And his mild-mannered pseudonym, Benjamin Jancewicz
Author: benjancewicz
I grew up in Northern Quebec, on the Naskapi First Nation of Kawawachikamach.
I’m a graphic artist, illustrator and independent abolitionist. I make artwork. I founded Zerflin. I’ll be your digital maverick, hired gun, and best friend.
I had planned to visit Lynnville United Church, but I can’t figure out what time they have their service (the sign out front, their website, and the note on the door are all different).
So; I was 5 minutes late getting to Grace Baptist Church. The parking lot was nearly full, and as I came in, I was warmly welcomed and handed a bulletin.
The church was quite full; maybe 50-60 people, even using the balcony upstairs. The chairs were comfortable, and the band played late 90’s Christian rock. This was also the first church I’d been to where I’d seen nonwhite people. So I had hopes.
Then Pastor Mike Holt took the pulpit, and things began to shift.
The readings were focused on Colossians 2, which, while dense reading, are all about warnings against false prophets.
Pastor Mike Holt began using the text to warn against “the false teachings of science”.
He said “this is something we heard constantly during the pandemic” and that it was “spiritual warfare”.
He went on to tell how he had been so sick and weak this past week that he had been forced to lie on the couch for days. “But God.” He apologized to the congregation for his voice. During communion, seeming to forget his mic is on, his coughs reverberate through the church.
My mask is ON.
After communion, they sing another song, and dismiss.
A lady rushes up to me, introduces herself as one of the deacons’ wives, warmly welcomes me, begins to interrogate me in that very churchy way (do you live in the area?) and asks if I’ll be coming back.
I attempt to untangle myself from her politely, but she’s insistent. “Are you visiting? Are you looking for a church home?”
I told her that it is unlikely that I’ll be returning. She doesn’t let go. “May I ask why not? Your parents live in the area, right?”
Dear readers; I let this poor woman have it.
I said: “Frankly, I was pretty shocked by your pastor. Everyone has been so nice and friendly. But what he was spouting from the pulpit? I’m disgusted, honestly. Colossians is all about false teachings, and he’s up here DOING it.”
Some middle-aged dude has come up to eavesdrop in the background, but quickly realizes he doesn’t want any part of this, and turns away. She gets quiet and goes “I understand. I’ll be sure to relay this to the pastor.”
I replied “I sincerely hope you do”, and got out of there.
TL;DR: went to a church with an actively sick pastor who uses scripture to argue against science. 2/10, do not recommend.
Reading the selection from Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula was fascinating for me for a number of reasons. There was a peripheral fascination with the pet beaver and the tools they used and how they travelled. But I was much more interested in the interactions between the various people in the story.
I loved seeing Domeninque’s interactions with his wife. It is quite clear throughout all their interactions that they are in a strong partnership. Domeninque consults with her at every single interaction, even calling her over to participate in conversations when Hind and Louis attempt to talk to him alone. Even though Hind doesn’t even bother to learn her name, it is clear that she has equal footing in every decision that is made.
It was quite clear to me that the Innu chief Domenique did not trust Hind at all, even from his caution when he first approached them on the river. Louis, who serves as Hind’s translator, detects Domeniques hesitation in helping Hind at all at a very early stage. He delays Hind’s request for Domeninque to give him Michel, a young orphaned Naskapi boy, multiple times. He intuits quite well that Domeninque does not want to let Michel go with Hind.
Domeninque has had a lot of experience with white colonizers, being a member of one of the tribes that were first contacted by the French, and it is clear he does not trust Hind at all. I really want to read the rest of the story to find out what Hind ultimately does.
I also got kind of annoyed with Hind as the story progresses. It’s clear that he values Native people and hires and pays them quite well (a dollar a day is near the top of what going wages were for the time period) and yet he repeatedly ignores or resents their advice throughout the narrative. He gets told by multiple people that the water is too high, making it dangerous to continue, by people who grew up and know this territory. And he ignores them, even though he’s paying them for their expertise. Hind even calls Louis “talkative and bumptious”, when he sees Louis is at ease talking with Domenique, despite having just used the man for multiple pages of repeated and redundant questions about the previous winter’s hunt and the icy conditions ahead.
Hind then goes on to make racist remarks about how he knows how “Indians are deferred from any efforts involving great labour”. The high water in the Moise River is a life or death situation, and not something to be taken lightly. This attitude of doggedly pushing through any obstacle in their path is what led to the death of many white men who first landed on North American soil.
Hind seems at face value a neutral observer who simply records the things happening around him, but it is clear to me that as soon as his ego is at stake or if he feels himself the professional in the situation (despite having never travelled this part of the world), everyone else’s advice and opinions are null and void.
It is clear to me that Domeninque sees himself at a clear disadvantage in this situation. He and his family are alone on the river, and encounter a rather large (and uncounted in this section of the book) party entirely composed of men. Though the power dynamic is quite strong against him, and he fiercely protests the taking of Michel still. He makes the correct argument that Michel is the one and only failsafe his family has of survival should anything happen to him. Despite all this, Hind again does not take the Native person seriously, and asks Louis if Domeninque’s death threats are legitimate or not.
Hiring a diverse police force may change what cops look like, but it doesn’t change what policing means and does.
After a white cop fatally shoots someone, prison reformers often suggest hiring more Black cops or more women. But diversifying the police force won’t end police violence, and neither will milquetoast reforms that have been tried and tried again.
Benjamin Jancewicz, a Baltimore-based abolitionist, points out that around 62 percent of the American police force is white, and around 85 percent of cops identify as male. But that lack of representation is not where the issue of policing lies. Jancewicz asserts that police have an established culture of “oppression and dominance” that does not change even when the force has more women or BIPOC officers. “Baltimore,” he points out, “has a 40 percent Black police force” which has not affected the “already established culture of corruption and brutality.”
In 2015, Freddie Gray died in police custody after being brutalized by Baltimore cops, and the police violence and misconduct in Baltimore hasn’t ended there. This is because a system will not and cannot reform itself, especially “when you dump more money and more personnel into it,” according to Jancewicz.
How do we know when a reform is actually going to funnel more money and power to the prison-industrial complex? In an interview with Truthout, Sarah Fathallah, an Oakland-based abolitionist, points to a Critical Resistance framework that helps to determine if a proposed reform “is an abolitionist step that works to chip away at the scope and impact of policing, or a reformist reform that expands its reach.”
The framework guides us to look at reforms critically and ask: Does the proposal reduce funding to police? Does the proposal challenge the notion that police increase safety? Does the proposal reduce the tools, tactics and technology police have at their disposal? And does the proposal reduce the scale of the police?
When it comes to hiring more police officers as an attempt to diversify, we can immediately see that this reform will not lessen the scope of the prison-industrial complex.
Instead, Fathallah says, “Hiring more diverse cops often expands the funding and bodies police departments have at their disposal.” Fathallah saw this firsthand in Oakland, where the City Council voted to approve a police academy in September 2021, citing “discrepancies between the gender and racial makeup of the police compared to communities” to justify the need to hire even more cops.
Focusing on the identities of the police who are committing violence actually prevents us from taking aim at the real issues. Fathallah rightfully points out that these pushes for gender and racial diversity frame “police brutality and murder as individual issues to solve” while reinforcing the “‘bad apples’ narrative of policing, that the police are harmful because of individually blameworthy and racially biased police officers.”
Pushing this narrative is imperative for those who seek to preserve the existing power structures, because it wrongly suggests that huge social problems are actually the failures of individuals, rather than structures.
The violence and cruelty of the prison-industrial complex has been well-documented since its inception, and public consciousness is reflecting this reckoning. More and more people are becoming increasingly critical of the prison-industrial complex. In the summer of 2020, this criticism came to a head with the protests against police violence after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Brutal police violence and the horrors of incarceration never stop, but when examples of them are catapulted onto the national stage, people want answers and solutions.
Because policing and incarceration are inherently violent and racist institutions, prison-industrial complex abolitionists have been working to dismantle them in the hopes of creating a safer and more just world. Without the prison-industrial complex, abolitionists argue that we can divert resources to life-giving resources and services, rather than death-making institutions.
Prison-industrial complex reformers and preservationists generally argue that the system is “broken” — that it has problems that are ultimately solvable, but that maintaining its existence is imperative for public safety. The truth is that the prison-industrial complex is functioning exactly as it is meant to; its creation was never intended to provide justice, but instead it was born of the desire to maintain white supremacy and racial capitalism. When we reframe our understanding of the prison-industrial complex, it becomes clear that it is accomplishing its intended purpose.
In this context, it becomes clear that reforms, such as hiring more Black cops or more women cops — as well as proposed changes like bans on private prisons, body cams on cops and requiring that police verbally warn before shooting — will never solve the problem of police violence.
While police violence can be enacted by individual officers due to racial bias, it is not limited to that. Fathallah says it is also (if not more so) “the outcome of intensive over-policing and systemic criminalization of racialized poverty,” meaning diverse hires will not stop violence.
When concerned people focus on reforming the police and removing the so-called bad apples, policing is able to continue existing in much the same way. Fathallah mentions the phrase “preservation through transformation,” coined by Professor Reva Siegel that describes the phenomenon wherein a violent institution shifts and changes just enough to remain legitimate in the eyes of most.
Hiring diverse cops changes who is doing policing and what the police look like, but it doesn’t change what policing is. And it certainly doesn’t change the fact that the system is actually functioning exactly as it was designed to do.
The only way to stop police violence is to abolish the police. “Policing itself is a form of violence,” says Fathallah, “and violence is a fixture of policing, not a glitch in its system.” Once we acknowledge that truth, then we can see that no reform will change what police are and what they were created to be: protectors of a white supremacist state, of racial capitalism and of private property.
Baltimore City Health Department’s communications director Adam Abadir (left) and contract graphic designer Benjamin Jancewicz (right.) —Photography by Matt Roth
Using memes, GIFs, and evocative infographics, the duo aims to combat COVID misinformation and boost vaccinations.
For Adam Abadir, beginning his new job just weeks before the arrival of COVID-19 was like a rookie athlete being thrown into the World Series.
“If I had known a pandemic was on the horizon,” he quips, “I probably would have at least changed my salary request.”
Ironically, a year and a half later, Abadir, communications director for the Baltimore City Health Department—with contract graphic designer Benjamin Jancewicz—has created a campaign that’s become, well, viral.
Using memes, GIFs, and evocative infographics, the duo’s clever initiative to both combat COVID misinformation and boost vaccinations has not only garnered national acclaim but also changed the status quo for how health departments interact with their residents in the age of social media. The zany graphics are meant to turn often insipid harm-reduction messages into something “a little bit funny, kind of quirky, and sort of subversive,” says Abadir.
Enter “MIMOSAS WITH THE GIRLS? YOU STILL AREN’T VAXXED, DEBRA!” That was one of Jancewicz’s first offerings, which features a generic stock image of an antagonized man arguing with a brow-furrowed woman. “I laughed when I saw it,” recalls Abadir, and the internet did, too.
The meme became one of their early hits on social media, particularly via the department’s Twitter account, @BMore_Healthy. Encouraged by its success, they went on to create “Salad Connor,” “Ginger Ale Derrick,” and “Green Tea Trina,” sending the message that: no, none of those “healthy” things cure COVID. They have since garnered tens of thousands of likes, thousands of comments, and shoutouts from major news outlets including the BBC, NPR, and The Washington Post.
The inspiration for each meme comes from feedback via the department’s frontline staff, from community ambassadors to infectious disease specialists. (In the case of “Mimosa Debra,” for instance, contact tracers had noticed an uptick in unvaccinated people contracting the virus over brunch.) And each message is fact-checked and vetted before being unleashed into the world.
Despite drawing much attention to their campaign, the guys behind the memes want to remind people that they are just a tiny part of what the country’s oldest continuously running health department has to offer, with some 800 employees, from school nurses to environmental enforcement officers, working to keep the city safe.
“The Baltimore City Health Department is staffed by some of the smartest people in the world,” says Abadir. “We are much more than just memes.”
I did not like this book. Not because it is a bad book, but because it tries to be something it is clearly not. An Asimov book.
I am no stranger to spinoff books, which were written after the author has passed on. Caliban is one of my favourite books about robots.
However, this book just does not fit in the universe that Mickey Zucker Reichert tries to shoehorn itself into.
This book is like a rather long episode of House, with the occasional robot thrown in. Other than a few passing mentions about the Laws of Robotics and the introduction of a few of Asimov‘s characters, it there’s no resemblance whatsoever to Asimov‘s series.
Isaac Asimov wrote a list of recommended reading to his Foundation and Robots series. Even though chronologically, this book would take place towards the beginning of that series, it is quite clear that the author only has a superficial understanding of who Susan Calvin is and the world Asimov created, and at least did not seem to read very much into the series.
Chronologically, Asimov’s The Caves Of Steel is supposed to follow this Reichert trilogy (of which I will be reading no more of). It is in The Caves Of Steel that Asimov introduces even the concept of a Humaniform robot; a robot that passes for a human. That humaniform robot, R. Daneel Olivaw, while in the perfect appearance of a man, does not have the customs or mannerisms of a human being, which gives it away as a robot.
Chronologically before The Caves of Steel, all of Isaac Asimov‘s robots short stories come. This is where his character Susan Calvin, the star of Reichert’s novel, is introduced.
However, in Asimov’s stories, at no point does she ever encounter a robot who bears even a slight passing to a human being. They are all described as man-shaped, but completely metal.
In this book, there is a Humaniform Robot, Nate, who is indistinguishable from all human beings. Not only does he look like a human being, but he also has a ridiculous number of mannerisms that match a human being as well, and even flirts with Dr. Calvin. All this, we are apparently to believe, happens several hundred years BEFORE The Caves Of Steel, where the first Humaniform robot is introduced.
There are also technologies that Asimov never uses. Nanorobots, for example, do medical procedures. In Asimov’s universe, the concept exists, but large robots are shrunk down to a very small size and injected into people.
I wouldn’t even call this book science-fiction. It is more like speculative medicine instead. It is chock-full of medical jargon, which only those well-versed in medical fields would even be able to handle. She doesn’t do a good job of explaining the jargon as she plows through it, merely leaving it to dizzy the readers in a sleight-of-hand to lead them to believe that she knows what she’s talking about.
Even the actual basis of the deus ex machina that ends the book (spoiler ahead), doesn’t even follow the rules that the author sets out.
The book’s climax is the catastrophic explosion of a four-year-old psychopath who has Nanorobots implanted into her head, which was coded to convince her to detonate a bomb that is strapped to her chest.
However, that doesn’t make consistent sense, given the author’s own description of how the three laws of robotics work.
Previously in the story, two other similarly controlled people also detonate themselves, but the three laws of robotics prevent them from harming others around them. However, the four-year-old manages to blow up the boyfriend of Susan Calvin, somehow ignoring the three laws.
These are not, by far, all of the inconsistencies and anachronisms in the book, but they are the most egregious.
The romantic scenes are… cheap? They feel like badly done harlequin novels. Nearly all the men Susan encounters are “tall, slim, muscular, and have tousled hair”. It gets old really fast, and feels like a poorly done male author’s attempt to write from a woman’s perspective and failing badly.
While Reichert does a decent job laying out some of the broader themes of this society for humanity and anti-robot sentiment, she tries to shove too many things into this book that don’t necessarily belong.
The story also has weird transphobic commentary, and even a random Islamophobic rant thrown into the middle of a section that had nothing to do with the story. The author was trying to make sense of The Society For Humanity’s extremism, but instead of using home-grown examples like the KKK or neo-Nazi movement, instead chose to vilify a religion.
To that point, the book also shoehorns in non-white characters but does so in such a way that they are 2-dimensional and othered. And there are really only two of them.
One is “Diesel”, a Black boy who is perpetually described as a bowling ball and is the only person in the book to have an object-borne nickname. He is Dr. Calvin’s first medical success and slides her into the archetype of white saviourhood.
The other is the homicidal four-year-old psychopath who just happens to be biracial.
I didn’t like this book. I’ll likely never read anything else from this author. It’s not worth it.
“Healing requires from us to stop struggling, but to enjoy life more and endure it less.”
—Darina Stoyanova
• When do you feel calm, peaceful, and in touch with your inner self?
I feel the greatest peace when I am out in the forest, or by the water’s edge. Something about being out in cool air and surrounded by greenery helps me to decompress, and I begin listening to myself more. I find that when things get busy, I’ll ignore the child that is inside me.
That child never stops talking, I just tend to drown it out.
• Is there anything that you want to do but feel unsure about? What is it and why are you so unsure about it?
I think that sometimes I rely too much on my ability to fly by the seat of my pants, which makes me not plan enough. I’m not sure I’m saying I want to feel more unsure, but I think that not feeling unsure contributes to not planning things well enough.
Texas is in the midst of a coronavirus surge, helped along by Gov. Greg Abbott’s absolute ban on mask and vaccine mandates. The state has lost more than 53,000 residents to the disease, and is rapidly running out of ICU beds. Earlier this month the Department of State Health Services requested five mortuary trailers to be parked in San Antonio as “a normal part of preparedness to have these available to support local jurisdictions in case they need them.” In short, it’s really bad.
With Texas’s governor rolling out the welcome mat for COVID, even going so far as to catch it himself, it fell to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to defend the administration’s honor on Laura Ingraham’s White Power COVID Love In last night.
“They’re coming after your state … because of increased COVID numbers. Hospitalizations, deaths are up in Texas, and there’s a direct assault on your governor’s policies and your state’s policies, what’s your response?” Ingraham asked, setting up the tee for Patrick to bunt off of, like the littlest peewee baseball player in the league.
Because we all know that the real victims here aren’t people dying of a preventable disease, but the people refusing to prevent it.
“Well, Laura, the COVID is spreading, particularly, most of the numbers are with the unvaccinated. And the Democrats like to blame Republicans on that. Well, the biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated. And last time I checked, over 90 percent of them vote for Democrats in our major cities and major counties,” Patrick said.
And through the Botox and shamelessness, a momentary cloud passed across Laura’s face. For it was then she realized she and her guest were going to be the subject of yet another withering takedown in the Post for being a racist garbage fire that poisons the country.
Because Dan Patrick was lying, of course. While Black Americans are getting vaccinated at slightly lower rates than their White counterparts, there are simply a whole lot more White people in this country — and in Texas, for that matter — which means a whole lot more unvaccinated White people are wandering around spreading their germs like a bunch of assholes.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation , Black Texans represent 12 percent of the state’s population, but they constitute just nine percent of the cohort of vaccinated people. White people make up 41 percent of the population, but only 38 percent of this group are vaccinated. Which means that there are roughly three times as many unvaccinated White Texans as there are Black ones.
But of course Dan Patrick doesn’t give a shit about math or objective reality, not when there’s racist tropes about dirty Black people to be peddled.
“It’s up to the Democrats to get, just as it’s up to Republicans, to try to get as many people vaccinated,” he continued, making clear that he feels no responsibility whatsoever to care for his own melanin-rich constituents.
“And if people don’t want the vaccination, we’re not going to force it on them. That’s their individual right,” he said, careful to toe the party line that it’s totally cool to choose to be a vector for a deadly disease. “But in terms of criticizing the Republicans for this, we’re encouraging people who want to take it to take it. But they’re doing nothing for the African American community that has a significant, high number of unvaccinated people.”
Friends, if I might veer into the personal on a Friday afternoon, may I just say FUCK THIS GUY SO HARD. Because, like myself, Dan Patrick is from Baltimore, so this shit is humiliating to me on a whole ‘nother level. His conduct is vile by any metric, but it’s particularly disgusting because he hails from a majority Black city where he grew up around people of color. He doesn’t have to look at Baltimore’s COVID dashboard to know that it’s a lie to say that Democrats are “doing nothing for the African American community.” But if he did, he’d see that 65 percent of Baltimore residents have had at least one shot, which is a full 20 percent higher than Patrick’s constituents in the Lone Star State. Because, like Obama, we really do care .
But life is too short to dwell on assholes like Dan Patrick. So instead let’s give a shoutout to the Baltimore City Health Department, which is killing it on social media.
In a cheeky campaign to take on anti-vaxxers, BCHD is plastering social media with hilarious memes.
No brunch for you, DEBRA!
“[Residents] were dealing with friends and members who were going out to parties and other things they shouldn’t be doing but didn’t have the language to communicate the harms, so we turned some of those into memes,” BCHD consultant Benjamin Jancewicz told USA Today .
They’re here for a history lesson, for those of us who grew up next door to a world famous medical institution which consistently marginalized the city’s Black residents, but seem to have forgotten. Gee, Dan, do you think there’s a reason Black Americans might be a wee smidge leery of the medical establishment?
In 1899, Baltimore City Health Department Commissioner C. Hampson Jones, led racist efforts that targeted forced smallpox vaccinations of Black, Jewish, and immigrant communities in Baltimore. pic.twitter.com/YAqjepmq4R
— Baltimore City Health Department (BCHD) (@BMore_Healthy) June 24, 2021
And they understand that we are in this together, each of us responsible for the other.
Thomas, you seem to be interested in prostate exams.
The Men's Health Center (MHC), operated by Total Health Care, Inc., is located at 1515 W. North Avenue and provides primary care, screening and health education to uninsured males residing in Baltimore City. https://t.co/zHFS7gncIYpic.twitter.com/KFC6w7LaON
— Baltimore City Health Department (BCHD) (@BMore_Healthy) August 18, 2021
So I don’t want to hear shit about Democrats not taking care of Black people, and certainly not from guys like Dan Patrick who are working to kill as many of their own constituents as possible. Get the shot, put on your mask, and shut up.
The city of Baltimore wanted to meet people where they were to provide COVID-19 vaccination information, so they turned to social media and used memes, ones that feature hilarious conversations while debunking myths.
And in the last few weeks, the city’s messages have gone viral with a positive outcome , according to Adam Abadir, director of communications for the Baltimore City Health Department.
“We can be authentic, we can be funny and we can reach people who we wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise,” Abadir said.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the health department used more standard communications to get the information out about COVID-19, vaccinations and harm reduction principles.
After social media users reached out with questions on how to communicate safety principles with friends and family, members of the health department were scratching their heads – until a viral moment set off the light bulb.
In January, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott garnered media attention when he told a man, “Shorty, pull your mask up, man.”
Video of the incident set social media ablaze, and suddenly the health department had a new strategy.
“I remember walking around the city and hearing people say ‘Shorty, pull your mask up,'” Abadir said. “To me, it meant if we could be authentic in our communications but also slide in a creative way to residents about harm reduction principles.”
A lot of the conversations used in the memes were conversations the health department knew people were having, according to Benjamin Jancewicz, a consultant for the department.
“[Residents] were dealing with friends and members who were going out to parties and other things they shouldn’t be doing but didn’t have the language to communicate the harms, so we turned some of those into memes,” He said.
The memes feature people debating on going to a house party or getting mimosas and also tap into some common misconceptions about what will help or what will hurt you.
The first memes when out in early April or late May, with the department doing a new one every couple of weeks. Some of them have been shared in the same post which has really been making an impact, according to Abadir.
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive, but there have been a few trolls,” he said.
In response to one troll who said their keto diet, full of kale salads, was keeping them COVID-19 free, the department turned it into a meme.
“The way we have been engaging with trolls is by showing how ridiculous they are, but that kind of humor disarms them,” Jancewicz said. “We’ve had multiple instances where we’ve been confronted with trolls, and they say, ‘That’s really funny.'”
Other cities have utilized different tactics, like the Los Angeles Dodgers who are offering two free game vouchers to those who attend their mobile vaccination clinic during a seven-game homestand.
The state of Louisiana partnered with businesses to provide free alcoholic or non-alcoholic drinks to people who can prove they were vaccinated within the last seven days, according to the National Governors Association.
For Baltimore, Abadir hopes the memes will make people laugh but also will be shared friends and family members who aren’t vaccinated.
“Memes are the language of the internet, and we need to be a part of that conversation,” Abadir said. “Not everyone is going to laugh at every joke, but what we are talking about is really important for people to hear.”
There is no way for the department to know if the memes are directly tied to people getting vaccinated, but Baltimore’s increase in residents getting the vaccine is consistently one of the highest in Maryland, according to Abadir.
“We want to acknowledge that the stakes are really high,” Abadir said. “We are humbled by the attention we get online, but the work continues.”
In the months leading up to the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S., Adam Abadir fielded many questions about best practices from Baltimore City residents.
As the communications director for the city’s health department, he observed that many people were already following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance for things such as social distancing and masking. But they often contacted the department seeking advice for the most effective ways to have conversations about public health recommendations with others.
Then, in January, Abadir and his colleagues watched as Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said to a community activist at a news conference: “Shorty, pull your mask up.”
That viral moment fueled a realization for Abadir and Benjamin Jancewicz, who creates graphics and runs the department’s social media channels: Sharing information in a new way that isn’t confrontational, they noticed, would likely result in more people spreading the message.
The city’s creative social media push to encourage vaccination, using graphics with phrases such as “What the FAQ is delta?,” comes as much of the country experiences a spike in coronavirus cases. As of Friday, 64.5% of Baltimore City residents have received at least one vaccine dose.
“If you package information in a new way, that’s not as confrontational, but also a little bit funny, you’re much more likely to see that work spread,” Abadir told WTOP. “That was the genesis of the idea of using memes as a way to communicate harm reduction principles.”
The county has used that approach since early April, when it shared a graphic promoting social distancing that said, “Love your elders? Prove it.” Jancewicz said the post was part of the county’s “Get Like Me” campaign, aimed at encouraging vaccination among the city’s youth after city leaders noticed a dramatic difference in vaccine uptake in younger residents.
In an attempt to speak directly to the city’s youth, Jancewicz used lyrics from a rap song and a generic photo of a grandmother.
“We used a rather traditional-looking grandmother who’s got a smirk on her face to encourage younger folk to step up their game a little bit, and have it be a bit of a competition,” Jancewicz said. “’If I can get vaxxed then you can get vaxxed’ type of thing.”
Each new idea has several requirements: It has to be funny; it has to address a real community concern, and it has to include language that people use themselves and will share in their social circles.
One of the department’s more popular graphics came after a commenter wrote they were on a keto diet and frequently ate vegetables, so a vaccine wasn’t necessary to bolster their immune system. As a result, a graphic that says, “Salad doesn’t cure COVID, Connor” was crafted.
And that type of messaging has evolved into other graphics, such as another that says, “Ginger ale doesn’t cure COVID, Derrick!”
“A lot of these trolls that we have clapped back at find the humor in the things that we’re saying,” Jancewicz said. “[And they’ll say], ‘I actually did have some serious concerns, and I wanted to talk to somebody about that. … These are really icebreakers and they work really well.”
Most recently, the pair launched a series of infographics describing what’s known about the delta variant. While many experts and those in medical circles have explained it, Abadir said, few have been able to share what it means for people in simple terms. Hoping to clear confusion about a complicated topic, the department created a series of informative slides, beginning with one titled “What the FAQ is delta?”
The post with the graphics has 1,400 Facebook comments and has been shared more than 50,000 times.
“We wanted to make sure we give them something that not only they can laugh at, but that they can share with their friends,” Abadir said. “Because they may know somebody that doesn’t follow the rules, or doesn’t pay attention to the latest update from the Baltimore City Health Department.”
The department is always considering the best ways to share information with the public, Abadir said, and Jancewicz witnessed the success of the latest initiative firsthand. While waiting in line with his daughter at a recent vaccine clinic, Jancewicz overheard a few workers speaking in Spanish about ads they had seen in the local Spanish newspaper.
They were some the department’s memes that had been translated, and the messaging evidently worked, since the group was also in line to get vaccinated.
“It’s one thing to be able to see all of the follower counts climb, and be interviewed by different news organizations,” Jancewicz said. “But to actually see people in line for vaccination because of the stuff that we did is really, really cool.”
The Baltimore City Health Department understands the assignment.
Over the past week, the department’s social media presence has garnered widespread applausefor the way it’s using epidemiologist-endorsed memes to spread accurate information online about the coronavirus—including the delta variant, why you shouldn’t drink bleach to cure COVID-19, and an explainer on this past spring’s Johnson + Johnson vaccine pause.
It’s a clever initiative. Memes, the good ones anyway, spread easily and speak directly to a particular moment in time. Black social media users are often the driving force of meme culture, and Black Americans are also less likely to be vaccinated, at least in part due to limited access to vaccines and valid distrust. And while the number of Black folks getting vaccinated in Baltimore has been trending upward, only 35.5 percent of Black residents are fully vaccinated.
Within this circumstance, Adam Abadir, the communications director for the city’s health department, saw an opportunity to dispel misinformation and bolster all the work being done on the ground by, as he says, talking to people in their own language.
I spoke with Abadir and Benjamin Jancewicz, a consultant for the health department who works on the COVID-19 social media campaign, about how it came about, meme culture, and why they chose those specific names for the characters in their ads. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Julia Craven: The ad campaign reminds me of meme culture. Was that intentional?
Abadir: Absolutely. Memes are the language of the internet. And what we’re trying to do is be a part of that conversation—and it seems to be working. We’ve been pushing out information like this before the vaccine was widely available—harm reduction principles, wearing a mask, keeping six feet of distance, and that kind of stuff. We kept getting questions from our followers on social media who were doing these things about how to convince friends and family members to do them as well.
Back in February, there was this really viral moment where Mayor Brandon Scott was addressing activist Shorty Davis at a press conference. Davis’s mask was sort of falling under his face. So Scott said, “Shorty, pull your mask up.” It was this really cool moment. It taught us that there’s an opportunity to tell people how to practice harm reduction principles if we come at them from a slightly different angle. We can totally message how to stay safe during a pandemic if we’re meeting people where they are and if we’re using language that they use themselves. So that was when we started using names as a vehicle to start introducing concepts.
Later on that transformed into dealing with some misinformation head on.
Jancewicz: What we were finding is that a lot of people wanted to have these conversations with the people around them, with their friends and family, but they didn’t always feel the best equipped. They didn’t know exactly what to say. At the health department, we’re able to drive through all that with an ice breaker and really break it all apart. That’s what we saw our mayor doing. He was speaking very directly, in plain English, and that’s what people are trying to do when they have these conversations with the people around them.
There’s all this apprehension and, really, respectability politics around trying to have these conversations. And we decided to go through with a wrecking ball, and just say, “No, this is not OK.” And you don’t have to put up with it. These actions have real consequences. That’s the energy behind it.
How did you come up with the specific scenarios for the ads? Because they are very specific. Like, my Nana always had a soda and some crackers around when my stomach was hurting.
Abadir: That one was personal to me. If you’re feeling sick, drink some ginger ale, eat some crackers, and go lay down on the couch and watch The Price Is Right. It’s real. It’s real authentic conversations that we’re having. We were seeing online conversations happen about what people believe will protect them. People are very open and honest on the internet about how they feel about the vaccines, about how they want to “protect themselves” from COVID.
We’re not trying to insult your grandmother here. Grandma had a great point: Medically, ginger can totally reduce your upset stomach, but that’s not the same as protecting yourself from a pandemic that killed millions.
Jancewicz: Some of the conversations were brought to us. The ad we did saying “Salads don’t cure COVID, Connor!,” was inspired by a troll that had come into our mentions. They were saying, “I don’t need your vaccine. I’m on this keto diet. I’m eating my kale and I’m working out,” and all that stuff. We started taking the trolls’ language, feeding it back to them, and pointing out how ridiculous they sound. And using that in ways that made everybody else laugh.
We found that humor is a fantastic tool to deal with this kind of stuff, because when people are trolling us and saying these kinds of things, they’re already at a certain level where feeding them raw information isn’t going to get to them. But diffusing the situation and making them laugh actually works. And we have found—over and over again at this point—that sometimes when we are able to make our trolls laugh, we’re able to start conversations with people who would otherwise be our enemies.
Abadir: One of the weird quirks of social media is sometimes you aren’t sure if the person you’re engaging with is actually a real person or if they’re a bot. We try to distinguish people who have legitimate questions about vaccines from an anti-vax troll whose sole mission is to discourage other people from getting vaccinated.
Are these conversations happening online, in-person, or both?
Abadir: Our social media strategy is only one component of an overarching, larger communication strategy. One of the things that the health department has been doing for months now is standing up our value ambassadors. These are folks who are door-knocking in communities with low vaccination rates and have been trained, gone through focus groups paid by the health department, and they are representatives of the communities that they’re going into.
Not all of these conversations are going to be online and so we need that nuanced, face to face interaction.
Jancewicz: All of these different levels of contact feed each other. We have meetings where we talk to the people who are out at the vaccination clinics, the needle exchange programs, and all of these various outreach points in our community. They talk about what’s happening in the communities. We talk about what’s happening online. This cross conversation allows us to say, “This is a conversation that’s happening right now in Baltimore, we should address it online.” Or, “This is a conversation that’s happening online. We should address it in the field.”
The names—Connor, Debra, Derrick—align really well with the scenarios and characters. How did you come up with them?
Abadir: I know people named Derrick. I know people named Debra. These are based in real world scenarios, and real conversations that people are really having. It’s less of a science, and more art.
Jancewicz: It very much runs in the vein of “Becky” and “Chad.” There are names that people will use in clapbacks automatically and we wanted something that expanded that range a little bit, but was also very, very Baltimore. The names we picked are names that you’ll hear in and around Baltimore—to the point where on Facebook people will tag people they know with the same name in the posts. We’re having multiple levels of conversation. We’ve even had people who are named Debra say, “I’m vaccinated but I know some Debra’s who aren’t. Let me share this.”
We talked about Karen, but honestly, it’s a little too on the nose.
Abadir: People ask all the time—especially about mimosas for brunch—why didn’t we name her Karen, but that’s not what we’re doing here.
After the ads went viral, I saw critiques from several prominent physicians and public health experts, who said the ads are shaming people for believing misinformation about COVID.
Abadir: We don’t want to shame anyone for believing misinformation, but we want them to know that it’s misinformation. That is a slight difference. But, you know, at the end of the day, it’s hard to explain a joke to someone who doesn’t think it’s funny. And that’s OK, because we’re more than just jokes. We’re the health department. It’s not about tone. It’s about preventing hospitalizations. It’s about keeping people alive. It’s certainly criticism that we can take, but the goal isn’t to shame—it’s to explain that that thing you think is going to work is not and, this time, the stakes are higher.
How effective would you say the campaign has been at convincing unvaccinated people to get vaccinated?
Abadir: Unfortunately we don’t have the ability to say if someone went to a vaccination clinic directly because of a meme. But we see it in the sum of all the work that we’re doing. One of the really cool things about the Baltimore city health department is how intentional we’ve been since day one about vaccine access. We’ve taken the stance that we need to bring vaccines where people are. That means setting up mobile vaccination clinics in areas with low vaccination rates. We announced a vaccine home program where folks can make an appointment if they have trouble leaving their home for whatever reason, and our teams will come to you.
Even though we’ve seen a slowdown nationwide in terms of vaccination rates, Baltimore city’s percent increase in individuals getting vaccinated each week is consistently one of the highest in the state. We credit that to all the things we’re doing to reach people.
