Reclaiming Our Air

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Siobhán Eagen, who was considered high-risk, was excluded from the San Diego arts, recreation, and organizing spaces they had long relied on when it became clear these spaces wouldn’t provide precautionary measures. “I lost access to basically every space that I used to inhabit,” they say. “I had nothing feeding my soul anymore.”

After years of isolation, Eagen joined a growing movement to make spaces safer by focusing on air purification. Air filters acknowledge the intimacy that comes with sharing air, and the inescapability of our interdependency. Eagen launched an organization called Fan Favorite in San Diego in February 2024, drawing inspiration from Clean Air Club, a grassroots group that provides free air-purification equipment to local and touring artists in Chicago.

Emily Dupree founded Clean Air Club in early 2023 after her partner got COVID despite wearing a mask at a concert. “There had to be a better way for us to navigate the continuing pandemic, where we would be able to enjoy the arts community, but also be safe while doing so,” she says. 

Thanks to the blueprint that Dupree established, the movement has grown to at least 21 clean-air lending libraries across the United States, four in Canada, and one in Australia, with a handful more preparing to launch. These groups provide essential mitigation resources and community building in a political climate where COVID-19 remains an ongoing public health threat without adequate institutional or social support. 

Numerous studies have shown that high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters, as well as ultraviolet radiation (far-UVC light) lamps, can reduce the transmission of COVID-19. Yet most venues have not upgraded their air ventilation systems to meet the CDC’s recommended standard of five air changes per hour—the rate at which a space’s entire volume of air is completely replaced. And that is only the minimum. 

“Clean Air Club exists as a DIY stopgap measure in the midst of ongoing institutional failure,” Dupree says. “What we’ve seen is a widespread suppression of the realities of how COVID can harm us so that capital and the interests of private businesses can continue unimpeded.”

When Katie Drackert developed long COVID, they say “it hurt” to be left out of performance spaces they had participated in for nearly 10 years. Witnessing the ongoing public health failures motivated them to found Clear the Air ATX in Austin, Texas, and study communications. “Whether we want to or not, we’ve all agreed to be public health communicators—and in such a grassroots way, where we’re fighting such an intense media machine and social stigma.”

Before fundraising for air purifiers in San Diego, Eagen built a social media following by posting memes about the connections between COVID, disability justice, and decolonization. As an Indigenous Californian of the Acjáchemem Nation, an Irish American, and a descendant of the San Juan Capistrano Mission Indians, their ancestors have a long history of being inflicted with—and resisting—disease, from smallpox and tuberculosis to HIV and AIDS. The resulting loss of life, connection, and language (and the role the government played in each) formed the foundation of Eagen’s worldview. So while they have been harassed for wearing a mask, Eagen sees their work as pivotal for public health and social justice. 

“Isolation is not fun,” they say. “We can’t have a movement without joy.” Without play and recreation, “we can’t feed our soul and our spirit, to have energy and to have integrity for the fight.” 

This grassroots effort to purify air in social spaces is clearly meeting an urgent need: Clean Air Club has provided air-purification equipment at more than 600 Chicago and Midwest events, more than 30 national tours, and seven EU/U.K. tours. The group also supports eight official artist partners who commit to having air purifiers at most of their shows, and hundreds of local artists who want to make shows safer. 

In January 2024, Clean Air Club also launched the Artist Connect platform for COVID-cautious artists of all disciplines to find each other. Within a month, 450 artists had signed up around the world.

Clean Air Club prioritizes events that require and provide masks, and in many cities, organizations partner with a mask bloc to distribute masks. 

“Venues worry that it’s going to drive away their customers or it’s going to interfere in some way with their customers’ enjoyment of the evening,” Dupree says of mandatory-masking events. “But in our experience, all of the Clean Air Club mask-required events sell out. They are packed with people who are happily masked and happy to participate in a form of care of one another.”

Many of these groups consider the clean air movement as harm reduction: People are going to gather anyway, and any level of mitigation helps reduce the chain of transmission.

Many of these groups consider the clean air movement as harm reduction: People are going to gather anyway, and any level of mitigation helps reduce the chain of transmission. 

It’s no coincidence that this grassroots movement is being led by artists—many of them queer. 

“Historically, queer nightlife has been such a safe space for when the rest of the world isn’t accepting of us,” Drackert says. “Disabled queer people should be able to partake in celebration and pure joy as well.”

While most groups focus on providing cleaner air for music, arts, and leftist organizing spaces, some have a broader focus. Thanks to a crowdfunding campaign and material donations, Fan Favorite has provided some combination of rapid tests, masks, and air filtration at events including a Palestine solidarity event, a punk show, a fast-food workers organizing panel, an erotic art night, a social drawing night, and an open mic. They have also distributed masks and tests to workers crossing the Mexico–U.S. border.

INHALE Nashville founder Ashley Hayward is a burlesque performer and her partner is a comedian, so she hopes to make those shows safer. Airgasmic in Los Angeles focuses on air purification for the drag scene, which relies on lip-synching, making mask-wearing impractical. Clean Air Cville in Charlottesville, Virginia, has installed permanent air filters in three local nonprofits, and makes filters available for any community event. Even car dealerships have requested the purifiers; the group might start renting them to businesses to help subsidize the cost. 

Groups like INHALE Nashville and Clear the Air ATX also provide lists of local COVID-safer businesses to help incentivize these practices. 

Rob Loll, founder of Safe Air Project in Jamestown, New York, aims to provide air purifiers as well as masks, tests, and COVID information to his community. He’s provided one permanent air filter to a yoga studio, and provided air filters for a Christmas choir concert. A small business owner himself, he is trying to help other business owners realize that cleaner air directly supports the local economy. 

“This whole idea that we’re just going to keep working until we’re sick, and then disrupt everything,” is unrealistic, Loll says. “Even from a business, capitalist sense, I don’t understand how this is supposed to play out for them.”

Accepting that the pandemic isn’t over means acknowledging the need for long-term infrastructural change and updated air-filtration standards. Several organizers compared the clean air movement with the structural overhaul necessary to purify water to eliminate cholera. “I really hope that we’re just the very early adopters of something that makes a lot of sense to do on a broad scale,” says Jennifer Bowser of Breathe Easy RVA in Richmond, Virginia. Similarly, during a January 2024 Senate hearing on long COVID, epidemiologist Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly pushed for updated air filtration to fight the virus, comparing it to how many building codes now require earthquake-proofing. 

Making spaces safer for disabled and immunocompromised people helps everyone.

“I have to remind myself when I get overwhelmed, I’m doing the job of the state,” Drackert says. “But I will do it, and I’ll continue to do it, because I feel really passionate about it.” 

Making spaces safer for disabled and immunocompromised people helps everyone—especially considering each COVID infection increases a person’s risk of becoming disabled and immunocompromised. Cleaner air also mitigates allergies, wildfire smoke, and industrial pollution; it also lowers the risk of other airborne diseases like influenza and RSV. And making spaces safer means more people can participate in crucial organizing efforts. 

This grassroots movement for clean air is poised to grow—and quickly. In early February, Dupree hosted a call with 14 clean air organizations to share strategies and build solidarity, and the number of groups has almost doubled since then. 

“All of the planet’s health is connected,” Eagen says. “Not only has it been true eternally, but on this global scale with so much air travel, the people who are breathing on me here probably breathed on someone in Chicago or got breathed on by somebody from Chicago. Our clean air in each of our cities impacts all of us.” 

CORRECTION: This article was updated at 9:38a.m. PT on May 24, 2024, to correct the name of the organization Clean Air Cville. Read our corrections policy here.