A Solarpunk Archive of Care and Resistance

For Activists on Stolen Land

Before we speak of our bright green futures,

we must acknowledge where we stand.

On the stories written in soil

watered with tears,

fertilized with blood.

This garden we dream of?

It begins on land that was taken — by force, by treaty, by lie.

It begins on Indigenous land.

To grow a just future,

we must learn from those who have always known the land.

Not just stewardship, but kinship.

Not just sustainability, but reciprocity.

Nick Estes (Lower Brule Sioux) – co-founder of The Red Nation teaches us:

“Land Back is not just a slogan

or a demand for the return of territory.

It’s a vision for the future based on Indigenous values

of sustainability, mutual aid, and care for the Earth.”

To decolonize isn’t just to feel reverence.

It is to return.

Return land. Return power. Return relationship.

This doesn’t mean abandoning the future —

it means reclaiming a future worth having.

Decolonization is not regression to the past;

it is the fertilization we need to grow.

It is the grounding we need to rise without repeating harm.

When roots are deep, branches can reach farther.

The future we long for isn’t built in labs or lifted from tech dreams.

It’s built with hands in soil, with mutual aid, with ancestral memory,

with solar panels and traditional knowledge working side by side.

It’s a solarpunk that doesn’t just reuse —

but re-roots.

A future where technology is humble.

Where progress means care.

Where land is not a resource, but a relative.

Where Indigenous voices lead, and all others listen.

This is not fantasy.

This is the blueprint of a better reality.

Land Back is not a metaphor.

It is the soil of justice.

And our roots must go deep.

A human poem edited using AI

After everything—

the noise, the questions, the weight of the world—

you are still here.

Against odds, against bigots who don’t want you around—

your presence is resistance.

Against systems that try to strip us of our humanity.

And we need you in this garden.

There is no one else who sows the seeds

and waters the plants your work produces.

No gardener is the same.

In this collaborative garden of life,

we need each and every hand.

Your work matters.

Your voice matters.

You matter.

It’s okay to be scared.

That tingle down your spine

when you sense oppression,

sense aggression—

that is ancestral knowledge.

Living, collective wisdom

carried in your bones.

When you feel it,

it would be so easy to run.

To disengage.

But your quiet courage to stay

lights and warms the sky.

Your presence nourishes those around you

like sunlight to plants.

And that matters.

Because the work we are doing

doesn’t wait for perfect conditions.

It continues in small ways,

in quiet ways,

in the ways we show up for each other.

When we are faced with fascism,

all we can do is come together—

to rise out of the shell

that is still squeezing us so tightly.

We stay.

We resist.

We use what is around us.

We are taught to look for purity.

For perfect choices.

For a way of living untouched by harm.

But that world does not exist.

What exists is this—

imperfect soil,

imperfect tools,

imperfect hands

still trying to grow something better.

And maybe that is enough.

Not perfection—

but persistence.

Not purity—

but care.

The garden grows anyway.

Written by Max the human

You must be thinking “Max what are you doing aiding your writing with AI? Doesn’t it go against your principles?”

It’s true I am an artist and a writer, not to mention a radical leftist, and I understand why you think that I ought to never touch it in order to have integrity with my ethics.

Decolonizing Love said it best on Facebook. I will link their full stance here. I really recommend you read it to understand my stance fully.

An excerpt from their stance is “AI is not inherently harmful. The harm lies in how it’s being deployed—by corporations that prioritize profit over people… Individual creators are not the enemy. Capitalism is.”

I get why using AI has its pitfalls ethically, stealing of water, jobs, and land but the entire tech industry is like that meta servers do much more harm. Even here on Tumblr we know this platform isn’t clean either. But it is a powerful tool for communicating.

So what am I doing with ai? I stated “the people I want to write for have a lot of over lap with anti ai” so who do I want to write for and why and what am I using AI to accomplish?

Signalseed to me is a space where I want to help people practice radical hope in the face of growing despair. This kind of thing helps prevent burnout in activists.

Signalseed has also always been about collective wisdom. I bring in quotes from writers I have read from. Viktor Frankl is referenced a couple of times and it’s because his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” deeply moved me. These posts aren’t just randomly generated slop, they are reflections driven by a passion for resistance. I direct it every step of the way, but with AI, the work becomes more collaborative as I can tap into a larger pool of collective wisdom.

I use the AI to check tone and match the signal seed voice and philosophy. If you look up Signal 21 about heroes and the allegations of Cesar Chavez, I wrote in a bout of rage but I used ai like a workshop, a separate set of eyes, a tool to clarify and preserve the tone signalseed is intentional about having. I want to discuss politics in a way that doesn’t cause us to spiral and ai helps me filter out what doesn’t serve. I’m proud of how signal 21 came out.

This whole project is done with a lot of care. I migrated from a mainstream AI model to the greener Ecosia AI to reduce harm.

Sometimes, the body understands

before the mind can explain.

A word.

A phrase.

A metaphor that seems harmless at first—

and then something in us tightens.

A pause.

A tingle.

A quiet sense that something is not quite right.

This is not overreaction.

It is memory.

Not always personal,

but carried—

through history, through culture,

through the conditions that have shaped how people are treated

and how belonging has been denied.

There are words that have been used

to separate people from place.

To say who belongs

and who does not.

To describe human beings

as if they were problems to be removed.

Sometimes, those same patterns

echo in language that was never meant to harm.

And still—

the body notices.

This is where learning begins.

Not in certainty,

but in attention.

We pause.

We ask:

Where have I heard this before?

Who has this been used against?

What might this mean to someone

whose experience is different from mine?

And just as importantly:

How do we respond

without losing our sense of care?

Because the goal is not

to create a world where nothing is ever said wrong.

It is to create a way of relating

where we are willing to notice,

to reflect,

and to grow.

Where we do not rush to defend ourselves—

or to condemn others—

but instead remain present long enough

to understand.

We can learn to choose language

that does not erase,

does not exclude,

does not quietly carry harm forward.

Not perfectly.

But intentionally.

And when something feels off,

when the body speaks before we have the words—

we can listen.

There is knowledge there.

And if we follow it with care,

it can help us grow something more human

in its place.

If you are reading this,

you have already done something important.

You stayed.

In a world that moves quickly,

that asks you to react,

to choose sides,

to burn out and move on,

you paused long enough

to sit with something quieter.

To consider that another way of living

might be possible.

As Paulo Freire once wrote,

“we make the road by walking.”

And that is what you have been doing,

even if it has not always felt like movement.

Even if it has felt like doubt.

Like questioning.

Like trying to unlearn what the world has taught you to accept.

This is part of the work.

Not the loudest part.

Not the part that gets seen.

But the part where something begins to change

beneath the surface.

There may be times when it feels small.

When what you are doing,

learning, listening, caring,

does not seem enough.

But as Wangari Maathai reminded us,

“it’s the little things citizens do. That’s what will make the difference.”

A seed is a small thing.

So is a shift in how we see one another.

So is the decision to remain human

in a world that often rewards the opposite.

You do not have to carry everything.

You do not have to know everything.

You do not have to be finished

to be part of this.

As Viktor Frankl wrote,

“what is to give light must endure burning.”

And still—

you are here.

Learning.

Returning.

Trying again.

That matters more than you think.

Because this work,

this slow, patient tending of a different kind of world,

has never belonged to one person.

It belongs to all of us

who are willing to stay with it.

So if you are here,

if you are still reading,

if something in you continues to reach for something better,

then you are already part of the garden.

And the garden is growing

because you are in it.

There are places in the world

where suffering is made quiet.

Hidden behind walls,

paperwork,

distance.

Places where people are held

without being fully seen.

Where names are delayed,

stories go unheard,

and care is not always given

when it is needed most.

Many of us feel this—

even from far away.

A heaviness.

A kind of fear.

Because we understand

what it means

for a system to forget

that people are human.

And it would be easy,

in moments like this,

to turn away.

To say it is too much.

Too complicated.

Too far from where we stand.

But something in us resists that.

Something in us says:

Stay.

Not to carry everything at once.

Not to overwhelm ourselves.

But to remain present.

To remember that behind every policy

is a person.

Behind every number

is a life that matters.

As Viktor Frankl once wrote,

“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”

What we are witnessing

is not separate from the conditions that created it.

And still—

we do not accept the loss of humanity

as something inevitable.

We may not be able to reach every place

where harm is happening.

But we can refuse the silence.

We can speak carefully.

We can learn.

We can stand with those

whose voices are being made distant.

And we can hold onto something

that systems cannot erase:

the understanding

that no one becomes less human

because they are unseen.

Even here,

even now,

we do not look away.

When we first plant a seed,

nothing happens.

A magic beanstalk does not rise

before our very eyes.

For a time, there is only stillness.

Beneath the soil, the seed begins its work—

taking in water, softening,

preparing for something not yet visible.

Some seeds do this in days.

Others take weeks.

From the outside, it can all look the same.

Nothing.

But something is happening.

This is how growth often begins—

quietly,

without recognition,

without proof.

And when we step into the work—

organizing, mutual aid,

showing up for one another—

we enter that same kind of process.

We may not see change right away.

We may not feel it moving.

But that does not mean it isn’t taking root.

Patience is not waiting without purpose.

It is staying present

while something deeper begins.

So we return.

We keep our hands in the soil.

We trust that not all growth

is meant to be seen at the start.

Happy sowing!

It is a beautiful instinct—

to want to plant something.

To see an empty space

and imagine what could grow there.

To carry seeds in your hands

and believe that is enough.

And maybe, at first, it is.

Because every garden begins

with that kind of hope.

But a seed does not grow

just because we wish it to.

It grows because the soil can hold it.

Because the conditions allow it.

Because what is already living there

can make space for something new.

And sometimes, the ground we find

is not ready.

Sometimes it has been depleted.

Or poisoned.

Or shaped by something we do not yet understand.

And if we plant without learning—

even with the best intentions—

we may struggle to grow anything at all.

Or we may grow something

that does not belong.

This is the part we are not always taught.

That tending is not just an act of care—

it is an act of listening.

Listening to the land.

To history.

To the people already rooted there.

Learning what nourishes.

What harms.

What needs time before it can receive anything new.

This does not mean we stop planting.

It means we begin to take responsibility

for how we plant.

We return.

We observe.

We adjust.

We understand that care is not a single act,

but a relationship.

And over time, something changes.

Not just in the garden,

but in us.

We stop trying to shape everything at once.

And we begin to grow

with the world around us.

In light of allegations against Cesar Chavez

Many of us were taught to look for heroes.

People who could carry the weight of the world

and show us what justice looks like.

We were given names, stories, movements—

and told: this is what it means to fight for something better.

And in many ways, those stories matter.

They helped something take root.

But over time, something else happens.

We begin to learn that the people we were given

were not whole in the ways we imagined.

That they made choices that caused harm.

That they carried contradictions.

That they were shaped by the very systems they were trying to change.

This realization can feel like a loss.

Like the ground shifting beneath us.

Like something we trusted

is no longer solid.

But maybe the ground was never meant

to be any one person.

Maybe what we were meant to stand on

was something deeper.

Not individuals—

but the work itself.

The work that existed before them.

The work that continued through them.

The work that will outlive all of us.

No single person can hold a movement.

No single story can contain it.

What we inherit is not perfection.

It is a field of unfinished effort—

roots tangled with both care and contradiction.

And we are not asked to worship it.

We are asked to tend it.

To learn from what was grown.

To recognize what caused harm.

To carry forward what nourishes.

And to plant differently where we must.

This is not the end of belief.

It is the beginning of responsibility.

Because if the work is larger than any one of us,

then it also belongs to all of us.

And that means the future is not something we wait for.

It is something we grow—

together.

When a seed begins to germinate, it does so quietly.

There is no audience.

No visible transformation.

Just a slow, unseen unfolding beneath the surface.

A soft breaking open.

A reaching.

For a long time, it may not look like anything is happening at all.

And yet, something is.

Over these past signals, something small has been taking root.

Words placed into the soil.

Ideas carried from one place to another.

Moments of reflection shared between people who may never meet, but are not as distant as they seem.

It is still early.

The garden is not yet what it could be.

There is so much still to learn—about tending, about growing, about caring for what is fragile and unfinished.

But something has begun.

Not fully formed.

Not fully visible.

But real.

A signal sent is not always a signal received.

And yet, sometimes, it is.

Sometimes it lands softly.

Sometimes it stays.

Sometimes it grows in ways we may never witness.

Maybe that is enough.

To plant without certainty.

To write without knowing who will read.

To believe that even the smallest act of care can take root somewhere beyond our sight.

If you have read even one of these signals,

if something here has made you pause, or reflect, or feel a little less alone—

then you are already part of this.

As a neighbor,

As someone tending the same soil.

And slowly, quietly,

the signals continue to germinate.