Hope in Hopeless Times
upcoming talks, good reads, a new video with Sub.media!
I’m giving a couple talks around the Midwest! Come out if I’m in your neighborhood!
In Grand Rapids, Sunday the 17th at 5:30pm at the DAAC: “Hope in Hopeless Times”
1553 Plainfield Ave NE, childcare is available!
In Chicago, Tuesday the 19th at 6:30pm at Haymarket House, They Will Beat the Memory Out of Us
in conversation with Timmy Châu
In Detroit, Thursday the 21st at 7pm at the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center
3061 Field St.
Sub.media video: It’s Revolution or Death
I made a video with the wonderful folks at sub.media “It’s Revolution or Death, Part I: Short Term Investments” It’s the first in a three part series about how capitalism and the State are incapable of fixing the ecological crisis, how they are already causing mass death and extinction, and how all the NGOs, green businesses, and reformist movements participating in the official climate framework are actually making the problem worse. Parts II and III will be about several movements successfully developing methods that can actually stop the causes, lessen the impacts, and help us all survive; and how we can adapt those methods to our own circumstances.
This is available in French and Portuguese too! Help spread it please, it might especially help convince that friend or relative who think we need to keep voting for progressive candidates, donating to NGOs, and participating in peaceful protest movements that pressure governments and corporations for greater emissions reductions.
Recommended watching and reading
Tariq Khan on how the far Right uses humor to disguise and normalize white supremacist ideas.
From Blind Archive, “Structural Violence and the Pandemic” on how the continuing deaths from COVID are being normalized, and the naïveté of believing the State is a neutral instrument that we could capture in order to protect ourselves. (I’ll be quoting this piece at greater length in a future article.)
Margaret Killjoy on resilience under the threat of an increasingly murderous regime: “The Sky Is Falling; We’ve Got This”
Vicky Osterweil: “Free HRT on demand without apology”
“If you are thinking about it at all, you can transition, you deserve to transition, and you are trans enough. It should be a joyful and beautiful process of discovery, desire and change. Any one who makes it otherwise, regardless of intentions, gender identity or number of medical degrees, is ultimately working to reenforce their own power and the structure of this world at the expense of your body, your life, your joy. We can help each other transition without those people and we are getting better at it every day.
“True trans liberation will only be achieved when such gatekeeping becomes unimaginable, when transition itself is embraced as the communal process of abolition and transformation it always already has been.”
The Poor Prole’s Almanac: “South Korea’s Radical Ecology Movement”
“As South Korea bounced back in the early 2000s from the economic reform, interest in ecological conservation grew, and across the political spectrum, the belief was largely that the solutions to protect the landscape were centered around strategies to “green the state and society in a top-down manner through the ecological reform of the capitalist state”, which only ever achieved partial success and much to be desired. As the reality that this would never solve these issues, an alternative ecological movement grew with a vision to create a sustainable, cooperative society that transcended the limitations of both capitalism and industrialism. The ecological alternative movement emerged as a grassroots response to these failures, championing community-driven ecological and democratic reforms.”
From An Irritable Métis “Optimistic Estimates Suggest… That at least 50 percent of today’s spoken languages will be extinct by 2100” :
“I can hear it rolling off her tongue and how my heart swelled to hear it. The “little yellow bird” being Aginjibagwesi, the goldfinch. Aginjibagwesi is important to us as Anishinaabe people, but also as a messenger who has appeared multiple times in my life this year in startling ways. I felt his appearance yet again during this conference was another reminder from him for me to keep at it. To use this growing platform I have to keep at it, even if my knowledge of the language remains barely nascent, because this work is so critically important. My elder’s words gave me the opportunity to tell, for the second time at the conference, the story I have about Aginjibagwesi…”
Also check out Chris La Tray’s
Spread this!
Finally, one from the archives for those interested in geopolitical analysis, which may become an increasingly important skill in these tumultuous times:
“Anarchy in World Systems” by Alex Gorrion https://theanvilreview.org/print/anarchy-in-world-systems/
and here’s a poster to spread for folks in the Chicago area:
take care y’all
Great recommendations
Wow....
That sub.media video.
Wow. So good, thank you Peter. Looking forward to the rest.
Happy travels, hope you make lots of good connections.