Common daisies and a common mutt make for an uncommonly pretty picture

Image shows Raksha lying on red cedar mulch, looking intently to the left of the frame. She's a medium-sized dog, about 50lbs, mostly black, with white on her legs, cheeks, and the sides of her muzzle. Her eyes have a little black under and around them, merging with a black stripe down the center of her long nose, and she has white eyebrows that give her a very expressive face. Her ears are large, triangular, and erect, black on the backs, with white fur inside them. They are also focused off to the left. I think there was someone approaching down the sidewalk when I took the picture.

Raksha in Somerville, enjoying the sun, and eagerly awaiting the latest in the stream of people who passed by for the sole purpose of making her day better, and for no other reason.

The last place I lived, back in Somerville, our landlord decided that rather than bother with maintaining grass in the tiny yard in front of our house, he’d cover it over with black plastic fabric and red cedar mulch. There were ways in which it was pleasant, and I enjoyed sitting out there to read and write with Raksha keeping me company and greeting the passers-by. The social activity was a big plus, but the mulch was not her favorite.

These days we have access to a very pleasant courtyard with grass, gravel, and a great deal more room for things like chasing sticks. There are fewer people, and I think that makes her sad – especially now that we don’t have the regular visitors she has come to expect, but on the whole, I think she likes having the grass for running, lounging, and rolling, and might even enjoy the occasional company we get from one of the local magpies. All in all, it’s an upgrade, and the lawns on this side of the pond are quite pretty this time of year with all the daisies popping up through the grass.

 

The picture shows Raksha approaching the camera, carrying a stick. The portion of the lawn she's on is shaded, but she's a few steps away from the sunlit portion. The grass has little white daisies speckling it, and there's a hedge around the edges of the lawn. She's a medium-sized dog, about 50lbs, mostly black, with white on her legs, cheeks, and the sides of her muzzle. Her eyes have a little black under and around them, merging with a black stripe down the center of her long nose, and she has white eyebrows that give her a very expressive face. Her ears are large, triangular, and erect, black on the backs, with white fur inside them

The Beast Approaches…

 

The picture shows Raksha carrying a stick. She's in the sunny part of the lawn now, and the light is making her black fur look thick and soft. She's mid-trot, and looking cheerful. The grass has little white daisies speckling it, and there's a hedge around the edges of the lawn. She's a medium-sized dog, about 50lbs, mostly black, with white on her legs, cheeks, and the sides of her muzzle. Her eyes have a little black under and around them, merging with a black stripe down the center of her long nose, and she has white eyebrows that give her a very expressive face. Her ears are large, triangular, and erect, black on the backs, with white fur inside them

She steps into the sun, absorbing its power.

 

The picture shows Raksha approaching the camera, from the other side of the lawn, still carrying a stick. The portion of the lawn she's on is shaded, but her nose is just poking into the sunlit portion. The grass taller in this area, and growing unevenly. Some patches are at about heel/ankle height for her, so maybe six inches long. This part also has little white daisies speckling it, and there's a hedge around the edges of the lawn. She's a medium-sized dog, about 50lbs, mostly black, with white on her legs, cheeks, and the sides of her muzzle. Her eyes have a little black under and around them, merging with a black stripe down the center of her long nose, and she has white eyebrows that give her a very expressive face. Her ears are large, triangular, and erect, black on the backs, with white fur inside them

Coming from the other direction now. Clearly she has learned how to teleport into the shade. It must be a superpower inherited from the Husky side of her family, evolved to avoid overheating.

 

The picture shows Raksha approaching the camera, from the other side of the lawn, still carrying a stick, and looking for a good spot to lie down. The grass has little white daisies speckling it, and there's along the left side of the picture, with a gravel circle beyond the lawn, and an apartment building behind that. . She's a medium-sized dog, about 50lbs, mostly black, with white on her legs, cheeks, and the sides of her muzzle. Her eyes have a little black under and around them, merging with a black stripe down the center of her long nose, and she has white eyebrows that give her a very expressive face. Her ears are large, triangular, and erect, black on the backs, with white fur inside them

Having exhausted her powers by teleporting into the shade, she now looks to lie in the sun and recharge.

 

The picture shows Raksha lounging on the grass, propped up on her elbows. She's a medium-sized dog, about 50lbs, mostly black, with white on her legs, cheeks, and the sides of her muzzle. Her eyes have a little black under and around them, merging with a black stripe down the center of her long nose, and she has white eyebrows that give her a very expressive face. Her ears are large, triangular, and erect, black on the backs, with white fur inside them

Recharging is good, but one must always remain alert. The eyes look one way, the ears two others, and the nose is always seeking signs of the next person who might approach.

 

The picture shows Raksha on her side on the grass, rubbing her snout against the ground. She's a medium-sized dog, about 50lbs, mostly black, with white on her legs, cheeks, and the sides of her muzzle. Her eyes have a little black under and around them, merging with a black stripe down the center of her long nose, and she has white eyebrows that give her a very expressive face. Her ears are large, triangular, and erect, black on the backs, with white fur inside them

Her location chosen, she begins the meticulous and careful process of cleaning off her face by rubbing it vigorously in the grass. This is accompanied by a thrashing of the tail, and very dignified snuffling and snorting sounds.

 

The picture shows Raksha rolling on her back on the grass, her feet up in the air. She's a medium-sized dog, about 50lbs, mostly black, with white on her legs, cheeks, and the sides of her muzzle. Her eyes have a little black under and around them, merging with a black stripe down the center of her long nose, and she has white eyebrows that give her a very expressive face. Her ears are large, triangular, and erect, black on the backs, with white fur inside them

During this phase of recharging, she wriggles ferociously ensuring that the light reaches all portions of the charging surface. More snuffling.

 

The picture shows Raksha rolling on her back on the grass, her feet up in the air. She's a medium-sized dog, about 50lbs, mostly black, with white on her legs, cheeks, and the sides of her muzzle. Her eyes have a little black under and around them, merging with a black stripe down the center of her long nose, and she has white eyebrows that give her a very expressive face. Her ears are large, triangular, and erect, black on the backs, with white fur inside them

The snuffling also includes some terrifying grunts and growls.

 

The picture shows Raksha rolling on her back on the grass, her feet up in the air. She's a medium-sized dog, about 50lbs, mostly black, with white on her legs, cheeks, and the sides of her muzzle. Her eyes have a little black under and around them, merging with a black stripe down the center of her long nose, and she has white eyebrows that give her a very expressive face. Her ears are large, triangular, and erect, black on the backs, with white fur inside them

Unfortunately this is the last picture of the process I can divulge. The rest is simply too terrifying for the world to see.

Sign up to be one of my patrons, and help me keep The Beast fed, and her powers charged, so that she doesn’t eat me and set out to rampage through the world! Like all great tasks, feeding and housing such a creature requires collective effort, and you have total control of your contribution! A dollar to my Patreon is a kibble in her bowl!

Bigotry, language, and apologies: building solidarity across social divides

There’s a bit of a debate, on the left, over how to deal with the history of language as a tool for marginalization. There’s been an effort to change how people speak about each other, and to reduce the casual dehumanization that has often been part of the systematic oppression of all marginalized groups within society. I think this is a good thing. Any effort toward solidarity is undermined by behaviors that constantly tell some people that they are, in one way or another, “less than”. At the same time, I’m aware that efforts to change our language are difficult for some people to get their heads around. Telling someone that they way they speak is hurtful to others is often taken as a personal attack, and there are a great many bigots out there who actively work to cultivate that reaction. They work to convince as many people as possible that being asked to respect pronouns, or to avoid racist or ableist language is anything from disingenuous “virtue signalling” designed to instill a different form of social hierarchy, to an outright evil plot to overthrow “western civilization”.

And there are absolutely people who use the effort to change the rules of acceptable discourse for less than noble purposes. The discussion of “cancel culture” is largely overblown, in my opinion, but like all effective propaganda, there’s a grain of truth there – there are those who view any transgression, past or present, as evidence of some essential and unchangeable personal failing on the part of the “transgressor”, that should result in them never being listened to or accepted again. Others use language as a form of gate-keeping activity to gain social capital and elevate themselves at the expense of others. It seems clear to me that such activities undermine efforts at solidarity.

At the same time, I think those people are in the minority, just as the so-called “Bernie Bros” are a small minority of those who support Bernie Sanders. The opposite reaction is also a problem. To declare that all “PC” language, and all efforts at creating a left movement that’s welcoming to people marginalized by the mainstream works against the development of class politics is wrong. The point of working class solidarity is not to tell everyone who’s not a white, cis, man to shut up until socialism or communism has been achieved. That would be a way to guarantee that solidarity never really forms. The goal should be to relate to each other as equals, to treat each other with respect by default, and to be willing to learn and adapt.

Those of us on the left should be fighting for global working class solidarity. That means overcoming the barriers formed by national and cultural differences, and by disputes in acceptable behavior and language. It does mean working with people who disagree with us, and who don’t share all of our values. It also means that in working with them, while asserting the validity and humanity of all, we work to mainstream everybody who has been forced out and disempowered.

That’s why the whole thing with Joe Rogan’s endorsement of Sanders was frustrating to me. While there are very real problems with Rogan and his bigoted language, part of the negative reaction to that was clearly disingenuous. This has been made obvious by the ways in which the clamor over Rogan’s bigotry has been largely absent when it comes to Biden, who has almost certainly done far more harm in his career. I think there’s a general recognition that if we want to build enough power, through mass movement politics, to stand against the aristocrats and oligarchs of the world, we will have to work with people who don’t share all of our values. I think most people are aware of how social and cultural issues have been used, over history, as wedges to drive apart various segments of the working class. That doesn’t mean those disagreements aren’t real, but it does mean that they can be used to get people to go against their own interests.

The reason I saw the Rogan endorsement, and Sanders’ embrace of it, as a good thing, was that the Sanders campaign did not weaken their support for black or trans people to get the support of Rogan and his followers. They appealed to a common set of interests, while being unashamed in demanding racial justice, and that Medicare for All should cover all expenses related to transition. Rather than taking the “mainstream” approach of sacrificing left-wing ideals and policies to appeal to conservatives, they used those ideals and policies to convince conservatives to embrace a pro-social justice campaign, for the sake of its economic agenda. From what I can tell, that situation creates more opportunities to change minds about race, gender, and sexuality than denouncing Rogan, and rejecting his support. I get that not everybody agrees with me.

I would never tell people not to voice their discomfort with someone like Rogan, any more than I would tell someone to shut up about Biden’s many problems. Working together toward common interests does not require that we make room to accommodate bigotry. It’s more that we allow bigots to occupy a station in the bucket brigade, while we’re all working to put out a fire, rather than rejecting their help entirely. And while they’re there, we require them not to undermine the collective effort by attacking the other people working to full and move the buckets.

Thoughtslime, as usual, has made a video that is worth considering when thinking about all this.

We should all be open to changing our minds and behavior, particularly when doing so will improve the lives of others at little to no cost to ourselves. Acknowledging that we’ve made a mistake, or that we’ve done something hurtful, while unpleasant, is not a high price to pay for making the spaces we inhabit more comfortable for people who aren’t exactly like us, and most people will respond well to a sincere effort in that direction. Not everyone will, of course, but living in a community has always meant working with people who we know will never like us, for one reason or another. Universal agreement, acceptance, and affection is not required for a community to function, or for people to work together, but it’s those people who are willing to work to bridge gaps, own their mistakes or transgressions, and publicly work to change that make it possible for a group of people to be a community. That doesn’t mean refusing to call people out for use of bigoted language, or refusing to try to get them to understand why their words or actions are bad. It just means that when we’re forming a bucket brigade to put out a fire, we’ll take the bucket handed to us by an asshole, and throw it on the fire, rather than in their face.

It means that if someone says that WE are being an asshole, we work to overcome our initial rejection of that possibility, and consider whether they have a point. We talk to other people, like the social species we are, and try to assess where we’re at. Not everybody who makes a callout does so in good faith. Not everybody who is called out will take it in good faith. It’s on us, as people who want greater solidarity, and a society that’s welcoming to all sort of people, to actually put in the effort discern the truth of any given case. There’s no easy solution, and trying to find one will always create problems. This should not be a call-and-answer activity.

And we apologize when we decide we’ve done wrong in some way, because doing so creates a behavior pattern people can follow if they want to improve, and in the end, that’s a pretty small sacrifice to make.

Hey everybody, I am once again asking for your assistance. I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!

Food waste and carbon sequestration – plucking the low-hanging fruit of climate action

This image shows an agricultural field with wide rows of some unidentified crop growing. In the background is a tractor pulling a rectangular trailer of some kind. In the foreground is a piece of automated farm equipment. It has four tires, spaced to run on either side of the crop row. On the top are photovoltaic solar panels and a couple antennae, and the front has a black and white grill and a couple headlights. The sides are red. Hovering over it is a standard quad-copter drone with what looks like some optical equipment on it, presumably as part of the guidance/navigation system for the farming robot.

Near-futuristic farming!

A friend of mine recently made a useful observation about the food waste we’re seeing right now. Crops left to rot in the fields, milk poured out, and so on, and yet there’s not currently a major increase in Americans going hungry – not at the scale suggested by the food being thrown away. So what’s going on? Well, this is probably the same amount of food we always throw away, but with distribution and distributed demand both down, that waste is now centralized at sites of food production, rather than being spread out among tens of thousands of restaurants and grocery stores around the country.

This ties into two issues. The first is the oft-repeated point that we grow more than enough food to feed the world. Hunger exists because there’s not profit in distributing the food based on who needs it, because those most in need are least able to pay for it. If we further adjusted that calculation based on the resources needed to raise meat, vs the equivalent amount of plant-based protein, the number of people who could be fed by the current level of food production increases even more.

The second issue is that of carbon capture and sequestration. While there are numerous projects studying ways to use technology to suck carbon out of the air, the best option available to us at this point is still photosynthesis – using plants to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, and then drying and storing that plant matter in some form to keep the carbon from returning to the atmosphere.

First, I think it’s important to state that no carbon capture program will be sufficient if we don’t cut emissions, and stop using fossil fuels. If we’re still putting billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere ever year, then it’s highly unlikely we’d ever be able to capture enough to break even, let alone reduce concentration. That said, I still believe this “carbon farming” is our best path toward reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere, once we’ve stopped driving them up. I also think that doing so will be important for counteracting the warming influence from various natural feedback loops triggered by the warming we’ve seen so far.

As a species, we’ve been tracking our food waste for a long time. If we shifted away from our current profit-obsessed paradigm, and began distributing food based more on need, we could alleviate a great deal of poverty, reduce the kind of desperation-driven hunting that increases our collective exposure to novel viruses like the one behind the COVID-19 pandemic, and get a better accounting of how much food we actually need to be growing when it’s based on what’s used, rather than what systems are profitable.

The expansion of new farmland, through the destruction of wilderness, is also driven by profit over need. Forests are destroyed, and their stored carbon is released into the air at a massive scale, increasing the greenhouse gas problem. Mature forests tend to pull in a limited amount of CO2 compared to what the emit, and compared to new growth, but their destruction can release centuries of stored carbon very quickly. Slash-and-burn agriculture, driven by interests like the palm oil industry are unnecessary and destructive, absent the drive for endlessly growing profits.

Furthermore, the farmland currently used to grow the excess could be turned to carbon farming. Cultivate fast-growing crops, ideally ones that will improve the soil in some way, and have the harvest be carbon for storage in the form of dehydrated plant matter. In addition to helping with air pollution and greenhouse gas levels, if done right this could also improve the soils being used. Combining this with crop rotation would reduce the need for artificial fertilizers. It would also keep the land available for farming if there was a sudden need to increase food production in one area to respond to a drought, flood, or blight in another area, and it would maintain many of the skills, tools, and infrastructure needed for such changes.

This wouldn’t solve everything. It likely wouldn’t even wholly solve the problems it’s designed to address, but as has been pointed out many times, our environmental problems are cumulative – they’re the result of generations of farming and industry all across the entire planet. Any plan to respond will also have to be cumulative in nature. No one power source can easily replace everything we do with the various forms of fossil fuel we currently use. No one crop will solve all of our food problems, and no one carbon capture strategy will necessarily make all others meaningless. This is one way we could start making a difference with very little change in existing infrastructure, if we just had the will to do it. Our society already spends a great deal to subsidize farming, and that’s one “special interest” we could use to our advantage, as we continue pressing for something like a Green New Deal.

Hey everybody, I am once again asking for your assistance. I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!

Human fuel for the capitalist fire.

200 years ago, at the end of this past March, I talked about some of the ways in which capitalism is making the COVID-19 crisis as bad as it is. Today, Cody at Some More News released a video talking about some of those same issues, plus a great deal more. Cody’s show is always worth your time, and in this one he draws attention to some of the ways in which the resources of the U.S. government are being used to benefit private corporations and Republican cronies. It’s worth noting that there are several layers of “externalizing” going on here. The military “air bridge” is taking on many of the costs of sourcing the materials. They are also putting some costs onto other countries in the form of worsening their crises by seizing shipments they needed, and they are forcing American state and local officials to bid against each other for life-saving resources, all for the profit of corporations selling materials obtained, often through a form of piracy, at the expense of American taxpayers.

If, by chance, this is the first time you’re hearing some of this stuff, I highly recommend adding The Majority Report to your regular news diet, as they were reporting on this at least a week ago. They also tend to have a great deal of important news and analysis that reaches farther, and digs deeper than any of the standard corporate news outlets.

I just want to add in a note at this point: It’s often said that the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s “crony capitalism”. This is a distinction without a difference. Capitalism, in all of its forms, is designed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few people, who then use that wealth to get more. Wealth also means power, and they use their concentrations of wealth and power to influence the laws and systems in which they operate, for their benefit. Any system that concentrates wealth and power, as capitalism is designed to do, will always result in monopolies, and what some call “crony capitalism”. Things like regulation, wealth taxes, progressive income taxes, and shifts like The New Deal are all efforts to slow or reverse the natural progression of capitalism, but they will also always fail in time, as the capitalist class gains enough power to change the laws and regulations. It’s what happened in the leadup to the Great Depression, and it’s what started happening immediately after the New Deal took effect. Capitalism is inherently incompatible with democracy, which is part of why some folks on the political center and right have been talking, recently, about how democracy isn’t actually very good. When it comes down to it, they value the right of a fraction of the population to accumulate unlimited wealth and power, over the right of every person to have a say in decisions that affect their lives.

We might get something like a Green New Deal, at some point, but without fundamentally changing major elements of how our economic and political systems are designed, capitalism will always return us to this point. Infinite growth on a finite world is impossible. Infinite accumulation on a finite world means artificial and unnecessary scarcity.

This image is text of a conversation between

Hey everybody, I am once again asking for your assistance. I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!

 

Crisis, workers, and the absurd capitalist fantasy of endless growth

I think this video is an important discussion to watch, and to think about. Michael Brooks and Professor Richard Wolff raise some important issues, and make some good points about what’s happening right now and what the future looks like.

A couple things I want to highlight. The first, as the title states, is the fantasy of endless growth. Capitalism has always been fueled by the expansion of capitalist enterprises into new territories. For the most part, that has been a physical expansion, and it generally comes with the displacement or destruction of people and of ecosystems that happen to be living where the capitalists want to make their money.

In “the West”, or at least in the United States, I think there has been a sort of comfortable illusion that the period of rapacious expansionism was over. The era of colonial empires ended, countries around the world got their independence, and we settled into the pipe dream of capitalist, liberal democracies as the final form of human political and economic endeavors – something that could, despite relying on endless growth, go on forever. If we did outgrow our planet, it would somehow happen after we had unlocked the key to easy space travel, so we could just expand out into the galaxy, rather than scouring our planet down to the bedrock before driving ourselves to extinction.

And it was a pipe dream. It was always a poisonous fantasy fed to us to cover up reality, for the benefit of the few at the top. The expansion never ended. The stories we heard about rain forest destruction were not, as I thought in my childhood, the result of people doing something else, somewhere else, with no real connection to me. Nor did my own decisions about whether to buy recycled paper products really matter. Those goalposts always shifted. Recycled paper became nearly ubiquitous, and the deforestation continued for different products. I think right now palm oil is the big one, but the pattern has always been consistent – the endless growth of capitalism is fueled by endless expansion and consumption of natural resources, of ecosystems, and in many ways of people.

It has been the endless hunt for new sources of oil and gas, and the myriad spills and leaks around the world. It’s been the destruction of whole mountains for the coal underneath them. It’s been the continued betrayal, relocation, and gradual genocide of our fellow humans in the various native American and other societies around the world. It’s been the encroachment of capitalist enterprise into the realms of public goods and services. It’s been the pollution of our air, our land, and our water.

And of course, it’s been the changing of the global climate.

Ursula K Le Guin once said, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”

I think that’s a quote worth bearing in mind. The miasma of capitalism is ubiquitous. It’s part of nearly everything happening on the surface of this planet right now. It is also, however, built entirely on a foundation of fantasy, and of the denial of reality. It’s built on the myth that growth can continue infinitely on a finite world.

In this video, Wolff brings up another quote, also about the way societies change. Where Le Guin’s was given just a few years ago, in the context of modern capitalism, the quote Wolff shares is from roughly a century ago, during a struggle to overthrow that same divine right of kings. It’s a response to the question of why it seems to take so long to actually go about the business of building a revolution, and overthrowing the established order.

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

– Vladmir Lenin

The other key point in this video is that we are in a period of weeks in which decades happen. Workers around the world, and particularly in the United States, are becoming aware of their power in a way they have not been for a very long time, and are beginning to experiment with the use of that power. There is a scramble by those at the top to solidify their control, and it can be seen in the expansion of authoritarian strategies, and the desperation to force Americans back to work, despite the mass death we know would result from it. While people are fighting for their lives, and medical workers are fighting to save as many as possible, there is also a struggle for power going on, and it’s a struggle that needs to happen if we are to have any shot at building a better future.

 

 

Hey everybody, I am once again asking for your assistance. I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!

“The broad shape of the story is the same”: Climate denial and the COVID-19 response

Back in 2010, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway published Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. There are patterns in the incentives, people, and tactics used in science denial, and learning those is crucial to dealing with a number of huge problems. This video from Yale Climate Connections shows the parallel between the unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the fight against acknowledging and dealing with man-made climate change:

Hey everybody, I am once again asking for your assistance. I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!

Racial justice, climate change, and COVID-19

Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, “N****r, n****r, n****r”. By 1968 you can’t say “n****r”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this”, is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N****r, n****r”. So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the backbone.

–Lee Atwater, 1981. Emphasis mine

I think the bold portion of that quote bears thinking about – I think it’s noteworthy that in crafting societal structures to hurt black people, white supremacists are quite willing to also hurt white people.

White supremacy hurts everyone. It hurts non-white people far more, but it does hurt everyone, and it always has. Lyndon Johnson, in 1960, famously put his finger on a central element of white supremacy – that it’s not just about brutalizing and oppressing black people – though that is absolutely a central element – it is also about providing a hierarchical structure to society that uses race to discourage class solidarity, and that tells poor white people that they have a position in the system that’s higher up than someone else, and that’s threatened by efforts toward racial justice.

We were in Tennessee. During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. “I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” he said. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

The true victims of America’s Segregation were, without question, black people. The oppression experienced then, by design, created long-lasting problems and disadvantages, many of which have been used to justify the racial injustices that continue to this day. The constant demonisation and criminalization of black people has now also had side effect that will interfere with our ability to cope with the COVID-19 pandmenic, and will continue to affect management of similar outbreaks for as long as the racial injustices in law enforcement continue. While the CDC is recommending facial coverings for everybody, black people have been pointing out that following those guidelines makes them targets for law enforcement and for white people who’ve been taught to fear any dark-skinned person with their face covered.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a 180-degree turn last week and is now recommending that people wear face masks in public. The guidelines say that medical grade masks should be reserved for health professionals, who are facing a shortage of supplies, and suggest that Americans use T-shirts, scarves, handkerchiefs, or any other spare fabric to make homemade masks to cover their noses and mouths.

On Saturday I thought about the errands I need to make this week, including a trip to the grocery store. I thought I could use one of my old bandanas as a mask. But then my voice of self-protection reminded me that I, a Black man, cannot walk into a store with a bandana covering the greater part of my face if I also expect to walk out of that store. The situation isn’t safe and could lead to unintended attention, and ultimately a life-or-death situation for me. For me, the fear of being mistaken for an armed robber or assailant is greater than the fear of contracting COVID-19.

These are the fears that Black Americans have to constantly face. Where we can go, how we can show up, what we can wear, what we can say — it never ends. The world is upside down right now with the coronavirus pandemic, and we are living in a dystopian nightmare come to life. Still, we are living in an America where history dictates that, even in the most absurd times, hatred and bigotry continue to reign. We are still judged, convicted, and sentenced by race, by gender, sexual orientation, and class.

Early reports highlight what many have predicted: Those who are impacted by COVID-19 are overwhelmingly people of color, poor people, the homeless, and those living with disabilities. This stems from a lack of equitable access to health care.

Meanwhile, the bigotry escalates. There has been an increase of anti-Asian discrimination because COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China. Racial tensions are increasingly escalating, and the situation for minorities is getting worse.

As this is a historical moment, it is important that we remember our history. Black men and women in this country have been killed for any and everything. A child with a toy gun, a young girl sleeping in her family home, a man buying an air gun at Walmart. Knowing all that, I just don’t feel safe. Even in a time of pandemic, the discrimination does not stop.

I will not be covering my face until I am able to obtain a face mask that is unmistakable for what it is. Let me be clear: This is not because I do not trust the advice of the CDC — I do. I believe in science, and I have followed all of its guidelines up to this point. I know masks work, and I trust the CDC’s recommendation.

What I do not trust are the innate biases and lack of critical thought about the implications of these decisions. I do not trust that I can walk into a grocery store with my face covered and not be disturbed. I do not trust that I will not be followed. I do not trust that I will be allowed to exist in my Black skin and be able to buy groceries or other necessities without a confrontation and having to explain my intent and my presence. I do not trust that wearing a make-shift mask will allow me to make it back to my home.

So until I receive a mask, I will get to live out my childhood dream of being on “Supermarket Sweep.” And yes, I will attempt to get everything I need into my cart and to the checkout in three minutes or less.

A number of similar articles  have been published making the same point, and it means that to whatever degree masks will help reduce the spread of COVID-19, the effects of America’s history of white supremacy will interfere in those efforts, and while that will affect the black and Latino communities more than other demographics, it will cause problems for everyone. This problem with precautionary masking comes along with a growing awareness that in the United States, the COVID-19 epidemic seems to be hitting the black community harder:

As the virus continues to spread, the high mortality rate for black residents is alarming.

“It’s disturbing and upsetting, but not surprising,” said Dr. Linda Rae Murray, health policy professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “This is just a reflection of the facts that we already know about these pandemics. People who are vulnerable will die quicker and won’t have as many resources.”

It’s still early in the pandemic and health officials are assessing information on which groups of people are being affected, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said Saturday. Ezike said she “would not be entirely surprised” if a disproportionate number of deaths were occuring in black communities.

“As we put on our health equity lens, we already know [that] before COVID was ever established that the health outcomes for various communities are already different,” she said. “So if you know those disparities exist in terms of health outcomes, you can imagine that overlaying a new disease is only going to exacerbate whatever inequities already exist.”

Historically, Chicago’s black communities have been disproportionately affected by health-related issues including poverty, environmental pollution, segregation and limited access to medical care.

The American medical system provides a strong incentive for people to leave chronic problems undiagnosed and untreated. The poorer you are, the less likely you are to have insurance that will meaningfully cover real health care, and so to make ends meet, you spend a lot of time hoping problems will go away on their own. In a country where the black population is disproportionately poorer, that means less practice of preventative medicine, and more conditions going without treatment.

To make matters worse, poor and non-white areas in the United States tend to have worse air pollution, which leads to worse heart and lung function – both factors that increase the severity of COVID-19. At the same time, poorer communities are more likely to have “essential” jobs that put them at greater risk of exposure to the virus, and with the massive disparities in who is jailed and imprisoned, black and Latino communities are also likely to suffer greater losses as the virus tears through the country’s crowded and mismanaged prison system.

At an international level, the economic disparities in air pollution hold true worldwide, and a French doctor drew international outrage when he suggested testing COVID-19 drugs in Africa, which still suffers, as a continent, from the effects of European colonialism, and the exploitative business arrangements that replaced it as various countries gained their independence.

In recent years, many white Americans have finally begun to come to terms with the reality that white supremacy never really went away. That’s a good thing. Being more aware of the problem is required if we’re ever going to solve it. But this is not a problem that can be left to solve itself. As the saying goes, justice delayed is justice denied, and the wounds of white supremacy still fester on a global scale. If we don’t address them, environmental collapse, climate change, and the myriad problems that will bring will crash down the hardest on those who have done the least to cause the problem, and who had the least power to prevent it from happening. And that will hurt everyone – not just the “primary” targets.

The movement for global solidarity within the working class is essential to dealing with climate change. Addressing issues of social justice is essential to developing that solidarity. Economic justice will never happen without justice along the lines of race, gender, and religion as well.

Hey everybody, I am once again asking for your assistance. I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!

The living world around us is on the move

While humanity argues over how to respond to the changes we’re causing in our climate, and in some cases argues over whether the climate is changing at all, the rest of life on the planet is already on the move. Some species are in decline, some are spreading, and some are simply moving to new locations, fleeing changes in temperature or in precipitation. We knew these changes were coming, and many of them have been detectable for over a decade, but other than shifts in things like the range of disease-carrying mosquitoes, most coverage of climate change has ignored them.

Some of the changes have been obvious to people whose lives require them to interact with wildlife, some have been harder to detect, but it’s happening everywhere. The climate of the entire planet is warming in a way that has never happened in the history of our species – possibly ever – and all around us, life is on the move. 

Since pre-industrial times, the world’s oceans have warmed by an average of one degree Celsius (1°C). Now researchers report in Current Biology on March 26th that those rising temperatures have led to widespread changes in the population sizes of marine species. The researchers found a general pattern of species having increasing numbers on their poleward sides and losses toward the equator.

“The main surprise is how pervasive the effects were,” says senior author Martin Genner, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Bristol. “We found the same trend across all groups of marine life we looked at, from plankton to marine invertebrates, and from fish to seabirds.”

The new study builds on earlier evidence for a prevailing effect of climate change on the distributions, abundance, and seasonality of marine species. Based on those findings, Genner’s team reasoned that marine species should be doing well at the leading (poleward) edge of their ranges but poorly at their trailing (equatorward) side. They also realized that existing databases of global species distributions could be used to test this hypothesis.

Based on a thorough search of available data in the literature, the researchers now report on a global analysis of abundance trends for 304 widely distributed marine species over the last century. The results show that — just as predicted — abundance increases have been most prominent where sampling has taken place at the poleward side of species ranges, while abundance declines have been most prominent where sampling has taken place at the equatorward side of species ranges.

The findings show that large-scale changes in the abundance of species are well underway. They also suggest that marine species haven’t managed to adapt to warmer conditions. The researchers therefore suggest that projected sea temperature increases of up to 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels by 2050 will continue to drive the latitudinal abundance shifts in marine species, including those of importance for coastal livelihoods.

“This matters because it means that climate change is not only leading to abundance changes, but intrinsically affecting the performance of species locally,” Genner says. “We see species such as Emperor penguin becoming less abundant as water becomes too warm at their equatorward edge, and we see some fish such as European seabass thriving at their poleward edge where historically they were uncommon.”

The findings show that climate change is affecting marine species in a highly consistent and non-trivial way. “While some marine life may benefit as the ocean warms, the findings point toward a future in which we will also see continued loss of marine life,” Genner says.

The long-term data included in the study primarily represent the most well-studied regions of the world. The researchers say that more work is needed to understand how climate change has affected marine life in all regions of the world in greater detail.

“We aim to get a better understanding of precisely how marine climate change drives abundance shifts,” Genner says. “Is this mainly related to the physiological limits of the species, or instead due to changes in the species with which they interact?”

Unfortunately, a lot of people have recently gotten a refresher course in how exponential growth works. With the various feedback loops present in our climate system, and without a real, global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is likely that the speed of the warming will increase in the coming decades, and the changes we see around us will become much more dramatic. That’s still something we can influence, but just as the two-week incubation period for the COVID-19 pandemic means that social isolation doesn’t show its effects immediately, there’s a lag time in the climate between when CO2 is emitted, and when the planet’s temperature reaches an equilibrium for the new amount of insulation. If we were to freeze at the current level of greenhouse gas concentrations, the planet would still continue warming for another 10-20 years.

These changes will affect a lot of things. Marine changes are going to affect both access to places like the Arctic Ocean, and the meaning of various fishing treaties and policies, as the fish change where and when they are active. I’m guessing changes on land will be most noticeable through things like crop yields, pest populations and the insect-born illnesses I mentioned earlier. Many of the changes probably won’t directly affect human life, but some of them definitely will. As with the pandemic, we’ve known this was coming for a while, we have a good idea what kind of things to prepare for, and even action taken late is better than doing nothing and hoping for it to blow over.

Hey everybody, I am once again asking for your assistance. I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!

Quarantine and domestic violence: Reporting and resources

One of the first things I learned about domestic violence is that the abuser often follows a pattern of controlling behavior. Using various justifications, they limit the target(s) of their violence to fewer and fewer “acceptable” behaviors, and fewer “acceptable” interactions with other people. Those struggling to survive the abuse often find themselves growing increasingly isolated, and their range of safe activities and expressions of emotion increasingly narrowed as they try to avoid “antagonizing” their abuser. Physical and behavioral isolation is a very real part of this. It means the abuser doesn’t have to worry as much about being caught, because there aren’t people to see the bruises on the survivor, and the changes in behavior.

Social isolation is necessary to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus, and reduce the death toll, but it is also putting a large number of people in a very dangerous situation. Just as single people are vulnerable to being overlooked, so too are those suffering abuse at the hands of the people they live with, and seeking help can be difficult and dangerous when the blanket expectation is that people won’t leave their homes. At the same time, most of the ways survivors could normally escape – planes, buses, and cross-country trains – are unavailable right now. Carolyn Bick at the South Seattle Emerald writes: 

For most people, being stuck inside –– though at times tedious –– isn’t a life-or-death situation. The biggest risk for the majority of people sheltering in place right now is the novel coronavirus, the reason for the state’s current stay-home order, which Gov. Inslee extended until at least May 4. The order is meant to combat the spread of the virus, which causes COVID-19, the disease that has killed 262 people as of April 1, according to the state Department of Health coronavirus page.

For domestic violence survivors, the situation is different. Though they are at risk if they leave their homes, their wellbeing can be in just as much jeopardy if they stay inside. The problem is compounded in places like South Seattle and South King County as a whole, which don’t have as many or as comprehensive a selection of resources, when compared with wealthier areas of Seattle, said Doris O’Neal, who leads the area’s YWCA domestic violence services, in addition to other related programs.

This article also has numerous resources for people seeking help in their struggle to survive, and for friends and family of survivors (or abusers, for that matter) who want to help. I strongly recommend checking out the article, and looking at the materials linked at the end, whether or not you yourself are being attacked or controlled by someone you live with. The more everybody understands the problem, the warning signs, and how to help, the better we’ll be able to provide support for survivors.

All over the world, people who work to help survivors of domestic violence are trying to mitigate the harm that will be done by the current isolation. In France, women are being encouraged to use code words at pharmacies to get help:

In Nancy, a woman went to her local pharmacy on March 28 to report the violence. “The pharmacist had then informed the police by phone, thus triggering immediate intervention by the police,” François Pérain, the Nancy prosecutor, told ABC News.

Asked about the policy on national broadcaster France 2, Christophe Castaner, the Interior Minister, said that the lockdown put in place since March 17 in France to stem the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in an increase in domestic violence.

In the area of the Paris police prefecture—which covers Paris and three surrounding suburbs—Castaner said it had increased by “36% in one week.”

On March 27, the Interior Minister had put a strategy in place with the president of the Pharmacists’ Guild that pharmacists would be a first port-of-call for victims of domestic violence.

The code word “mask 19” can be used by the victim if she is accompanied by her spouse, he had suggested. The use of a code is a system already implemented in Spain.

Sadly, domestic violence is a problem in all human cultures, as far as I’m aware, and the patterns are often the same. This means that regardless of where you live, mass social isolation is putting people at risk. Check out the resources from the South Seattle Emerald article – many of them have advice on what to do, in addition to country or region-specific outreach tools, and look up information on what options are available where you live (here’s one for my fellow UK residents, and a reddit post from a survivors forum with some useful stuff) The purpose of this isolation is to save lives, so let’s do what we can, in that spirit, to reduce the harm done in the process.

Hey everybody, I am once again asking for your assistance. I really need help paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. Patreon.com is a way for you to help with that, even if it’s just a little bit, and get some perks and extra content in return. You control how much you give, and how long you give it, and every little bit really does help. When lots of people pitch in, it can make a huge difference. Please help if you’re able, and share my work with others. Thank you!