Garthikan Gobinathan

Essential Needs Include:

In collaboration with Dana Zamzul.Our goal with this poster project is to highlight the the inequity essential workers have faced while providing essential services + labour during the pandemic. We started by examining the word “essential” and exploring how its definition has evolved from the beginning of the pandemic to one year later. We are critical of the way “essential” has been deployed by the government to offer a blanketing sense of heroism, without providing fundamental support to those who need it most and those who have kept our city functioning.

“We focused on three key areas of policy change to highlight: 1) rent relief 2) paid sick days and 3) vaccines for all. We chose these areas based on research specific to the critical goods industry which includes grocery stores, retail shops, food processing plants, and warehouses.”