About Crisis Palace
This is the home of a newsletter about what we build while the world is on fire. Written by journalist and essayist Tate Williams, it explores mutual aid, radical activism, music, art, and more, focused mostly but not entirely on Tucson, Arizona.
Every issue consists of a short essay about what it's like to be a person in the world right now and how we can build a better future while everything seems to be burning down around us. Issues often include analysis of local and global events, book reviews, interviews, etc., followed by some recommended links and media.
What topics do you write about?
- Climate Change. Extreme heat, hunger and thirst, housing and displacement, transportation, climate resilience.
- Mutual Aid. Non-hierarchal, community-led care that models a more just way of living beyond capitalism.
- Radical Activism and Social Movements. How people seeking transformative change build power and fight harmful systems.
- Media and Art. Movies, music, comics, television, fiction and nonfiction that help us cope with this world and imagine a new one.
About Tucson
Tucson, Arizona is a medium-sized desert city about 100 miles south of sprawling Phoenix and 60 miles north of the Mexico-U.S. border. Derived from the O'odham word Cuk Ṣon, meaning "base of the black hill," it stands on land stolen mostly from the Pascua Yaqui and Tohono O'Odham. One of the longest continuously populated areas of North America, dating back thousands of years, it's been occupied by the U.S. since in 1853.
I grew up in Phoenix, but lived in Tucson in the 1990s, left for 20 years to try some other places, then inevitably came back in 2021. That kind of thing tends to happen to people who have lived here. Even with the time away, it is the only place I've really ever felt was home. There is a particular warmth, but also a strangeness, that Tucsonans can't ever seem to escape.
Often reduced to a "blue dot in a red state," Tucson's politics contain the full complexity of its community and its problems. Tucson grapples with poverty and inequality, housing injustice, substance use issues, violent border enforcement, a legacy of colonialism, and an increasingly deadly climate. But our tragedies and struggles give us resilience. Our harsh surroundings make us stronger and gentler. Tucson can be a scary place, but it is very often a peaceful place, and it is always a beautiful place.
About me
I’m a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in the Atlantic, Boston Magazine, Inside Philanthropy, the Arizona Daily Star, the Tucson Sentinel, and more. I'm an organizer in the mutual aid collectives Community Care Tucson and Agua Para el Pueblo, and a board member at the Institute for Anarchist Studies.
What does Crisis Palace mean?
Crisis Palace means actually nothing. It was the result I got from an old twitter meme where the letters in my name determined what my Sonic the Hedgehog world would be called. I have a hard time naming things.