Community Voices
A possible vision for memorializing essential workers of the COVID-19 pandemic.
by Shindy Johnson.
Summary
The COVID-19 Dashboard is a data driven, crowdsourced website/app that seeks to memorialize victims of COVID-19 from marginalized communities and advocate for economic justice for essential workers particularly from the black, latino and indigenous communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
Proposal
The raw data representing the devastation of COVID-19 does not capture the human toll and trauma of this disease, particularly for communities of color. This project seeks to track the appearance and evolving impact of the virus locally and internationally and correlate it with several data points including local and national government response and other socioeconomic factors that inform the impact of the virus on communities in the United States. The project will begin with a global overview and then hone in on a hyperlocal view of the emotional, psychological, and economic impact on essential workers and frontline workers and in particular communities of color which have borne the brunt of the devastation from COVID-19.
Open Sourced
The project invites collaboration from the software development community at large to build out and develop the application using vetted data sources from the global to the hyperlocal levels. This collaboration will begin with the Digital Media program at Drexel University.
Crowd Sourced
The project will call for submissions of photos and vignettes from family members of essential workers and other members of the black community to create a meaningful online memorial of those lost to COVID-19 - a pandemic that precluded traditional mourning and grieving. The project will make it easy for online submission of stories and remembrances of family members and those who made important contributions to their local communities. The project will feature an individual story each week and maintain an archive of personal stories and remembrances.
Racial Justice
Through data and local stories of those lost to COVID-19, we will seek to amplify the structural inequalities and the social, emotional and economic ripple effects which this pandemic has laid bare. We will use the stories and data to humanize the loss and fight for economic justice for essential workers including:
Retroactive hazard pay for essential workers still on the job
Living wage and healthcare and retirement benefits for essential workers
Compensation for families of essential worker COVID-19 victims who were heads of households