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.”

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 Necessity is 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.)

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.

Strongly represented were those protesting the Brazilian crimes against the rainforest.

*

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.

*

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.

*

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.

A lot of different art forms were utilized. They ranged from painting murals on the street – with tools, templates and colors all provided,

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.

*

The theatrics were matched by the passion of many of the individual signs carried in one fashion or another by individuals.

*

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.

Telling the stories in pictures today (and a link to OPB’s summary of the climate rally.)

So many youths participated, so much energy, such urgency.

There were places to meet and places to play:

There were plenty of relevant signs, covering a wide array of topics:

Plenty of people:

A lot of colors….

And one no-drama llama:

And the nurses, after tending to an endangered bee, were in dire need of refreshments…

Grateful for all who came out, all who gave support in other ways, all who are no longer looking away.

Today is the start day of the Global Climate Strike week. We don’t know how big it is going to be, but my prediction is: massive! Here are some known statistics:

Globally, 72 trade unions and federations are supporting the climate strike, with unions in Quebec and Italy taking formal strike action to join the youth school strikers. In the U.S., workers in major tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft are walking out of work to demand their companies take real action on climate change.

6,300 websites, including Kickstarter, Tumblr, and Tor will be green-screening their sites and directing visitors to the climate strike website as part of the Digital Climate Strike.

Globally, over 2,500 businesses are supporting the strikes —from those going all out, like Patagonia and Lush, with poster-making areas in their stores or closing their doors for the day completely, to others allowing workers to walk out for a short period to join the strike.

In the United States, a monumental mobilisation will see over 1,000 protests across the country, taking #StrikeWithUs outside of the major cities to every corner of the nation. New York public schools have given permission for all 1.1 million students to skip classes! More than 1,240 actions will be held in Europe across seven countries. There will be mobilisations in every country in Latin America, including countries that have not participated in climate action before such as Cuba and Venezuela! From Brazilright up to Mexico, there will be protests: A massive march in the south of Brazil against the proposal of the biggest coal mine in the country.

Here are some pictures of what this Friday so far looked around the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2019/sep/20/global-climate-strike-millions-protest-worldwide-in-pictures

In Berlin 230.000 are in the streets, below that is Hamburg. Performance artists stand on ice blocks to demonstrate the world’s potential fate.

Here is the FridaysforFuture Map that shows events near you. For us in PDX, the demonstrations begin at City Hall in the morning and will then march over the Hawthorne bridge down to OMSI where there will be events all afternoon until 5 PM – Meet me there! You will join scientists, artists, and, of course, the youths who are leading the way.

I will also be involved with documenting some climate change actions in CA, part of next week. Expect some interesting postings, even if irregularly sent.

Photographs today from threatening skies, hung over us all week when they weren’t already pouring down….

Two pieces of music based on climate data…..

https://www.co2.earth/global-warming-music-for-string-quartet

https://vimeo.com/127083533

Someone else’s words, again, for your weekend reading. Written by Rebecca Solnit in April, I wish the essay had more circulation.

I value Solnit as a feminist thinker and writer; usually her pieces, which she seems to churn out by the minute, are tightly structured and argued with heady measure. This one seems like passion took over and the language erupts, at times almost like stream of thought. An interesting experience.

Rebecca Solnit: Unconscious Bias is Running for President

I’ll be back with more reports from the Exquisite Gorge project on Monday!

Music to day by another strong woman, Louise Farrenc (1804- 1875) Following her marriage, she interrupted her studies to play concerts with her husband, the flautist Aristide Farrenc. Despite her brilliance as a performer and composer, she was paid less than her male counterparts for nearly a decade. Only after the triumphant premiere of her Nonet for wind and strings – in which the violinist Joseph Joachim took part -did she demand and receive equal pay.

Photographs are from Portland State University’s Walk of the Heroines honoring women.

Let’s face it: I am on overload. There are 4 more artists to interview and write about before the grand finale of the Exquisite Gorge project in 2 weeks. No matter how much I enjoy the project – and I do, it has been intellectually satisfying beyond my expectations – these pieces are long and require a lot of informational reading on my part, as you might have guessed if you followed the accumulation.

So I am copping out just a little bit: depending on where I am in the process I will let others speak for YDP.

Today, then, I leave you to words that are magical, in more than one sense of the word, and deeply moving. Obviously not my words. One of the most powerful pieces of writing I’ve come across in a long time.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/the-black-art-of-escape.html

Photographs are of from the East Fork Lewis River in WA, including Lucia Falls. (Rivers play a role in the linked story.)

One of the sources of racism as well as one of the consequences of racism is segregation between the races. Segregation has served a purpose to keep the races apart (and I will not even start to lay out the reasons why that was advantageous to one of the races under discussion.) It has in some domaines been institutionalized de jure by the administration and nowhere is that more visible than when you look at Housing Acts.

The Color of Law, a book by Richard Rothstein, a former columnist for the New York Times and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, as well as a Fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, documents the evidence that government not merely ignored discriminatory practices in the residential sphere, but promoted them. Here is a strong voice, telling us about racism in politics.

If you have an hour, listen to the conversation between Rothstein and Ta-Nehisi Coats on the topic. Time well spent.

Otherwise, here are the highlights of the argument (basically borrowed from here. )

Already existing housing segregation inherent to the New Deal’s housing projects were made worse by a 1934 Federal Government policy called redlining (the term comes from the colors used to map out where racial divisions ran in any given area – red for Blacks.) It concerned a refusal to insure mortgages in or near African-American neighborhoods. The FHA was also subsidizing builders who were mass-producing entire subdivisions for whites — with the requirement that none of the homes be sold to African-Americans. The rationale? If African-Americans would buy property in white areas, property value would sink and thus loans would be at risk.

The FHA actually had an Underwriting Manual which explicitly said: “Incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities.” It recommended that walls should be built to divide neighborhoods, that highways or rivers would be a good way for separating them. Many neighborhoods legally prevented anyone but a white person to acquire property.

The wealth differential between white Americans and African-American – the latter own about 5% of what the former own – can be economically traced back to the equity in homes that was available for the former and not the latter. This was implicitly acknowledged in the Fair Housing Act that was finally passed in 1968, now giving the right to African-Americans to buy property in any neighborhood they wished. One small problem: none of the housing in the neighborhoods they were always excluded from was within financial reach at this point, with housing prices in those neighborhoods going through the roof.

All this is in my head because of the news that Raj Chetty, an economist in Seattle, believes there is a way to improve the situation. Here is an experiment by his research group, together with the Seattle Housing Authority and the King County Housing Authority. Noting that people who received housing assistance (Section 8 vouchers, essentially a rent subsidy) stayed in their usual neighborhood instead of seeking housing in neighborhoods with more opportunities, particularly for their children with good schools etc. they offered the following:

 “A random subset of people receiving vouchers for the first time would get more than just the rental subsidy. They would also be given information on which neighborhoods promise the most opportunity for their kids, based on the research data. They’d also be assigned “navigators” whose job it was to walk them through the apartment application process, and receive additional financial assistance with down payments if necessary. “

A year later: the additional support raised the share of families moving to high-opportunity neighborhoods from 14 percent to 54 percent. 

Let’s be clear: this is a large effect, and it means potentially a better life for those random families who were assigned this role in the experiment. It is, however, NOT dealing with the systemic issues underlying the decay of poor neighborhoods and the exponential improvement in wealthier ones. Until we are willing to deal with the economics (and politics) of segregation, social science interventions will be just a drop in the bucket. But knowing that some seem to work is a good start.

Photographs today are from Seattle, where the intervention took place.

And one of Seattle’s own with Red House