creative writing on environmental justice
Your house isn’t flooded in the conventional sense. It’s an unconventional flood.
You knew about the rising seas and that, but this was faster, like the kind of disaster movie that pisses off your mates who work at MetService. One day it was the usual Wellington, can’t beat it, mushrooms in the cupboard, then the next day, with no tsunami and no warning, came the . . .
Fairytales are revealing: they tell us about the world in which they were formed, the landscapes and values that created them. They’re also ever-changing, morphing to meet the mindsets of the times. The brutality of the Brothers Grimm is transmogrified by Disney; the pagan folk stories of Wales morph into the Christianity-friendly fables of the Mabinogion . . .
I.
[Is ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ Coastal Road worth ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ecology?]
we must speak about the land as an orbit an erosion
a map carbonized into the helm of cinderblocks
you are playing with Mumbai like we play a game of cards
[∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ may decongest the city. But ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ . . .
I.
[Is ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ Coastal Road worth ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ecology?]
we must speak about the land as an orbit an erosion
a map carbonized into the helm of cinderblocks
you are playing with Mumbai like we play a game of cards
[∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ may decongest the city. But ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ people ∙∙∙∙∙∙ places it will harm?]
in a physics class I kept hearing plants
when my teacher said planks
[∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ at a time when fisherfolk, like other ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ communities, ∙∙∙∙∙∙ struggling to recover ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ the heavy blow of the ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ pandemic. ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ “Had you been there ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ you would have had tears ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙,” ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙. “I invite ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ come live with us for two days, ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙. ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ not even have vegetables ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ with rotis sometimes.”]
the truest sentence is a hailstone.
because the Arabian sea is swallowing our city
where it is being built for wealth regardless of tides
where tomorrow’s ancestors are today’s elusive parents.
my father walked barefoot to a temple several times
to pray to a goddess, this temple is situated upon the Arabian sea
where now my mother’s ashes are mixed with water
in the pandemic in a new country, we move ten houses
in twelve months. our cartilages remember a country
as sponging throbs of firmament emptying into rain
[∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙, an assistant professor ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ calls this a “skewed idea of planning”.]
tell me the history which will not be written in books
and I will tell you the cleaving of a family, how it begins
[“Our beaches will go underwater, ∙∙∙∙∙∙ currents will change, ∙∙∙∙∙∙ shoreline ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ eroding faster, ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ loss of biodiversity, ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ livelihood of fishermen ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ destroyed. ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ an exercise in extravaganza ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ could ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ have been avoided, ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙,” ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙. “This belief ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ restore nature ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ from every ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ mind, ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙]
my mother’s father was a fisherman, a Koli
with significant ties to water. we all will be connected
to water is a story which will yield a life.
the water turned alkaline, nana, before I could
leave the country. the word for alkaline in Marathi
is अल्कधर्मी. when calling out to God, I weep in Marathi.
II.
[‘100-year-storm’ batters Mississauga, ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ damage could have been ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ worse]
when it rains, rasped, thunderstorm blur knots
churning the city into water into lake into pond into river
ocular and abject, I remember the Credit River for its amplitudes
of sound, cultivating entire forest marshlands
why are you thinking about wealth with the alliteration of water?
[While storms like the one ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ are rare–the last comparable ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ in 2013–experts say climate change could trigger more ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ temperatures climbing just one degree ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙.]
for two years, the cherry trees have begun to bloom
earlier due to rising temperatures. a congregation of families
will arrive to watch the eighty trees at Kariya Park.
two cities are called sisters. after refrains of fog bridled
into the balconies of high rises, eyelids will sketch pestles
of autumn leaves that surpass an erosive winter.
when I leave a country, the birds meet me in sutures of cities.
[∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙, the stormwater drainage system ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ more than 51,000 catchbasins, 270 kilometres ∙∙∙∙ ditches, 150 kilometres ∙∙∙∙ creeks, ∙∙∙∙∙∙ 81 stormwater management facilities (including ponds, ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙, ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙) that help
∙∙∙∙ collect, drain, and clean ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ rainwater runoff before it enters Lake Ontario, the source of ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ drinking water.]
Two 100-year storms hit our city in a month.
A distillation prayer of an immigrant passes through
widening trees into the greenbelt, exiting the city as the Credit River
takes new forms. With the city changes the country
and then the world. Except water, in its memory
of taking form through rituals against slants of cartography.
I won’t say I have left the Arabian Sea of changing waters.
In his last years, my paati’s anna kept calling God in Tamil.
When I was a girl in a sprawling temple of gingelly oil lamps
I asked my mother if God will understand my prayers in English.
God understands all languages, my mother would say.
Now I pray in malls, parking lots, bus stops, empty rooms.
Through water, I step out of the borders of a country.
∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙If we won’t listen, will water—
will water take formless thuds; throb, ferried into everything,
as if a country as if an unmooring, liquefying into an auspicate
As Michael says, “Everything is environmental justice”, and well “everything” is a lot, but it’s also true. Take fair elections. They may not seem at first glance to be connected to environmental justice, but in places without fair and equal representation, those who stand to suffer the most have the least power to protect themselves from environmental injustices . . .
As Michael says, “Everything is environmental justice”, and well “everything” is a lot, but it’s also true. Take fair elections. They may not seem at first glance to be connected to environmental justice, but in places without fair and equal representation, those who stand to suffer the most have the least power to protect themselves from environmental injustices like climate change vulnerabilities, pollution, and displacement.
In red-lined and gerrymandered states across the US, privileged political and economic elites vote against clean energy and line their pockets with money from oil and coal lobbyists, but coal ash doesn’t wind up in their water supplies. They invite and encourage pollution hotspots like data centers, power plants, and refineries to build or dump in poor, rural, disproportionately racialized communities with willful disregard for the health and welfare of the people, the surrounding land, and the water supply. Because dumping—both literal and metaphorical—always occurs downstream.
We’ve seen this kind of inequality before in places like Flint, Michigan, where it’s been twenty years and the primarily Black community is still only beginning to see justice. We see it continuing in climate-vulnerable communities, especially along the coasts where rising sea levels threaten those who can’t afford to leave. We see it across Appalachia, where mountain top removal mining contaminates water, air, and creates ever-worsening health crises. Now, maybe more than ever, we need free elections. To move the scales towards justice everyone must have a voice, and those voices must be represented equally.
In this way, environmental justice is connected to gender equality, to disability rights, to fair lending practices, to immigration and labor laws, to education, and communication. The list is endless because, ultimately, environmental justice challenges unequal and failing systems; it demands new ways of thinking, of communicating, of being.
Environmental justice reminds us, more than anything, that we are all (and always) connected. I hope the works collected here in our beautiful tenth issue show how much those connections matter.
Thanks to all of you for an amazing decade.
[An Exquisite Corpse]
Humans use words. Mushrooms use mycelia. Who’s to say which is better? This is why we have infused each copy with spores.
If you’re reading this, the psychedelics have already entered your bloodstream. Get ready.
[An Exquisite Corpse1]
Humans use words. Mushrooms use mycelia. Who’s to say which is better? This is why we have infused each copy with spores.
If you’re reading this, the psychedelics have already entered your bloodstream. Get ready.
The language of our nervous system, the solar system, any system. We don’t hear it? Can you hear the earth burning? The shrieks of languages travailing across species like migrants from another destroyed solar system. The voices of the non-human neighbours pleading to billion deaf ears. Betrayed by alphabets, the language killed by a deficit in the bank of vocabulary. Do you speak/understand the language of the planet?
And if you’re not fluent in Disregulated Polysystem, if sometimes these days it seems impossible to believe reason, attention, goodwill, a ‘decent ear’ should be enough to turn so much noise to signal, well then: what’s the strangest living thing you can love and listen to? Stranded between ice and melt, with January sheeted over sidewalks and March shaking the treetops, maybe you think of lichens, moss; if moss, then tardigrades; if tardigrades, then irritated bears who also suffer from unsettled weather. If bears? then skunk cabbage, which heats itself inside a fruitful mire. Red-hulled stinking food. Saying in its own way, come here—come soon.
Listening gathers silence and casts light into the countless corners of an ever-connecting web. We coalesce at the intersections like dew drops, each our own glimmer until we all become a single shine. Until we are all water and sunlight and rainbow refractions, myriad reflections we only sometimes believe.
Below us, we know, is a darkness we cannot fathom, a hollow our refractions cannot touch. But it’s always been there.
The rain ends and the worms squirm forth, singing. Like orpiment wine, the sun spills across the field; the tender brush unfurl to tap into the light, decussate leaves bobbing up eastward. This is the force of change. No one gets what they want—except us, and we want a happy ending.
So go, sip at the new sun. Listen for what you’ve always missed. Thousands of years ago, human hands traced ochred animals along Chauvet’s stone, painting the slope of a snout, the hunch of shoulders. Let your fingertips sink into warm clay, and know that it is not too late to begin again.
1. Exquisite Corpse is a storytelling game, invented by French Surrealists in the 1920s, wherein each participant adds a single line after having seen only the previous line. The title refers to a line from one of the game’s first incarnations: “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau.” (“The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.”)
“Everything’s environmental justice” is something I used to say around the shop back during Reckoning 2 or thereabouts, a way of indicating what kinds of environmental writing should go in the magazine: all kinds, from everywhere and everyone.
Ten years in, I stand by that statement, even as I acknowledge that “everywhere” for our purposes refers, with far . . .
“Everything’s environmental justice” is something I used to say around the shop back during Reckoning 2 or thereabouts, a way of indicating what kinds of environmental writing should go in the magazine: all kinds, from everywhere and everyone.
Ten years in, I stand by that statement, even as I acknowledge that “everywhere” for our purposes refers, with far too few exceptions, to the English-speaking world, and “everyone” means specifically those in earnest about enacting environmental justice, large-scale or small.
Let me put the lens of environmental justice over this book or device you’re gazing into, Reckoning X, our collectively edited communication issue. This lens is many-leaved. Perhaps a very, very thin leaf is made from cobalt mined by children. Accessibility, access to information, access to services, education, cost, economic situation, race, nationality, sexuality, and ethnicity: these are all leaves of the environmental justice lens, as are the physical ones inside our heads made for us by some billions of years of evolution and, depending who you are and how you look, God.
Everything’s communication, too. All behavior is communication. Mycelial networks, spores, the chemical interactions of root systems, birds dancing, orcas wearing salmon hats, cephalopod color displays, cat hackles, pheromones, ant chemical highways, ultraviolet floral pigmentation, and pretty much everything humans do, for better or worse. Communication is at the heart of environmental justice, and it’s the heart of Reckoning. Who gets justice, who is even allowed to work for it, is a matter of who’s allowed to communicate their need and who is able to receive and understand that communication. Everything’s a circle, everything’s interconnected.
Here in Reckoning X, Jaime McGhee’s “The Over-Sea”—a story about emigrating to the land of the colonizer—denotes speech by indentation, but renders speech within a colonized mindset using quotation marks. It’s a deliberate, deeply meaningful choice by the author, calling attention to the textual and linguistic violence inherent in a literary medium like this one. Luis Rafael Moya’s textual art piece “Agujero Negro” speaks to the same point.
Ten years into making Reckoning, I’ve become we, and we’ve learned so much. We can see so much more of that interconnectedness than ever before, even as the intersecting crises grow more acute with every year that’s passed. And though at times I dread what another ten years might teach me about humanity, where I’d have failed, we keep going.
Reckoning started with a staff of one. After ten years, our editorial staff has included upwards of thirty people from ten countries, speaking eight languages, each of whose lives and minds are completely their own, unlike any other, and each of whom has contributed something indelible to what Reckoning has become and is becoming.
We start out not knowing, then we learn from each other. I think that’s as good an encapsulation as any of what these past ten years have taught me, about environmental justice, about what it is to be alive, struggling to survive, perceive, communicate, and understand. This issue is packed full of all kinds of different ways of communicating about environmental justice—some soothing, some shocking—from all kinds of different people. Some of it, I very much hope, will blow your mind right open.
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Aaron: I’m Aaron Kling, audio editor for Reckoning, and listeners, if you’re feeling cold, this episode will warm you right up. It’s “SQUAWKER AND DOLPHIN SWIMMING TOGETHER”, from Reckoning 7, written and read by T.K. Rex. I really enjoyed “SQUAWKER AND DOLPHIN”. Before it’s . . .
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Aaron: I’m Aaron Kling, audio editor for Reckoning, and listeners, if you’re feeling cold, this episode will warm you right up. It’s “SQUAWKER AND DOLPHIN SWIMMING TOGETHER”, from Reckoning 7, written and read by T.K. Rex. I really enjoyed “SQUAWKER AND DOLPHIN”. Before it’s a story about climate, it’s a story about building interspecies bridges, hand to flipper. Before it’s a story about communication, it’s a story about a changing world through a new pair of eyes. And before all that, it’s a story about curiousity, about being willing to push out of your own sphere and into someone else’s, even if you’ve got to go underwater to do it. And I think that’s worth a listen. Right?
“If we ever wanted to, our friend group could transition nicely into a BDSM circle,” I announce to my friend George as we stare at nearly $1,000 worth of locks and chains in a pile on the living room floor.
“Is that a thing? A BDSM circle?” he asks, looking up from his project of color-coding keys to locks with iridescent nail polish.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “You can . . .
“If we ever wanted to, our friend group could transition nicely into a BDSM circle,” I announce to my friend George as we stare at nearly $1,000 worth of locks and chains in a pile on the living room floor.
“Is that a thing? A BDSM circle?” he asks, looking up from his project of color-coding keys to locks with iridescent nail polish.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “You can ask the cops about it.”
“Probably not the best strategy . . . .” he says as he sets up a stopwatch.
“Ok! Let’s try Pancakes with Blueberries.” The code name for the position we’ve chosen doesn’t sound like the sexiest of moves, but we haven’t chosen it to be sexy. After all, we are not (as of now) a BDSM circle. We are just friends, with a lot of locks, a lot of chains, and a plan to shut down a natural gas pipeline.
I got involved in activism my senior year of high school. For my first act of civil disobedience, I skipped school to attend a rally in Washington, DC against the Keystone XL pipeline. High school tyrant Mr. Maxfield told me that if I went, he’d give me detention. As an anxious teen whose identity hinged on straight As and approving nods from adults, I cried about the decision beforehand to no less than three teachers and two administrators. But the next Saturday, wearing my homemade No Tar Sands shirt in the no phone zone cafeteria with all the other adolescent miscreants, I felt like a complete badass. Four years and many protests later, here I am searching under the couch for missing adult diapers as I prepare for my second arrest for direct action.
Today, there are six of us planning to block construction of the West Roxbury pipeline with our bodies. Ian, Amy, and I will jump in a pit where the pipeline will go and lock ourselves in a triangle with our backs together. This arrangement is ‘Pancakes with Blueberries’. In a pit across town Max, Sam, and Angus will fold themselves into a complicated tangle of arms and legs, with people lying down and sitting on top of each other. This we call, somewhat less whimsically, Shit Pit Yoga.
George is driving the getaway car. We have planned to do one loop around the block to scope. The second drive-by is the real deal.
“Oh my G-d I can’t do it!” Amy panics.
“No no! We’re doing it!” I cheer and lunge for the door, “Oh shit. Can we do another loop?”
“Come on,” says Ian, hopping out. Nothing fazes Ian.
Once we’re out of the car, we must act fast. The workers and security on site are used to activists. If we don’t get into formation, they’ll get us out much more quickly, meaning the whole thing will have been a big waste of time and money.
The July sun is already hot at eight in the morning. I look over the edge of the pit, then close my eyes and jump, like it’s a swimming pool, like it’s a normal summer day and I have nothing to worry about. Like I am young and fearless.
I lock my feet together first so that even if we don’t get our waists locked together I will not be able to walk away if the police try to make me. More specifically, if the police try to make me, my ankles will break. This fact that previously seemed merely strategic is suddenly anxiety-inducing. The chains have been custom tailored for my ankles by an engineering major friend. They are tight, requiring the lock to be just so to close. I close it.
For our waists, each person is in charge of the lock to their left. (Always go left.) I reach around and my clammy fingers fumble with the bolt between Ian and me. Shit. How much time has passed? 20 seconds? A month? I scoot backward to get a better angle and the lock slams shut.
“I’ve got pancakes!” I call out.
I wipe my hands on my pants, which are long despite the 90 degree weather because I’ve been told that jail is cold. I’m fighting global warming, but I still hate the cold. I wipe my hands so I’ll be ready for what’s next: super glue.
“It never really works,” George told us weeks before in a prep meeting. “Your hands will be too sweaty from heat and nerves, but it confuses the cops and looks good in a headline.”
I spread it across my palm and up my arm then pass the bottle off to Ian before we grasp hands. He passes it to Amy, and Amy throws it aside hoping we don’t accrue an additional littering charge for this detritus. All hands together and no one has even noticed the commotion. We’ve got blueberries.
Climate change is bad. Really bad. Most of the time, even I am a climate denier. I will lay my body down in the sand, but I don’t know how to grapple with the voice in my head, with the numbers in the news, with the knowledge that my country has condemned hundreds of thousands to death. People will lose their homes. People will lose their livelihoods. People will die. It’s started already. And the people who will bear this burden first and hardest are communities of color, low-income, and indigenous communities. I don’t know how to feel this, I mean really feel this, and still wake up in the morning. I get the urge to ignore. I get the desire to look away. Of course I deny.
In the pit, we clutch each other’s hands as if they aren’t already glued together.
“I’m nervous,” Amy tells me. We do the only reasonable thing there is to do; we sing.
“The tide is rising, and so are we.” The song comes from Rabbi Shoshana Freedman and singing it I have never felt more powerful. Shouting and sirens begin to drown our voices. We sing louder. The construction workers, police, and firemen circle us, looking down over the sandy drop off. They grumble about how to cleanse what is, for this morning, a money-losing pit of filthy activists.
Over the radio, we hear: “Wait, they’re in your pit too!?”
Oh yeah we are! We are everywhere.
The fireman throws his jacket over my head to protect my eyes from flying sparks. It’s heavy and I have a vague memory of elementary school field trips from back when I had a simpler understanding of what it meant to be a civil servant. Without warning, I am sprayed with a hose. This is also, in theory, to protect me, but sitting in a puddle of mud in darkness beneath a fireman’s jacket, warm metal against my bruised ankles, all I can think is, How did I get here? Why do my friends, my beautiful friends who are in their early twenties, who navigate depression, and grad school, and dinner, and dating, why must they put themselves in situations like this? What a totally absurd thing to do with a Monday morning.
The moment I am free from my ankle chains, I am bound at the wrists.
“You’re under arrest for trespassing and disturbing the peace.”
Personally, I thought our music was perfectly peaceful, but the National Lawyers Guild, who provides legal aid to activists, says arguments based on the quality of the singing will not hold up in a court of law.
As I am led past two fire trucks and an ambulance to the police wagon, I call out to my jail support an important message, “Please bring pizza!”
In the first holding cell, we cheer as Max, Angus, and Sam are led in.
“We love you!” Max, whose baby will be born within the week, has a towel wrapped around his waist.
“What happened to your pants??” we ask.
“Well . . . .” Max monotones, “Sam was screaming because of the superglue and they poured acetone on my dick.”
“What??”
But Max is led to the back to be fingerprinted.
“I guess it’s good he’s already having his baby.” Ian shrugs. Nothing fazes Ian.
Here is the truth. The sacrifices we will have to make are going to be bigger than $40 and a day in jail. Change is happening, but not fast enough. At this point we are not fighting to stop climate change. Our fight is for degrees. Degrees of warming. Degrees of deaths.
To those who would call young activists idealistic I would say, yeah. The criminal justice system is racist, and cruel, and life-ruining. But because I am white, young, college-educated, and protesting climate change in a liberal-leaning region, I am free to pass through its tendrils relatively unscathed. And I would be lying to say it’s not partially for selfish reasons that I engage in civil disobedience. I am terrified by the thought that the fires, storms, droughts, and hostility to immigrants and refugees we see now may not in fact be “the new normal”. The new normal will, in all likelihood, be a lot worse.
There’s kind of a relief in jail that at this moment, there’s nothing more I can do. In my cell, with nothing but my tired mind, receding adrenaline, and wet clothes, I can finally accept that this is out of my control. It is unacceptable to live resigned to the reality that we will not be able to do enough. It’s self-sustaining to acknowledge this truth. People will lose their homes, communities, and livelihoods. People will die. Hopefully fewer because of us, but there’s really no way to know. We will keep fighting anyway. We will sing louder. We sing to be heard, but also to say, “We hear you. We have not, and we will not, forget you.”
The marches and rallies, the meetings and pits have all taught me how to love. This is the way I have to say “I have your back” to Amy and Ian and George and Sam and Max, to our unborn (or soon to be born) children, to my sisters, to the fighters everywhere. There is no winning in a world where people will die needlessly, but there is still loving. There is still believing in a world worth fighting for. When we are singing, when we are laughing, this is when I find the strength, trust, and commitment to lay my body down.
Outside the jail, my hands oily with pizza grease, I hug my friends as they’re released. On Sunday, we’ll debrief the action in our normal meeting and eat home-cooked chili from a comically large pot. We will think about how we can confuse the police for longer, how we can maintain pressure, how we can engage more people in West Roxbury. We’ll break out the ukulele and play John Prine crooners. For now, I run and jump on Angus as he walks from the precinct.
“Angus!!!!! We did it!” I cheer.
“Oh my G-d did you actually get us pizza? I’m so happy!” he says to George, who is without a doubt the best jail support a grimy activist could ask for.
“Of course!” George smiles. He yells to the precinct as we walk to the car, “See you next week!”
Next week, there will be a new pit to fill with new songs. Next week, we will be everywhere.
