I truly wonder how much courage it takes to be a journalist these days. It has become literally an existential choice for many – we know through the CPJ, the committee to protect journalists, of at least 21 journalists who have been killed while doing their job in 2019 alone. This is true for Syria, Libya, the Philippines, but also for countries in Africa, the Ukraine, Honduras and, of course, Mexico. Never mind Turkey and Russia, countries where it is harder to access accurate data.
I was thinking about this when reading the report of a young investigative journalist who went undercover in Poland this year, to explore how we are all manipulated by information put out by troll farms. What might happen to you when you are discovered to be a spy?
Take Katarzyna Pruszkiewicz who joined a private firm, Cat@Net, this year, which sets up fake social media accounts to influence consumers and voters. People pretending to be private individuals, cat pictures, favorite recipes and all, churn out messages dictated from above, that have social and political content. They include right wing as well as left wing subjects, since confrontation between these two increases traffic. They create a sense of trust between those who receive your messaging and the trolls, and eventually they can start with the real manipulation of public opinion.
In this particular case, the majority of the firms employees are people living with disability. Not only are their employment options in Poland (as here) limited, and this kind of work can be done from their home computer. It also allows the company to derive substantial public subsidies from Poland’s National Disabled Rehabilitation Fund. According to the Reporters Foundation, the company has received about 1.5 million zloty ($386,000) from the fund since November 2015. In other words, vulnerable populations are dragged in to manipulate a naive and vulnerable public.
Here was a typical task of the undercover journalist (source here):
“…operate anonymous accounts with instructions to promote content produced by TVP, Poland’s state broadcaster, which is widely reviled by critics for its extreme partisanship and hate speech directed against minority groups. ‘It would be great if you posted positive comments about the government’s subsidy for TVP and the television licence fee,’ read an email from her manager. An internal report seen by the Guardian details how the fake accounts were used to denigrate legitimate criticism of the broadcaster. According to an analysis by ISD Global, a London-based thinktank that studies global trends in extremism and polarisation, Cat@Net accounts created up to 10,000 posts in defense of TVP, with a potential reach of 15 million views.”
The problem is, of course, that there are no easy ways to regulate this kind of propaganda. It is not hate speech, it is not inciting violence. Which is also true for more home-grown trolls: just think about what the super PACs have been doing since the US Supreme Court lifte spending limits in 2010. 9 years later the number of super PACs has increased from 83 to 1565 for the 2020 election cycle.
Independent expenditures represent spending by individuals, groups, political committees, corporations or unions expressly advocating the election or defeat of clearly identified federal candidates. These expenditures may not be made in concert or cooperation with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, the candidate’s campaign or a political party.
Where do we think those unrestricted expenditures are going? A lot of this is used to influence user comments on social media.
We have no way of knowing if what we read is propaganda from national sources or international actors. Or a way to distinguish between those who are “merely” trolls, or something altogether more sinister. Just think about the numbers we are talking about: in October Twitter, in keeping with its recent promise to Congress to be transparent about its attempts to prevent election interference on its platforms, released more than 10 million tweets that had been circulated by propaganda farms and their associated puppet accounts.
We have also have in many cases no way of examining the content for accuracy. Which is why we are all the more dependent on professional journalism and uncorrupted journalists to tell us the facts. Journalists who will be attacked and in some cases killed for doing their job. Hats off, then, to the women (and men) who pursue this path!
Photographs are of farmed goats, not trolls. Also some chickens, since the female reporters are anything but.
Music is familiar to you, the only one I could think of about trolls, in the halls of the political kings, here and abroad….
Yesterday I wrote about some reasons why people distrust or outright reject science: contradictory findings are held against the validity of the scientific enterprise, debunked studies are seen as signs of sham proceedings, problems with replicability are justifying overall doubtfulness.
Let’s look at this a bit more closely. Non-replications (which, by the way, happen mostly in the areas where the social and personality variables of are investigated,) and de-bunking are actually signs of a robust health of science, rather than the opposite. People care to get it right. Science is a cumulative enterprise that happens slowly, over time, with careful calibration. It is open to explore where things might have failed or, more likely were dependent on contextual variables that we are unable to re-create.
This is not picked up in news reporting which, for obvious purposes, goes for the latest, the flashy, the new. Nor do you read in the news each and every case of where replications succeeded – far outweighing the opposite cases, but not considered news-worthy. You have a real sampling problem here: I tell you the bad, because it sells the paper – never mind, it sells the on-line ads – but m silent on far more frequent good outcomes.
These are, alas, not the only causes for our view of science as untrustworthy. Science is often met with loud opposition, and those who oppose it know how to manipulate the general population. Think of what vested interest managed to do: if science was a threat to profit it was ignored, dissed, or its results never published. This is true for the tobacco industry, the fracking industry, the pharmaceutical industry – you probably can add considerably to this list. Threatened interests withhold science, they disparage science, they lie about science. (Here is a series of clever articles on the whole issue.)
Then there is the enlistment of “merchants of doubt,” who as willing media create “balanced” debates where, say, one scientist denying the causes and consequences of the climate crisis (or the crisis outright) is confronted with another scientist describing a different picture. Never mind that only a few scientists agree with the former and 99 % of the rest agree with the latter. Just this week 11.ooo of them urged us to change energy, food and reproduction habits or face dire consequences….
Manipulation is all too often willingly received, though, by the public and none of us is exempt. Inconvenient findings might be a threat to our worldview, or a threat to our comfort levels in living our lives, a threat to the status quo that provides longed-for stability and maintenance of status for some of us. Climate science is a good example: acknowledging the physics, the facts about greenhouse gasses, would compete with a system’s need to protect free enterprise, avoid government intervention, compete with a solar power industry overtaking the coal industry, etc.
It would force us to face changing our own behavior from what we eat to if and how we travel, keep the house warm, buy clothes, you name it. Or think mandatory vaccines – g-d forbid the government infers with parents’ rights, (particularly when vaccines concern STD’s and a presumed impact on (to be deterred) sexual behavior is part of the equation.) Thus the public is perfectly happy to listen only to the data that confirm their worldview, or disparage data altogether as untrustworthy if they don’t.
This is true for the opposite side of the political spectrum as well. If you look at the left’s receptivity (or absence thereof) to data about gene manipulation, nano technology, nuclear power or factory farming you see some of the same picture. I am the first to admit my own cherry picking of data: I am following research on Alzheimers, since it is one of the things I dread most in life – loosing my brain. I am way less critical towards studies that bring me comfort, than those that don’t. Case in point: a recent finding that sleep might help to prevent the disease. Well, let’s be more precise: there is the assumption that something that happens during sleep, your brain getting washed, quite literally, with slushing waves of cerebrospinal fluid that takes the gunk in there away, is beneficial to your mental health. Tell that to this passionate sleeper.
New research from Boston University suggests that tonight while you sleep, something amazing will happen within your brain. Your neurons will go quiet. A few seconds later, blood will flow out of your head. Then, a watery liquid called cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) will flow in, washing through your brain in rhythmic, pulsing waves.
Note, this does not allow us to make causal claims, even the correlations are tenuous, there might be a third variable problem, but oh, do I like a study like this, since as a deep sleeper it ever so marginally reduces my fears. Cherry picking, as I said. You will not find me promoting studies that seem to correlate frequent use of Benadryl with Alzheimers, on the other hand, since it would require changing my allergy medication habits…..
One more thing, and then I am done with the bully pulpit:
Science matters. Doing science right matters. Policy issues should be driven by science and not by individual taste or belief or industrial greed. But there is also a case to be made for some policy issues to be independent of science, and we have to be very careful in distinguishing the two. Take, for example, the argument that has been around for a while, that discrimination against the LGTBQ population should be prohibited because science has determined that genetics play a role in who you are and as who you present. What if science turns around and we find out it is all about social construct, not genes? Is it ok to discriminate then?
The point here is that there are moral arguments that should be independent of science, no matter what scientific claims we hold true at any given point in time.
And now, if you excuse me, I am off to catch a few winks of brain washing before I consider writing on morality…. Photographs are of waves, of course.
We started the week with magic, then miracles. Can witchcraft be far behind? Tired yet of rhetorical questions?
I just learned that Sylvia Federici, professor emerita at Hofstra University, renowned political theorist and feminist activist had a new book out: Witches, Witch-hunting and Women (2018). It expands on topics found in her seminal work from about 15 years ago, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (2004), which was formative reading. (I have not yet read the new one, except excerpts.)
I’ll try and introduce the main themes of her work, as far as that is possible in this short space. I’ll then link to a short chapter on gossip that is available online and makes for fascinating reading.
Traditional explanations for the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th century across Europe, and later in South America concerned 2 factors: for one, scapegoating was needed to explain the deaths from epidemics, wars and hunger (it was the Little Ice Age after all). Secondly the catholic church felt its grip slip, particularly during the time of reformation and needed to show some power. Witch hunts were born, (and not the kind that certain presidents prone to cry victimhood claim, either) and cost the lives of between 80.000 and over 100.000 mostly older women, the statistics vary. Many myths about witch hunts are still alive and well.
Sylvia Federici explores different territory. She looks at the transition from feudalism to new capitalistic economic systems, leading up to the industrial revolution . Where before men and women shared agrarian work, a commons and open cohabitation, now laborers were needed for piece work, eventually confined to factories. That meant that (unpaid) domestic work fell entirely to the women who were also supposed to produce ever more children to be subjugated to production’s demands. Women who kept contraception, pregnancy and child birth in female hands were declared witches: midwives, herbalists who provided contraception, abortionists. Their ability to help women control their own bodies was dangerous to the system that needed to expand the labor force. Women, who refused to be confined to newly “private” marriages that subjugated them to reproductive servitude and complete dependence since their labor was unpaid, were also declared witches.
This means that with the advent of capitalism a new sexual division of labor came into existence that deepened the differences between women and men, male and female labor, devalued women’s work, subordinated women to men, and condemned women to unpaid labor. It is significant, in this context, that, by the sixteenth century, in some European towns, women were practically forbidden to work for a wage and in the ideology of the witch-hunt a connection was made between women seeking money and making a pact with the devil: it was the devil that gave witches money in times of need. Also prostitutes were seen as witches, as they sold their services for money.
Anything that could keep women in their place and keep them from finding collective power or solidarity or just emotional closeness to others, was pursued. Here is but one example: gossip used to be a positive term applied to women friends who would get together and chat. During the 17th century it was suddenly loaded with negative connotations – talk outside the house (and its possibility to break the isolation that women felt) had to be stopped. The same courts who pursued witches also tortured and punished “gossips” who were seen as a danger to the hierarchical status quo in male-dominated households. They might teach other women about reproductive issues, they might relate historical knowledge of times when women were on more equal footing, they might suggest ways to rebel. You can read an excerpted chapter here.
Violence against women, the killing of women has not abated. It might not be done after trials in church courts, but we see it on a daily basis in the world around us, from domestic violence to the killing of political activists to the slaughter of Kurdish politicians by the invading Turkish army. We see it in selective infanticide across cultures, where girls are aborted or killed for being the wrong gender. No witchcraft involved. No devil either. Simple structural demands from a particular economic system, hunger for power, and desire to maintain a hierarchical status quo, with silent acquiescence enforced.
Just give me a magic wand, already.
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Since witches refused to be photographed and given the associations to the demands of capital and hierarchies within the labor force, photographs are of industrial staircases today. We know who’s up and who’s down….
Music is a witch mix – pick and choose!
Here is a French witch (It is rumored opium-addicted Berlioz wrote this for his infatuation with a Shakespearian actress who wrote him off as crazy and obsessive yet later married him (briefly) when she heard this piece was about her. ) Gossip!
Here is a Czech witch met by Dvorak at noon
and here is a Scottish witch (this was written as a requiem for her, quite recently.)
“Some consider death as a landing; others see it as a point of lift-off.” — Darrell Grant, musician, speaking at a Compassion & Choice, Oregon event.
Darrell Grant
The topic of death appeared twice in my view last week. In one instance it concerned death with dignity. It looked like anything but, in the other.
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The cramped office at Street Roots was crowded by news media cameras, various Multnomah County politicians and Tri-County Health Officer Dr. Lewis for this year’s introduction of the Domicile Unknown Report. Published by Multnomah County and Street Roots, the report tracks the annual deaths of those living without housing, with data gathered by Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury, Dr. Lewis and Chief Medical Examiner Kimberly DiLeo.
Media at Street Roots office
For 2018 the statistics were grim – 92 people in Multnomah County died without having an address and that is not necessarily counting all those who passed while admitted to hospitals. 11% died by homicide, a few more than 10% by suicide, and only a smidgen over 50% of the deaths involved drugs or alcohol. The average age for the 22 women among them was 43 years. Cold killed. Disease killed. Houselessness killed.
Death, in thought or in reality, is never far away from those living on the streets, they who face violence, they whose belongings, medications included, are taken away when the garbage trucks sweep in, they who will not take antibiotics prescribed for medical conditions because they fear diarrhea in the absence of public bathrooms or the opportunity to launder clothes. These deaths are not landings, they are crash landings, utterly avoidable like so many crashes if preventative safety measures were available. These must include accessible housing, medical care and debt re -structuring, given that debt (originating from health costs for so many) drove them into an unhoused existence in the first place.
Multnomah County officials and Street Roots staff
Maybe the planned Downtown Behavioral Health Resource Center will diminish the current rate of deaths: a place, in the words of Street Roots’ executive director Kaia Sand, where people can exist, with the spirit of hospitality and the possibility of extra support. Maybe our compassion rather than irritation will lead to individual actions that help combat houselessness. We have that choice.
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Death as a point of lift-off might become the reality for some of the rest of us who live in a state where courageous individuals and organizations have fought long and hard to provide wind in the sails for a gentle(r), pain-free, self-directed take-off.
I had been invited to attend Wednesday’s fall fundraiser of Compassion & Choices by Susan Prior, Senior Manager of Development and Stewardship, who I happened to meet at the house of a former Board member of the organization. I am glad I accepted the invitation from this warm and energetic woman.
Susan Prior with guest
I usually avoid events at the posh Multnomah Athletic Club, with their waste of food during luxurious meals, where people surreptitiously look at their watch (at lunch) or are straining with small-talk (dinner) until it is time to whip out the checkbook. This time was different.
Buffets with small refreshments, sort of like tapas bars, allowed inconspicuous consumption. Time wasn’t wasted either. After a few minutes of meet&greet the program started with one interesting speaker after another.
Former Governor Barbara Roberts with friend Andrea Meyer
My declared preference of “give me the facts already” was immediately met. Indeed, I was facing a lot of new, complex information beyond what I knew about the goals and accomplishments of the organization: improving options for compassionate dying and assuring patients’ rights to make end-of-life choices in accordance with their values and beliefs.
Kim Callinan, the Chief Executive Officer of Compassion & Choices, reiterated the major gains: so far six states have authorized medical aid in dying and 21 national and state medical societies have dropped their opposition to Death-with Dignity legislation. All of us, including those who would never consider aid-in-dying as a possibility due to faith-based or moral reasons, have benefited from the movement. End-of life care has radically changed as a result of the movement, being more devoted to palliative measures, and more inclusive of patients’ wishes.
Kim Callinan
Instead of seeing death as a medicalized event requiring all available methods to prolong life, medicine now eases the process of dying with hospice care, palliative pain management and, most drastically, the possibility of aiding in the passing of terminally ill patients. In some ways this has de-stigmatized what was previously considered suicide, a moral aberration for many. Aid-in-dying shortens a life expected to end soon; for instance, Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act stipulates that patients must have a prognosis of less than six months to live. It is not a choice of life over death, then, but one kind of death rather than another – one that implies agency by the patient and abbreviates incredible suffering.
The cultural shift towards the patient rather than the medical establishment as the decider, has been of seismic proportions. According to Callinan, the next effort will be to reach out African American and Latino populations to share the potential benefits of this movement. Generally, there is the need to spread the word that Advanced Planning and written-out directives to honor ones decision are of utmost importance.
This became clear during the address of Barbara Combs Lee, whose book Finish Strong – Putting YOUR Priorities first at Life’s End was the inspiration for a set of new tools and resource guide to help plan for end-of-life care. You can download a planning guide here, that provides help with assessment of your values, your options, and means of communication with those who will be caring for you. It also outlines provisions for the painful case of having to prepare for the advent of advanced dementia after an Alzheimer or other dementia diagnosis.
I strongly recommend looking at the guide – I found it valuable both for the information it offers about what problems one might face as well as for the solutions that are proposed.
Dan Winter, who serves on the Board of Directors for the ACLU in Oregon, gave a testimonial at the fundraiser that left me impressed as well. It is not everyday that you see someone with the courage to describe the suffering of a parent living, endlessly, with dementia and now, early, having an Alzheimer diagnosis themselves, prompting them to think about end of life care.
Dan Winter in conversation with Paul Meyer, one of the co-founders of the ACLU in Oregon in 1955
I understand the reasoning that you want to preserve what you consider your dignity and not live for endless years in a husk when your former self has long departed in spirit. I also understand that we are dealing here with a medical situation that centers on acts of omission – not providing life-prologuing measures like antibiotic treatment in case of infections, or not forcing food when the patient is refusing to open their mouth or eat anything – rather than the act of commission of providing the means to a clear-minded, consenting adult wishes to ingest to end suffering.
Betsy Moss who was celebrated as Volunteer of the Year
And yet – how do we assess whether the patient really wants to die, when a certain stage of dementia is reached? How do we ensure that those who are proxy decision makers can be trusted? How do we interpret temporary refusal of foods as more than temporary? History has no shortage of slippery-slope abuses – as a German I am exceedingly sensitive to issues of euthanasia. Moreover, a normatively functioning adult often assumes that non-normative forms of existence must be horrible – when we know now from a host of insights from the communities living with (severe) disabilities, that that is not so and rich lives can be led.
I am not saying that an existence with dementia is a rich life, don’t get me wrong. But I am asking about the importance of considering the subjective experience that a patient can no longer communicate, but which might diverge from what we think they must feel. It seems contradictory to put such stress on agency in the process of dying – something I wholeheartedly agree with – and then minimize it when the cognitive tool kit is somehow different from our own.
The Rev. Madison T. Shockley II, who managed to asked for money with humor and graciousness, not easily done.
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I don’t have answers, fully aware that, from my current perspective, I do not wish to live for years with advanced dementia either. I do remember vividly from my volunteering days at a local hospice (now closed) that there are some kinds of pain that cannot be treated no matter how advanced medicine is these days; having an option to escape that kind of pain is a gift for many and does not devalue life, in my opinion. I also remember that the incredible nurses who were surrounded by and easing daily lift-off’s as I now like to think of death, always imbued agency to the timing of death. If the patient died before the family arrived,”they wanted solitude, or they wanted to spare them.” If they died right after the family arrived,”they waited until they were there.” If they died at the end of a long night of being surrounded by one’s loved ones,”they were ready to go and let people go on with their lives.” I think the notion of having some control in the one event every single one of us will never be able to escape is a comforting thought. Rather than focussing on the mechanics of inevitably failing organs, we can attend to the power of our spirit. The lasting dilemma will be when that spirit no longer has words to communicate, and when it is safe to assume it has lifted off before the body could follow.
It is good that there are organizations grappling with these issues and offering advocacy as much as a forum for thought and discussion. We are richer for it.
Just so you know how coincidence sometimes works: I was following, with scarcely contained envy, the Viennese travels of someone I know. Seeing her photos of Viennese pastries (yes, Carol, I ate the same things!)
or art exhibitions, brought back a flood of memories from last year. I thought I really have to go back to the archives!
And then I encountered in my Sunday readings a fascinating article about Edit Schlaffer, a woman who was born and educated as a social scientist in Austria, who founded Women without Borders in 2002 in Vienna. Her organization does international work with women to “empower them as agents of change and a critical driving force in stabilizing an insecure world.”
Schlaffer’s and her colleagues latest work focusses on women’s ability to detect and contain potential radicalization of children in their households or larger family groups. They started out with a curriculum geared at mothers in Tajikistan almost a decade ago, teaching mothers to be aware of recruiting for radical islamist organizations, and to inoculate their children against thinking it would be cool to be a soldier for extremist causes.
These days MotherSchools have spread across the world, with Germany currently having its very own first graduates, 200 immigrant women from Algeria to Syria. “MotherSchools has educated some 3,000 women in 16 countries, from Tanzania to Bangladesh to European nations including Austria and Belgium. It was named a “best practice model” by UNESCO and the European Union’s Radicalisation Awareness Network about three years ago.”
The mothers are not just learning what to look for and how to interact with their children who might be drawn towards radicalization. They learn to stand up for themselves, have a voice and break out of their relative isolation. Many European nations have not been exactly supportive of these soft power approaches and are instead engaged in upping police force and terrorism units.
For non-governmental help then, Schlaffer turns to women who already have standing in the community, to get a leg up with her ideas. In Austria, for example, which ranks second in the EU after Belgium for Islamic State recruitment, Chechen exile Maynat Kurbanova became Ms. Schlaffer’s anchor for Vienna’s booming, vulnerable Chechen Muslim community. Germany, in contrast, has actually requested her help in establishing these schools, as part of a larger de-radicalization network.
One only wishes that the next round of graduating German and Austrian mothers will be non-immigrant citizens, able to rescue their children (and the country at large) from the pull of the ever growing neo-Nazi radicalization.
Photographs, of course, from Vienna.
Music by Dvorák and Strauss, about mothers, what else….
I had meant to write today about a man I met during his lunch hour. He was watching the street actions of Extinction Rebellion in San Francisco and we got to chatting.
As eloquent as they come, as informed as they come, as thoughtful as they come, he talked about the need for radical change how we approach the climate crisis and his disdain for a corrupt presidency. He had started out as a shoe shine boy and errand runner, now owned his own shoe shine stand.
This morning I learned about the untimely death of Rep. Elijah Cummings. My first thought was, these will be hard shoes to fill. The loss reverberates across Baltimore and the Nation. We should spend a minute reading about him instead.
Today I will report on one of those “You ok? No, I’m not.” encounters.
During my recent foray to San Francisco I was hanging out at the parking lot of COIT Tower, while the film crew did some “B-roll” footage, recording scenes that can later be used in a documentary as background information, providing a sense of place.
Next to me, with both of us staring across the water at Alcatraz, was a middle-aged woman whose face was swollen from crying. (One of the reasons why there is no portrait today.)
I couldn’t help but ask if she was ok and the mere question elicited a torrent of revelations. A union rep, she had come to San Francisco from West Virginia 3 days earlier after her sister suddenly fell ill. A day later her sister died. Vicky had buried her father in law in February and lost her son, recently released from prison, to an overdose death in March.
She had come up to the tower to look at the social realist murals painted by students of Diego Rivera (quite a few women artists among them) in the early 1930s, radical political work that she had always wanted to see (Photographs below). But she was glued to the view of the prison, as was I, for far more personal reasons in her case than mine. Having sought distraction, she was right back at the central loss of this year, of her life, that of a child to opioids.
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Post-release opioid overdose mortality is at an all-time high and the leading cause of death for people released from jail or prison. There are many factors that contribute. I will try and summarize the current science, details can be found here.
Chronic pain, HIV and trauma, all prevalent among people who experienced incarceration, are linked to opioid use. So is the increased suicidality among the recently released, with a large number of overdoses being assumed to be intentional. The risk is increased by other factors: incarceration disrupted social networks, broke up families, increased poverty, interrupted health care access and led to stigma upon re-entry (something even more so experienced by Blacks than Whites, when looking at failed employment attempts and housing needs.) Re-entry into the community also often lays bare underlying psychiatric disorders and addiction problems that were partially contained while medicated in prison but also exacerbated by incarceration itself.
Solitary use is a risk factor for dying of an overdose as well. The majority of people who inject opioids after release from incarceration do so on their own and avoid social settings where help could be provided by someone near by, or where counteragents like Naxolone are available. People crave solitude after having no privacy whatsoever for every minute in prison. Then there is the loss of tolerance because of prison-induced abstinence over longer periods of time. People who used drugs before imprisonment and tolerated high doses, will die when they go back to those doses after periods of abstinence, because of dangerous levels of respiratory depression.
Generally there is little to no guaranteed access for post-release users to opioid use medication, given the pretense that people leave prison “clean.”
There are clear policy lessons implied. The lack of available Opioid Antagonist Therapy post-release needs to be remedied, first and foremost. Many of the people with addiction problems should not be in prisons in the first place, which increases trauma and health-related issues that lead to an increased risk of self-medication/regulation through further use. Treatment programs are the way to go (and, incidentally, cheaper than incarceration to society at large.) It would save a lot of families a lot of pain.
Today I thought it would be fun to juxtapose the looming architecture of San Francisco’s Financial District with an extraordinary building I visited in Berkeley.
Here is a sampling of banks, consumer palaces, office towers and other oppressively imposing structures.
The Microsoft Building
Even the reflections echoed the massiveness.
And here, in contrast, is the 10 year-old David Brower Center, a beautiful green building that is home to the environmental movement and its allies.
It was named in honor of David Brower, an extraordinary rock climber and pioneer of the environmental movement – he founded Friends of the Earth and later the League of Conservation Voters – who was the first executive director of the Sierra Club. Many different organizations share the space.
The lobby branches into the light-filled Hazel Wolf Gallery devoted to art of advocacy, which currently shows The National Geographic Photo Ark led by photographer Joel Sartore.
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The Necessity team was there to interview two lawyers from the Climate Defense Project who represent climate activists and also work as legal observers during demonstrations and other actions. Executive director Kelsey Skaggs and co-founder Alice Cherry are both Harvard alumnae and the 2018 Echoing Green Fellows of Harvard’s Public Service Venture Funds (PSVF) which provides seed funding for emerging leaders who are tackling the world’s most pressing issues.
Kelsey SkaggsAlice Cherry
Among other things, the attorneys focus on the necessity defense, a legal argument used by people accused of acts of civil disobedience. It states that when all legal and political means are exhausted it might be necessary to engage in non-violent illegal action to prevent irreversible harm. You need to offer proof that harm was imminent, that the harm you inflicted does not exceed the harm that is potentially prevented, and you have to be able to show that all other attempts to stop the harm within our legal framework were futile.
Alice Cherry and Kelsey Skaggs in discussion with film director Jan Haaken
Here is a more knowledgeable and detailed description of the argument written by Kelsey Skaggs.
Given the threats that resource extraction entails for our climate, and the continuing inability to address industrial assaults on the environment within the usual frameworks of our law, this is the true vision, alluded to in today’s title.
Music today by John Prine, you can read about him here.
We should reframe the old adage “It takes a village to raise a child.” A more urgent summons is needed during a time when the 2019 UN Climate Change Summit failed to deliver and scientific predictions of how fast we are approaching a point of no return are growing more dire by the day.
How about: “It takes alliances to save a planet.”
Banners at the 9/25/2019 San Francisco Bay Area Strike for Climate Justice
There are those who deny the dangers (or the very existence) of the climate emergency, those who ignore it and those who are giving in to helpless passivity in the face of it.
Then there are those who are determined to raise awareness about the crisis, change, at a minimum, our behavior, or, more urgently, our whole system of relating to nature and each other. They are forging alliances across a whole spectrum of organizations and participants, setting aside differences in ideology and strategic approaches, and join forces to rescue this planet in whatever fashion is still possible. By necessity.
The documentary film project Necessityis in the process of following and interviewing several of the diverse groups and activists participating nationally in the fight for climate justice. (I am involved with the production photography of the series.)
Director Jan Haaken, Cinematographers Peter Menchini and Anna Rosa, Neshma Friend Camera Assist, and Sound Recordist Edmundo Torres, at 6 am walking to the meeting point.
This week we attended the Strike for Climate Justice! in San Francisco, called for by the Climate Justice SF Coalition, and organized by 350.org and Extinction Rebellion SF Bay. The attached website informs about the various alliances for the event; a look at the endorsements tells its own story of bridge building.
Endorsed by: 350.org, 350 Silicon Valley, Amazon Watch, Brasil Solidarity Network, Center for Biological Diversity, Code Pink, Democratic Socialists of America (San Francisco Chapter), Friends of the Earth, Global Exchange, Interfaith Climate Action Network, No Coal in Oakland, Rainforest Action Network, Sunflower Alliance, Sunrise Movement Bay Area and Sunrise Project.
The diversity of participants, apparent on paper, became so much more impressive when seen in action, people supporting each other during an event that was stunning in its dimensions. Here is a visual sampling, just to give you a sense of the range in age, politics, and approaches. Organizations and individuals alike were fully immersed in the proceedings, sharing a common goal.
Folks from XRSFBaySage Lighting Purification
Strongly represented were those protesting the Brazilian crimes against the rainforest.
Maria De Lime Dorsey from the Brazil Solidarity NetworkInterviewing Shahid Buttar, a San Francisco attorney who is launching a primary challenge to Nancy Pelosi Interview with one of the representatives of Idle No More SF Bay a group of Native Americans and their allies
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Before the strike on Wednesday, activists stopped traffic for 3-5 minutes on several intersections in the financial district on Monday. They handed out leaflets informing the public about the planned actions. Drivers’ reactions ranged from smiles and thumbs up to frustrated honking and aggressive approaches to break the line closing the road. This kind of civil disobedience was tolerated by the police who were visibly present but did not engage.
Interview with Lisa Fithian, representing the National XRAnd the indispensable Heather from the local chapter.
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Wednesday’s acts of peaceful civil disobedience directed against multinational banks who play a role in earth’s destruction, on the other hand, led to immediate arrests and/or citations. We cannot have people hindering Wells Fargo employees from entering their building after lunch by blocking the doorways….or have banners unrolled from the rooftops informing about the issues, can we? Paddy wagons were at the ready for the seven arrested, as were legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild to assist those who were in need. I will write about new approaches in defending acts of civil disobedience around climate justice with a necessity defense in more detail at a later point.
Police Helicopters circling Someone more agile and courageous than I, covering the roof action. Kelly Johnson is a remarkable photographer. You can see her footage here.
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I cannot begin to imagine the amount of planning, preparation, organizing, sheer work and herding cats that must have gone into the choreography of what unfolded on the streets in the heart of the financial district on Market and Montgomery St. They all did a remarkable job, with veteran art organizer David Solnit being instrumental.
David Solnit, the North American Arts Organizer for 350.org
A lot of different art forms were utilized. They ranged from painting murals on the street – with tools, templates and colors all provided,
Final Stretch of Murals – Photos by Mary Spadaro
to clowns,
to music,
to dance,
to fun and games,
to an amazing silent mime group, The Red Rebel Brigade, who were stunning in their synchronized movement, emotive power – and tolerance of heat in those costumes on a late September day approaching temperatures in the 90s.
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The theatrics were matched by the passion of many of the individual signs carried in one fashion or another by individuals.
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The festive atmosphere of a block party on steroids helped instill a sense of solidarity and community. It raised the hope that there will be enough momentum to wake up the numbers of people needed to create the mass movement necessary to hit the brakes on our ruination of the planet. Organizing it must have been hard. The harder work lies still in front of us. A necessity, if we want to preserve a future for our children and grandchildren. Knowing we are doing it for them, and are not alone in this struggle, will ease the way.
