News from AWSS: Vol. 9, Issue 1-Spring 2019

Anna Muller, University of Michigan-Dearborn

I have been in Gdańsk, Poland, since late January 2020. When social isolation and strict limitations on travel were imposed in mid-March, I was in the middle of preparing research trips to finish my second book. The first weekend in isolation was telling. Locked in my parents’ house, a home in which I have not lived for decades, I remained acutely open to the external world: I listened to my favorite Polish radio station and began writing a diary. I tried to note all the grassroots efforts that seemed to be spreading from various directions. The first messages from our society were encouraging: we are in this together. Yet within the next couple of hours--or maybe days--I realized how inaccurate these first emotional responses were. A couple of weeks later, I shared a meme on Facebook: No, we are not in the same boat. We are in the same storm. There is a huge difference. Arundhati Roy, in a conversation with Imani Perry, speaks well to this paradox. Even though the pandemic transcends borders and social hierarchies and the virus can attack us all, the crisis works as an MRI that exposes our bare bones and shows the vulnerabilities of contemporary societies. For some, the virus compounds suffering while leaving others relatively untouched. Preying on our own “pre-existing social conditions,” this pandemic thus adds immediacy the suffering that already exists.[1]

Polish media almost immediately picked up on how the virus exacerbated problems already evident in society at large: domestic violence, the gender imbalance in work inside and outside the home, the vulnerability of the Ukrainian population (who constitute a significant percentage of the Polish workforce, especially in construction work, care for elderly and children, and the service economy). By early April, incidents of domestic violence had grown exponentially. The anxiety related to prolonged isolation at home exacerbated former problems and led to new ones, for example, fear of job loss. Isolation can breed anger and frustration, which, in turn, can trigger violence. The problems seemed to multiply. The small size of Polish apartments made it impossible to avoid conflict, and the usual spaces where one could escape to were off-limits: no job to escape to, and of course malls, coffee shops, and public areas were also closed. It was increasingly difficult to rely on former ways of reaching out for help or to seek respite in familiar public places.

Renata Durda runs the National Emergency Service for victims of Domestic Violence in Gdańsk, which has a helpline, Blue Line, for victims of domestic violence. When asked, in a radio interview, if she had seen an increase in calls reporting domestic violence, she responded that even before the crisis the phone used to ring non-stop and that has not changed. The difference she sees since the outbreak of COVID-19 is in the intensity and scale of the reports. Children, the elderly, and individuals with disabilities have proved to be especially vulnerable. When providing examples, she mentioned that, in some cases, mothers worry about being able to provide food for their children. Before, there was an assurance of at least one meal being provided at school, and now even that one meal is not guaranteed. Also, the system of support that children had at schools, such as school psychologists, common-room –świetlica– where teachers help students with their homework is not accessible. In many homes, children do not have access to computers so they cannot participate in online classes, let alone access school psychologists. Another category of new victims are middle-aged and even elderly parents, in particular those returning from working abroad. They return to their previous domiciles, inhabited by their children who now refuse to accept them, telling them to quarantine elsewhere.[2]

The problem also includes children of Ukrainian families, whose presence in Polish schools is growing. My friend Maja Kosińska, a psychologist in one of the local elementary schools in Gdańsk, tried to reach out to several Ukrainian families whose children had stopped attending virtual school meetings and responding to her phone calls. Some of these children cannot count on the help of their parents, who often do not speak Polish and are having difficulties following instructions for online education--or even understanding what the schools require from them. The situation of these families, which is characterized by unresolved legal status, the temporarily closure of borders, and weak or non-existent support networks in Poland is becoming increasingly more precarious. Kosińska worries that as these families’ circumstances worsen, its weakest members, usually children and women, will suffer neglect or even domestic violence.

But the problems do not end there. The crisis of capitalism is a particular crisis for women.[3] Early on, Polish and foreign media noted that the pandemic affects women differently than men. Women constitute most of those working as teachers, caregivers, and health care workers, and thus carry the burden of “essential work” during the pandemic. Gdańsk activist and gender scholar Anna Miler, who has been compiling data on how COVID-19 has affected Polish women, says that from the very beginning of the pandemic, women either had to take advantage of care allowances and position themselves as not indispensable at work, and hence risk being fired, or had to try to combine childcare with remote work. According to Miler, the fact that women are more likely to be fired “is not only associated with the traditional division of roles in the family, but also with pragmatic calculations - women statistically earn less, so the possible loss of their salary will be less loss for the household budget. This situation affects single mothers even more profoundly.”

In the view of many social activists and public intellectuals, these problems are part of the social architecture in which we live and will multiply if something does not change on the policy level. In one podcast on the situation in American prisons, a host asked about the ‘uncanniness’ of the situation: what seemed impossible for years suddenly became possible, such as the end of the water shutoffs in Detroit.[4] In some areas, governments appear to show that they can adapt humanely to serve, or at least recognize, some of the needs to which they had been previously been blind. I hear a similar hope and a sense of ‘uncanniness’ in a different conversation with Renata Durda, after the Polish Sejm, on April 30 when she announced an anti-violence bill that gives police the prerogative to isolate victims from perpetrators, meaning that police can order a perpetrator to leave home immediately after an abusive incident. Durda says that there is a lot that can be criticized about the bill, but various community activists and NGOs have been waiting for this policy for years. Now, in the midst of this global crisis, the wind seems to “blowing in the same direction.”[5] The impossible is turning out to be oddly possible.

Or at least perhaps we can say that the pandemic has exposed the fragility of the world in which we live. The immediacy of suffering and the rapidity with which the problems are being exposed inspires the kind of political pressure that will (hopefully) force social and political change. What is happening also seems to be a debunking of the war metaphor that politicians used at the beginning of the pandemic. The current crisis is not about killing, but about saving lives. Perhaps we can hope that this attitude towards rescue extends even further into thinking about how to use our energies to benefit from the interventions that many organizations are already making in order to push for real and substantive change.

[1] https://www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/130-arundhati-roy-the-pandemic-is-a-portal?fbclid=IwAR1ydSTMnzMfXGSUbT72icg1Jnx3lSSd54zemUgIsp-K-UplPxQ_GwNBG3A

[2] https://www.tokfm.pl/Tokfm/7,103085,25871815,w-izolacji-przemoc-jest-jeszcze-bardziej-domowa-to-nie-awantury.html

[3] https://newrepublic.com/article/157528/coronavirus-pandemic-family-care-work-crisis-social-reproduction-theory?utm_source=social&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=sharebtn&fbclid=IwAR2DWMnkGcZaAekFf9A8yrpweqfdQ_lZuukklwce5TgzKHw25c8sMBLaiMU

[4] https://rustbeltradio.org/2020/04/14/ep35/

[5] https://audycje.tokfm.pl/podcast/87290,Ustawa-antyprzemocowa-Co-przewiduje-nowy-projekt