In April 2021, The Ginsberg Center’s Faculty Advisory Board got together. Stil on zoom at this time, variously vaccinated and dispersed throughout the globe, we took time in pairs and small groups to ask each other about the year as it had affected our civic engagement work. Here is one selection, excerpted from a conversation between Nick Tobier, Sue Ann Savas and Maria Arquero de Alarcón.
How has COVID affected your work?
Maria:
COVID has changed my life in ways I could not anticipate. First, I am writing to you from Madrid, my family home, where I have spent the winter while working remotely, a circumstance I could have not imagined before. The opportunity to be with family during part of the pandemic has given me a new perspective about life and family care that I hope to continue to nurture. It has also rendered visible how unbalanced my work-life relationship is.
In general, I think it is fair to say that I hate being remote. Losing the in-person interaction with students, collaborators, and colleagues is nuts. I miss doing field work and the four-dimensional experiences that everyday life enables. I miss the joy and wonder of meeting new people and visiting places.
In my teaching, I feel at a loss when that is not part of the equation. A lot of what I work to bring to the classroom relies on making other cultures accessible and discovering them together. While zoom has enabled positive things, making it easier to elevate more voices and democratize the classroom space, it has also flattened our experience of the world and the others. The screen, while a powerful mediator, can not bring us the smells of the city, the whispering of people, the warmth of the sun, the touch of the rain in the skin, or the shade of that beautiful tree. Teaching about places, urbanism, or climate change, becomes a bit formulaic without that.
In our research, we also felt the impact of going remote. In one of our projects in Sao Paulo where we work with popular communities in the south periphery, we have seen our partners in communities and social movements to quickly adapt to an incredibly challenging situation. The lack of a proper government response in Brazil has amplified the public health catastrophe, and for the many living in precarious conditions even before COVID that has become a matter of life and death. For a participatory action research project to continue through this most difficult time, we have relied on already formed relationships, and the capillarity of the social movements in the territory to reach remote communities during a time of increased isolation.
The digital divide is not to be taken for granted. When the digital is the space of community organizing, resource provision, and continued struggle for the right to the city, it becomes a life-line and universal access is key. Social movements have quickly adapted, but not all citizens have equal access and without it, education, health, and other basic human rights are at stake.
Sue Ann:
COVID impact on my work has been a mixed bag. There were some real advantages. I could pack in a lot more meetings without travel time or parking issues. I took lunch and snack breaks with my family. I learned how to manage my calendar to build in time to work offline between Zoom meetings.
The online format worked well where I had previously established relationships. I found the format to be constraining when it came to developing new relationships. Most times, the online format felt one-dimensional, flat.
The gap in access seemed more pronounced with the remote format. The access issues we anticipated were fully realized. A few of my project stakeholders and students live in rural communities or have limited infrastructure. They could not use the video and audio at the same time. I noticed some students were participating in class on their phones rather than on computers. I offered to meet by phone to increase access for those with technology issues. I noticed people starting to ask for what worked best for them. We seem to be more accommodating now.
After work hours, the restrictions pushed many of us into the neighborhood to exercise/walk. COVID restrictions introduced me to new neighbors beyond our block. People would stop and chat while on their walks. Strike up conversation about the trees, our pets, the weather. During the pause on haircuts, a few of us reached out to help our favorite barber, Tiffany from Arcade Barbers. We invited her into the neighborhood to give outdoor haircuts in our backyards, on our patios. Haircuts-at-Home. We spread the word. I hope we helped keep her business alive while deepening the friendship. An unanticipated three dimensional COVID impact.
Nick:
A shared sense that we were all experiencing something unfamiliar, terrifying and isolating catapulted me into a sense of present-tense urgency. I was alert on a daily basis that we were part of communities and relationships where questions of urgent need, mutual aid, and concern for others were front and center. Remember always asking everyone how they were, if they were safe and healthy, if they needed anything? Those months where each of our neighbors routinely asked one another for flour, or shared extra eggs were a big part of feeling very human.
I spent a lot of time in April of 2020 working with students and staff sewing masks that were distributed through the Maize and Blue Cupboard. Along with my work at the Brightmoor Maker Space we figured out ways to keep working with our hands--this involved a lot of dropping off materials on people’s porches and that was great too--never before had we all been as much a part of each other’s lives that touched domestic space like this. In Brightmoor we started working outside in early May--recognizing both the power of presence and trying to use the term socially connected but physically distant. Social distancing seemed misplaced --what we were experiencing was a need to connect and we figured out ways to do so on the fly. We designed and built a neighbor’s bench so that you could sit outside--one person at one end of the bench and one at the other as a design gesture recognizing the need for safe distance while inviting the social connection. The first benches we built--me and 3-4 high school students--went to the students’ families just as it was getting warm, and the next to our partners in the neighborhood at churches doing urgent food distribution, at senior centers. These distributed ways of making and communicating safely kept us going through fall with U of M students.
I really hope we never forget to ask after one another’s lives.