A brief, oral history of mask blocs: Part 1

Mask blocs are grassroots mutual aid groups that distribute high-quality masks, such as N95s, for free in response to public health failures during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Many were created and are led by disabled people, many of whom had little or no prior organizing experience. Many include organizers who have Long COVID. Most of the earliest mask distribution groups formed in late 2022 and early 2023.

In this first piece of a three-part oral history series, mask bloc organizers across the United States explain their personal and organizing backgrounds, and what being in a mask bloc means to them. Many individuals requested anonymity or use of their first name only for these interviews, for reasons both personal and political, with concerns about the criminalization of mutual aid work and as mask bans are spreading across the U.S.

Read part two of the series here and part three here.

Interviews have been condensed. Full interview transcripts and audio will eventually be available at MaskBlocHistory.org.

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Anonymous organizer, Fight COVID NOLA: I’m 30 years old, she/her pronouns, disabled, queer, and a sex worker.

I was on CovidMeetups because I’m lonely. I lost most of my friends because of differences in precautions and ableism. I met my comrade [on CovidMeetups], and they gave me my first box of Auras! 

They had been buying extra masks to give to people, mostly posting on Facebook. As that 2022-2023 winter surge started hitting, they were saying it had really slowed down in terms of people taking them up on the offer. They were complaining: “I don’t know what to do to get people to take these masks.” I was thinking: that’s bullshit. Yeah, there’s people dropping precautions every day. But I know there are tons of people in the city who still mask, a lot of people still wearing surgical and cloth masks who I’m sure would love free N95 masks.

I’d seen Mask Bloc PDX [Portland, Oregon] on social media — and maybe Mask Bloc UC Davis and San Francisco at that point. What if we made this a thing and not just a private Facebook offer? I volunteered to make our social media to get masks into people’s hands. 

Lily, Mask Up Pittsburgh: I’m white and in my late 20s. I’m a disabled trans person. I use they/them.

I was feeling really, really powerless. I’m sure this is something a lot of disabled people can relate to in the pandemic. I can’t change laws. I have no interest in running for office or anything like that, but I can directly help people who are my neighbors. I had the idea for the project six months prior; I think we launched in February 2023? My brain is mush. And I saw — I believe it was — Fight COVID NOLA and UC Davis pop up and I [thought: okay, there are other people doing this. I don’t have a lot of traditional organizing experience. 

I don’t remember who, but somebody [said]: hey, this N95 distributor is having a sale for 25 cents a mask. I thought: okay, this is what I’m starting with. I got brown paper to pack them into and started emailing random organizations: “hey, do you want some?”

A couple of weeks later, I saw Project N95 had donations so I [thought]: I’m gonna email them and see what happens. And they [said]: Yeah, do you want 2,000 masks? It was really a lot of stumbling upon information online from other people who were trying to do the same thing. I think we were the third or fourth [mask bloc] in the United States.

Miranda, Mask Bloc NYC: I’m a white queer in Queens. I’m 32. I use she/her pronouns…I don’t live alone at the moment because I am caring for a community member with Long COVID.

What was the first mask bloc? It might have been Portland. Then there was UC Davis and Fight COVID NOLA. I started connecting with those people and I was like: Oh, there’s a name and framework for what we’re doing. We’re a mask bloc.

I was still in the years-long process of understanding my own identity as a disabled person. By the end of 2022, I thought it was too late to do anything about the pandemic. I had a lot of things that stopped me from starting anything sooner, a combination of imposter syndrome and just the fact that I was busy trying to survive. 

I had it vaguely in my head that we would distribute masks and was pretty much just copying the model of the harm reduction outreach that I had been a part of. I was like, I guess I could make a page for this group that doesn’t exist yet. It was called COVID Solidarity NYC, which is a name that I personally came to hate just ’cause I think it’s a bit pretentious.

Anonymous organizer, Mask Bloc NYC: I use they/she pronouns. I’m 29. I am pretty heavy in disability justice abolitionist organizing. But it’s hard to do COVID advocacy because it’s really no different than disability organizing; it’s just primarily white: white-centered, white-led, white-dominated, and those things influence and impact the strategic direction and goals of all of these groups.

We ended up becoming Mask Bloc New York City. I pushed really hard for that, personally. I felt like COVID Solidarity NYC was a liberal-sounding name. There should be an intention to continue moving further left and embodying what a bloc is supposed to do in my opinion, which is to move autonomously and resist state repression.

Anonymous organizer, Fight COVID NOLA: COVID solidarity was a name that some groups were using. Fight COVID NOLA was the first thing I could think of that was short. At that time, most people didn’t know what mask blocs were.

I was a brand new baby organizer getting into this. I had done some organizing in college and high school, but it’s so different being on a campus and being a student org. That feels like being in a swimming pool versus organizing in a city feels like going into the ocean.

We have a big tradition of mutual aid organizing in response to hurricanes here in New Orleans. Mutual Aid Disaster Relief became a thing after Katrina. I was volunteering with them after Ida. All capitalist supply chains had shut down, and it was all DIY supply chains throughout south Louisiana. To get people goods, it was a bunch of people in their cars driving across the state, driving in from out of town. It was really hard to find things where you could pay; everything was free.

And that kind of thing inspires me, that when we are abandoned by institutions, when the normal way society is organized falls apart, we can fill that void. We can step up and meet our needs. Sometimes what we create is better than what the institutions had to offer us. 

We can step up and meet our needs. Sometimes what we create is better than what the institutions had to offer us.

Anonymous organizer, Fight COVID NOLA

Lily, Mask Up Pittsburgh: I had heard the term mask bloc going around for a little while. And when I was starting up, I didn’t want to necessarily imply that these kind of autonomous groups were connected because I think that gets confusing for people. But also I [thought], I don’t know that people know what a bloc is outside of… lefty spaces or have done some organizing. 

I was going through a history of organizing that I knew, stuff like ACT UP… Fundamentally, what I’m asking people to do is put a mask on. So I went with Mask Up and then obviously Pittsburgh, which is where we’re located. I figured that gets across what we do, what we’re asking of people, and what we offer.

Alex, Boston COVID Action: I use they/she pronouns. I’m 22. The first time I did mask distribution was on my campus at Northeastern University, with what we called NEU COVID Response. With Boston COVID Action, I knew that our work would probably expand beyond masks, and I wanted a name that could encompass [rapid antigen] test distribution, community events, and political education.

Celeste, Charlotte Mask Bloc: I use any pronouns. I’m 35. I live with a partner in a smaller, conservative town. I was already doing mask distribution on my own and then a founding member of Charlotte Mask Bloc sent out a message on CovidMeetups, and I immediately was excited because cool, I can do it with other people.

I would post on Facebook offering masks. I would put them in those blessing boxes. I was sending masks to people in my life who wouldn’t normally know how to find them or what to get — older family, friends who were busy and knew that I knew about masks. My grandparents would mask, potentially, in certain settings, but they would never buy a mask. So that means just sending them masks. I was basically doing mask bloc work on my own. 

I like the term bloc because it implies militancy. It implies urgency. It implies autonomy. It’s moving in unison without leaders.

Anonymous organizer, Charlotte Mask Bloc: Pronouns are she/ her. I’m in my twenties and it’s myself and my partner in an apartment. Before that, we were sharing a house with other people. I was going from what I think some people describe as Medium COVID — where I would mask whenever there was an opportunity to but not putting a ton of thought into it — to engaging more in mask bloc work and learning more about transmission.

Being in a mask bloc exposes you to anarchist values, thought, and ideology. A year ago, I never would have thought much about anarchism as a political praxis or orientation, and now I’ve joined more mutual aid groups and learned more in terms of politics from those people than I ever did in other situations. I’ve had people in the past that I knew who would [say], “oh yeah I’ve read Marx,” and they could talk the talk, but they never embodied any of those values. When they had the opportunity to make the ableist dig at someone, they did.

Now, I’m surrounded by people who aren’t necessarily quoting Marx, but they embody the values they talk about, which has been refreshing for me. I look back at myself when I started, and I’m embarrassed of that person, which I think is a lovely thing. I’ve had so many adjustments in terms of worldview and clarifying of values. 

Now, I’m surrounded by people who aren’t necessarily quoting Marx, but they embody the values they talk about, which has been refreshing for me.

Anonymous organizer, Charlotte Mask Bloc

Katrina, Covid Safe Colorado: My pronouns are they/them. I’m 47, the oldest person in Covid Safe Colorado. I was born in Colorado and came back here in 2022. My divorce happened because of COVID. My ex, during the Omicron spike [said]: I’m not going to take the same precautions that you are and I’m going to live my life. I am not through the damage that has done. I have mast cell activation syndrome [MCAS]; finding another place to live is a nightmare for me. I did choose to move across multiple states, but that was all I could think of. 

We started with five people in a Covid-Cautious Colorado Discord server. I had been following Fight COVID NOLA and watching them put masks in a box they had hung up at a playground. I needed an outlet for my rage, and I had the little baby hope that it would help me create community too. 

Anonymous organizer, Covid Safe Colorado: I’m in my thirties, I have kids and a husband and I live in a house. My family had gone through a pretty bad experience with COVID in 2022. We did all the right things. But because all the mitigations were ending, my kids brought it home from preschool and we got really, really sick. I’ve figured out what underlying conditions we may have had that have contributed to that, but of course anybody can get Long COVID. It’s a danger for everybody, and I wish more people understood that.

My lack of trust in the government really started when they dropped mask mandates before kids under 5 could get the vaccine. We could not wait two more months before just “going back to normal,” as most people called it?

As mask blocs gained visibility online, more individuals began their own local distribution efforts. By late 2023 and early 2024, there were dozens of groups across the U.S. giving away masks for free, based in major cities, smaller towns, and rural areas.

Samwise, Seattle Mask Bloc: I use they/them pronouns. I’m in my 30s. I moved here in 2021. I was moving from California to escape the heat, and it’s helped for the most part.

I made one very good friend at the end of 2021. My friend has a lot lot lot less income than me, and we wearing the same kind of mask so I said: I’ll just buy them in bulk and we’ll share them. And then that really made me think: Shouldn’t I be giving them to more people than just my friend? Yes, I should. 

I had never been involved in any organizing at all. For a long time there, I was searching around: who’s already giving out masks? I knew about a mutual aid meal service in my neighborhood that I was giving money to, and I contacted them: “Could I give you masks to hand out?” They [said] “we’ll take a few but people don’t really want them.” 

There are a healthy amount of socializing-type groups in Seattle for people who still care about not getting COVID, but less strong organizing and activism. So through some of the socializing spaces, I found a few other people who [thought]: “Yeah, why isn’t there a mask bloc?’ That was pretty recent, end of 2023.

Keeny, Mask Bloc Seattle: I got involved with mask bloc through the Alphabet Alliance of Color after getting my eighth COVID infection — this was in February of 2024. I’m Black, queer, transmasculine, use he/they pronouns, and I’m in my early twenties. I met my wife during the lockdown period so we’ve been doing COVID precautions together. We live with one of her partners who also takes precautions.

Anonymous organizer, S.W.A.M.P. (Still Wearing A Mask Proudly) Central Florida: I use they/them pronouns. I’m poor. I’m disabled. I’m in Central Florida, which is a huge area. It was just me for a couple of months. I’d already read the How To Make A Mask Bloc zine. And I was in a Discord server for leftists, and someone in that server did mask bloc stuff, so that person was able to answer my questions. It’s like that expression that you’re flying the plane as you’re building it. I wanted something to exist. I didn’t have a plan or a team. It was just me.

This project is a promise to a whole region of people — 13 counties — and I don’t know if people know about me or care. I started with my own funds, which was $40. It’s about the power of other mask blocs. They would really spread the word. I didn’t have anybody going into this. I lost all my friends because of the pandemic, because those people showed who they truly were — ableists.

All the other mask blocs in Florida, I’ve reached out. Some of them have even said: SWAMP has inspired me. I never expected that! Other people in other mask blocs told me: if you create it, people will come to you. And that is very true!

Other people in other mask blocs told me: if you create it, people will come to you. And that is very true!

Anonymous organizer, S.W.A.M.P. Central Florida

Sally, Mask Bloc St. Louis: I use she/her or they pronouns. I’m in my early thirties. I’m disabled and chronically ill. To me, bloc is a shorthand for a group of people who are organizing around something that they are oppressed by. It sort of echoes things like the black bloc [moving autonomously, without leaders]. I know that there were some mending blocs that formed earlier in the pandemic in places like Portland and Seattle, where they would teach people how to mend clothes. It’s the idea of a specific group focused on a particular issue that affects them directly.

Before mask bloc stuff, I wouldn’t have called myself an organizer. I helped form the mask bloc in St. Louis, but it actually came out of the St. Louis Covid-Cautious Queers Facebook group. 

Socks, Mask Bloc OKC: I am a queer, trans, disabled organizer in Oklahoma City. I’m 25. I moved here fleeing an abusive relationship in Texas, right before the COVID-19 pandemic was officially recognized, in January 2020. We never had a lockdown here; there was absolutely no official response. There was no mask mandate. I was living with my grandmother. I had no connections to the community. 

I started the mask bloc with masks I had from a friend who organized with Mask Bloc Albuquerque, and from when I was employed and was buying masks. It was: okay, I have these extra masks. Who needs them?

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Britta Shoot is a San Francisco-based journalist and editor. She is writing a book about early HIV/AIDS pandemic civil resistance. Learn more about her mask bloc oral history project here.

Editor’s note: Betsy Ladyzhets, who edited this story, has collaborated with Mask Bloc NYC through her band and obtained a care package from the group when she and her partner had COVID-19 earlier in 2024. She has not been involved in organizing efforts.

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