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46 Queen's L.J. 305 (2020-2021)
The Urgent and the Important: Political Resistance during a Pandemic

handle is hein.journals/queen46 and id is 320 raw text is: The Urgent and the Important: Political Resistance During a Pandemic Ashwini Vasanthakumar* The author discusses the coincidence of the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests that occurred in the summer of 2020 and scrutinises the alleged tension between careful quarantine and political protest. The author suggests this tension is a false one that results from an urgency bias in normative reasoning and political action. The author begins by outlining a structural conception of injustice and identifies how the indeterminacy of structural injustice can complicate and deter a response. The author then discusses the duty to assist. The author argues that although the duty to assist is often theorised in the context of emergencies, it arises with the same weightiness in the context of structural injustice. Tbere is no necessary priority of emergencies over structural injustices, particularly as what is recognised as an emergency is itself a reflection ofstructural injustice. Indeed, the pandemic reveals that emergencies and structural injustice are not separate issues. The author describes a view of the pandemic and inequality as manifesting and exacerbating each other-a view under which the protests are also a response to the pandemic itself * Assistant Professor and Queen's National Scholar in Legal & Political Philosophy, Queen's University, Faculty of Law. Email: ashwini.vasanthakumar@queensu.ca. The author thanks the Queen's Law Journal editors and faculty advisors for helpful comments and other editorial assistance. Copyright © 2021 by Ashwini Vasanthakumar A. Vasanthakumar 305

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