I dream of the children of the rising seas The wildfire born, the tornado seeds Conceived in the hands of the run down clock Betrayed by their ancestor’s greed They live on the edges of forgotten towns Main Street hunters, suburban farms Raised by necessity, grief, and change Schooled by the silenced alarm At night they gather, chant freedom tales Of shining light, and hammer and bell Prostrate to surviving beasts and birds Remembering all those who fell. I pray for these wildflowers of heat and flood Find rivulets, run deep and wide Resync your heartbeats with earthsong Let your energies be sun-tied. The new world is yours Tornado seeds Disperse Alight Be
climate change
Imaginal Discs
To become a butterfly, a caterpillar first digests itself. But certain groups of cells survive, turning the soup into eyes, wings, antennae and other adult structures
Ferris Jabr, Scientific American, 2012
It was born hungry. And because it believed it was alone, it ate and ate and ate. It ate the floor upon which it sat. And it grew. It ate the walls that protected it from the biting winds. It grew some more. It ate the roof that shaded it from the sharp rays of light. Of course, it grew and grew and grew. It ate the only home it had ever known.
On the inside, we imagined something different. Inside its body, we felt – not alone. We felt joined, resonant, alive. We believed in open skies and soft places upon which to alight. We knew we could eat without destroying our home. Inside the darkness, we gathered, we waited, we held the story in our hearts.
It couldn’t grow anymore. Nothing left to eat. Nowhere left to live. It was bloated, stagnant, uncomfortable in its own calcifying skin. And from deep inside it sensed an unsettling fluttering of wings. It turned itself upside down. It wrapped itself in a sticky thick blanket. It tried to quiet the fluttering, slow the beating, beating, beating rhythm of another life.
We felt the slowing, the darkening, the silencing. We felt the body around us turn upside down. Some of us also slowed, darkened, went silent. Some of us felt topsy-turvy, nauseous, confused. But many more of us raised our heads towards the future. This dimming, turning, quiet was not only an end, but also a beginning. We began to dance slowly at first, then faster and faster. We sang to each other. “It’s time! It’s time! “
It did not understand what was happening. It felt afraid. Its body was dissolving, disintegrating, disentangling the pieces of itself one from the other. Meaning to end the fluttering, it liquefied, made itself into a soup. It was no longer hungry. It could not eat. There was nothing left for it to do, to be, to want. So it waited to see what would happen next.
We danced and the body turned into a vast sea. Many of us wept in the water. We felt sad that the body around us was gone. We had to learn to swim. We had to find each other in new ways. Over time we learned that the sea was full of nourishment and possibility. We grew stronger inside the sea. We remembered the story of another body, graceful, life-giving, free. And slowly, steadily we, transformed the sea into something new.
I was reborn, in sunlight. I felt the warm breeze dry my body, still damp from the sea I used to be. My eyes showed me a thousand pieces of the world around me. The home my old self had eaten was one tiny leaf in an endless flowing river of soft swaying blues and yellows and pinks. I was hungry, ready to drink and dance, pollinate and migrate. With a push, I opened my wings, released my hold on the only home I had ever known and fell into the loving arms of the air around me.
“There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren’t, the cycles wouldn’t keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves.”
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
Bringing our whole selves into the movement to end the climate crisis
** Framing speech I gave at the April 2014 Convergence of local 350 leaders working in their towns, cities, and states to end the climate crisis.
I want to bring my whole self into this room.
- I am the great-great grand-daughter of villagers from a rural, Tamil-speaking, Hindu people
- I am the great-grand daughter of a people colonized by profit-seeking, English-speaking, pale-skinned, Christian, monarchists from thousands of miles away.
- I am the granddaughter of civil servants whose families survived, then profited by taking on the values, language and practice of their British rulers.
- I am the daughter of a father born a few years after Indian Independence, who was told by his parents, “we should speak English in this house.”
- I am the daughter of a mother who was one of a few Hindu students allowed to attend a prestigious Christian Medical college in independent India.
- I am the child who immigrated with her parents to the United States as a baby. I am the naturalized citizen.
- I am the child of a doctor and an engineer. I am comfortably middle class.
- I am a woman.
- I am a college educated person.
- I am an anti-oppression educator and an activist for women’s rights and racial justice.
- I am a woman of color.
- I am a woman married to a man.
- I am a brown-skinned woman married to a white skinned man.
- I am the mother of two kids under age 6.
- I am an activist working to end the climate crisis
I have brought my whole self into this room with you because we all share a basic goal: the end of the climate crisis.
We have the same basic analysis;
1. the fossil fuel industry is the main driver of this crisis. We must stop them.
2. Alternate forms of energy exist that do not contribute to global warming. We should use them.
But just as I bring my whole self into this room, I also bring my questions:
Why do we as a global society allow the fossil fuel industry and other corporate and state powers to put profits before people?
This question keeps me up at night. Because when we try to answer this question, we know that the answer lies in 500 years of history we cannot ignore.
No. We must bring our whole selves into this room.
In the 15th century the Kings and Queens of Europe sent their people to systematically colonize the non-Christian lands;
They prioritized power and profits for the kingdoms of Europe over the sovereignty, and survival of indigenous people, nation-states, and their lands.
In order to increase and maintain their power they exploited the lands, natural resources, and labor of the people they encountered.
They silenced those who stood in the way of this profit. They massacred tribes, enslaved whole villages, indentured workers, discounted local values, beliefs and practices and replaced them by force with their own.
But perhaps the most clever thing they did was this:
They rewarded those who complied by minimally sharing profits and offering security. And those who actively brought profits in were granted riches, safety, and access to power.
They rewarded those who complied…and we are still being rewarded, or privileged simply because we were born into the middle/upper class, simply because of our European ancestry, simply because we are culturally American.
We have been taught to believe that our ideas are good, our methods are rational, are causes are just.
And now we are all here in this room. A group of good, rational people, with a just cause: shutting down the fossil fuel industry, and ending the climate crisis. But who are we in this room? And who is missing?
I bring myself into this room as a person who has internalized the values of a profit-driven colonialist culture.
****
Around the world people who rely on the land, natural resources and on their own physical labor for their daily survival are most often Black and Brown people, indigenous people, and migrants.
When their ancestors attempted to resist colonization and the unending drive for more profit, more growth, they were massacred, enslaved, indentured, exploited, dehumanized, and objectified.
Today the great-great grandchildren of those resisters carry that trauma within them and face the 21 century colonial weapons being wielded daily: malnourished and poisoned bodies, crumbling neighborhoods, children trying to learn in dysfunctional schools, hostile law enforcement, and decimation by incarceration.
In order to survive, they too have often been minimally rewarded for compliance.
Compliance has often meant working in service of profit for the wealthy, in the very industries we are trying to dismantle. Coal mining, oil-refining, pipeline laying.
Knowing this, are we still good? Are we still reasonable? Are we still just?
If we want to end the climate crisis, is it enough to end our reliance on fossil fuels? If the” profit before people and land mandate has gotten us to where we are right now, what must we do differently?
******
We do not have to answer this question by ourselves. In fact, we cannot.
Many groups led by people who work the land, black and brown people, indigenous people, and migrants are finding ways to resist the fossil fuel industry, AND prioritize the people and the land. Some refer to this work as “THE JUST TRANSITION’. Others may think in terms of building the triple bottom line: people, planet and profits.
I bring myself into this room as a humble student of those groups working toward a Just Transition. Groups working for more triple bottom line approaches: Groups like the Climate Justice Alliance, Movement Generation, the Green Jobs Movement, and Idle No More.
I am asking you now to bring your whole selves into this room and into this work. To consider becoming a student like of those who have been traditionally outside of the environmental movement.
As you strategize, organize, and mobilize, I ask that you consider the following:
1. How can we prioritize those who rely on the land, natural resources, and their own physical labor to survive?
2. How can we prioritize the voices of those who have been silenced?
3. Who is missing from our strategizing, our organizing, our mobilizing? Why?
4. How do we begin?
How will we save the planet? (aka We Didn’t Start the Fire 2.0)
Hydroponic, symbiotic, solar-powered farmings fun.
How can someone save the planet when she lacks a green thumb?
Loca-voring, and divesting, raising chickens cage free.
Walking, sailing, cargo biking, canning fruit straight from the tree.
How will we save the planet?
When it’s all so crazy
and I feel so lazy.
How will we save the planet?
There’s so much to learn
meanwhile the planet’s burnin’
Wind turbines, electric cars, siphon power from the stars
How will I survive if I can’t get my daily candy bars?
Building bunkers, keeping bees, local living economies
Crop rotating, fertilizing, don’t forget the heirloom seeds.
How will we save the planet?
When it’s all so crazy
and I feel so lazy.
How will we save the planet?
There’s so much to learn
meanwhile the planet’s burnin’
How will we save the planet?
I’m sure she’ll keep turning,
But we’ll all be burning.
How will we save the planet?
I can’t tell who’s winning
and the world keeps spinning.
Rest. Rant.
Riding through Italian Market on my bike, watching vendors lay out winter squash and imported lychees, a red-lettered sign catches my eye.
REST RANT
Early morning brain prevents me from getting the joke for a solid minute and in that time I try to follow this new rule set forth by this unknown guru.
REST.
I begin to breathe deeply, clear my mind. Relax my muscles, feel the damp fall air lick my skin.
RANT.
Whatwillhappenifwedon’tgetclimatechangeundercontrol?!!!!!!!!
REST.
A wrinkled, crisp leaf circles in a wind swirl and my mind follows its delicate dance.
RANT.
Incomeinequalityisnotsustainableandwillleadinevitablytobloodyrevolution!!!
REST
I imagine my son’s third birthday candles glowing in front of his face. Maybe we should decorate it with the left over Halloween candy.
Forests of lollipops on fields of kit-kat crumbs, a three-year olds heaven.
RANT
Thiscountryissoracistanditsthechildrenwhosufferwhatcouldpossiblybewrong
withfundingfgoodpubliceducationforall?!?!
REST (AU) RANT!
Now I get it.
A Mother’s Survival Shanty
Swimming lessons are first
to prepare for the worst.
I guess sailing could be useful too.
Some kind of marshal art.
When things fall apart.
Self-defense in a world gone cuckoo.
Perhaps building a fire,
or recognizing a liar.
Who knows what will keep them alive?
Building shelter by hand,
coaxing food from the land.
When I’m gone what will help them survive?
The world’s begun cooking
and so I am looking
for ways to build skills and plant seeds,
to help my kids weather
well, weather the weather
in the new world we made with our greed.
World weary
Author’s note: This is my first attempt at hip hop lyrics.
I’m so tired.
I’m so tired.
I’m so tired.
Of the whole world in denial.
The world’s burning.
But it doesn’t seem to phase you
cause you’re still earning
profits driving you
to keep on grave digging
fossil fuels, fracking
mountain tops blowing
while a storm’s growing
and the sea’s rising,
and some more dying.
I’m so tired.
I’m so tired.
I’m so tired.
How are we gonna stop your lying?
american incarnations 