A couple of reflections to kick off the day regarding language. The journalists following this thread may find this interesting. Others may tune out ...When @DanielAndrewsMP announced the hard lockdown of public housing, he described them as vulnerable communities.
Every journalist since then, including me, has used that word or similar words to describe them. And they aren't entirely wrong, of course. Awareness of the history of the Flemington estates in particular with police,...
...for example, is one of the reasons I started reporting this "beat" as we journalists say. And anyone locked up and forced to depend on bureaucracy for basic needs is vulnerable. But the residents themselves, such as Ahmed Dini, hate the term, and very rightly...
...point to the strengths the community has displayed. And I am humbled by how correct that is. If you consider the vast volunteer effort that has been central to this story from the very start of the lockdown. The citizenship, connection and capacity for care has been enormous.
As an experienced public health person said to me this morning, without understanding of community you don't know what you are doing, and your efforts will fail
If you are managing a contract to deliver a service, you have no idea whether your contracter is doing what is needed and promised, and so on (I'll be looking at cleaning contracts, for example - a key issue)
But back to language. The other term that I am growing to hate is "vertical cruiseships". Yes, I know it is being used to describe the infection environment, but...
the resonance is so wrong as to make it destructive to the effort to care for the residents. These are people's homes, not holiday accommodation. Cruiseships have air conditioning. Most of these homes do not. Do I need to go on? Let's find another way of describing them.
I'll work on that in my own reporting. Finally, the issue with the fence I was talking about yesterday. As I said then, I can understand how an "exercise yard" maintaining security of quarantine might have seemed like a good idea...
...but following through on that (particularly when community advocates were told it wouldn't happen) is tone deaf to the nature and experience of people with a particular history, looking down out of their windows to see a cage being erected outside their homes
This, too, is about the kind of language we think with. In this case visual language. Thankfully, sense prevailed and the "trial" as @VicGovDHHS described it to me in their statement yesterday lasted only hours.
Thinking through visual as well as verbal language, I will be interested to see how these issues play out in the remaining six days in which #33alfred will remain under quarantine, and how future public housing clusters are handled.
