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San Antonio Tries A Creative Tack On Getting Residents To Wear Masks

Courtesy of Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson

The City of San Antonio has created a new advertising campaign driven by the question “What’ll it take to stop the spread of COVID-19?”

And the way they answered it is through music. Original songs were written and composed by Alyson Alonzo, Shelly Lares, Santiago Jiménez Jr., Azul Barrientos, Michael Carrillo and Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, the city’s poet laureate.

“I can't believe I'm among them. And I'm really, really honored to say, ‘Hey, I'm promoting the same message as these powerful artists,’” Sanderson said.

The city has tasked the artists to underscore mask-wearing and other precautions to help make them front-of-mind to San Antonians.

"We hope this campaign reminds the public how critical it is to work together to contain the spread of COVID-19,” said City Manager Erik Walsh in a press release.

Sanderson said she hoped to get inside listeners’ heads.

“I was hoping it would be something that would make you smile and motivate you to want to put on your mask when you don't feel like it or remind you, ‘Hey, I need to go wash my hands,’” she said.

Sanderson thinks disinformation has been very damaging to Americans’ trust.

“There are facts, there are things (that) are true about COVID-19. And we need to look at those facts, look at those statistics and get back to the basics of knowing what is real and what's not real, so that we can always have a clear understanding of how we can move forward and get better,” Sanderson said.

Since wearing masks is largely a precaution to keep you from spreading the virus, she thinks there is an even broader issue here than just COVID-19.

“Whatever happened to the Golden Rule, like treating others the way you want to be treated and being mindful of your neighbor?” she asked. “If we can love our neighbor as ourselves and keep that in focus and start teaching our kids that again, you know, we would be better as a society for it.”

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Jack Morgan can be reached at jack@tpr.org and on Twitter at @JackMorganii