No. Just. No.

Seaweed pods.

 Where do I even start?

We are experiencing the 6^th great mass extinction due in large part to habitat destruction from extractive practices. Mining seaweed for edible water pods is just like mining fossil carbon to create fuel. Isn’t there enough evidence that extractive practices wreak havoc? Why do we seek yet another extractive ‘solution?’

Besides, shouldn’t we have some curiosity as to why seaweed exists in its particular ecosystem in the first place? Maybe, just maybe seaweed hangs out in oceans because it serves a purpose and isn’t just waiting to be siphoned into human use. What right does our species have to disrupt yet another ecosystem? It’s not even to meet needs, but rather to serve the arguably self-indulgent endeavor of an elite few.

All of earth’s systems are destabilizing. Who specifically, in the midst of this, can use the planet for enormously resource intensive events like marathons? Who has this sort of environmental privilege and who ultimately pays for it?

It adds insult to injury to then market such environmental extravagance as sustainable by boasting seaweed pods instead of bottled water. It’s like bragging you’re no longer beating someone with a crowbar but with a baseball bat instead.

What needs to stop is the actual beating.

What needs to stop is half the world carrying on with business as usual while the other half burns and drowns. What needs to stop is half the world seeking easy fixes so they can continue business as usual.

arise

On April 16, 2018, Notre Dame cathedral caught fire. To be clear, it is a magnificent architectural work of art. The timing of this tragedy, perhaps caused by a computer glitch no less, couldn’t be more relevant. Indeed is there a more apt construct to symbolize what needs to burn down in the world today?

First, the global North regards this structure as significant because of the particular history, European imperialism, that we value. But what of the history and architecturally significant constructs beyond the global North, beyond Christendom’s empire? The prevailing Euro-focused literacy is at the expense of an appalling world illiteracy that fosters the white supremacy we continuously grapple with.

Illiteracy regarding the global South needs to burn down.

Second, the cathedral was built through the efforts of Louis VII and the Catholic church. In my research, I found detail on architects and ‘important’ people responsible for its design and execution. There wasn't much on who the actual laborers were or how it was financed other than it was paid for through granting absolution of sins and touring relics. I found little on how such a financial undertaking impacted the common people.

This is not unusual.

History books extol glorious structures and heroic feats with scant information regarding cost and impact to everyday people. Thus in our socio-political DNA we are accustomed to suboptimal and inequitable infrastructure, goods and services for the sake of grand schemes that serve few. Consider how TIF monies are misallocated. Worldwide, consider the colossal expense of Olympic parks versus their long term communal benefit. No longer can the agenda of those who have supremacy be the agenda promoted, perpetuating the disenfranchisement of others, then mis-glorified as good for all in history books.

The agenda of the privileged needs to burn down.

Three, the cathedral sits on grounds upon which the Celts and Romans had temples. The Notre Dame symbolizes the oft violent erasure of belief systems that predate Christianity, typical of religious dissemination. Where is the grief and impetus to reconstruct desecrated sites for those historically and religiously marginalized?

The obliteration of differing religious ideologies needs to burn down.

Four, the building is called, ‘Our Lady.’ She is a static, passive entity upon which we project faith, awe, hopes and desires. This is a skewed reverence for the feminine within patriarchy. It is not female destiny to be the vessel of male projection, regardless of how beautiful or religious you make her.

Patriarchy needs to burn down.

Five, it is significant that the symbol of Catholicism caught fire at the same time that the church is under fire for slavery, the forced ‘reeducation’ of indigenous people, rape and molestation. 

Enabling abusive entities needs to burn down.

Six, religious history would have us believe that the Notre Dame was constructed to honor God. This baffles me. Why build something and honor it more than what the God we claim we built it for, has created himself? WWJD?

Idolatry needs to burn down.

500 oak trees form the ceiling of the Notre Dame. To be destructive of creation to honor the creator is tragically dissonant. We are driving ourselves to extinction by sacrificing nature for a human agenda based on centuries of a malignant understanding of one’s place within creation.

Species supremacy needs to burn down. 

It is painful to relinquish that which has been important physically, culturally, symbolically. But who and what does it serve to perpetuate what once was? 

If we view the Notre Dame cathedral through the lens of metaphor, look beyond the stunning edifice at the ideological brick and mortar, we can learn something about ourselves and where we are in this moment in history. This lens allows us to determine if we want to remain here, scaffolded in systems and world views that elevate the aforementioned in our collective consciousness. 

Because it is not in our global best interest to salvage such constructs, we can allow fire its alchemical work within our consciousness to burn down what once was. 

It is from fertile ashes that the new, the needed, can arise.

myth: ablutions

Once upon a time, people crafted everything they needed with their own hands. They relied on each other for what they couldn’t do or make themselves. This was called community. They had community with the earth that sustained them and each other.

To ease their labor, they improved their technology. They tasted leisure and wanted more. Others saw that profit could be had from this desire for leisure. Technology, the earth and people were then diverted to make machines and to make things, rather than husbanded equitably to provide for all.

People left their crafting for what became known as work to make money to buy the things no one knew how to make anymore. People were unable to feed and clothe themselves. They did not know how to make water or heat. Because people unlearned how to heal themselves, they feared and hated death. 

Because they relied on things, their hearts forgot the meaning of community and they became attached instead to things. Their impotence created a hunger for more, a fear of losing things. Their appetite was as insatiable as their dissatisfaction. Thus community became enslaved, sacrificed, burned, upturned to produce things. 

Because it was too painful to reckon with their impotence, too painful to reckon with their appetite, too painful to reckon with their wreckage, they devised rituals to atone. Each week, they separated recycling from trash. The more zealous ones, further separated materials into compost and glass. The most pious offered their electronic offal, their electric detritus at designated shrines. Still others poured what was no longer useful into trash bags for the poor and needy. 

They emptied bins, closets and garages and they deemed it righteous. These ablutions cleansed them, freed them to consume more.

not the but our

The park near my home has a dramatic incline ideal for many uses. Dog owners lob tennis balls for eager pups; golfers practice their aim; Independence Day revelers shoot off fireworks. And when there’s snow, it is perfect for sledding; hence its gruesome nickname, ‘Suicide Hill.’

Days after our last snow, sprinkled all over the slicked slope were remains: stray mittens, scarves and large bits of brightly colored plastic.

I wondered at the debris. If parents bring children and sleds break, did they say, just leave 'em? Or if a child trudges back uphill missing a hat or toy truck, why wasn’t it retrieved? How are things left behind? 

It brought to mind the definition of the commons: pertaining or belonging equally to an entire community, nation or culture; public.

Why do we feel entitled to use the commons but not entitled to their upkeep? Leaving behind my busted sled is a microcosm of what we do to the ultimate shared commons, earth.

This is referred to as the Tragedy of the Commons: individual users act independently according to their own self-interest and behave contrary to the common good of all users. But this is a passive paradigm; as though these mishaps or this way of being is a given, like gravity.  

Instead, we should call the Tragedy of the Commons what it is: environmental privilege.

Like other forms of privilege, environmental privilege is predicated on commodification. We narrow our perspective to a specific intention turning the commons, including who or what reside there, into a commodity to be used then disregarded as we move on to the next thing. 

Consider Mount Everest. Climbers discard unwanted materials and leave human waste, which endangers water during monsoon season. That meticulous planning and training goes into preparation for the climb without consideration of one’s impact on the actual terrain and its inhabitants, shouts privilege: class, race, species, environmental.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with sledding or mountain climbing. But in both instances we function out of entitlement to silo our interaction with the commons. 

This blinkered paradigm is killing us physically and spiritually. As Jacqueline Patterson, director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program, points out, ‘instead of commons, we have sacrifice zones: public areas-forests, mountains, oceans and rivers choking on the debris we leave behind.” Good grief, we even ditch wreckage in outer space.

Since words shape ideation, environmental privilege plays out in the language we use.

Recall the definition: pertaining or belonging equally to an entire community. The park by my house to Mount Everest to the ocean is not really the commons. It is our commons.

By no means does belong  here imply license to exploit according to one's whim as when ownership is wielded by the ignorant, arrogant hands of entitlement. No. If something belongs to us, then we belong to and are responsible for it. Belonging equally. 

Take the word commons. Ever received a postcard from there? Yea, no me neither.  Because there is no such place. The commons is always a specific convergence of longitude and latitude. It is where a host of beings, human or otherwise, live. 

What do you imagine when I say the beef industry utilizes the commons for grazing? If we have a notion cows graze in a vague somewhere (the commons) we need not think of it. Ambiguous language creates distance, a privileged position. What do you picture when I say the beef industry utilizes the Amazon for grazing?  Once ruminants requiring pasture are placed in the Amazonian rain forest, we can imagine ramifications.

And given that we have a dozen or so years to address our climate catastrophe, this is exactly what we are called to: imagine ramifications.

To do so we must throw off our opportunistic language and siloed ideation. Throw off commodified engagement that fosters distance. 

We are called to a deeper, farther reaching belonging; to and with one another, to and with everywhere latitude and longitude converge. 

If you think it's impossible to have relationship with 'everywhere,' I invite you to take inventory of your food, clothing, furniture, vehicles and technology which come from all over our planetary commons.

But we are not called to the commons. We are called to communion. 

Imagine the possibilities. 

it’s just peanut butter, right?

Dear Mothers,

I can’t win.

Even when it's something as ordinary as peanut butter, there are variables the sum of which equal a purchase I can feel good about.

I want organic. And not just for my health. While workers at organic farms endure what amounts to slave labor practices, at least they aren’t inhaling and touching poison like the men, women and children working chemical farms (in Doublespeak: conventional farms).

I want only peanuts. Not sugar. Not HFCS. Not hydrogenated vegetable oils. Go figure.

I want a glass container.  Recycling is undergoing a major shift and its future is unclear. Besides, I don’t want to support the petroleum-military-complex any more than necessary by buying plastic.

Buying glass means:
1) I can recycle it via Ripple
2) it'll be turned into something useful right here in our region
3) I'll be supporting a local business = supporting local families
4) less petroleum use
5) less plastic being shipped somewhere far for recycling or landfilled

Yes, all this goes through my mind as I shuffle through pretty much any store quoting Michael Douglas (albeit for different reasons) in Falling Down: “this whole shelf is suspect.” 

After navigating a vertical mile of PB, I finally found this:

organic peanut butter in a glass jar

I was so ecstatic, I missed this:

Palm oil is definitely NOT part of my good purchase equation.

Each time you see the words palm oil understand it means the loss of habitat. Translate that into dead orangutans. And elephants. And tigers. Understand it means the loss of indigenous, independent ways of life for a people. Understand it means the eradication of a carbon sink. Translate it into climate refugees. 

Sacrificing people + the planet = cheap food. In this equation, no one wins. 

Momrades, it is soul death to deny what we know in the service of variables that do not equal our integrity. If we do not make these seemingly minor choices with integrity, how will we train for the significant decisions climate change will force upon us?

every vote counts

Dear Mothers,

I voted today, November 8, 2018. Yes, after the big election. Did you?

I went to the grocery to buy something for my fifth grader. Her class is having a party where they’ll be bobbing for apples. Only instead of apples, they want clementines.

I was asked to buy at least three bags for the 25 students because they may bob multiple times. As you may know, clementines don’t grow in the Midwest in November. The clementines I found were from Chile. That’s right: three bags of fruit from Chile for a class party.

Needless to say I lost my shit.

Here’s why.

1)   Do these students even know where Chile is?

2)   Or that this fruit traveled over five thousand miles to get here?

3)   Or that Chile is semi-arid and citrus is a water-intensive fruit?

4)   Do they know what fruit grows where?

5)   Or what fruit grows when?

If you’re going to eat something you didn’t produce yourself then at the very least learn something about where and who it came from and how it got to you. That is how you live, not just say, grace.

6)   Did they consider what conditions are like for those working the clementine groves?

7)   Do they know the majority of agricultural workers around the world are female, subject to unspeakable violence and little representation? 

8)  Do they know that climate change experts warn if we don’t change we’re essentially driving ourselves to extinction?

Caught in the web of capitalism, we are constantly buying things we need, desire or are required to (really basketball couch, my oldest daughter needs another set of Nike warm ups?). Last week we bought candy for Halloween and soon we'll be preparing for Thanksgiving. Many of our goods are made with palm oil. No doubt slave labor is involved because we like our stuff cheap. 

For the handful of days we go to the polls, we take the time to study the issues and candidates to make informed decisions. However the average American spends up to $100 daily. Beyond how an item fits our specific need, do we research its entire cradle to grave impact? That'd be like voting for Ocasio-Cortez because I like her lipstick. And yet daily we buy shiny without knowing its environmental and species politics. 

Capitalism is how we vote literally everyday.  And capitalism is killing our planet.

So Momrades, can you understand why I lost it?  

In the era of climate change, I’m buying three bags of clementines from Chile. If every vote truly counts, then in essence, I am casting my vote toward present-day injustice and the destruction of our children’s future. This is not how I want to vote. 

You?

Sincerely,
a momrade