'The Crossroads Hotel in Casula has gained the kind of infamy that most venues in 2021 want to avoid. In June the hotel became ground zero for the Covid-19 outbreak in the multiracial, largely working-class area of south-west Sydney. The starkly different, militarised response to this outbreak, compared with those in the eastern suburbs, has arguably done more to entrench Sydney’s west–east divide than any other event in the city’s history.' (Introduction)