Speaker 1: Episode two, Into the Wild Orange Yonder. For the first
Speaker 1: three days after the shooting, you didn't talk to anyone,
Speaker 1: and none of your friends or family seemed to know
Speaker 1: what to say. You took off from work, cloistered yourself
Speaker 1: away in your house, and drank. You're not sure why,
Speaker 1: but your brain wouldn't let you listen to any of
Speaker 1: the outreach that came your way until Aaron texted you.
Speaker 1: She was a local organizer. You'd met her last year
Speaker 1: at a protest, and she'd struck you as an unusually
Speaker 1: outgoing person. You all barely knew each other, but when
Speaker 1: she heard about what happened, she reached out. She offered
Speaker 1: to put you into contact with a friend of hers, Tom,
Speaker 1: a combat veteran who'd seen some ship overseas. She said
Speaker 1: he might understand some of what you were going through.
Speaker 1: You'd called him eventually, and talking to Tom had helped. Still,
Speaker 1: it was two weeks after the shooting when you finally
Speaker 1: felt good enough to leave your home. You'd pretty much
Speaker 1: disconnected yourself from social media in the interim, and upon
Speaker 1: diving back into the world, you were surprised to see
Speaker 1: that everyone was freaking out over a heap home destined
Speaker 1: to settle over your city in the coming days. No
Speaker 1: one knew quite how hot it could get. Weatherman would
Speaker 1: only quote a range of possible temperatures, but everyone said
Speaker 1: it might break the city's all time high heat record.
Speaker 1: That same hyperbolic to you. The world was warming. You
Speaker 1: didn't doubt that, but that heat record had held solid
Speaker 1: since the nineteen nineties. You might have taken it all
Speaker 1: more seriously if you hadn't been so overwhelmed with your
Speaker 1: own ship. By the time you were semi functional again,
Speaker 1: temperatures had already started to crest above one fifteen. During
Speaker 1: the heat of the day, at a hundred and eighteen degrees,
Speaker 1: the airports started canceling certain flights. Some smaller planes, like
Speaker 1: the Bombardier CRJ, couldn't handle those temperatures. The news assured
Speaker 1: you that big planes, the ones made by Airbus and Boeing,
Speaker 1: could handle up to a hundred and twenty six degrees.
Speaker 1: There was no way it would get that hot. But
Speaker 1: it hit a hundred and twenty, and then the next
Speaker 1: day it hit a hundred and twenty three, breaking the
Speaker 1: old record for the first time in decades. More flights
Speaker 1: were canceled, but you were doing okay. It was easy
Speaker 1: enough to sit inside with your air conditioning and wait
Speaker 1: out the weather. During a press conference, the city assured
Speaker 1: everyone that the grid would hold up to the strain.
Speaker 1: This isn't Texas or California, the mayor assured everybody, we
Speaker 1: can handle this. You woke up the next morning boiling
Speaker 1: in your sheets. The power was out even in the
Speaker 1: early morning. It was almost a hundred and ten outside.
Speaker 1: You gulped down water, stumbled to your car, and turned
Speaker 1: on the A C to see what the hell was
Speaker 1: happening localized brownouts, the city, through local news assured you,
Speaker 1: and so you decided to pass the time in your
Speaker 1: private A C box by driving to the gas station
Speaker 1: to fill up your car. A lot of other people
Speaker 1: had the same idea, though there were lines around every station.
Speaker 1: People were filling up their cars, but also jerry cans
Speaker 1: and even bags of gasoline. You drive around for a
Speaker 1: few minutes, looking for any place not swarmed with customers,
Speaker 1: until you see your first out of gas sign. Then
Speaker 1: you drive straight to the nearest station and wait twenty
Speaker 1: minutes for a chance to fill up. You're one of
Speaker 1: the last people at the station to top off. The
Speaker 1: out of gas sign goes up just as you exit
Speaker 1: the parking lot. On your way back home, you see
Speaker 1: crowds of people outside the few stations that haven't run dry.
Speaker 1: Several people are yelling at each other, fighting over access
Speaker 1: to the pump. You see one man waving a rifle
Speaker 1: while another fills an enormous plastic moving crate with gasoline.
Speaker 1: Where the hell are the cops, you wonder. The answer
Speaker 1: to that question comes a few hours later in the day.
Speaker 1: Without power, your office is shut down and there's little
Speaker 1: points staying indoors where it's even hotter than outside. Aaron
Speaker 1: reaches out and asks if you're free today. You say yes,
Speaker 1: and she pulls you into a signal loop where a
Speaker 1: few dozen other folks have organized cooling stations for some
Speaker 1: of the local homeless camps. Since you drive a hybrid
Speaker 1: car with a big full tank, you agree to help
Speaker 1: distribute cool water and electrolyte packets. The first couple hours
Speaker 1: go well. You swing by a few little tent communities
Speaker 1: where houseless people bake under shade structures and try to
Speaker 1: cool off with wet towels and iced water bottles. Given
Speaker 1: the power situation, you're impressed that so many local activists
Speaker 1: had the presence of mind to freeze water before the
Speaker 1: heat wave. You're also impressed by the different solar arrays
Speaker 1: you see in encampments, often wired together from battery packs
Speaker 1: and cast off panels. Wealthier people bought to go camping
Speaker 1: between the fans and the ice. Most of the folks
Speaker 1: you meet seem like they'll get through the day alive.
Speaker 1: In between stops, you keep checking the local news. They
Speaker 1: aren't referring to the outages as rolling blackouts anymore. The
Speaker 1: term grid failure has grown more and more common. Around
Speaker 1: two p m, as temperatures crack a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: nine degrees, you get a notification that the airport has
Speaker 1: canceled all flights due to a heat emergency. Earlier in
Speaker 1: the day, you saw several older cars pull off to
Speaker 1: the side of the road, smoke billowing from their engines.
Speaker 1: When you pull into your last encampment of the day,
Speaker 1: located beneath an overpass, you see an old SOB and
Speaker 1: two old Fords parked nearby. Their drivers and passengers are
Speaker 1: huddled under the shade of the encampment, wet towels over
Speaker 1: their faces, and next most of the passengers looked to
Speaker 1: be middle class. They're well dressed, clearly uncomfortable with the
Speaker 1: homeless people handing them water to ward off heat stroke.
Speaker 1: As you walk up, you hear one older woman chattering
Speaker 1: at one of the encampment dwellers while he wets a
Speaker 1: towel for her. I'm sorry to intrude. We went to
Speaker 1: the store to see if we could pick up some fans,
Speaker 1: and we just ran out of gas on the way back.
Speaker 1: No one has fuel. We couldn't even run a generator
Speaker 1: to get the fans going if we were back home.
Speaker 1: Best to wait it out here, anyways. The man next
Speaker 1: to her says, the freeways a parking lot. Everyone who
Speaker 1: can is bolting out of town, heading somewhere higher and cooler.
Speaker 1: Radio says, a bunch of people diet already when their
Speaker 1: cars broke down and they cooked by the side of
Speaker 1: the road. You hand out the last of your supplies
Speaker 1: to the encampment's grateful residence. Before you turn back to
Speaker 1: your car, you check your phone to see if your
Speaker 1: neighbor texted you that the power was back on. No news.
Speaker 1: You aren't sure if you really want to head back
Speaker 1: to your house in the middle of all this. The
Speaker 1: overpass might be more comfortable. Someone set up too large
Speaker 1: kiddie pools filled with water. There's music and solar charged
Speaker 1: batteries to keep your phone topped off. All things considered,
Speaker 1: it's one of the more comfortable places you could weigh
Speaker 1: out the heat wave. As you pull this over, you
Speaker 1: notice flashing lights as a half dozen police cars and
Speaker 1: a riot van pulled up by the overpass. It all
Speaker 1: happened so quickly that you stand there stunned for a moment.
Speaker 1: As officers begin to form ranks on the far side
Speaker 1: of the encampment. You look behind you, just in time
Speaker 1: to see more cars pull up, including one large cruiser
Speaker 1: with an l RT on its back. This is the
Speaker 1: police department. They say this encampment is a fire hazard.
Speaker 1: The mayor has declared a state of emergency. You all
Speaker 1: need to disperse now. All around you, encampment residents and
Speaker 1: activists begin to pick up shields, pipes, and bottles. They
Speaker 1: form crude lines to face off against the riot officers
Speaker 1: marching in from both sides. Your heart starts to pound.
Speaker 1: You see the normies. The one is not too sick
Speaker 1: with heat stroke to stand start glancing around in the
Speaker 1: same way you are trying to weigh the best of
Speaker 1: their options. Most of them are stuck here. But you
Speaker 1: still have a nearly full tank of gas. You can
Speaker 1: get away for now, at least. In two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: exactly a decade ago. As I typed this, my partner
Speaker 1: and I drove eleven or so hours south from our
Speaker 1: home in Dallas to the border town of Marfa, Texas.
Speaker 1: Back then, Marfa had a population of about hundred. It's
Speaker 1: a beautiful place, surrounded by the kind of wild scrub
Speaker 1: brush desert that outsiders assume most Texans live in. Marfa
Speaker 1: is famous as the former home of artist Donald Judd,
Speaker 1: and as a result, the whole place has a strange vibe,
Speaker 1: a mix of rural South Texas grit and woo woo
Speaker 1: artsy flair. We'd chosen to visit in April, traditionally one
Speaker 1: of the mildest months for Texan weather, but it was
Speaker 1: unreasonably warm when we arrived, and the whole state had
Speaker 1: suffered through a bizarrely dry spring. As we drove into town,
Speaker 1: we saw smoke on the far horizon. We didn't know
Speaker 1: it then, but an electric short in an abandoned building
Speaker 1: had sparked what would eventually grow into the rock House fire.
Speaker 1: We lived out of my prius and motels at that point,
Speaker 1: and we spent most of the day driving or staggering
Speaker 1: from bar to bar to a rad grilled cheese restaurant,
Speaker 1: talking to locals while we watched the flames burn across
Speaker 1: the horizon. We saw the fire eat Mount Marathon, and
Speaker 1: we sat on the deck of a bar talking to
Speaker 1: locals who had driven what possessions they could into town
Speaker 1: and then abandoned their homes to the blaze. There goes
Speaker 1: my house, someone would say, pointing to local news coverage
Speaker 1: and ordering another round. What we drank and gawked. Nearby
Speaker 1: ranchers were cutting their fences. There was no time to
Speaker 1: evacuate the herds, so the best they could do was
Speaker 1: cut holes in the barbed wire and give the animals
Speaker 1: a slim chance of fleeing to safety. By the time
Speaker 1: night fell, the whole horizon burned. Every government building in
Speaker 1: Marfa was empty. There were no cops. Everyone was a firefighter.
Speaker 1: That night, we eventually headed to a nearby motel. The
Speaker 1: door to the office was empty and the lights were on.
Speaker 1: On the desk was a bucket of keys and a
Speaker 1: sign informing us that the owners were both volunteer firefighters
Speaker 1: and that we should just take a key and pay
Speaker 1: in the morning. The rock House fire would eventually burn
Speaker 1: more than three hundred and fourteen thousand acres in two counties.
Speaker 1: It marked the beginning of a historic wildfire season in Texas.
Speaker 1: Over the next six months, more than thirty one thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty three fires would burn a total
Speaker 1: of four million acres or sixteen thousand square miles, an
Speaker 1: area larger than Switzerland. Ten years later, almost to the month,
Speaker 1: my new home state of Oregon was hit by an
Speaker 1: unprecedented heat dome. Temperatures in the state capital neared a
Speaker 1: hundred and nineteen degrees, seven degrees hotter than it has
Speaker 1: ever been in Dallas. Crops died, along with more than
Speaker 1: a billion sea creatures. Along the northwest coast, the verdant
Speaker 1: woods of the Pacific Northwest dried out and caught fire.
Speaker 1: As i type this, the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon
Speaker 1: is the largest in state history. It is burnt over
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand acres, and it is still not contained.
Speaker 1: It's started less than a year after an unprecedented series
Speaker 1: of wildfires blanketed much of northern Oregon in orange clouds
Speaker 1: of smoke that choked every living creature for weeks. For
Speaker 1: a brief span of time, a tree filled Portland had
Speaker 1: lower air quality than New Delhi, India. The heat dome
Speaker 1: that just hit us landed alongside articles telling us it
Speaker 1: was a once in a thousand years weather event. I
Speaker 1: read similar articles earlier this year when I was with
Speaker 1: my family back in Dallas watching an unprecedented blizzard drop
Speaker 1: temperatures below zero for the first time in Texas history.
Speaker 1: One man too, once in a millennia weather events in
Speaker 1: the same six months span. Texas is infamously idiosyncratic power
Speaker 1: grid buckled under the strain of so many homes putting
Speaker 1: their heaters on full blast. The state only narrowly avoided
Speaker 1: a complete grid collapse that would have left much of
Speaker 1: it powerless for months. Between four d seventy six and
Speaker 1: nine hundred and seventy eight Texans died in a single
Speaker 1: week from a mix of carbon monoxide poisoning, exposure, and
Speaker 1: ice related crashes. In Oregon during the heat dome, northwestern
Speaker 1: asphalt roads buckled and power cables to street cars frayed.
Speaker 1: Portland was forced to shut down its max light rail line,
Speaker 1: stranding many poor and elderly citizens inside their overheated homes.
Speaker 1: At least a hundred and sixteen people died in Oregon,
Speaker 1: nearly five hundred people died in British Columbia during the
Speaker 1: worst of the heat wave. Oregon Governor Kate Brown and
Speaker 1: Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler were nowhere to be found. Like
Speaker 1: most wealthy people, they fled to more comfortable climbs or
Speaker 1: at least air conditioning, while those who could not escape
Speaker 1: suffered or died. The same story played out in Canada,
Speaker 1: where the Vancouver City Planning Commission issued a scathing report
Speaker 1: about the other lack of preparation on behalf of the
Speaker 1: city government quote failing to act and create policy that
Speaker 1: reflects the reality of people's lives can and will cause
Speaker 1: people who would otherwise be alive to die. Where arement failed,
Speaker 1: normal people were forced to take matters into their own hands.
Speaker 1: Mutual aid cooling stations were organized and set up across Portland, Eugene,
Speaker 1: and Salem, providing people with wet towels, frozen water bottles,
Speaker 1: and shade. One homeless man set up an above ground
Speaker 1: swimming pool beneath an overpass. In Salem, police repeatedly destroyed
Speaker 1: cooling stations under the guise of breaking up homeless encampments.
Speaker 1: These gestures were, in the grand scale of the calamity,
Speaker 1: fairly minor, but they illustrate an important point. When disaster strikes,
Speaker 1: communities nearly always respond more effectively than governments. This is
Speaker 1: a well documented phenomenon in the field of disaster response studies.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty two, when nine point two magnitude earthquake
Speaker 1: hit the Alaskan Coast, Anchorage was utterly devastated. Whole neighborhoods
Speaker 1: fell off of cliffs. The first thing the police did
Speaker 1: was deputize a crowd of half drunk volunteers to stop
Speaker 1: people from looting, even though no looting had been observed.
Speaker 1: The police chief was so worried about disorder that he
Speaker 1: almost instantly suspended the search for survivors. Thankfully, the people
Speaker 1: of Anchorage were not so easily scared. Spontaneously organized groups
Speaker 1: of civilians pulled every survivor from the rebel By the
Speaker 1: next day, volunteers had organized, with no input from the government,
Speaker 1: a man power control team where people with skills, carpenters plumbers,
Speaker 1: electricians in the like were matched up with jobs that
Speaker 1: needed doing. As it happened, a team of social scientists
Speaker 1: from Ohio State University were in town studying disaster response
Speaker 1: under a grant from the U. S. Military. Based on
Speaker 1: the science of the time, they expected sheer panic. Here's
Speaker 1: what they found instead, From a write up by James
Speaker 1: Meags in Commentary magazine Quote. The team stayed for a
Speaker 1: week and interviewed nearly five hundred people. Enrico Quarantelli, the
Speaker 1: leader of the study, was particularly interested in Anchorage's small
Speaker 1: Civil Defense office. It should have been in charge of
Speaker 1: search and rescue, but Quarantelli noted, had quickly become bogged
Speaker 1: down of her questions of bureaucratic protocol. Of course, Bill
Speaker 1: Davis's amateur mountaineers had taken over that function on most immediately.
Speaker 1: Quarantilly used the term emergent groups to describe the teams
Speaker 1: of self organized volunteers like Davis's searchers. He didn't miss
Speaker 1: the irony that the agency created to protect civilians soon
Speaker 1: became an obstacle that this emergent group of rescuers had
Speaker 1: to work around. We are standing all of us on
Speaker 1: the cusp of an age of the unprecedented, a time
Speaker 1: when most people are likely to experience once in a
Speaker 1: millennium disasters on a near annual basis. The only thing
Speaker 1: we can truly know about our unknowable future is that
Speaker 1: this is a problem our present governments cannot and will
Speaker 1: not fix. We will cover that idea in more depth later,
Speaker 1: but for now, it's important to accept that help is
Speaker 1: not coming. When the wildfires blanketed Oregon in smoke last year,
Speaker 1: the state responded by handing out lucrative logging contracts to
Speaker 1: their political donors. This was done under the guise of
Speaker 1: wildfire preparedness. All it really did was released more carbon
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere. The fire still came. When Texas's power
Speaker 1: grid failed in February, the company that administers at Aircot
Speaker 1: made two point four billion dollars. Conservative politicians took to
Speaker 1: social media to defend Texan independence. Lawmakers turn their efforts
Speaker 1: to legalizing permitless concealed kerry and restricting voting rights. Aircot
Speaker 1: donated one million dollars to Governor Abbott, and he refused
Speaker 1: to call for grid reforms during a special session of
Speaker 1: the state legislature. Nothing was done to fix the grid,
Speaker 1: and when the first summer heat waves hit, AIRCOT asked
Speaker 1: citizens to keep their thermostats at eighty degrees while they slept.
Speaker 1: When some people with health conditions attempted to cool their
Speaker 1: homes further, they found that their new connected thermostats raised
Speaker 1: the temperature without their consent. The failure of our elites
Speaker 1: to handle the disasters wrought by climate change is not
Speaker 1: the result of a grand conspiracy. More than anything, it
Speaker 1: is the result of selfishness and confusion. Most of these
Speaker 1: people are just as blindsided by the disasters racking our
Speaker 1: world as anyone else, because they're the kind of people
Speaker 1: who are capable of taking power. They look out for
Speaker 1: themselves first, and in chaotic and dangerous times, they default
Speaker 1: to what they know best, leaning on culture war bullshit,
Speaker 1: and hiding from scrutiny. There are a couple of military
Speaker 1: concepts that I find helpful for analyzing times like these.
Speaker 1: One is VUCA vu C, a an acronym that identifies
Speaker 1: situations of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. VUCA situations are
Speaker 1: obviously dangerous, but the sheer amount of information coming in
Speaker 1: can be blinding, and the best course of action is
Speaker 1: generally unclear. Leads are actually more likely to be blinded
Speaker 1: in these situations than the rest of us. A mayor,
Speaker 1: or a police chief or a president has much more
Speaker 1: information incoming, and his concern in a heat wave is
Speaker 1: always more complex than what needs to be done to
Speaker 1: protect people, because what is politically safe, what do my
Speaker 1: donors want, and how will what I do be spun
Speaker 1: by the media are also on his mind. Ultimately, people
Speaker 1: like us worry will my community and I survive? And
Speaker 1: people like them worry will I lose power. This tug
Speaker 1: of war between this aster and political expediency, between preparing
Speaker 1: for the inevitable and protecting your ass leads to a
Speaker 1: phenomenon called turbo paralysis. This was first coined back in
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve by a fellow named Mark Lynde, and
Speaker 1: he described it as quote combination of vigorous and dramatic
Speaker 1: motion with the absence of steady movement in any particular direction.
Speaker 1: You may recognize this as an apt description of how
Speaker 1: our nation has handled climate change for the last several decades.
Speaker 1: I want to quote here from a very useful document
Speaker 1: titled the Gonzo Futurist Manifesto. Quote in this reading, a
Speaker 1: sudden spike of VUKA dynamics causes big actors, big business,
Speaker 1: Nation States organizations to flail wildly, muddying the waters with
Speaker 1: U turns and knee jerk cargo cult behavior as the
Speaker 1: old certainties are swept away. For cyberpunk Archdeacon Bruce Sterling,
Speaker 1: this is the transition to nowhere. There's neither progress nor
Speaker 1: conservatism because there's nothing left to conserve and no direction
Speaker 1: in which to progress. From the U. S. Republican Party
Speaker 1: to occupy Wall Street, from Benghazi to Wukan. Wheels are
Speaker 1: spinning furiously and engines are being gunned to no effect.
Speaker 1: Now politicians can afford to spin their wheels indefinitely, or
Speaker 1: at least as long as the political system they thrive
Speaker 1: and continues to exist. Many powerful actors like fossil fuel
Speaker 1: companies and defense contractors thrive so long as the rest
Speaker 1: of us stay locked in this place. But you and
Speaker 1: I cannot survive in a state of turbo paralysis. As
Speaker 1: I noted earlier, it's easy to avoid that in the
Speaker 1: moment of a disaster if you're a regular person looking
Speaker 1: at a problem and finding ways to mitigate the damage.
Speaker 1: Mutual Aid in response to calamity is the norm. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to the bigger question, how are we
Speaker 1: going to survive in this world? How can my community
Speaker 1: adapt to be less vulnerable? How can we stop things
Speaker 1: from spinning out of control? Well that's when turbo paralysis
Speaker 1: kicks in again, because we don't have the luxury of
Speaker 1: just dealing with climate change and its consequences. We've got
Speaker 1: gangs of fascists marching through city streets every powerful and
Speaker 1: violent cops murdering people and gassing descent children in cages
Speaker 1: on the border. And my god, when you start to
Speaker 1: list it all or try to take it all in
Speaker 1: on Twitter, you're liable to have a panic attack. As
Speaker 1: much positive as I've said about mutual aid, I want
Speaker 1: to acknowledge here that it alone is not enough. It
Speaker 1: can't be a good example of why comes just this
Speaker 1: year from India. Their right wing central governments so thoroughly
Speaker 1: botched the COVID nineteen response that corpse fires were burning
Speaker 1: in the streets of almost every major city. Hospitals took
Speaker 1: to Twitter to beg for oxygen. The government suddenly adopted
Speaker 1: a liberalized vaccine policy that put the onus for vaccine
Speaker 1: procurement on individual states, which led to nine corporate hospital
Speaker 1: chains acquiring half the available vaccine doses. Rather than go
Speaker 1: door to door handing out vaccines, which is how India
Speaker 1: wiped out polio doses cost about sixteen dollars in a
Speaker 1: country where a hundred and thirty four million people make
Speaker 1: less than two dollars a day. In response to the
Speaker 1: utter failure of its elites, the Indian p a Bowl
Speaker 1: took matters into their own hands. And I want to
Speaker 1: quote now from a wonderful write up in The Baffler
Speaker 1: titled how it Feels Confronted by the complete breakdown of
Speaker 1: the state's health care infrastructure, Ordinary civilians did that most
Speaker 1: Indian thing jow god, a commonly used Hindi word referring
Speaker 1: to a stop gap solution or using limited resources. Innovatively,
Speaker 1: volunteers mobilized on WhatsApp, discord, Twitter, Instagram, and any number
Speaker 1: of social media platforms to connect COVID nineteen patients and
Speaker 1: their families somehow to some form of medical care. Civil
Speaker 1: society groups, nonprofits, students, journalists, and lawyers started fielding distress
Speaker 1: messages posted online. Informal coalitions formed based on hashtags like
Speaker 1: s OS city name or hashtag COVID emergency volunteers scrambled
Speaker 1: to procure drugs they knew little about and couldn't pronounce
Speaker 1: bar siddonip, toxl zoom. App Lists were compiled of hospitals
Speaker 1: with available beds, chemists who had rim disavere in plasma,
Speaker 1: hospitals admitting patients in the I c U. Every what
Speaker 1: I knew was glued to their phones. We will probably
Speaker 1: never know how many people survived because of stopgap efforts,
Speaker 1: and people like Ritty dested Are who wrote the article
Speaker 1: I just quoted. These folks were heroes, but between one
Speaker 1: point six million and four point two million Indians are
Speaker 1: still likely to have died of COVID, most just this year,
Speaker 1: the official government count hovers it just over four hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: And while mutual aid did save untold lives, the trauma
Speaker 1: of responding to such a calamity on the fly has
Speaker 1: left permanent marks on Ready and their peers. Quote. We
Speaker 1: have tried to fill in the blank where the government's
Speaker 1: public health response should be, working ourselves to the bone
Speaker 1: and missing paid work opportunities. I know volunteers who have
Speaker 1: physically arranged ambulances and transported elderly patients who are alone.
Speaker 1: Many have been infected themselves or lost family, including my
Speaker 1: friends Fetha, whose grandfather passed away in November. In the
Speaker 1: last two weeks of April and Delhi, volunteers barely slept
Speaker 1: or eight more than one meal a day. Nights were
Speaker 1: the worst, with the most critical cases arising after ten pm,
Speaker 1: when government officials tap out. There were instances where Sweater
Speaker 1: reached out to top state officials who told her they
Speaker 1: would return in the morning. I have nightmares of hospitals
Speaker 1: and people crying. I remember passing out on the floor
Speaker 1: of my hall at four am and waking up at
Speaker 1: eight am to the news that my patient had died,
Speaker 1: she says. I remember texting my friends to say I
Speaker 1: need some time to cry. I want to cry. There
Speaker 1: is no time to cry. Like many volunteers, I've become
Speaker 1: alienated from my own body. I cry involuntarily before even
Speaker 1: realizing I'm sad. I wake up repeatedly throughout the night.
Speaker 1: I think of patients who died while I was trying
Speaker 1: to help, and my throat chokes up even now. I
Speaker 1: returned to the moment I texted Magna saying, why isn't
Speaker 1: he breathing. Where is his cylinder? What are his oxygen levels?
Speaker 1: And she replied, my father is expired. When disasters are
Speaker 1: singular limited in scope, like that earthquake and anchorage, mutual
Speaker 1: aid can be enough. People pull together and help each other,
Speaker 1: the calamity passes and life goes on. That is not
Speaker 1: the situation we find ourselves in today. Mutual aid alone
Speaker 1: is not enough because the central disaster we face has
Speaker 1: no end point. There is no going back to normal,
Speaker 1: because we now live in post normal times. Post normal
Speaker 1: is a term created by a British philosopher and an
Speaker 1: Argentinean mathematician in a paper about the new conditions of
Speaker 1: science in a time of increased turbulence and uncertainty. In
Speaker 1: that document, I recommended the Gonzo Futurist's Manifesto. The author
Speaker 1: quotes scholar Zayad and Sardar when he describes post normal
Speaker 1: times as characterized by uncertainty, rapid change, realignment of power, upheaval,
Speaker 1: and chaotic behavior. We live in an in between period
Speaker 1: where old orthodoxes are dying, new ones have yet to
Speaker 1: be borne, and very few things seem to make sense.
Speaker 1: A transitional age, a time without the confidence that we
Speaker 1: can return to any past we have known and with
Speaker 1: no confidence in any path to a desirable, attainable, or
Speaker 1: sustainable future. Post normal times require post normal solutions. This
Speaker 1: means moving beyond merely meeting needs and disasters and doing
Speaker 1: something bolder, building a new social safety net and a
Speaker 1: new society capable of anticipating need, preparing for disaster, and
Speaker 1: providing people with a way to get care and give
Speaker 1: care in a persistent manner. This is necessary because the
Speaker 1: only way to force our civilization back from the edge
Speaker 1: of catastrophe is something very much like a revolution. Before
Speaker 1: you make assumptions, I want to be clear that I
Speaker 1: think dreams of violent overthrow of the government, red flags
Speaker 1: and a K forty sevens and the like are foolish.
Speaker 1: They're useless too. You could perhaps lock the U. S
Speaker 1: Military into a long term, multi sided insurgency, but such
Speaker 1: a fight would not resolve in any reasonable time frame
Speaker 1: and would cause the U. S Military, already Earth's number
Speaker 1: one carbon emetter, to pump even more poison into the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: The only thing that will work is the political equivalent
Speaker 1: of a heart attack, clogging the valves of capital with
Speaker 1: a united mass of human beings who demand concerted action
Speaker 1: not just on the climate, but on all the myriad
Speaker 1: injustices of our age. I'm talking about a general strike.
Speaker 1: And if you don't think one can work, think about
Speaker 1: the longest government shutdown in US history. It happened in
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, if you can remember that far back,
Speaker 1: when President Trump refused to sign a budget that didn't
Speaker 1: include five point seven billion dollars in funding for his
Speaker 1: border wall. The shutdown dragged on for thirty five days.
Speaker 1: It ended, in large part because the American Association of
Speaker 1: Flight Attendants called for a general strike. Hours after union
Speaker 1: head Sarah Nelson announced that attendants were mobilizing to strike,
Speaker 1: which would have effectively ground at all US air travel,
Speaker 1: President Trump agreed to reopen the government. Now, what we
Speaker 1: actually need here is a true general strike, something that
Speaker 1: brings together tens of millions of workers across the country.
Speaker 1: That is a titanic undertaking and endeavor more ambitious and
Speaker 1: complex than the moon landing. To even make it possible,
Speaker 1: we will require national mutual aid infrastructure on a scale
Speaker 1: never before seen. Striking workers need food, power, medical care,
Speaker 1: eviction defense, and much more. The best rubric we have
Speaker 1: for how mutual aid on that scale might look comes
Speaker 1: from the island of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a
Speaker 1: colony of the United States, and for decades as people
Speaker 1: have languished as second class citizens, forced to pay into
Speaker 1: the American Project but excluded from many of its benefits.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and sixteen, the Obama administration placed a
Speaker 1: Fiscal Oversight Board to manage the island's debt load. This
Speaker 1: led to cuts to services that sparked a two thousand
Speaker 1: seventeen students strike against austerity and cuts to public education.
Speaker 1: Activists organized community kitchens for socialized food distribution. This had
Speaker 1: been a building trend in Puerto Rican organizing for a while,
Speaker 1: but in when Hurricane Maria hit, it reached unprecedented scale.
Speaker 1: From a rite up by Isa Soto quote tired of
Speaker 1: watching people die after Hurricane Rhea, Puerto Ricans needed to
Speaker 1: do two things. Filled the immediate gaps in order to
Speaker 1: keep people alive, and at the same time continued to
Speaker 1: demand accountability in actions from governments. Disaster relief funds and
Speaker 1: supplies were slow to reach communities in need. Some people
Speaker 1: buried their dead in their back yards. Thousands left for
Speaker 1: the US mainland and a year after the hurricane, some
Speaker 1: people were still living without electrical service. It was evident
Speaker 1: the state had collapsed. The protest signs that read only
Speaker 1: the people will save the people took on a new
Speaker 1: and raw meeting. If Puerto Ricans were to wait for
Speaker 1: the state, federal, or local to address the absolute devastation
Speaker 1: and lack of resources, many would die waiting. During that time,
Speaker 1: multiple organizations, mostly based on grassroots groups that existed prior
Speaker 1: to the hurricane, quickly organized to channel aid. Puerto Ricans
Speaker 1: have been abandoned by their so called government for a
Speaker 1: very long time, and as a result, their mutual aid
Speaker 1: solutions are commensurately grander than anything we've seen and say, Portland,
Speaker 1: the network of community kitchens that formed after Maria had
Speaker 1: no head, no NGO or govern are overseeing things. They
Speaker 1: eventually cooked more than a hundred thousand meals per day.
Speaker 1: An entire island was fed by its own people coming
Speaker 1: together to keep each other alive, while the man who
Speaker 1: called himself their president hooked paper towels into a crowd.
Speaker 1: The example set by Puerto Rica gives us an idea
Speaker 1: a glimpse of the scale of effort that will be
Speaker 1: needed to turn this ship around. It is a daunting task,
Speaker 1: but this is thankfully a situation where we get to
Speaker 1: kill two birds with one stone, because the thing that
Speaker 1: got us into this mess, the social atomization, selfishness and
Speaker 1: greed that lies at the core of capitalism, has only
Speaker 1: one antidote, taking care of each other.