The Busiest Basement in Jackson Heights

New York Magazine, Feb 7 — t’s impossible to know exactly how many [mutual aid societies] New Yorkers started in 2020, when the labor market crashed and so many families found themselves cash-strapped with little hope of getting adequate public assistance. It’s also impossible to say precisely how many families avoided starvation or radical isolation because of the help that their neighbors provided. What we do know, though, is that hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions of New Yorkers, fared far better in the COVID crisis than they would have without the extraordinary rise and surprising resilience of mutual-aid societies. Today, as the city faces a different kind of emergency, New Yorkers are adapting and reassembling the groups they formed in 2020. The pandemic left the city worse off in so many ways, but the creation of organizations like O’Doherty-Naranjo’s is one lasting change for the better. These groups get little recognition — and little, if any, public funding — for the services they offer. Without them, though, the city would hardly function.

Face Mask Face-Offs

Public Culture, Feb 1 — In the United States, the COVID‐19 pandemic has proved to be especially destructive and divisive. One of the few things that has united Americans during the pandemic, however, is the experience of watching a new genre of viral videos—face mask face‐offs—that showcase citizens going toe‐to‐toe in public places because someone refuses to wear a mask. These videos are not mere political theater; they are replete with sociologically meaningful data about the nature of Americans’ cultural divisions. By closely analyzing recorded conflicts over collective coronavirus risks and individual freedoms in public settings, the authors identify six justifications for not wearing a mask. These justifications point to emerging cultural discourses and practices organized around phones that not only point to new ways for us to observe social life but participate in the reconfiguration of social life—and social conflict—itself.