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After covering production costs, Between the Lines is donating all proceeds of Sick of the System to the Migrant Rights Network.
Published May 2020
Sick of the System
Why the COVID-19 Recovery Must Be Revolutionary
First edition
Families left grieving; small businesses shuttered; communities in lockdown; precarious workers set adrift; health care workers stressed beyond endurance. The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world to its core. But the cracks already ran deep.
Featuring essays on poverty, health care, incarceration, basic income, policing, Indigenous communities, and more, this anthology delivers a stinging rebuke of the pre-pandemic status quo and a stark exposé of the buried weaknesses in our social and political systems. As policy makers scramble to bail out corporations and preserve an unsustainable labour market, an even greater global catastrophe – in the form of ecological collapse, economic recession, and runaway inequality – looms large on the horizon.
What can we do? From professors to poets, the authors of Sick of the System speak in one voice: We can turn our backs on “normal.” We can demand divestment, redistribution, and mutual aid. We can seize new forms of solidarity with both hands. As the world holds its breath, revolutionary ideas have an unprecedented chance to gain ground. There should be no going back.
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Praise
“The essays capture a truly visceral pain – all too often hidden in the daily bustle of pre-pandemic life – that’s further magnified in a lockdown world. Even for many in progressive politics, it is rare to hear such voices: prisoners, Black Nova Scotians, and Indigenous people long used to the failure of governments in providing accessible health care. Also represented are those living with the still stigmatizing diagnosis of AIDS, women fleeing male violence, and cleaners and grocery clerks who, despite their new-found hero status, continue to survive on poverty-level wages.”
– Matthew Behrens, Quill & Quire
Contents
| Introduction | Politics and Pandemics Richard Swift |
| If It’s a War against COVID-19, Who Are the Soldiers on the Front Lines? | Karen Messing |
| Novel Virus, Old Story | Government Failings Put Health Care Workers at Risk Jane E. McArthur, Margaret M. Keith, and James T. Brophy |
| Whither the Medicine Chest? | COVID-19 and the Histories and Contemporary Realities of Colonial Violence Gina Starblanket and Dallas Hunt |
| Sheltered in Place | Violence against Women in Lockdown Julie S. Lalonde |
| The Pandemic and the War on the Poor | John Clarke |
| COVID-19 and Toxic Capitalism | Harry Glasbeek |
| A Good Idea Goes Viral | Basic Income 2020 Jamie Swift and Elaine Power, with Wayne Lewchuk |
| Learning from AIDS Activism for Surviving the COVID-19 Pandemic | Gary Kinsman |
| We Can’t Police Our Way out of a Pandemic | Alexander McClelland |
| Doing Time during COVID-19 | Accounts from three people who are incarcerated Theo T., Cory B. and Jesse G. |
| No One Is Disposable | Depopulating Carceral Sites during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond Robyn Maynard and Justin Piché |
| Fighting the Virus, Fighting for Change | Andrew Jackson and Emma Jackson |
| Take Care | A Community Response to COVID-19 Hugh Goldring and nicole marie burton |
| Fragments for a Pandemic | El Jones |
| How to Build a Better World | Transformative Justice and the Apocalypse Kai Cheng Thom |
| Wayfinding with Metaphors through Crises | A View from Inside 2020 Anita Girvan |
| Beyond the Plague State | Alberto Toscano |
