Take Down

Some Final Words

Due to political events, I will be winding down this site, with its last day being next Friday, November 29. I will still be writing, but in a much less public way. Stay tuned; feel free to pull whatever makes your heart sing between now and November 29.

It’s taken me a long time to write this post. I didn’t know what to say because, like many, the first two weeks after the election were filled with grief, rage, and fear. Hope was mixed in, but it was few and far between.

I don’t want to wax poetic on politics in this moment, because I know that a great number of people (myself included) are tired with the finger-pointing monologues, the gloating MAGAts, and the pompous armchair economists.

We need to sit with this as a country, as a country in a world that is being quickly consumed by populist ideology. This ideology threatens the lives of many and endangers the future of this planet. If this is allowed to continue, our Earth will no longer be habitable. Full stop.

That’s all I have to say about politics right now. What I want to focus on is where we go from here. I want to make clear first that I think the climate crisis defies political boundaries. The climate and our lack of care for it as a species is an Every Human problem.

Obviously some countries - like the one I live in - are more at fault than others, and we have a duty to right the ship we’ve sailed into a category 5 hurricane. However, ultimately, we do have to recognize that every human being on this planet has stake in the future of our home.

As a result, it’s my firm belief that environmental justice is the pathway we need to take to not only save our planet (obviously) but to achieve social liberation as well:

BIPOC folks are disporportionately affected by the climate crisis. This is due to the capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist agenda followed by colonizers across the globe. As a result, antiracism is itself an act of environmental justice.

Women and gender non-conforming people have been playing important care roles for people and the planet - their ancestral wisdom is central to the work we have to do. So, it goes that dismantling the patriarchy is also an act of environmental justice.

People with disabilities have a unique perspective on the world around them that is crucial to understanding other ways of moving through spaces. This is important when learning how to adjust to our limitations on resources we’ve historically relied on like oil and gas. Disability justice is an act of environmental justice, too.

What am I getting at with all of this?

While Trump and his cronies are fucking around with our futures we can start building what we want our future to look like now by making the climate crisis our focal point.

If you don’t have access to community at this moment, for whatever reason, you don’t necessarily need others to start this process. (Although, ideally, getting involved in - or creating - a robust mutual aid network that can value climate action would be the goal.)

Some thoughts about where you can start, which you can then use to build endurance towards bigger, community-driven things:

(1) Swap your flight for a train ride. Perhaps consider a cozy staycation or a local natural area, if you need some R&R.

(2) If you have investments, consider taking them out or putting them in places that don’t support warfare, genocide, fossil fuels, etc. Have a lot of investments or generational wealth? Check this out. Or consider investing in your community instead.

(3) Do you have a yard? A window not overtaken by an enterprising cat? A driveway with a little extra room? Plant some green stuff! Maybe even some edible green stuff! Poke holes in the bottom of old yogurt containers or build your own boxes, if there’s no soil for you to dig out a bed.

(4) Go on a walk or laze about in a park. Observe all the plants and animals. If you can, take some belly breaths. Do you feel gratitude that you can do this?

(5) Speaking of walking, do you live in an area where you can make your exercise a walk (or a bike ride) to do an errand? Getting my mail became so much more exciting this fall.

(6) Update your nightly doomscrolling routine. I say this as someone who’s actively trying to do less of this. Using data (all those GIFS!) and surfing the internet is a huge data suck.

(7) Challenge yourselve to only buy a couple of things in plastic at the grocery store. How low can you go? (Can you go down low? All the way to the floor? … okay I’m done, sorry.) Think of ways to use the plastic you already bought (see no. 3).

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list, nor is it possible for everyone to do these things. The idea is to get your own creativity flowing. I also tried to phrase it as what you can do as opposed to what you shouldn’t do. (Surprisingly, after ten years of teaching toddlers to ski, this was really hard. The number of times I had to frantically yell at a kid to not poke out their friend’s eye with a pole is unfortunately more than one.)

I’ve really enjoyed writing this blog, even though I have had very few readers. (Which is fine by me - less trolls to deal with!) What I want to leave everyone with isn’t necessarily hope, but a little tool kit to shift our collective mind away from the tornado ripping up stuff on the horizon and towards what we can do in front of us, right now.

Some people are at different steps. I’m currently moving towards permanent off-grid living with my partner, but still need to build community in this new area. Maybe your next step is to build a tenant union and get bees on the roof of your building.

We need to recognize that our feet are on one connected soil even if we are doing different things with our time - and better yet, we can help each other with our respective goals in community. While we may not all have the exact same values, we can be united in the idea of making our world habitable for the years to come, even when the villains in power are actively trying to do the opposite.

No one is coming to save us - a political system is not built to work on the scale that we are dealing with. Hug your roommate, cook dinner with your neighbor, get building.

Much love ~