Neighborhood Emergency Contacts: The Humanizing Potential of Intergenerational Neighborhood Life, Labor, and History during the Global COVID-19 Pandemic

Humanizing Acts is a series of essays and artworks that examines the impact of COVID-19 on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Each contributor writes about the ethical quandaries of conducting research at the border, living amidst the vulnerability and violence of pandemic times, and navigating complex interpersonal relationships and responsibilities. The scholars and artists share compassionate stories of people, including friends, loved ones, and neighbors alike, ultimately asking: How can academic research be a humanizing act?

Beginning in March 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic rendered the humanizing relationship between intergenerational neighborhood life, labor, and history indispensable to the wellbeing of my Los Angeles, California working-class neighborhood. Living, learning, and thinking about the reach and toll of COVID-19 and the pandemic on my neighbors, neighborhood, and me has expanded my historical understanding of how humane intergenerational neighborhood life, labor, and history are vital to neighbors growing their connections to each other and caring for one another as invaluably humane neighborhood emergency contacts during the pandemic. The fear of being exposed and/or infected with COVID-19, hospitalized, losing neighbors and other people we care about and love, and threats to our own lives moved some of our neighborhood to work together to avoid suffering from debilitating historical silences and erasures. This reflection centers on the humanizing and intergenerational configuration and goals of neighborhood connections, life, and labor that supported acknowledging, sharing, and building upon intergenerational neighborhood life, labor, and history as invaluable to developing life-changing intergenerational neighborhood connections and solidarities during the pandemic.  

African American and Central American and Mexican immigrant families are my neighbors and make up my Los Angeles neighborhood. My neighbors and I live in apartments or homes that were built in the early twentieth century and we moved into our neighborhood in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Before the pandemic, many of my neighbors to varying degrees knew each other and aspects of each other’s everyday joys, routines, schedules, and worries. Most neighborhood households here are multigenerational. Children and the elderly, young adults, and middle-aged people support each other as they age, attend school, labor in the service sector, parent, participate in community organizations, enjoy household celebrations and milestones, and/or manage chronic illness. Throughout our neighborhood’s history, the trauma of family separation from relatives and friends in Central America and/or Mexico, chronic diseases, exclusion across a diversity of contexts, immigration, labor exploitation, racism, and meeting the rising cost of living have been struggles that have connected neighbors. During the pandemic, some of my neighbors recognized and expanded on the intergenerational neighborhood life, labor, and solidarities that we had already developed and shared when acknowledging and dealing with such traumas as a critical move to support each other during the pandemic. Some of my neighbors and I refused to let our vulnerabilities and fears regarding the pandemic drown us out or prevent us from recognizing, sharing, and using the humanizing potential of our varied and longstanding intergenerational neighborhood connections and experiences to grow as humane neighborhood emergency contacts for each other during the pandemic.

Writing about the generative humanity of my Los Angeles neighborhood’s intergenerational neighborhood life, labor, and history and its benefits for our neighborhood during the pandemic is meant to contribute to our historical understanding of often underestimated intergenerational neighborhood life, labor, histories, relationships, and spaces, like our neighborhood’s driveways, gardens, porches, patios, and yards as what Borges, Cancian and Reeder call “emotional pathways to capturing the multiplicity of spatial and temporal connections that characterize immigrant and migrants’ lives” during moments of vulnerability, like the pandemic. It is also a move towards not overlooking what historian George J. Sánchez casts in his scholarship on the neighborhood of Boyle Heights, that neighborhoods “have a powerful historical record to build from as they
decide how to move forward together and preserve what has made the neighborhood so unique
over time.” My recognizing the humanizing dimensions of intergenerational neighborhood
knowledge and spaces in relationship to the intergenerational neighborhood spaces as neighbors lived, labored, and cared for each other during the pandemic is consistent with historian Vicki L. Ruiz’s scholarship on claims to public space, specifically contextualizing how neighbors have worked together to “exercise some control over their lives in relation to material realities and individual subjectivities as forged within both the spatial and affinitive bonds of community.”

By writing about the intergenerational life, labor and history of my neighborhood and about how my neighbors and I learned to become neighborhood emergency contacts for each other, I intend to offset the risk of losing the humanizing gravity of this intergenerational neighborhood experience when accounting historically for the diversely experienced impacts of the pandemic on our neighborhood’s emotional and physical wellbeing. My neighbors and I worked to support each other through disruptions, suffering from or being exposed to COVID-19 and/or other diseases, masking, social distancing, isolation, quarantine, mourning losses, working and/or learning remotely, and a series of other changes during the pandemic as safely as possible and as neighborhood emergency contacts for each other. This entailed different kinds of intergenerational neighborhood connections, labor, and a deep-seated investment in our neighborhood’s wellbeing during the pandemic. This intergenerational neighborhood labor and history expands our understanding of this labor as intergenerational neighborhood interactions and acts that, as conceptualized by Dionne Espinoza, Maylei Blackwell, and Maria Cotera, are part of a growing history of collective and individual movidas (maneuvers) that “seek to work within, around, and between the positionings… and practices of publicly visible social relations.”

Humanely Intergenerational Neighborhood Labor

During the pandemic, living next door and being Pedro’s neighborhood emergency contact expanded my understanding of the generative dimensions of intergenerational neighborhood life, labor, and history. Pedro is an elderly Mexican immigrant neighbor and friend who is well into his early 70s. For a great deal of his life he has worked long hours in landscaping; he enjoys dancing and playing guitar, he supports neighbors through challenging situations proactively, and he volunteers in local community centers to contribute to the wellbeing of our neighborhood. During the first few months of the pandemic, Pedro maintained the same schedule I did. We would greet each other by waving from a distance when beginning our day very early in the mornings and when wrapping up late into the evenings.

As our neighborhood began to experience the pandemic and support each other through an increase in emergencies that required ambulance services and other forms of support, Pedro began to share with me more about how and where he had labored throughout his life in Mexico and the United States, as well as why he had moved into our neighborhood while observing COVID-19 protective protocols responsibly. His receptiveness to sharing these aspects of his history was new and inspired by his fear that so much could and was getting lost during the pandemic. He shared that even within our own neighborhood, so many neighbors like him were relying on each other, at their most vulnerable and for the first time, to avoid facing an uncertain situation on their own or at best, without anyone ever knowing much about who they are, what they care about and did, and how they feel during the pandemic.

Talking about his feelings and history with me also inspired Pedro to acknowledge that he feared that his labor loading, handling, and unloading heavy landscaping equipment and materials for extended periods of time for years had rendered him vulnerable to chronic back, knee, and shoulder pain, as well as that the conditions of the pandemic were weighing heavily on his aging body. Working longer hours during the pandemic under the constant emotional stress of being exposed or infected with COVID-19 and other diseases exacerbated his feeling of being vulnerable and invisible beyond our neighborhood. Discussing with me the source of his physical ailments, the diversity of connections and skills he had developed from his experiences in landscaping, as well as his collaborating with his extended family in Mexico and the United States to participate in several cultural events in which he could play his guitar and perform cultural dances, improved his morale over time. Weeks later, this conversation allowed me to support him when he was being tended to by emergency care attendants. His having provided me with details of his health and history, as well as on how he was feeling a day before he was rushed aboard an ambulance to the hospital by emergency care attendants, allowed me to be of support as best as possible by providing information that could assist the emergency care attendants treating him. Pedro’s facial expression and nod before being boarded on to the ambulance signaled to me that he took some comfort in my having shared as much as possible during this emergency in my efforts to support his wellbeing, as well as my knowing how best to assist him as he was being treated away from our neighborhood. Fortunately, Pedro returned to his home a couple of days after being hospitalized and with the care of his extended family, friends, our neighborhood, and my family and me, he is currently feeling better, working, and supporting our neighborhood.

During the pandemic, being a neighborhood emergency contact for Pedro fueled my investment in learning about the intergenerational feelings and histories of my neighbors, as part of my work to support my neighborhood’s wellbeing as proactively and humanely as possible. Pedro’s and my efforts in support of growing our intergenerational connection, friendship, knowledge sharing, and solidarity steeped us in us learning, about aspects of his history that are not the easiest to recognize, because they lay bare experiences, feelings, and vulnerabilities that we are often dissuaded from sharing with others, especially as we age. His sharing made a world of difference to how we could both support each other and in turn, the wellbeing of our neighborhood. Learning more about Pedro’s feelings, aging, and history, I also grew in my understanding of the restorative benefits of sharing one’s history at one’s discretion when asserting connection, friendship, and belonging in one’s neighborhood, especially as neighborhood emergency contacts during times of intense vulnerability. Connecting with Pedro to learn more about his sense of aging, belonging, labor, happiness, talents, vulnerability, the underestimated reach of the pandemic, and how he was emotionally and physically feeling as he lived through the pandemic rendered this act of sharing, caring, and learning across different generations a most humane, intergenerational approach to the expansiveness of the pandemic.

Growing into and being neighborhood emergency contacts for each other in my neighborhood often depended on our labor to recognize and expand our connections to each other safely. With the utmost humanity and respect, caring for each other in this way entailed learning from each other continuously. Avoiding the escalation of our neighborhood’s vulnerabilities to the pandemic while responsibly practicing COVID-19 protective protocols included building on years of neighborly interactions and/or friendships. We learned to support connecting with neighbors of different ages in multigenerational homes to provide information, feedback, and other support to each other, in our development and/or implementation of plans for the care of relatives, as well as connecting and/or providing relatives and/or friends who did not live in our neighborhood with information on our whereabouts and tasks to be completed if we became exposed and/or infected with COVID-19 and too ill, and/or hospitalized to share this information with them ourselves. This support also meant translating and/or sharing information on COVID-19 and the pandemic with each other, and calling each other and/or respective family relatives and/or friends via phone to check in on each other. Becoming neighborhood emergency contacts and supporting each other as we lived through the pandemic, we initially addressed how to meet such immediate responsibilities, and over time we grew our efforts to remain connected to each other, to talk to each other, and see each other in ways that supported our individual and neighborhood wellbeing and in turn, the life of our intergenerational neighborhood.

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As the intensity of the pandemic grew, supporting each other as emergency neighborhood contacts motivated some of my neighbors to meet via phone with oftentimes elderly and middle-aged neighbors, like Pedro, to discuss with them how to install and use phone and internet applications and services. The emergencies taking place in our neighborhood moved neighbors to want to remain connected to each other and other people in their lives, as well as to COVID-19 information hubs and outlets. These connections grew in importance and made it critical to support intergenerational neighborhood access to urgent information about COVID-19, the pandemic, and our neighborhood’s knowledge and skills critical to supporting each other. Working with our neighbors so that they did not feel alone and uninformed inspired intergenerational neighborhood solidarity. The patience, precision, and humanity with which this information was circulated intergenerationally, as mostly young adult and middle-aged neighbors met via phone with elderly and middle-aged neighbors to support them as they installed and used these resources, made it viable for my neighbors and me to grow our neighborhood connections to each other.

Laboring intergenerationally to remain safely connected to each other and support our access to important information and services, as well as deriving varying levels of relief from such access during the pandemic, grew into us learning more about our neighborhood’s intergenerational concerns, identities, labor, and history. Our neighborhood homes being close to each other encouraged some of our neighbors and me to connect with each other from a distance when leaving and returning to our homes after running necessary errands, or when sweeping our respective driveways or tending to our garages and gardens, while wearing our masks and practicing social distance. Some neighbors scheduled phone meetings to share their feelings, histories, labor conditions, the impacts on their aging bodies, and feelings concerning COVID-19 and our sense of neighborhood history. Some of our neighbors were well into their late 60s and early 70s. They shared that laboring in diverse, labor-intensive service sector jobs, and as heads of households and caretakers for their families over at least forty-five consecutive years throughout Central America, Mexico, and the United States, had rendered them emotionally and physically vulnerable to the pandemic. They feared that having had to, or continuing to  labor long days emotionally and physically without much rest had made them extremely vulnerable during the pandemic. Expressing their worry over becoming infected, ill, and/or hospitalized with COVID-19, the possibility of losing people they cared about and/or their own lives, and the erasure and/or misperception of their feelings, labor, and histories and its effects on their emotional and physical wellbeing within and beyond their households and our neighborhood, made them feel less overwhelmed and/or invisible. These intergenerational neighborhood phone meetings to share feelings, thoughts on who they are and have been across diverse contexts, and the restorative qualities of having done so at their discretion, contributed to some of our neighbors feeling heard, known, and seen as neighbors. They could be seen as people who are aging, with feelings, identities, histories, and perspectives that defy the erasure and the essentialization of their humanity, and how, where, under what conditions, and for how long they had aged, built, lived, contributed, loved, and labored, as well as the goals, benefits, and emotional and physical tolls of their feelings and experiences on their aging bodies, identity formations, and personal relationships before and during the pandemic.

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These intergenerational neighborhood histories and the process of sharing them was a departure from a neighborhood history that some of us already knew about and shared. The previous shared history centered on which neighbor spent most of their time laboring outside or within their home; which neighbor had lived in which home and for how long; which neighbor had moved out of the neighborhood and the timing of their departure; how a neighbor contributed to the wellbeing of the neighborhood; which neighbor had passed away and how and when they had passed away; which business, community center, church, or park had supported the wellbeing of the neighborhood and for how long. Rather, this new intergenerational neighborhood history and the process of sharing of it centered on neighbors expressing themselves at their discretion and in ways that they felt safe to do so. They shared what felt most comfortable sharing about their feelings, identities, labor, enjoyments, relationships, and history, so that they and the diverse impacts of their aging, feelings, identities, labor, strengths, vulnerabilities, and history could be known and understood as part of their and the neighborhood’s intergenerational identity, humanity, and history. This intergenerational neighborhood knowledge and the process of sharing connected neighbors to understand how the pandemic was impacting them, as well as their sense of intergenerational neighborhood belonging, feelings, identity, labor, and history.

Over time, supporting our neighborhood’s wellbeing as neighborhood emergency contacts grew into some neighbors expressing intergenerational solidarity through a dedicated approach to caring for their driveways, gardens, patios, and yards. Some of our neighbors tried to support the intergenerational morale and wellbeing of our neighborhood by making sure that their bougainvillea, gardenia, hydrangea, rose bushes, avocado, guayaba, lemon trees, lawns, and assortments of potted plants flourished. If neighbors were ill, quarantining, mourning the loss of loved ones, and/or shouldering the diversely experienced toll of the pandemic, the act of looking out their front door, or stepping outside their home would make it possible for them to see and experience the gardens, plants, and trees, as well as the dedication that kept them beautiful during this heavy time. They used the plants to affirm that the neighborhood was committed and that no matter how challenging the pandemic had become, they had not given up on contributing to the life of their neighborhood and in turn, remaining connected to each other in a generative and safe fashion, and as proactively humane neighborhood emergency contacts. The pandemic’s expansive reach and toll informed neighbors, maximizing our neighborhood’s labor, humanity, and exteriors and inspiring us to act as emergency neighborhood contacts working to remain committed to supporting as many neighbors as possible, so that they derived strength from within our neighborhood and the different ways we labored in support of each other. 

My caring and learning about and supporting my neighborhood’s intergenerational life, labor, and history during and beyond the pandemic has made for vital neighborhood connections, friendships, knowledge, and history when facing the painful consequences of the pandemic. Writing about the ways in which the toll of the pandemic moved our neighborhood to grow our connections to each other through our shared understanding of the impactful relevance of intergenerational neighborhood life, labor, history, and spaces that connect us to each other fortified my understanding of the humanizing potential of intergenerational approaches to belonging, caring, and history during times of much erasure, suffering, and loss, like the pandemic. It elevated and reaffirmed the importance of understanding the ways in which intergenerational approaches to history can support humane connections to recognize and act in support of people’s humanity within our neighborhoods and across generations. 

This essay is part of the series Humanizing Acts: Resisting the Historical Erasures of the COVID-19 Pandemic across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, funded by UCHRI’s Recasting the Humanities: Foundry Guest Editorship grant. Listen to the collaborative podcast, in which series contributors discuss the gifts of resisting the historical erasure of the COVID-19 pandemic with community and research.

This publication was partially funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.