Philippines Band Beast Jesus Pen Article About Coronavirus Pandemic With Tips

Hello internet!

On most days, we’re Beast Jesus from the internet. Today, we’re just people. And we need your help. Like most of the world, the Philippines is having a terrible time with the COVID-19 pandemic. State support, while appreciated where present, is sorely lacking for the most part. There are gaps, and they need to be addressed.

We’re going to have to do that ourselves. While many of us are safe at home, well-stocked, and working from a computer, a considerable number of Filipino people neither have housing or food security. It’s abundantly clear that we’re going to have to help each other out directly if we’re making it through this together.

Our primary concerns are the homeless, the poor, service workers, and first responders/frontline medical staff.

We started compiling possible avenues for support and direct action here:
https://www.facebook.com/BeastJesusManila/photos/a.598230163613434/2264286523674448/

Unfortunately, and this is entirely our fault, the band’s meme page status is biting us in the ass by pushing memes up, and making it harder for people to find actual, helpful content. So, for starters, we’re going to need help getting this thing to show up on people’s feeds. People SHOULD know what they could do for their own communities.

STEP 1: Please share this post. We’re consolidating various channels in the comment section of this post, and sharing them on our wall for redundancy. Hopefully, the algorithm starts considering this relevant and helpful content: https://www.facebook.com/BeastJesusManila/photos/a.598230163613434/2264286523674448/

STEP 2: Please access this working document to find nearby groups you could support. I don’t run this, but I trust the people who do and will be volunteering as soon as I could. It’s updated in real-time, and people could point you in the right direction if you have any questions. You may access it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mIY9cAz1d0GVuaFGH3Rgxcj8JWfIJzjZVekzGHT7bKw/htmlview

STEP 3: If you don’t see any COVID-19-related initiatives in your area, please comment in our original thread above. If we couldn’t find you a group to work with, we could, at the very least, try to signal boost your own community effort.

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Here are some causes we’re trying to help at the moment:

Catpuke’s tent drive for the homeless in Quezon City.

Golden Gays Manila, a shelter for elderly LGBT folk. Especially vulnerable right now, as they’re older, have pre-existing conditions, and have no family/other support networks to turn to.

If you’re faced with no-work/no-pay conditions, or met with sudden termination or pay cuts, you may want to get in touch with this union advocacy group.

If you’d like to support our frontliners and medical/service staff, there are several initiatives you could work with here, here, and here.

If you’re a chemist, and would like to volunteer for a crisis response project near UP Diliman, you may want to check out the SaniTents PH initiative.

Camp Queer is organizing Queer MAMA (Queer Mutual Aid Manila), and they’re looking for volunteers. Queer or not, maybe you should just ask them for things to do.

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, you may have noticed that most of this effort is centered around the National Capital Region. This is understandable, but I’d also like to know of more initiatives people could work with in the Visayas and Mindanao areas. Imperial Manila is a bubble, and people MUST know what’s happening elsewhere in the country.

I wish we could be more entertaining, but given the severity of the situation, the most we could do is be earnest in our concern.

Wala tayong ibang maaasahan. Tulungan tayo.

– M.