Data is not immune to injustice. In fact, it can be used to perpetuate injustice. The demands for equity data collection and analysis aim not to reproduce the taxonomies and hierarchies of oppression, but to forever undermine them. Our ethical obligation to life is a refusal to omit the inequitable conditions that expand the chasm of expected longevity.

The increasing violence surrounding extractive operations around the world demonstrates the role of mining as capitalism’s ‘commodities fallback’ in the face of unprecedented economic upheaval during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the global crisis continues to unfold, the inherent dilemmas of this planet-wrecking system are quickly being unearthed.

Over the weekend, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended an anti-racism rally in Ottawa and scored a photo-op as he “took a knee” alongside protesters, supposedly to show his government’s seriousness in fighting racism and police brutality. However, for many communities, the gesture was worse than hypocritical—it was insulting.

The word Nakba is used to describe the period between 1947 and 1949, when over 700,000 indigenous Arabs were driven from their homes during a “cleansing” operation that made way for the creation of the state of Israel. Since the Nakba is intentionally excluded from mainstream narratives, most Canadians receive a narrow version of history.

We know that profit-driven care with its various forms of medical rationing and institutional approaches threaten all of us when a crisis hits. Now, it is more important than ever to build on existing successful models for anti-capitalist care, knit them together, and demand a society where people, and their care, are central in our political, social and economic organization.

The disastrous spread of COVID-19 in Canadian and American prisons illustrates the shocking exploitation and harms produced by incarceration. A response to this crisis, and beyond, must move beyond prison reform, and towards widespread decarceration—the rapid reduction of numbers of incarcerated people and subsequent reform of sentencing connected to the criminal code.

Palestinians have long understood that no matter what type of struggle they are engaged in, the reaction from the Israeli military is always the same–killing, maiming and destruction. The Israeli government continues to respond with excessive force to all forms of protest in an effort to force Palestinians to abandon any hope of national independence and full rights.

The outbreak has been blamed incorrectly on everything other than the employers, from a community conspiracy against authorities to the necessity of workers to carpool. Around 70 percent of workers at the Cargill High River plant, it turns out, are Filipinos; some of whom are recent migrants who were hired through the federal Temporary Foreign Workers (TFW) Program.

At the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, government bodies quickly implemented preventative measures to stop the disease from tearing through communities and devastating populations. Yet the response to assist Canada’s homeless population has not been so swift, and governments at all levels are still scrambling to heed calls for improved protections to assist one of society’s most vulnerable groups.

As the coronavirus hit Québec in mid-March, detainees at Laval IHC held a hunger strike to appeal to the public and authorities to take action on their living conditions. The hunger strike ultimately brought attention not only to the conditions during the COVID-19 outbreak, but it has shown that the present crisis has exacerbated the unfair conditions that have long been the reality for many.