#solarpunk activism

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Fr you guys this is so serious. We have a lot to lose here and they’re trying to push this bill through before the 4th of July. Contact your reps but if you’re sick of being one voice in a crowd like I am, consider this an invitation to use a megaphone.

I’ve just been thinking about how online activism translates to irl activism and got a little curious. And also I’m curious to hear about the expansive ways people chip in besides the obvious climate scientist or educator. Obviously there are many other ways to fight for the climate besides your job but idk I think it’s interesting. I feel like there are spaces in almost any field for some kind of climate work.

I made Sustainable Fashion for the Solarpunk for a college class I took this semester on the climate crisis. I was tasked with creating an action project for communicating a facet of the problem and some potential solutions to community members. I chose to make a zine on sustainable fashion. When I handed them out myself, I attached a piece of cloth large enough for a patch, a length of thread, and an embroidery needle to the last page, so that anyone who was curious to try the tutorials would have no roadblocks to getting started. Here’s some in-process pics (edited to remove personal details):

Having finished my kits I bundled up and delivered them to little free libraries throughout the city!

In total I put out 16 zines across five little free libraries. When I checked back in a week later, only five zines were left! Eleven zines isn’t really a huge amount, but it was very exciting to feel as though I made a tangible (if small) impact on my community. Praxis, or whatever.

I’m hoping to do another round of these in my hometown. It was really exciting and hopefully it changed some minds about clothing consumption.

Swale is a barge harboring a food forest that docks at different areas in New York City--to avoid the strict anti-foraging laws in New York City as well as to reach food deserts. From her website:

"At its heart, Swale is a call to action. It asks people to reconsider industrial food systems, to confirm a belief in healthy food as a human right, and to pave pathways to create public food in public space.

As a direct result of Swale and the support of community groups, the New York City Parks Department opened their first land-based pilot in 2017 – a public “Foodway” at Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx."

This week I’m writing a letter to my rep concerning a bit of legislation that didn’t make it through our state’s house. Because posting the unedited letter would be doxing myself, I’m posting a censored version. You can probably figure out the state pretty easily but please don’t try to, thanks.

In order to write the letter I had to find a piece of legislation that interested me. I looked up “‘my state’ climate legislation and then poked around until I found something. I wanted to do something local. I feel like I’m more likely to be heard that way—this guy probably has like 1000-2000 constituents, so I don’t think my letter will get lost in the scuffle.

I tried to use persuasive language and write clearly and respectfully. Here are some of the sources I used to format it: [1], [2]. The second one is for children but I still found it pretty helpful. Your Rep’s mailing address or email should be publicly available online, which makes it pretty easy to send.

My favorite part about the process was people coming up to talk to me about it. I had some really interesting conversations with a bunch of people. Just going out and doing something made me feel so much closer to the community.