If you're feeling despair over the fires in the Amazon, here's my attempt to be useful. Thread.
Some of you have read this one. It's a reflection on living on the edge of ecological collapse. I wrote it bc I needed to read it and I return to it weekly.
This piece is the best rundown I've read on the history of deforestation in the Amazon and its impacts on the Indigenous people who live there. It also discusses Indigenous resistance efforts. If you care, this stuff is worth knowing.
This is a shorter piece by award winning climate reporter @DahrJamail about the fires & their context. If you're thinking, "this isn't making me feel better," I get it, but I believe understanding these things is part of the process of overcoming despair.
There is hope in the fight & in our willingness to fight. Part of the struggle in this moment is to help ppl make connections between their pain over what's happening in the Amazon & the work that needs to be done here in the U.S. Trump is waging his own war on the natural world.
Like Bolsonaro, Trump has used hate speech to promote environmental destruction. Trump's wall will devestate ecosystems. Bolsonaro wants to clear the rainforest for commercial purposes before global alarm over ecological collapse creates greater pressure to preserve the forests.
Sadly, Bolsonaro doesn't presently have a lot to be afraid of, in terms of substantive international pressure. In truth, most of us have not paid close attention to the quickening pace of deforestation in the Amazon in the last 7 yrs or so. But that can change.
Last yr, a student at a talk I gave asked me what I'd say to students who want to get involved w social justice work but are super busy and don't want to risk getting an arrest record. I told him Indigenous ppl were already dying each week to ensure life on Earth, including his.
This moment is an opportunity to get right with the struggles we have not honored or appreciated. It's a chance to reconcile that Indigenous people, who have already suffered the violence of colonialism and imperialism, have often fought alone. We can acknowledge and change that.
The U.N. has clearly stated that the transformation required of us is massive and that Indigenous people, who are historically the best stewards of land, have the best guidance to offer. This is a moment to spread and embrace that truth.
Remember that the context of these events is fascistic and that fascism and ecological collapse are mutually reinforcing. We can panic about that foreshadowed spiral or we can get our learn on and fight fascism.
When it comes to environmentalism and direct action, we don't have to start from scratch. We can learn from recent history and from the brave work that many people who are still in the fight have made happen -- and we can show them due respect.
If you're thinking "we are not ready," you are right. But we are not the first group of people who've had to join forces with whoever is willing to fight and throw down like everything depends on it, because it does. Prison organizing offers a great model. truthout.org/articles/the-m…
When it comes to the climate crisis, I won't tell you that what's done can be undone. Some actions have irrevocable consequences. But we can fight to keep the natural world alive as long as possible, and we should.
When it comes to our politics, transformation is possible.
I'm not saying "don't be afraid." I'm afraid. Every damn day. Of fascism. Of the end of the world. But if the end comes sooner than later, I know who I want to be at the end of the world. Do you?
The person you are now is the person you would be at any moral crossroads in human history. Who is that person? Who will that person be in the ultimate struggle between life and death? Between good and evil? I'm guessing that person could be pretty bad ass.
We must recognize that Trump is not the totality of the crisis and beat back narratives that say otherwise. We can work to inform people that capitalism, white supremacy and neoliberalism have culminated in the rise of fascism & rally our communities against all of these forces.
People who have long done the work of direct action have gifted us with a great deal of knowledge. Collectives like mine reshare that knowledge through workshops, but there's also a lot of great content to read out there.
Some leftists are echoing right-wing talking points about the South being abandoned by the .gov in the wake of Helene. It's just not true y'all. We can talk about how services could be better or about how mutual aid does things the .gov can't/won't, but let's be honest/cautious.
The people I've talked to on the ground have consistently referred to ongoing federal efforts as crucial while also emphasizing that those efforts are not reaching everyone. The scale of the disaster and the nature of the terrain are major factors. It's not abandonment.
Under Trump, we saw true abandonment after Maria. We saw 3K people die unnecessarily. Many people will be found dead in the coming days, but it won't be bc the government wasn't trying to save people. You don't have to like Biden or the .gov (I don't) to admit this distinction.
Folks who are traveling to Chicago for the DNC, please be careful about who you connect with. If you meet strangers who are talking big game about doing "epic" shit, ask yourselves why they're saying these things to someone they don't even know.
They might be cops who want you to get hyped and drunk and run your mouth. We have seen this before. In 2012, a couple of undercovers latched onto three out-of-towners who showed up to protest the NATO summit. They hung out with those guys, got high with them, and talked big.
The two undercovers recorded the activists they targeted in moments of bravado and the state ultimately hit them with terrorism charges. Those young men were not a threat to anyone. They were singled out bc they had previously recorded police in a manner that embarrassed CPD.
When he was still doing climate journalism before retiring young (and not bc that work pays big), Dahr Jamail wrote: "I am learning how to bridge gaps between myself and the people I love who are navigating in a different reality." And fuck if that doesn't resonate.
This is all my therapist heard about recently: what it is to hold so much painful knowledge that you can't just casually dump on other people bc that info has to be parceled carefully alongside ideas about what the fuck to do, or it just demobilizes people or shuts them down.
So you don't want to throw around bad news like Oprah giving away cars. "You get an apocalyptic scenario! And you get an apocalyptic scenario! And you get some bad news about sea mammals!" It doesn't end well.
"What does peace mean in the heart of empire amid the realities of racial capitalism? What does it mean to politicians whose primary concern is the maintenance of an economic system that is driving most life on earth toward extinction? It means order." organizingmythoughts.org/what-does-peac…
Noticing some folks reasoning that particular students don't deserve a militant police response bc they are "peaceful." I don't care if students break windows, shove back, or throw things; none of them deserve a militarized police response. They're protesting a genocide.
Folks should be careful about conjuring standards that determine whether someone is deserving of police violence. It's enough to say that the people protesting a genocide should not be harmed.
I'm not even sure whose values are being appealed to half the time. If people were really worried about "violence," they'd be objecting to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
Many people in colonial societies believe (or simply accept as a norm, without argument) that any amount of suffering and death is acceptable within out-groups to sustain their in-group's way of life. This is especially true in the imperial core, where I live.
The idea of a "whatever it takes" stance being adopted by those out-groups, as they pursue a freer existence, or simply demand to survive, inspires genocidal zeal among many people in colonial societies. Standards of decency are about how their in-groups are treated, not others.
When such people are harmed, they say, "Nothing could justify this." When their governments harm others, they point to the injuries they have experienced as justification.