This essay is part of the Color of Long COVID series, supported by the Disability Visibility Project.
Listen to Sam Williams read part of this essay on our podcast:
Something awful happened to me during a Green Party meeting on January 11 and I can’t get past it.
The Green Party is a left-wing political party in England and Wales originally set up to campaign on environmental issues. In 2024, I and other members formed a group called Greens Against COVID. We got the Green Party to adopt a COVID-19, Long COVID, and clean air policy.
During a Zoom meeting with a member of my local Green Party, I asked to give an in-person speech about the policy and my own experiences. I was excited to give my speech about Long COVID. I thought I would be speaking to a friendly crowd who understood the threat of COVID-19, but I have never been more wrong.
I’m a 52-year-old Welsh Brown autistic person living with Long COVID. This intersectional identity profoundly shapes my advocacy. As a disabled person of color, I often feel like the “Long COVID unicorn” — seemingly one of the few openly discussing these experiences in the U.K.
I didn’t choose the avatar of a unicorn by accident. My favorite book growing up was “The Once And Future King” by T.H. White. It’s a brilliant retelling of the story of King Arthur, and the myths and legends surrounding him. In the book, Arthur is depicted as a flawed, naive, and well-meaning figure, who loses his innocence as he is overwhelmed by the evils in the world. I learned my strong sense of ethics from this book, and I learned how cruel the world is from its pages.
In one key scene, several Knights of the Round Table go hunting for a unicorn to impress their mother, Morgause. The unicorn is “white, with hoofs of silver and a graceful horn of pearl.” The knights use a virginal maiden to attract the unicorn, who puts its head in her lap. All the young knights can see how beautiful the unicorn is. “His eyes brimmed with trustfulness,” White wrote, “And he lifted his near fore in a gesture of pawing. It was a movement in the air only, which said, ‘Now attend to me. Give me some love. Stroke my mane, will you please.’”
Instead of love, the knight Agravaine stabs the unicorn to death with a dagger. Then, the other knights help Agravaine cut off his head.
“Everything had begun to be horrible,” White wrote, and, “The once beautiful animal was spoiled and repulsive… and, in proportion as they became responsible for spoiling its beauty, so they began to hate it for their guilt.”
Feeling like a unicorn myself, I have wanted to connect with other Long COVID patients of colour, so I joined the Facebook group of a large Long COVID charity. In the group, I posted an invitation to share experiences of being a person of color with Long COVID in the U.K. When I woke up the next morning, I was upset to find racist comments under my post. I felt unsafe, so I decided to leave the Facebook group.
I went to Twitter/X and talked about my surprise at finding racist comments in a “safe” space The white administrator of the Facebook group responded with fury that I had posted about something “private” in public. It was more important to them that I abide by their arbitrary rules than I speak about my experience of racism.
I didn’t just leave the Facebook group. I stopped being a member of the Long COVID charity itself. Just like the unicorn in the story, I had “brimmed with trustfulness,” and just like the unicorn I had been unexpectedly “killed” by cruelty. I was being hated for their guilt, and treated as if I was the cause of their harm instead of the other way round.
Jill Stauffer’s book “Ethical Loneliness” brilliantly captures the Long COVID experience. Ethical Loneliness, as Stauffer describes it, represents the initial wound of having Long COVID plus the social abandonment I experience from being ignored by society. I am both more invisible than a white person, and more scrutinised and criticised for being “The Angry Brown Man.” The Angry Brown (or Black) Man is a trope frequently levelled at people of color who challenge microaggressions made by white people. Often the trope is implied, instead of said.
Back to my speech at the Green Party meeting.
I entered the room, and I noticed it was poorly ventilated. I was the only person wearing a mask. I was also the only non-white person. I spoke about the COVID-19 policy. I could see that they thought COVID-19 was over, so I told them about COVID-19 death rates.
Things started to go wrong when I talked about my own experience. One man started referring to COVID in the past tense, and called my mask “dehumanizing.” I started to get visibly upset as he railed against ‘Big Pharma.”
He claimed that “Natural Immunity” was more important than the COVID-19 vaccines. He sounded like RFK Jr.
Then, a woman said that I shouldn’t be presenting my lived experience as evidence for the policy. Another man called my mask a “muzzle,” and I felt angry and close to tears. I had said how disabling my Long COVID was, and they acted as if it was nothing to do with them.
When I told them that three million people in the U.K. have Long COVID, they didn’t care. When I told them about the excess deaths caused by COVID-19, they didn’t believe me. When I said that their refusal to wear masks or use clean air would lead to other people getting COVID-19 and Long COVID, they mocked me.
When I said that their refusal to wear masks or use clean air would lead to other people getting COVID-19 and Long COVID, they mocked me.
I tried to appeal to their sense of community and social responsibility, but they didn’t care. I am ashamed to say that I lost my temper. I stormed out of the room, saying that I was going to go home and quit the Green Party.
I’m still absolutely devastated. Heartbroken. Raging. Speechless. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more tired, more fatigued, more fed up, more heartbroken in my whole life. To this day, I can feel the violence of their language as if they were the stab wounds from Agravaine’s dagger.
I was met with ill-advised, ill-judged, anti-science nonsense that you expect to hear in the Conservative party or the Reform party — not the Green party, not a modern forward-thinking party. These people with their extremist beliefs may as well have been wearing MAGA hats.
Here in the U.K., and around the world, people on the political left have adopted the same attitude to COVID-19 and Long COVID as the right. They use the same individualistic, you-do-you attitudes, and this has led to a more uncaring world. Senator Bernie Sanders is one of the few politicians still asking people to take responsibility for the health of others. It’s no coincidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has happened at the same time as the global spread of far-right politics. Selfish attitudes after the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic contributed to the rise of fascism in Italy.
Finding right-wing attitudes in progressive spaces has really put me off doing Long COVID advocacy. It suggests that the far-right will soon come to power in the U.K. under the populist Reform Party.
My lone Brown voice feels increasingly silenced. Reality conflicts with rhetoric. If even the Knights of the Round Table are willing to slay a unicorn, what hope is there?
Reality conflicts with rhetoric. If even the Knights of the Round Table are willing to slay a unicorn, what hope is there?
Sam Williams is a Brown, Welsh autistic person disabled with Long COVID, living in the South West of England.
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