals, and BIPOC reflects an inability of these systems to truly protect people and raises the question:
What have we simply come to normalize and what is actually normal?
The patriarchal, capitalist systems that govern our daily lives are not normal, but rather have been normalized. While recent protests in the United States have centered around systemic racism, other protests around the globe have also sought to oppose issues also rooted in patriarchal, capitalist systems. These protests, aside from exclusively focusing on the issues of an individual country, reflect a larger backlash against patriarchy and capitalism.
Just last week, Peru’s congress voted to remove now former popular president Martín Vizcarra due to accusations of investigations for bribery and replaced him with Manuel Merino. The decision led to some of the largest protests the country has seen in recent years, all while Peru is experiencing the second highest global per capita COVID-19 mortality rate. The protests are largely composed of young people who stand for anti-corruption.
Briceno, F. (2020, November 13). Peru president’s ouster sparks wave of youth-led protests. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/peru-presidents-ouster-sparks-wave-of-youth-led-protests
In Poland, hundreds of thousands have been protesting across 580 cities and towns since October 22nd in response to a Constitutional Court decision that sought to further restrict access to abortion in the country. The country is seeing some of its largest protests in history since 1988. The organizers of the protests have created a council of experts on a variety of topics of concern identified by protestors including not just abortion rights but also: work and the pandemic, health care, education, and seperation of church and state. While the protests have led to a delayed governmental implementation of the decision, people continue to protest and make their demands heard.
Originating earlier in the year, a series of anti-government protests have been occurring since May in Belarus. The protests mark the largest anti-government protests in the country’s history and stemmed from the then incumbent president Alexander Lukashenko seeking a sixth presidential term during the 2020 elections. However, other factors driving the protests include the arrest of other presidential candidates, electoral fraud, authoritarianism, political repression, social and economic governmental policies, and the country’s inadequate handling of the pandemic. The protests continue to center around opposition to Lukashenko’s continued presidency.
The protests in Peru, Poland, and Belarus are just a few of the many protests that have taken place throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the health threat of the virus continues to persist globally, people’s willingness to still go out to the streets and fight against injustice represents just how necessary and urgent these matters are. These protests represent an overall dissatisfaction with current social, political, and economic systems. The weaknesses of these systems have been highlighted by the pandemic and can no longer be ignored.
