Unión del Barrio Community Guidelines for Addressing the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic

UPDATED 03/19/2020, 9:30 pm.

Secure the wellbeing of UdB membership:

  1. Each member of UdB (and solidarity-minded people in general) should secure the following consumables and store them in their homes to prepare for a general quarantine-household “lockdown.” Any member that is not able to gather these materials, please inform your local leadership in order to request guidance and/or support for securing these materials:
    • 30-days of non-perishable food. For example, gather items such as canned goods, frozen foods, etc. that can be stored for a month.
    • 2 weeks of any required medications, if any.
    • 5 days of emergency drinking water.
    • Fill the gas tanks of all vehicles to which you have access.
    • Gather cash in hand, as much as possible up to $500 per person.
  2. Identify and check in (via telephone) on comrades and supporters who are unusually vulnerable, for example older people, sick people, or those members do not have access to medical services.
  3. If you are a member that feels ill, inform your local leadership and self-isolate. Do not attend any meetings or events at least until you receive some form of medical advice and have spoken to your local leadership.
  4. All UdB-led public events (community meetings, youth activities, rallies, protests, etc.) scheduled during the month of March should be immediately postponed. These postponements may have to be cancellations, and may also have to be extended to activities planned for April. All new updates that relate to this point will be available via this website: <https://uniondelbarrio.org/main/?page_id=4368>.
  5. All members and community people should have a contingency plan if/when there is an internet outage. The massive shift to online communication has placed the current internet infrastructure under massive stress, and it is increasingly likely that the system will succumb to planned slow-downs (aka “throttling”) or periodic failures. Each of us should talk about old-school analogue (non-digital) forms of communication if it should become necessary to maintain communication without our digital devices.

Securing the wellbeing of UdB allies and supporters:

  1. Unión del Barrio members and allies should immediately begin to centralize a list of allied organizations and collectives (as well as contact information for their leadership) that can be potentially mobilized if there is a need to bring together an organized mass-based community response to this health crisis. Email this information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.
  2. Unión del Barrio members and allies should begin to centralize a list of supportive medical workers and institutional services (as well as contact information). Email this information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.

Securing the wellbeing of our broader communities:

  1. Unión del Barrio members, allies and general community members should report to a centralized location any potential “security threat” perceived in our barrios that represent a risk to families or communities. This includes unusual movements of local, state, and/or federal police, ICE, or other governments agencies, as well as the presence of white supremacist/ fascist individuals and/or groups. Email this information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.
  2. Unión del Barrio members, allies and general community members should report to a centralized location a list of the following community services offered by school districts and/or local agencies that provide food distribution and no/low cost medical services. Email this information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.
  3. Unión del Barrio members, allies and general community members should report to a centralized location a list of the following community health related “hot-spots” of vulnerable people within our communities. This list should be centralized at minimum for the Los Angeles and San Diego areas, and will serve as a guide for us to prioritize all of our public political and advocacy work. Of course all sectors of our communities are vulnerable, but we should expect these sectors will be intentionally marginalized (and potentially repressed) by local, state, and federal authorities. Email this information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>. We must remain vigilant if a need arises for UdB and allies to intervene as an organized force on behalf of these sectors:
    • Large concentrations of undocumented gente.
    • Large concentrations of vulnerable students.
    • Large concentrations of older people.
    • Large concentrations of homeless people, especially when these populations are within our barrios.
    • Large concentrations of agricultural and industrial workers.
    • Local jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers.

Unión del Barrio calls on our members, comrades, and allies to immediately implement this plan until further notice. We must demonstrate the best attributes of a people’s revolutionary organization to protect the health of our members, allies, and our working-class communities. We are guided by the fundamental principles of human solidarity and active rejection of bourgeois tendencies of hoarding, selfishness, and neoliberal individualism.

Email all questions, updates, or pertinent information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.

UdB national phone number is 619/398-6648.

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