Crisis Palace 100: The Reader Takeover!

by

‘A world in which there is room for many worlds’

Death and Life, Gustav Klimt, 1915

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Well I asked and you delivered. I didn’t really know what to expect when I decided to do a reader participation issue. The response could have been complete crickets and I would have 100% understood. I don’t even like to open emails, much less respond to them, much less fill out an accompanying survey with essay questions for god’s sake. But a bunch of you were up for it, and I am very grateful.

For starters, I learned a lot about your interests and preferences. I was encouraged that most people don’t seem to mind the length, although I’m sure that’s kind of a self-selecting sample. I was surprised to learn that there’s a lot of interest in philanthropy. I don’t know why I’m surprised, considering that was the primary focus of this newsletter when I started it. But I’ve written about philanthropy since 2014(?) so I usually have an itch to write about different stuff and probably project that onto readers. Clearly there is a lot of interest in how billionaires and wealthy foundations are impacting the world right now, and that will always be a thread in the newsletter. Also a lot of interest in housing, which I totally get.

I also got a lot of extremely helpful suggestions. One theme was that people seem to like the interviews, and want to hear more voices in the newsletter, including from grassroots organizers, people working on just transition, and people from local politics and community organizations. I could not agree more, and in the next phase of CP, I’m going to be doing more reporting and Q&As mixed in with the essays. This has always been something I wanted to do more of, but have had to balance it with time and money concerns. Going forward I’ve freed up a little more space to focus on that kind of thing, which I’m really looking forward to. Always open to suggestions of people I should talk to.

The responses to the writing prompts were so thoughtful, honest, insightful. Full of things I also feel deeply, things I had never considered, and topics I now want to write about. And finally, some much appreciated recommendations of books, music, movies, podcasts, TV shows and more that I will list below.

Also, I’ll do the drawing soon and get in touch with the winners about their winnings. If you didn’t get a chance to respond, you are still more than welcome to. I’ll leave the form open and may include straggler responses in future emails, although you won’t make it into the drawing sorry but there are rules in life.

Thanks again to Tamiko for the inspiration, and Jamie for helping me figure it out. Here we go!

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Prompt #1: Do you feel like the world is on fire?

Literally or figuratively. How do you feel climate change impacting your life? What other related crises (democracy, inequality, structural racism, housing, transportation, health, etc) do you feel bearing down on you? What emotional response is this bringing up—anger, rage, motivation, energy, grief, dread, anxiety? Who or what are those emotions directed toward?

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I think about climate change basically all the time. I vacillate between existential dread and hope that we can avoid the worst. Oh and sorrow that my children are going to live in a world that will be more and more disrupted by climate crises for their entire lives.

David Rogers

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I live on an Ionian island and sooner or later we’ll literally burn up—the scars of past wildfires are all over the olive groves and pines near here—and sooner or later we, too, will have to contend with wet bulb 35 events.

But meanwhile we installed heat pumps and plan to install solar electric (the energy company offers the option for buying 100% renewable electricity, but we’d like to also have our own system to power our own little electric car for when the main cable from the mainland goes down). Emotionally, I find some semblance of balance walking the dogs and soaking up the incredible beauty, the warm people’s vibes, but I basically agree with someone (Ada?) who suggested we’re all doomed, and some of us are more doomed than others. (Editor: Indeed it is from Ada, or Ardor by Nabokov)

The other day I spoke with a wealthy man who is planning a massive marina for super-yachts since there are hundreds of them floating in the neighborhood looking for a place to park. But it will be a green marina—they won’t be able to idle their engines while docked but will be hooked up to the solar electric system. How’d it make me feel? I had to laugh… and dust off my old copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang.

Marko di Bello

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I always imagined climate change would happen really quickly one day, culminating in a major catastrophic event where many millions of people would die. I understand now that it’s a slower unraveling, and there are people who will always be able to shield themselves with money and power, people who will never be impacted in a serious way. But there are more of us than there are of them, and in my good moments I think it’s that shared humanity, the desire to live a meaningful life without causing harm to others, that will save us in the end.

Jamie Cerretti

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Yes. And the interconnectedness of all those related crises you list makes me waver between a greater despair and the positive notion that some good progress on any issue will impact many others.

Eric Swedlund

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The alarm is blaring, the doorknob is hot, and the smoke is starting to come in from under the door. What makes it truly terrifying are all the people telling me to just wait for the firefighters to come save us.

Josh Cerretti

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It feels like the conversation about the world being on fire is more present than ever. But the reality is that it’s becoming more of an apathy engine than I would like to see. Too many people either throw their hands up and say oh well, or too many people willing to martyr themselves for the cause. Then there are the often forgotten people who are being ground down by the very system in front of us and don’t have energy, time, or shouldn’t be expected to do much more than they’re already doing unless we’re willing to fight for them. Migrant and incarcerated workers, single parents with multiple jobs or just one grueling one, marginalized people, status insecure or unsafe people, etc.

What I would like to talk more about is sustainable movement ecology. Movements for change and justice are hard but martyring ourselves for the cause is making the decision that it’s okay to recycle the idea of expendability into our movements. No one is expendable, we are all valued and necessary members of society, anything less than that may fall short of a radical vision of the future. And we’ve got plenty of entities working hard to have us fall well short of our goalposts.

Michél Legendre

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Yes, the world feels very on fire. I feel a sense of dread most of the time that I haven’t ever felt before. Dread about what comes next, about not doing enough, about living in this world as a whole person.

Theresa Warburton

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I feel like climate change and capitalism has had an impact on my decision not to have children. There is a sense of hopelessness around it, and an end of the world feeling. But it also encourages me to enjoy the beauty of what we have now and be kind of selfish with my time and my life. I flow between anger and anxiety and ambivalence with all the issues facing our country specifically. I have trouble balancing being super active and angry and removing myself from all of it to a hopeless “fuck it all” state of mind. The anger and anxiety is directed at big, dark money, extreme capitalism, and white supremacy. Basically a lack of empathy from society as a whole, which was born of and is fed by the above.

Amanda McDaniel

Prompt #2: What do you want to build in the next world?

What are the elements of the future world you want to see built or help build? Innovations, infrastructure, community resources, social bonds, organizations, businesses, economies, government agencies—whatever. What actions do you want to take in coming years, individual or collective? What are you excited about? How are the problems discussed above shaping your work (either your job, your art, or volunteering)?

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Like the zapatistas said “a world in which there is room for many worlds.” Too many visions of the future assume we would all like to live the same way.

Josh Cerretti

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Lately I’ve been thinking about the phoenix, and what it looks like to prepare to transform and rise from the ashes of the fire. There’s a group of queer BIPOC that I’ve met online and we are talking about what skills and resources we need during the “great unraveling.” We’re thinking about what it looks like to build small communities across the country that are both self sufficient and connected to each other—queer communities grounded in radical values.

As you’ve said in this newsletter, the way we will survive, and maybe thrive, is by being connected to the people we are in community with. I am thinking a lot about what that looks like in practice, and all the different circles of community I am part of. How do we learn to take care of each other and rely on each other. That will be how we rise from the ashes, I think.

Tamiko Beyer

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I often ask organizers, people in the movement, friends in general what would they do if money didn’t matter and we weren’t expected to work to live. And so many people answer with “work” that would be with their hands. I think there’s something fundamentally human that so many people would do art, woodwork, be farmers, care for people through different mediums, make clothes, but don’t because it’s not seen as a career or sustainable or they have movement work to do.

I want to start building the world where we can fall into joy when we win. Like when we finally roll this boulder up the hill and fall over out of exhaustion, the ceiling that’s collapsing to replace the floor is that world where people can just be. Be in existence, be in their own manifestation, be in community, just be.

Michél Legendre

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I hope we can shift our focus from punishment to accountability, justice, and reparations. So many of the problems we are currently facing seem rooted in our unending thirst to put Black and Brown people in cages or control every aspect of the way they move through the world. I envision a world where true reproductive justice is realized, which requires abolishing the carceral state and ensuring every single person has the ability to choose if, when, and how they parent.

Jamie Cerretti

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What I’m excited about is a project that plans to map the world’s human population into about 100,000 segments of fewer than 100,000 people using existing boundaries, and then characterize the risks and opportunities of each, develop tools to help convey and upgrade/update those characterizations, and then see how many of the ~100,000 “metacommunities” might be engaged through their schools and local orgs to “globalize” their communities, networking with others with the shared vision of leaving no community behind.

Marko di Bello

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Would love to see public education become the heartbeat of our communities, teachers to be respected as professionals and seen as essential to the future of the country. Free college. I support organizations who are working at local political levels on legislation, by sharing their work or giving them funds, helping get the good ones elected. As cliche as it is, I believe the children are our future. They give me hope, we just need to get out of their way at times. Getting more and more old white men out of public offices.

Amanda Williams

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Whatever brings a greater equality between people will have the most lasting and positive impacts.

Eric Swedlund

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I want no more police!

Theresa Warburton

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I want a world where fossil fuel companies no longer exist. And I’d like a relatively healthy democracy where folks’ minimum basic needs like food, water, shelter, clothing, education and health care are guaranteed.

David Rogers

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I’d like to build a world without billionaires.

Pat Wood

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Here is one thing that I wrote this week

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Reader Recommendations!

Jamie Cerretti:

Pat Wood:

Eric Swedlund:

  • TV Shows: Lodge 49, Reservation Dogs, Stranger Things, Get Shorty, Bosch
  • Music: The Beths, Hiss Golden Messenger, Jason Isbell, Waxahatchee, Lydia Loveless, Khruangbin, Micah McKee
  • Books: James McBride – Deacon King Kong; Luis Alberto Urrea – The House of Broken Angels; crime/mystery series from Tana French, Joe Ide, Attica Locke, Jo Nesbø, Michael Connelly, Alex Segura, Joe R. Lansdale, and more.

Marko de Bello:

  • Foundation, the Apple TV series, is a beautiful disaster, and the premise of trying to establish a foundation to reduce the dark ages from 30,000 years to 1,000 years is a timely one.
  • Woman at War, the Icelandic film about a woman fighting an aluminum plant, dodging drones and shorting out power lines by shooting wires over them, is a minor masterpiece.
  • But my current obsession is anything recent by Andreas Malm, especially podcasts and How to Blow up a Pipeline.

Josh Cerretti:

Theresa Warburton:

  • This Land (podcast) is great.
  • I’ve really been enjoying Brothers on Three, a story of a basketball team on the Flathead Reservation.
  • Slothrust’s new record is really getting me through right now.

Michél Legendre:

  • I love the IDLES band they are incredible. Raw emotion and fun.
  • I’ve also been really getting in touch with more Afro-diasporic music: Francis The Great, Do 7 band, Lord Beginner, Mighty Dougla, Roy Ayers, Sons of Kemet.
  • More music: Kojey Radical, Joy Crookes, Appleby, Oompa (shoutout Boston), Arma Jackson, Oscar Jerome, Miraa May, Bakar, Tonina – Calypso Blues, Shungudzo – It’s a good day
  • Poetry: Porsha Olayiwola, Tamiko Beyer, Jericho Brown
  • Books: anything Amitav Ghosh, bell hooks – The Will to Change, Teju Cole – Open City

Amanda Williams:

  • Ted Lasso – what a gift of joy
  • Sex Education, as graphic as it is, it’s a show about hope and inclusion and loving and accepting yourself.
  • Schitts Creek of course
  • CODA

David Rogers:

BONUS:

You gotta check out Michél’s Spotify playlists:

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And take us in for a landing Slothrust!

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There you go folks, takeover complete. That was so fun. Thank you everyone for your great insights and recommendations and the many books I have added to my reading list. I hope to do another of these someday, maybe issue 200!

And more than anything, thanks for subscribing and reading. I’m lucky enough to have a pretty good day job, but being a journalist or a writer or someone who works in digital media can be a dark endeavor, one that runs at a painful speed fueled by clicks, likes, shares, retweets, where young journalists get paid 50 bucks to write a 200 word blog post about something Machine Gun Kelly tweeted about Slipknot until one day the publication they write for is inevitably bought by a hedge fund and they can’t even go back to selling weed because it’s legal now. Even Substack—the platform where this newsletter started out, which is great software and home to some of my favorite writers—has come to represent this relentless conversion of thought into capital at a massive scale, demanding every one of us to be not just reporter, writer, thinker, but a digital entrepreneur.

I have found that this little newsletter provides a safe harbor from all that. What started as yet another self-promotional tool turned into a refreshing new writing practice. And that turned into what I now think of as my own zine, a little baby publication I send out to you all via wordpress plugins instead of xerox machine. (I know some of you freaks would LOVE it if I printed and mailed this to you.) Everyone knows that a zine is nothing without the community of people who subscribe, read, and pass it along. So thanks again, and as long as you keep checking the mailbox, I’ll keep running off copies.

Tate