Hello? Is There Anybody Out There?

With the coronavirus pandemic stalking the asylum seekers waiting nervously in camps and shelters all along the border and in the overcrowded jail cells of the US justice system, inspiration from the border is very hard to come by these days. Thanks to the Angry Tías and Abuelas for shining a light in the darkness, and to London journalist Sarah Towle for sharing their story, and other tales of humanity and heroism from her 2,000-mile journey along the US-Mexico Border.

Trump’s EPA is Creating COVID-19 Sacrifice Zones

We are the forgotten ones, the canaries in the coal mines, the disenfranchised and the disposable. We are communities of color, lower-wealth communities and Indigenous peoples.

We are black, brown, yellow, red and yes, even sometimes white. We are gay and straight. We are atheist and theist.

Nafeez Ahmed on Synchronous Failure and Post-Pandemic Systems Change

How many recognize that this pandemic—or some other shock to our interconnected and brittle global systems—could trigger a massive “phase change,” and utterly remake the world as we know it?

I spoke with investigative journalist and systems thinker Nafeez Ahmed about these critical questions.

Commoning as a Pandemic Survival Strategy

 Commoners and allied movements, disillusioned liberals and social democrats, people of goodwill must thwart the many retrograde dangers that threaten to surge forward under the cover of fear. But we must also, simultaneously, demonstrate the feasibility of new forms of commoning, infrastructure, finance, and commons/public partnerships. Rarely have needs and opportunities been so aligned!

Outbreak

In a year where biblical calamities have rained down upon the world – as floods, bush fires and locust storms– this fracture has not emerged in the highly stressed natural world but from within a globalised human society. After ignoring the cries of Cassandra for decades, the horse has finally entered the gates of the cities, releasing billions of tiny invisible lifeforms that are no respecters of age, gender, wealth, position or race.

The Pandemic Armchair Philosophy Blog, 03.26.2020

It’s hard to take much comfort in our collective cultural and institutional experience with thinking through the kind of pandemic we now confront. Nor do we seem to have anything as valuable and practical as a paddle with which to leverage our movement out of the hole we’ve fallen into.