Statement on Covid-19 Crisis

Comrades,

We hope this message finds you and yours safe and healthy and that you’re getting along okay in this really difficult time. We’d like to share with you some changes in our operations and at least a first draft proposal on chapter-wide mutual aid efforts. As challenging as this time is for our organizing, it’s also an opportunity to demonstrate by example our core socialist values of solidarity and comradeship. Be well, stay safe and keep in touch!

In solidarity and comradeship,

Capital District DSA Executive Committee

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Online meetings

In order to maintain medically-prescribed social distancing and avoidance of large gatherings, committee and branch meetings will be held on Zoom using Capital District DSA’s account. At present, the meeting schedule is as follows:

24 March		Columbia-Greene Branch Meeting
25 March		CDDSA Labor Committee Meeting
1 April		Troy Branch Meeting
12 April		CDDSA Executive Committee Meeting

Zoom invites for meetings will be sent out three days prior via our mailing list.

If CDDSA members in good standing need to use our chapter Zoom account for personal business, please contact chapter or branch officers. We’ll do our best to set it up for you.

Note to branch officers and committee chairs: If you don’t have the chapter Zoom password, please contact our chapter secretary.

Mutual Aid

As a matter of solidarity and comradeship we need to reach out to community members who are the most vulnerable:

• • in high-risk age groups
  • existing illnesses and immune deficiencies
  • limited or no access to healthcare
  • unhoused or unemployed
  • high risk occupations

So, as a CDDSA member, can you:

• • pick up and deliver groceries or prescriptions for someone who can’t leave their home?
  • care for someone’s pets while they’re hospitalized?
  • walk someone’s dog?
  • cook meals for a someone that’s sick?
  • share media, spare medical supplies, or storage space?
  • help a comrade who’s suffering from social isolation and needs conversation and companionship?
  • act as a skills and knowledge resource?

If you need assistance, or can volunteer aid, please fill out our Covid-19 Crisis Mutual Aid form.

Personal Safety

For the duration of this crisis, we recommend you comply with World Health Organization guidelines to maintain personal safety and prevent the spread of this virus:

• • In order to protect yourselves and others, avoid non-essential travel
  • Minimize face-to-face contact and try to keep a 6 ft. distance between you and another person. When out and in public, don’t touch your face.
  • Wash your hands thoroughly and often. If soap and water isn’t available, hand sanitizer is an adequate substitute.
  • Wash any of your items (e.g. reusable shopping bags) that come into physical contact with something you don’t know to be uncontaminated.

For more information on SARS-CoV-2 aka Covid-19 aka Coronavirus and what you can do to protect yourself and others and act in this difficult time, Build DSA recently hosted an online presentation by Dr. Jennifer Gaddy, Assistant Professor at the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Best of luck to you all.

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