A feature-length documentary that follows the Auntie Sewing Squad, a collective of mostly BIPOC women volunteers who came together on social media with a mission: to protect vulnerable communities from COVID-19. This national network of hundreds of Aunties, Uncles, and non-binary volunteers turned their living rooms into "sweatshops," where they sewed and donated cloth facemasks to counter the US government's failure to provide protective gear for its people. 

At the start of the COVID-19 crisis in March 2020 in the U.S., due to the Trump administration’s botched response to the pandemic, the bottom dropped out of the surgical facemask supply as healthcare workers scrambled for PPE. From this chaos the Auntie Sewing Squad emerged, when performance artist Kristina Wong created the Auntie Sewing Squad Facebook group in mid-March 2020.

The Auntie Sewing Squad grew from about two dozen crafty activists to a nationwide group of more than 800 members who sew for historically disenfranchised communities of color whose vulnerabilities have been exacerbated by COVID-19. For the Aunties, sewing masks served as a way to meet a public health need, as well as a model for engaged radical care and as a means of expressing cross-racial solidarity. The Aunties address systemic inequities from their sewing machines, openly discussing feminism, anti-racism, allyship, and smashing white supremacy.

As hate crimes against Asian Americans spiked as a result of President Trump’s rhetoric blaming all Chinese for the so-called “Wuhan virus,” the mostly-Asian American Auntie squad formed, gathered momentum, and sewed masks by the thousands. As coronavirus rapidly spread through every state, overburdening health care systems to near-collapse, more and more Aunties joined the ranks. When it became clear that communities of color were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, the Aunties quickly pivoted from their initial mission of supplying healthcare workers to meeting the needs of vulnerable communities, funneling masks to farmworkers, day laborers, unhoused asylum seekers, indigenous communities, incarcerated people, and many others in need of protection. As the nation erupted in rebellion over police violence against Black Americans, the Aunties supplied Black Lives Matter protesters with facemasks. For the Aunties, sewing masks is not only a way to meet a public health need, but also a means to  express cross-racial solidarity in a moment of social upheaval.

As Sun Tze wrote, “On desperate ground, fight.” In 2020 we were on desperate ground in the battle against COVID-19, and the Aunties continued to fight, to save lives.