Until we nobodies, nurses, mechanics, teachers, firefighters, restaurant workers and others, who take genuine satisfaction in work that serves others, more clearly articulate and defend our own humane and ethical values, we will continue to lack the moral leverage needed to restrain greed elsewhere. Our values have been forged in lives of care, responsibility and service and they can and should pack a punch.
Daniel Gauss in 3 Quarks Daily. If the Poor Die, the Rich Die Too: A Review of āThe Insiderā by Teater Katapult in Hong Kong
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The long read: Gardens could be part of the solution to the climate and biodiversity crisis. But what are we doing? Disappearing them beneat
Gardens are human-made habitats, but they mimic the woodland edge, so they also hold on to water, slow down wind, create shade and provide food and homes for wildlife. In cities they can absorb pollution and help reduce urban temperatures. Crucially, they also link together to form vast corridors that connect other ecosystems (the woodlands, peatlands and other terrestrial systems mentioned above), enabling species to move between them, potentially giving them space to adapt to climate change. Of course, they also absorb and store carbon ā in lawns, in the bark of trees, in the sludge at the bottom of garden ponds, in soil, in leaf litter and compost.
Gardens are, or at least have the potential to be, an enormous but as yet untapped solution to the climate and biodiversity crisis. But what are we doing? Disappearing them beneath plastic and paving. Beneath weed-suppressant membranes and ādecorativeā purple slate chips. Beneath cars, beneathĀ gravel, beneath entire new homes. Beneath large stones and driftwood to make them look like theĀ beach (my absolute favourite).
Climate change has happened several times in Earthās 4.6bn-year history, but it happened slowly, overĀ thousands of years, partly because ecosystems were initially able to take the hit. What weāre facing now is the rising of temperatures alongside the chipping away of the very systems that can lessen or even slow its impact. At the exact time we should beĀ halting habitat loss and facilitating landscape recovery (rewilding) for the good of all life on Earth, weĀ are still taking more than we are giving back ā it seems we canāt stop ourselves. Temperatures are risingĀ and the clock is ticking.
What if the solution to these problems lies, in part, inĀ our gardens and other green spaces? Not that gardening can stop climate change, but what if gardens could connect us with the natural world, make us more aware of the destruction all around us? What if we rise up, garden by garden, park by park, balcony by balcony and do something ā anything ā to help a bee or a butterfly or a bird or a hedgehog? What would ourĀ world look like if more of us were tuned into the lifeĀ systems that support us? Would we stop our pesticide-laden dog from jumping into the river? Would we switch from eating factory-farmed meat, with its many layers of pollution and trauma, to something kinder and more sustainable? Could we all collectively tread that little bit lighter, for the good of all things, while still pushing for the radical change thatās needed at the top? Would more of us push for that change? I think we would.
How Priscilla, Queen of the Desert changed the world | Between A Frock & A Hard Place
We Are Pride
Terence Stamp Dies: āSupermanā & āPriscilla, Queen of the Desertā Star Was 87
I have never seen Priscilla Queen of the Desert, but I was very moved that on my social media feeds straight allies were pointing to Terrance Stamp's role in the movie. Allies are the ones who show up and not always the ones you suspect to show up.
Stamp narrates this documentary and provides first-person accounts of the role. It's a wonderful documentary about a struggle for freedom.
As heād come to understand and explore through the 1970s and 1980s, Black personal responsibility had always been a complexly collective and mutual reality. Personal life was social life. Privacy didnāt turn upon ownership of the space; and it was as much about intimacy as it was about solitude. As Baldwin sensed powerfully by 1968 and would explore and elaborate upon for the rest of this life, to regard personal life as a privately owned, individual matter was to be frozen. A personās real life was a social reality, not an autonomous one.
Ed Pavlic at Public Seminar. Nonviolence, Black Power, and āthe Citizens of Pompeiiā: James Baldwinās 1968
The radicalization of an unparalleled figure in American literature and African American cultural politics
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Endings are not to blame. Loss is simply an element of change. Change is the heartbeat of social movement. But, on either side of change is loss. Reimagining the world requires that we release the parts of the system and ways of being that are ready to die, and mourn the destructive losses that we could not control, despite our best efforts.
Malkia Devich-Cyril at In These Times. Grief Belongs in Social Movements. Can We Embrace It?
A Black activist reflects on intergenerational trauma, community, and coming to terms with death in movement building.
Excerpted from Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation by adrienne maree brown (AK Press, 2021).
āWhat in English we call wild-cat strikes, [are] not strikes which the union initiates but strikes which come from below. The workers themselves decide on direct action.ā The āunorganizedā strike, not prearranged by trade union leaders, becomes the center of Rodneyās focus in these reflections. Yet it was not simply a strike, rather what the strike portends. Out of the action, away from the immediate material interests of the workers themselves, were the seeds of another society and power.
Yet these strikes raised important political questions and organizational issues and posed an uncomfortable dichotomy. So, theāÆorganizedāÆworking class and the strategy of organizing workers was central but conversely, the action ofāÆunorganizedāÆworkers with their spontaneous protests was vital to a genuine project of transformation.
Leo Zellig in Africa is a Country. Walter Rodney was way ahead of his time
