What is The Other Spread?
The Other Spread is a web-based project that documents communities’ responses to COVID-19, through individual acts of survival, moments of quiet heroism and shared acts of generosity and selflessness. The contents of The Other Spread memorialize unique historical, cultural and social perspectives that will help current and future generations understand, remember and learn from this extraordinary moment in time. By documenting and sharing these stories, we can gain insight into important questions: What can we learn about one another? How do we better understand each other? And, how do we emerge from this crisis with a greater appreciation of our shared humanity?
Throughout history, every generation faces significant moments of reckoning. Looking only at modern history, the world has survived two World Wars which, combined, killed over 100 million people; a Great Depression, during which over 300,000 companies closed in the United States alone and saw 1 in 4 people unemployed; a Holocaust that murdered six million Jews, approximately two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population; the Korean and Vietnam wars, in which over six million people were killed; a Cold War that seized economies and paralyzed social liberties across Central and Eastern Europe; and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that killed nearly 3,000 civilians and have had effects lasting far beyond the actions of that day. These are just the widely recognized events in the United States – not factoring in the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, or mass famines in Ukraine and Ethiopia, or dozens of other crises that have presented people with perhaps the most human of all choices: to respond or to not respond.
It has been said many times that on humanity’s darkest days, the human spirit is also its strongest. Those are the days when selflessness and resilience shine bright and contain the flames of hurt, pain and suffering so that no tragedy ultimately exists in vain. We must believe, and rightly so, that from the ruins of destruction emerges a separate, but parallel, narrative – one of hope and strength and kindness. Because of this counter narrative, we understand that time and again, when nearly everything may seem broken, stolen or destroyed, the human spirit not only remains intact, but it perseveres and grows stronger than it was before whatever challenge was thrust upon it.
The spirit remains intact because of those individuals and communities who respond in the moment without pride and without fanfare. Their legacy lies in the philosophical questions imparted to future generations:
Would we risk our lives to smuggle a sack of potatoes into the Warsaw Ghetto in 1939 to feed families awaiting a doomed future?
Would we run into gunfire and grenades to rescue a wounded soldier?
Would we cut our own salary in half to hire someone in need of a job?
Would we run into a burning building to carry strangers down crumbling flights of stairs?
And, would we do all of this, knowing that our identity would ultimately fade into oblivion and we would simply become another face in the crowd, indistinguishable from all the rest?
Since the start of COVID-19, we have traced the spread of this virus and its effects; we have traced patient spread and the spreading economic impact. We have traced the spread of variant strains and, most recently, we have begun tracing vaccine distribution. But, is there not another spread to trace? The spread of inner-strength to survive, silent acts of generosity, and communities working together – the spread of people simply offering what they had to offer, doing what they were called to do, and trying to live their lives with dignity and compassion for one another.