# data[].attributes.headline
Infographic thread on Anti-Racism in HE - Michael Cole

# data[].attributes.subject
Infographic thread on Anti-Racism in HE - Michael Cole

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
So - what is the deal with the AntiBlack 'awarding gap' in UK higher education?
@Wonkhe @officestudents @nusuk @UWankings @BantshireUni 
#BlackAwardingGap #highered

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
So - what is the deal with the AntiBlack 'awarding gap' in UK higher education?
@Wonkhe @officestudents @nusuk @UWankings @BantshireUni 
#BlackAwardingGap #highered https://t.co/E3APfHYL5k

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
So - what is the deal with the AntiBlack 'awarding gap' in UK higher education?@Wonkhe @officestudents @nusuk @UWankings @BantshireUni #BlackAwardingGap #highered pic.twitter.com/E3APfHYL5k
— Michael (@Cole_Therapy_Ed) December 10, 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
So - what is the deal with the AntiBlack 'awarding gap' in UK higher education?
@Wonkhe @officestudents @nusuk @UWankings @BantshireUni 
#BlackAwardingGap #highered https://t.co/E3APfHYL5k

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
So - what is the deal with the AntiBlack 'awarding gap' in UK higher education?
@Wonkhe @officestudents @nusuk @UWankings @BantshireUni 
#BlackAwardingGap #highered https://t.co/E3APfHYL5k

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
So - what is the deal with the AntiBlack 'awarding gap' in UK higher education?
@Wonkhe @officestudents @nusuk @UWankings @BantshireUni 
#BlackAwardingGap #highered

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
[Thread]

On Fanon's birthday, I am thinking of the cyclical, ongoing conversations about "decolonizing the institution." As long as a course, exhibition, etc is within the confines of an institution, the work of "Decolonization" is stunted and cannot fully actualize.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Thread by @amy_sall: [Thread] On Fanon's birthday, I am thinking of the cyclical, ongoing conversations about "decolonizing the institution." As long as a course...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Thread] On Fanon's birthday, I am thinking of the cyclical, ongoing conversations about "decolonizing the institution." As long as a course, exhibition, etc is within the confines of an institution, the work of "Decolonization" is stunted and cannot fully actualize.

# data[].attributes.body
(UK) https://twitter.com/pancake_puns/status/1248550753062526980?s=21

(US) https://www.nlg.org/know-your-rights-during-covid-19/

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
HEY NONBLACK FOLKS 

i see a lot of "check in on your black friends" posts and they are well intentioned, but please be mindful of HOW you are checking on your black friends.

here is a thread on how to check in on your black friends.

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
HEY NONBLACK FOLKS 

i see a lot of "check in on your black friends" posts and they are well intentioned, but please be mindful of HOW you are checking on your black friends.

here is a thread on how to check in on your black friends.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
HEY NONBLACK FOLKS

i see a lot of "check in on your black friends" posts and they are well intentioned, but please be mindful of HOW you are checking on your black friends.

here is a thread on how to check in on your black friends.
— maki roll @ HELL DC 4/5 👺 (@makirollOFC) May 31, 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
HEY NONBLACK FOLKS 

i see a lot of "check in on your black friends" posts and they are well intentioned, but please be mindful of HOW you are checking on your black friends.

here is a thread on how to check in on your black friends.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
HEY NONBLACK FOLKS 

i see a lot of "check in on your black friends" posts and they are well intentioned, but please be mindful of HOW you are checking on your black friends.

here is a thread on how to check in on your black friends.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
HEY NONBLACK FOLKS 

i see a lot of "check in on your black friends" posts and they are well intentioned, but please be mindful of HOW you are checking on your black friends.

here is a thread on how to check in on your black friends.

# data[].attributes.headline
26 Ways to Be in the Struggle Beyond the Streets

# data[].attributes.subject
26 Ways to Be in the Struggle Beyond the Streets

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
26 Ways to Be in the Struggle Beyond the Streets

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This list is designed to celebrate all the ways that our communities can engage in liberation. For a range of reasons, there are and always have been folks who cannot attend rallies and protests but who continue to contribute to ending police and state violence against black people.

# data[].attributes.headline
Get Radical, Boil Roots: A Kitchen Witch’s Guide to COVID19

# data[].attributes.subject
Get Radical, Boil Roots: A Kitchen Witch’s Guide to COVID19

# data[].attributes.body
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1fPaNqc7acJuxOZLDWqDNHkgrZcLkAFX-2hwZKPVDAhk/mobilebasic

# data[].attributes.headline
On Social Reproduction and the Covid-19 Pandemic - The Marxist Feminist Collective

# data[].attributes.subject
On Social Reproduction and the Covid-19 Pandemic - The Marxist Feminist Collective

# data[].attributes.body
https://spectrejournal.com/seven-theses-on-social-reproduction-and-the-covid-19-pandemic/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
To compensate for decades of neglect in a crisis, many capitalist states and corporations are shifting their priorities, but only partially and temporarily. They are sending cheques to households, extending unemployment insurance to precarious workers, ordering automakers to switch from producing cars to producing masks and ventilators. In Spain, the state temporarily took over for-profit hospitals; in the US, insurance companies are forfeiting co-payments for Covid-19 testing. Among other things, this shows just how readily available and plentiful are the resources to actually meet people's needs when there is political will.

We demand that workers in social reproduction sectors-nurses, hospital cleaners, teachers, garbage removal staff, food makers and supermarket employees-be permanently recognized for the essential service they perform, and their wages, benefit and social standing be improved to reflect their importance in maintaining society as a whole.

Thesis 3

Bail out people not banks

Our rulers are devoting far more resources to bailing out businesses, in the hope of staving off an utter collapse of capitalist value. The very profits produced, we remind you, by the labor power that social reproductive labor supplies. CEOs of hotel and restaurant chains, tech and airline companies, and more are throwing millions of workers off their payroll, while largely preserving their own hyper-inflated salaries and benefits. This is because the capitalist system requires that the contradiction between life and wage labour always be resolved to the benefit of capital rather than people's lives.

We demand that all financial resources and stimulus packages be invested in life-making work, and not in keeping capitalist companies running.

Thesis 4

Open borders, close prisons

This pandemic is hitting immigrants and detainees very hard: those who are stuck in prisons or detention centers with indecent hygienic conditions and no health resources, those who are undocumented and suffer in silence for fear of seeking help and getting deported, those who work in life-making activities (health and social care, agriculture, etc.) and are more at risk of being infected because they have no choice but go to work (lacking adequate or any protective gear), those who are in transit between countries trying to reach their families, and those who cannot leave their countries because of travel bans and sanctions.

Pandemic or not, Trump will retain the sanctions against Iran (where infection rates and deaths are skyrocketing). And neither Trump nor the European Union will pressure Israel to lift sanctions that rob the 2 million people imprisoned in Gaza of much needed medical supplies. This differentiated response to the pandemic draws upon and reinforces the racist and colonialist oppression that is capitalism's underbelly.

We demand that healthcare needs take precedence over any immigration regulations, that those imprisoned for most crimes be released immediately and alternative compassionate sanctions are found for those who are sick, that detention centers and other carceral institutions aimed at disciplining rather than nourishing life be closed.

Thesis 5

Solidarity is our weapon: Let's use it against capital

The pandemic has revealed to the world how working people in a crisis always get by through a wide and creative array of survival strategies. For most, that has meant relying on immediate friends and family. Some, however, are managing through mutual aid initiatives. For the homeless and those capitalist society has rejected as a burden, support has come from heroic initiatives of social reproduction volunteers who are offering to others nothing less than the right to life. Neighborhoods across the UK are creating Whatsapp groups to stay in touch with the most vulnerable and help them obtain food and medication. Schools are sending food vouchers to poor families with children eligible for free meals. Food banks and charities are seeing the number of volunteers rising. Social reproduction commons are arising as an urgent necessity. But we have also learned the lessons of the past: we will not allow capitalist governments to use social reproduction commons as an excuse for the state's withdrawal from responsibility.

As socialist feminists, we need to push this further, to work together to call for provision of all that is necessary for human life to thrive. This means building solidarity across the different communities that are unequally affected and resourced. This means supporting the most marginalized and arguing for those with any social resources-trade unions, NGOs, community organizations-to share and support those without. This means demanding that the state recognize social reproduction work as the cornerstone of social existence.

We demand that governments learn from the people and replicate in policy terms what ordinary people are doing to help and support each other.

Thesis 6

Feminist Solidarity against Domestic Violence

The lockdown measures adopted by most countries to contain the spread of Covid-19, while absolutely necessary, have severe consequences for millions of people who live in abusive relationships. Reports of domestic violence against women and LGBTQ folk have multiplied during the pandemic as victims are forced to stay indoors with violent partners or family members. Stay-at-home campaigns that do not take into account the specific plight of domestic abuse are particularly worrisome in a context in which years of rampant neoliberalism have meant that funds have been withdrawn from anti-violence shelters and services

We demand that governments immediately reverse years of defunding of anti-violence services, and provide the resources agencies need to operate and widely publicize their helplines.

Thesis 7

Social reproduction workers have social power: We can use it to reorganize society

This pandemic can, and should, be a moment when the left puts forward a concrete agenda for how to support life over profit in a way that will help us move beyond capitalism. This pandemic has already shown us how much capitalism needs social reproductive workers-waged and unwaged, in hospitals and infrastructure work, in households, in communities. Let's keep reminding ourselves of that, and of the social power that such workers hold. This is the moment when we, as social reproduction workers, must develop the consciousness of the social power we hold, in our national contexts, at the borders that divide us, and across the globe.

If we stop, the world stops. That insight can be the basis of policies that respect our work, it can also be the basis of political action that builds the infrastructure for a renewed anti-capitalist agenda in which it is not profit-making but life-making that drives our societies.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
On Social Reproduction and the Covid-19 Pandemic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To compensate for decades of neglect in a crisis, many capitalist states and corporations are shifting their priorities, but only partially and temporarily. They are sending cheques to households, extending unemployment insurance to precarious workers, ordering automakers to switch from producing cars to producing masks and ventilators.

# data[].attributes.headline
Angela Davis and Naomi Klein in conversation

# data[].attributes.subject
Angela Davis and Naomi Klein in conversation

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.facebook.com/TheRisingMajority/videos/1001191156942525/

# data[].attributes.headline
Emily Maitlis debunking myth of COVID19 as a leveller that can be overcome with “fortitude”

# data[].attributes.subject
Emily Maitlis debunking myth of COVID19 as a leveller that can be overcome with “fortitude”

# data[].attributes.body
“This is a health issue with huge ramifications for public welfare, and a welfare issue with ramifications for public health.”

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
Emily Maitlis with powerful words that needed saying tonight.

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
Emily Maitlis with powerful words that needed saying tonight. https://t.co/yqNgxlHoJU

# data[].attributes.headline
Irresistible FKA Healing Justice Podcast

# data[].attributes.subject
Irresistible FKA Healing Justice Podcast

# data[].attributes.body
https://irresistible.org/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Listen to the Irresistible Podcast archive on

See all our episodes, practices, resources
& transcripts in the Podcast Library

We are more than resistance -
we are irresistible

We celebrate the many traditions of movement leaders, cultural workers, and spiritual teachers who remind us to embody the liberation we are pursuing. Listen to Becoming Irresistible to learn about the many rivers that led us to this vision.

Together, we're building movements for justice that are expansive, vibrant, and fully alive.

The need runs deep

Our lives depend on our ability to make urgent, dramatic, liberatory change in our society. But many models of activist culture deplete us and replicate patterns of trauma, harm, oppression, and workaholism. We've lost too many of our visionary leaders to exhaustion, depression, and under-supported conflict.

We are the strategy

"People power" means that we are our own most precious resource. We cannot afford to burn ourselves and each other out. If we want to welcome enough people to our movements to really transform our world, we have to make the experience of participating sustainable, healing, and irresistible.

Let's transform movement culture

We are a community supporting each other to make joyful lifelong commitments to social justice work. We learn from many lineages, and connect and visibilizestories, strategies, & practices that fortify our movements for change.

Welcome to the resilience archives

Founded by organizer Kate Werning in the bedroom of her collective house in 2017, this project shared conversations & accompanying practices from over 100 social movement leaders, and was made possible by dozens of incredible volunteers and collaborators.

In our 3 years of active operation, the podcast surpassed 1.5 million downloads - which is a powerful testament to the hunger & need for this kind of work worldwide.

This archive is the largest catalog of publicly accessible wisdom & practices around healing in social justice work today. We hope the library of conversations, practices, additional resources and transcripts will be a powerful support for you and your people to lean on.

A global community of learning gathered here for collective readings in social justice & healing from 2019-2020. You hosted your own gatherings locally & virtually, started practice groups, met up to read on blankets by the river, and joined authors for live discussions. Your joy & commitment in study and practice was a beautiful force.

Now that Book Club has sunset, we share all resources from past selections here for the benefit of the public. We bow in deep gratitude to the authors and to each of you for moving this transformative knowledge.

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
Written & gathered by adrienne maree brown (Spring 2019)

Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture by Nora Samaran (Fall 2019)

Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm by Kazu Haga (Winter 2020)

Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger
by Lama Rod Owens (Spring 2020)

Photo credit: Lama Rod Owens' Instagram, @lamarodowens

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Irresistible is building a community of practice in collective healing and social change. The podcast features guests sharing conversations and practices from the worlds of organizing, wellbeing, sustainability, anti-racism/anti-oppression social justice work, spirituality, activism, and more. Because we are more than resistance -- we are irresistible.

# data[].attributes.body
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0001839220911056

# data[].attributes.headline
Immediate Proposals to Universities and UK Dept of Education

# data[].attributes.subject
Immediate Proposals to Universities and UK Dept of Education

# data[].attributes.body
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ih-hfIo51muzDGF6TINyQpIDmCYezvBNHYh84gtyst8/edit?usp=sharing

# data[].attributes.headline
Feminist publishing – slowing down, taking care

# data[].attributes.subject
Feminist publishing – slowing down, taking care

# data[].attributes.body
https://femrev.wordpress.com/2020/03/24/feminist-publishing-slowing-down-taking-care/

# data[].attributes.headline
‘Stay Home’ and Work? Implications of COVID-19 and the UK Governmental Response for Self-Employed Women

# data[].attributes.subject
‘Stay Home’ and Work? Implications of COVID-19 and the UK Governmental Response for Self-Employed Women

# data[].attributes.body
https://isbegen.wordpress.com/2020/03/27/stay-home-and-work/

# data[].attributes.headline
The Quarantine Reading Series feat. Alexis Pauline Gumbs

# data[].attributes.subject
The Quarantine Reading Series feat. Alexis Pauline Gumbs

# data[].attributes.body
https://youtu.be/wPQGlrKheuk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
#thequarantinereadingseries -- feat: alexis pauline gumbs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
#thequarantinereadingseries -- feat: alexis pauline gumbs tickets

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
#TheQuarantineReadingSeries -- FEAT: Alexis Pauline Gumbs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
COVID19 has touched our lives in varying degrees, and for now, we've been advised to stay at home. In light of all city, state, and country-wide shutdowns, poets from around the world (particularly BIPOC & LGBTQ poets) have been struggling financially, navigating the loss of income from canceled gigs, low audience turnout, and scrapped book tours!

# data[].attributes.headline
How to clean groceries and takeaway food

# data[].attributes.subject
How to clean groceries and takeaway food

# data[].attributes.body
https://youtu.be/sjDuwc9KBps

# data[].attributes.body
http://ihuman.group.shef.ac.uk/surviving-ablesim-in-covid-times/

# data[].attributes.headline
Addressing Anti-Black Racism in Education' Webinar

# data[].attributes.subject
Addressing Anti-Black Racism in Education' Webinar

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
The recording of the 'Addressing Anti-Black Racism in Education' Webinar is now available. Please click the link below to access and share it.

https://t.co/4VGqbdEFDN

#oiseblackfacultyconvo @CLD_Leadership

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.author.name
Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
The recording of the 'Addressing Anti-Black Racism in Education' Webinar is now available. Please click the link below to access and share it.

https://t.co/4VGqbdEFDN

#oiseblackfacultyconvo @CLD_Leadership

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
The recording of the 'Addressing Anti-Black Racism in Education' Webinar is now available. Please click the link below to access and share it.https://t.co/4VGqbdEFDN#oiseblackfacultyconvo @CLD_Leadership
— Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies (@OISECIARS) May 28, 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
The recording of the 'Addressing Anti-Black Racism in Education' Webinar is now available. Please click the link below to access and share it.

https://t.co/4VGqbdEFDN

#oiseblackfacultyconvo @CLD_Leadership

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.includes.users[].name
Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
The recording of the 'Addressing Anti-Black Racism in Education' Webinar is now available. Please click the link below to access and share it.

https://t.co/4VGqbdEFDN

#oiseblackfacultyconvo @CLD_Leadership

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
The recording of the 'Addressing Anti-Black Racism in Education' Webinar is now available. Please click the link below to access and share it.

https://t.co/4VGqbdEFDN

#oiseblackfacultyconvo @CLD_Leadership

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.author.name
Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies

# data[].attributes.headline
Decolonising Scholar-Activism Online: Sustaining our politics during the Coronavirus pandemic

# data[].attributes.subject
Decolonising Scholar-Activism Online: Sustaining our politics during the Coronavirus pandemic

# data[].attributes.body
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zVfnhirieHP0HEMet5gW3VFPoP-dFY9r5bSVH1OmS0M/edit?usp=sharing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
THREAD: The UK is not the only place seeing a recent sharp rise in Covid cases.

Difference is *just like last time* our government had advance warning by looking at other countries. And not only did they do nothing to stop the rise, they actively encouraged it. 1/10

This a graph from the @FT of Covid cases from Spain and France (both of which were hit badly last time). Cases in Spain start rising mid July, cases in France take off during August. Cases in the UK still remained relatively low during this period 2/10

I had some thoughts on why our numbers were so low in this thread - basically reluctance of Brits to go back to shops, pubs and restaurants, plus more working from home than in other countries.

So what does our government do? 3/10

https://twitter.com/ChristabelCoops/status/1296488679146389504?s=20

It tells people to go back into the office (often via public transport) and spends 100s of millions of public money bribing people to eat out more. There is now some evidence that the Eat Out scheme directly contributed to the rise in UK Covid cases. 4/10

https://twitter.com/kieran_walshe/status/1304709371956473856?s=20

More generally government messaging was deliberately encouraging people to believe that the worst was over and we could start going back to normal life. Even though we could see from other countries that this was resulting in a second wave of cases. 5/10

But this isn't all. Given the government knew that a rise in cases was possible, why did it not build up testing capacity to deal with an increased number of people reporting Covid symptoms? Instead, it allowed the testing system to fall over. 6/10

https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1305047753983225858?s=20

@Chrischirp explains here why this is such a problem - if we can't test, then we can't trace and isolate cases either, so Covid spreads even further. 7/10

https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1303646373041115137?s=20

But the government just blames young people, and to starts talking about an ambitious new £100bn testing program rather than fixing the system we actually have.

This is a really good thread from @scienceshared on the problems with "Moonshot". 8/10

https://twitter.com/ScienceShared/status/1304016643174133760?s=20

I get the government has been trying to help the economy, but a significant second wave is going to do far more damage to jobs and the economy than anything else. Restrictions will have to be re-imposed, and individuals will start avoiding shops and restaurants again anyway. 9/10

All this could have been anticipated, but this is not a government that leads - it only reacts, and when it reacts, it does so incompetently.

They must be held to account for this. 10/10

* * *

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Thread by @ChristabelCoops on Thread Reader App

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
THREAD: The UK is not the only place seeing a recent sharp rise in Covid cases. Difference is *just like last time* our government had advance warning by looking at other countries. And not only did they do nothing to stop the rise, they actively encouraged it.

# data[].attributes.body
Citizen and expert led news, holding the U.K. government to account for its handling of the crisis

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1248005070567772160?s=21

# data[].attributes.body
Building the Anti-Racist Collective developed Principled Space Guidelines for levelling racialised and gendered power dynamics in learning spaces. These need to be reformed for this resource.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The BARC collective begins each session with a ground-clearing practice that sets a levelled foundation upon which to build our work and relations in the workshop space.

Artist and activist Hanalei Ramos has problematised the notion of the safe space. While the safe space is invoked at most every event discussing the experiences of marginalised people, we make efforts to understand participants' expectations and reasons for attending. We do not know how the discussions will unfold and so we must acknowledge that it is not possible to guarantee complete safety. Instead, Ramos suggests that principled spaces are better suited to creating the environments we wish to develop: we can commit to adhering to a set of principles that guide and shape the space, and increase the possibility of safety for all involved.

Our principles are:

1) Be aware of your privilege and take a step back so marginalised people can lead, consciously challenging any implicit hierarchy where gender trumps other dimensions of marginalization including race.

2) Believe people's accounts of their experiences of marginalisation, and honour people's vulnerability by not disputing their lived experience, keeping in mind principle number 1.

3) If you feel unsafe for any reason, we have a safety officer with whom you can have a private discussion that will be fed back to organisers anonymously. The organisers commit to taking steps to address any issues and improve the conditions for the rest of the event.

4) All the experiences that are shared here may be deeply personal and should be treated in confidence. While we cannot guarantee full confidentiality, we request that unless explicit consent is requested and given, that discussions held in the room should stay in the room.

5) We encourage participants to tweet, make posts, comments and critiques using the hashtag #barcworkshop, but to respect other participants, you are not permitted to make derogatory comments or posts about any person in the room, or to share experiences that are not yours without explicit consent.

6) While these principles are intended to apply to all, they are written in recognition of existing power structures that continue to marginalise people of colour, perpetuate anti-Blackness and promote white privilege/power. This should be kept in mind throughout the workshop.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The BARC collective begins each session with a ground-clearing practice that sets a levelled foundation upon which to build our work and relations in the workshop space. Artist and activist Hanalei Ramos has problematised the notion of the safe space. While the safe space is invoked at most every event discussing the experiences of marginalised...

# data[].attributes.body
https://padlet.com/support/padlets_howtopost

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
--Audre Lorde
In moments of grief, crisis, or trauma, and in the time before and after, we need each other to survive and thrive. We are obliged to lift up, honor, and hold space for our self-determination, to fight for our lives, and to remind each other of our worth and that none of us are disposable. In a time and place where we LGBTSTGNC POC are hurt, isolated, silenced, murdered, imprisoned, disappeared, and deported, it is a radical act of self and community love to name our trauma and needs, and to love each other fiercely to meet those needs. We have been taught and conditioned to turn to the state in moments of crisis and trauma, to turn out and away from the communities and relationships that hold us. In this moment of community grief, let us find each other, and radically turn in to each other with love, consensually present each other with our hurts and needs, and strategize as community to get those needs and desires met. We must remember, share, and practice strategies for grounding, support, resilience, transformation, and accountability.

We must support each other's wellness. One way to do this is to create a wellness plan for yourself, and encourage folks in your community to create a wellness plan for themselves. Strategize with your community about your wellness plan and meeting your needs.

Here's a template for wellness planning:

Your wellness plan can look however you want it to, but the point is to name your current or anticipated needs, and who can support you in getting your needs met. Be sure to communicate your needs to the people who will support you. If your community is a web-based one, maybe create a private online shareable spreadsheet that folks can contribute to and edit. If your community isn't online, maybe set up an in-person group meeting, a conference call, or make individual calls or meetings.

When folks ask you for support, remember to listen and follow their lead in lifting up their own self-determination. This is about the person requesting support, so don't make it about you. If you feel you aren't able to meet a need, be clear and honest about that, and help strategize another way to meet that need. Folks experiencing or dealing with their own triggers, crisis, or trauma may or may not be able to support. Ask. Don't assume anyone is or isn't able to provide support. If you do commit to supporting the needs of community, you may also need support in meeting those needs, so consider creating a wellness plan for yourself.

We are enough, and we are all we need to survive. We always have been. We're all we've got. Be good to each other. Take care of each other.

No comrade left behind!

Rest in power, Taueret Davis.
Resources:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Breaking Isolation: Self Care and Community Care Tools for our People

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Audre Lorde In moments of grief, crisis, or trauma, and in the time before and after, we need each other to survive and thrive. We are obliged to lift up, honor, and hold space for our self-determination, to fight for our lives, and to remind each other of our worth and that none of us are disposable.

# data[].attributes.headline
Ethics of care that centres those who are continually forgotten

# data[].attributes.subject
Ethics of care that centres those who are continually forgotten

# data[].attributes.body
https://femrev.wordpress.com/2020/03/31/covid-19-and-cancer-following-audre-lorde/#more-1954

# data[].attributes.headline
Asian American Feminist Antibodies: Care in the Time of Coronavirus E-Zine

# data[].attributes.subject
Asian American Feminist Antibodies: Care in the Time of Coronavirus E-Zine

# data[].attributes.body
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59f87d66914e6b2a2c51b657/t/5e7bbeef7811c16d3a8768eb/1585168132614/AAFCZine3_CareintheTimeofCoronavirus.pdf?mc_cid=ed76736592&mc_eid=d9ba740056

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This means ANY kind of Asian! 😉 South Asian, East Asian, Half-Asian, etc. No photos to gawk over here, this is a subreddit for Asian ladies! All are welcome, but if you start to post inappropriate or offensive material, you will be banned.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Asian American Feminist Antibodies: Care in the Time of Coronavirus E-Zine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This means ANY kind of Asian! 😉 South Asian, East Asian, Half-Asian, etc. No photos to gawk over here, this is a subreddit for Asian ladies! All are welcome, but if you start to post inappropriate or offensive material, you will be banned.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to look after your mental health during the coronavirus outbreak | Mental Health Foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Good mental health for all. Dedicated to finding and addressing the sources of mental health problems.

# data[].attributes.headline
How To Practice Self-Care When You’re The Only Person Of Colour In The Office

# data[].attributes.subject
How To Practice Self-Care When You’re The Only Person Of Colour In The Office

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How To Practice Self-Care When You're The Only Person Of Color In The Office

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There are people in your corner ... hold onto that.

# data[].attributes.headline
What you should know about using online tools to organize during the crisis

# data[].attributes.subject
What you should know about using online tools to organize during the crisis

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know-about-online-tools-during-covid-19-crisis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A greater portion of the world's work, organizing, and care-giving is moving onto digital platforms and tools that facilitate connection and productivity: video conferencing, messaging apps, healthcare and educational platforms, and more. It's important to be aware of the ways these tools may impact your digital privacy and security during the COVID-19 crisis.

Here are a few things you should know in order to make informed decisions about what works best for you and your communities, and ways you can use security and privacy best practices to protect yourself and others.

Free Slacks

EFF has a about when it comes to free versions of the software. With so many mutual aid networks and organizing groups coalescing on Slack to support our communities, it's important that users are aware that the company retains their messages if they're using a free plan-and they can't automatically delete them. By default, Slack retains all the messages in a workspace or channel (including direct messages) for as long as the workspace exists. Slack's data retention issues

If you are using a paid workspace, you can change how many messages are retained in Slack's databases by setting shorter retention periods . If you're using the free version though, that option is not available to you. Additionally, free workspace users only have the ability to search through the most recent 10,000 messages. And while users can't see messages sent prior to the 10,000 message mark, they are still available to Slack, law enforcement, and any third-party hackers through a data breach. Leaking or sharing of this data could prove catastrophic, especially for groups who are working to provide aid and support for our most at-risk communities.

Zoom Conferencing

The best way to stave off the effects of isolation is to maintain contact with friends, family, and coworkers. Zoom has quickly become a popular option to work and keep in touch with others in the midst of social distancing and shelter-in-place protocols. There are a few things to keep in mind when using Zoom, particularly in instances where users are relying on the conferencing tool for their studies, or for work-related activities.

Attendee Attention-Tracking

The host of a Zoom call has the capacity to monitor the activities of attendees while screen-sharing. This functionality is available in Zoom version 4.0 and higher. If attendees of a meeting do not have the Zoom video window in focus during a call where the host is screen-sharing, after 30 seconds the host can see indicators next to each participant's name indicating that the Zoom window is not active.

Administrators and User Tracking

Zoom allows administrators to see , including video, audio, transcript, and chat files, as well as access to sharing, analytics, and cloud management privileges. detailed views on how, when, and where users are using Zoom , with detailed dashboards in real-time of user activity. Zoom also provides a ranking system of users based on total number of meeting minutes. If a user records any calls via Zoom, administrators can access the contents of that recorded call

For any meeting that has occurred or is in-process, Zoom allows administrators to see the operating system, IP address, location data, and device information of each participant. This device information includes the type of machine (PC/Mac/Linux/mobile/etc), specs on the make/model of your peripheral audiovisual devices like cameras or speakers, and names for those devices (for example, the user-configurable names given to AirPods). Administrators also have the ability to join any call at any time on their organization's instance of Zoom, without in-the-moment consent or warning for the attendees of the call.

Schools Moving to Online Learning

Surveillance shouldn't be a prerequisite for getting an education. But even before more school districts started moving their classes and coursework to digital forums for purposes of social distancing, . With the advent of COVID-19 and the associated uptick in distributed digital learning, the potential for this surveillance to ramp up is alarming. surveillance has become more and more common in schools

This is true from kindergarten all the way through graduate school, though it is most prevalent and insidious in K-12 schools. School administrators are choosing to use tools and tactics that encroach on students' privacy in ways that can break down trust amongst students and their peers, teachers, families, and administrators. Many K-12 schools offer or mandate the use of school-issued devices, and those devices come with pre-installed spyware that monitors all student activities and reports them to school administrators.

Many schools are already experimenting with mass surveillance technologies with no evidence, and no way for concerned parents and students to opt out. If your school is using or is considering using technologies like Bark, GoGuardian, Gaggle, Securly, or Social Sentinel , check out our guide to Privacy for Students . It covers many of the privacy and surveillance concerns that these technologies raise, with ways to minimize the data being tracked, risk mitigation strategies, and advocacy tactics.

Telehealth and Non-HIPAA Platforms

The HHS has altered HIPAA rules during the COVID-19 crisis, allowing health care providers to use applications such as FaceTime, Facebook Messenger, Hangouts, Skype, Zoom, etc so they are able to provide care to patients remotely:

During the COVID-19 national emergency, which also constitutes a nationwide public health emergency, covered health care providers subject to the HIPAA Rules may seek to communicate with patients, and provide telehealth services, through remote communications technologies. Some of these technologies, and the manner in which they are used by HIPAA covered health care providers, may not fully comply with the requirements of the HIPAA Rules.

If your healthcare provider is using an application or platform that is not covered under HIPAA, check with them on what safeguards they have in place to ensure your privacy is protected, and what their plans and timelines are for moving to platforms that do fall under HIPAA compliance.

Tools for Assessing Risk and Staying Safe Online

One of the best things you can do to keep yourself and others safe during this crisis is to learn how to minimize risk. Many of the problems presented in this post can be mitigated or circumvented with careful consideration of the risks, employing " privacy as a team sport " tactics, and minimizing the data that corporations, employers, and others can track. Our resource site, Surveillance Self-Defense , is full of practical tips, tools, how-to's, and explainers for communicating safely online. Here's a list of useful guides with concrete steps you can take to get started:

And lastly, remember-we're all in this together. Take care of each other by safeguarding each others' physical digital health.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What You Should Know About Online Tools During the COVID-19 Crisis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A greater portion of the world's work, organizing, and care-giving is moving onto digital platforms and tools that facilitate connection and productivity: video conferencing, messaging apps, healthcare and educational platforms, and more. It's important to be aware of the ways these tools may...

# data[].attributes.headline
Mutual Aid and Survival Resource Folder from Queers/Crips of Colour

# data[].attributes.subject
Mutual Aid and Survival Resource Folder from Queers/Crips of Colour

# data[].attributes.body
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1l_xCQmi3NnK0A_1Urnb1W0-Xs53-LMZI

# data[].attributes.body
https://covidmutualaid.org/

# data[].attributes.headline
Linking Imperialism, Black Liberation and Anti Colonialism

# data[].attributes.subject
Linking Imperialism, Black Liberation and Anti Colonialism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

- MLK

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Thread by @IWriteAllDay_: Black Activists on Anti-Imperialism: "As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Thread by @IWriteAllDay_: Black Activists on Anti-Imperialism: "As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with andarticipation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world ag...

# data[].attributes.body
Detailed advice on experiences and emotions likely to arise in crisis situations -

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Managing Fears and Concerns About COVID-19

Common acute stress reactions

shock, things feeling surreal

fear or anxiety about the future or death

hopelessness or feeling lost about the future; feeling a lack of purpose in study or work

difficulty concentrating or making decisions

feeling emotionally detached, numb, or crying for what seems like no reason

rumination, preoccupation with information about the outbreak

difficulty getting to sleep, poor sleep quality, bad dreams, or problems staying awake during the day

headache, stomachache, or pain without medical causes

significantly decreased or increased appetite

relying on alcohol or substances to cope with stress

increased irritability, feeling angry

shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, experiencing panic attack(s)

When facing stress, everyone's reaction is different. You may have other experiences or symptoms aside from those noted above.

Reactions specific to this COVID-19 outbreak

Worry about contamination, preoccupation with any signs/symptoms of illness, excessively taking your own temperature, and frequent urges to have yourself examined at health centers. The worries may impact your daily living, social relationships, or study.

Experiencing symptoms such as itchy throat or nasal congestion and being concerned about having contracted coronavirus, even though no fever is present and there is little possibility of having contracted the virus in reality.

Feeling alone or misunderstood.

Feeling angry at or lacking trust in systems or others.

Excessive attention to or obsession with related news, information, articles, or statements. The focus can result in compulsively reading about information about the outbreak, difficulty sleeping, and/or problems with concentrating on other topics.

Quickly jumping to conclusions based on new information, resulting in panic in self or others.

Grieving over loss, or feeling sad and/or a sense of unfairness around someone's death.

Possible experiences while living in the US, far away from the loved ones

"Survivor guilt" due to having physical distance between you and the current virus outbreak. For example, you might feel ashamed, guilty, or that you have abandoned your loved ones because you are not directly involved, because you are currently healthy, or because there are limited ways you can help.

Excessive worry about loved ones who are currently in China. The worries significantly impact your daily life, social life, or study.

Feeling angry, disappointed, or a lack of control because your loved ones do not follow suggested precautions or believe in false information.

If your loved ones have come into close contact with a diagnosed patient or have been diagnosed with coronavirus themselves, are in quarantine, or if they are medical providers in China, you might have different reactions in addition to those identified above. If you want to read more about different situations, please click here for more information.

Please know that it is normal and valid (even protective, in some cases) to have the above mentioned thoughts and feelings. It is important to first acknowledge and accept the emergence of the emotions. But if the excessive worry or stress responses interfere with study and daily living, you may want to develop some new coping skills.

Coping

Though you might feel somewhat powerless or limited in what you can do from such a distance, there are ways you can offer support and take control of emotions. Below is a list of suggested activities that might help you during this difficult time.

Seek support: Visit the Counseling Service, call the 24/7 Care and Support Line (413-538-2037), or check in at College Health Services regarding physical and mental health.

Maintain a healthy routine: Stress can disrupt our daily routine, in turn causing more stress. It is important to maintain your regular schedule for sleep, eating, having fun, socializing, studying, and working etc. If this is difficult to achieve by yourself, work with a friend - you can encourage each other in self-care. Click here or here for some relaxation exercises for sleep.

Exercise: Physical activity can boost your immune system, help you feel good about yourself, increase your energy levels, alleviate stress, and help with sleep.

Meditate: Find some time every day to do a bit of meditation. It helps you feel grounded and present.

Be informed: Uncertainty or misinformation can increase worry and cause panic. You can stay informed through official, fact-checked channels (e.g. Mount Holyoke Health Center website or World Health Organization website).

Pay attention to some positive news: Despite this difficult time, there is often some positive information in daily news. Decide whether the degree of your worry is consistent with reliable information (e.g.: incidence rate, death rate, current advancement of medicine etc.)

But limit the information: Sometimes, too much information leads to overload and more stress. So please try to limit your exposure (such as <1 hour/day), and make sure your information sources are reliable. Avoid reading information on the topic before going to bed - this can make it more difficult to fall asleep.

Think positively: Recall how you and your loved ones survived past hardships and crisis. Remind yourself that things are temporary and the current situation will pass. Please remember that no matter what happens in the future, you and your loved ones are striving to live day-by-day in the present. Change your perspective - consider the current time as an opportunity to show more care to yourself and your loved ones.

Share your thoughts/feelings with others (in moderation): Talking about your thoughts and feelings can help alleviate stress. Others might share similar feelings and help you feel less alone.

Check in with your loved ones (in moderation): If you are worried about your loved ones, please reach out to them when you feel comfortable and lend a listening ear. Loved ones are often concerned about us and we may think they are trying to protect us by not being fully truthful; try not to jump to conclusions about their health and well-being, and please understand that we cannot always control others' behaviors or change their beliefs.

Learn to say "no": Although sharing can be helpful, sometimes it is also important to say "no" when you are not comfortable with sharing or engaging in conversations on the topic. Just make sure you set your boundaries respectfully or leave conversations in an appropriate way.

Engage in conversations and activities unrelated to the outbreak and allow yourself to have some fun: There is still life outside of the current crisis. Reading news and engaging in activities unrelated to the current outbreak is okay - it doesn't mean that you don't care or aren't concerned.

Do some relaxation: Make sure to plan some relaxation or activities you enjoy into your daily schedule, such as deep breathing, spending time with friends, coloring, listening to music, taking a shower, taking a walk, etc.

Let it out: Sometimes expressing your emotions can be helpful - try journaling or keeping a voice diary, or let yourself be upset for a while.

Potential for Bias and Discrimination

During this time you may experience bias, discrimination, or misunderstandings because of your identity or your relationship to people who live in China. If any of the following happens, please consider the options available:

If you read false information or insulting/condescending articles from the media and you are feeling angry, helpless, or wronged due to your hometown or culture being slandered:

Please know that these reactions are valid and potentially helpful. If your current state allows, you can provide feedback and advocate through appropriate channels, such as writing emails to the media, reporting the article etc. You can also share your thoughts with people you trust in order to advocate together or to seek support.

If you experience discrimination against your racial, national, or provincial identity:

Make a record of the incident by writing or keeping a voice memo of the details. Consider reporting the incident or seeking support from professionals. If the incident happened on campus, you can contact the Dean of Students Office and fill out a Bias Incident Report; you can also contact the Ombudsperson or the Counseling Service to seek support. You can share your experience with people you trust or on appropriate platforms; it might validate your feelings and thoughts.

If a friend, adviser, or someone you know says something insensitive or discriminatory:

It is valid to feel angry, confused, sad, and disappointed, especially when someone you know is the source of bias. After you take care of your own emotional health, you could consider reporting the incident and/or having a conversation with the person about the experience. If you would like to do that, writing down what you want to say might be helpful.

It is also okay to not respond.

If you do not have the time, energy, or mental resources to take further action, it is okay - you have endured a lot already. It is common to not want to think about the incident or to take action. If you have made a record of the incident, you can keep it out of sight and continue with your daily activities. If and when you want to return to the subject and have the energy to do so, you can retrieve the record and seek appropriate actions. You can also choose to keep some distance from the media, making a record of troubling articles or reports, then blocking them so that you do not have to see them again. If and when you have enough energy to return to the subject, you can confront it then.

Contacts

If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact Counseling Service at 413-538-2037.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Taking care of your mental health during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
shock, things feeling surreal fear or anxiety about the future or death hopelessness or feeling lost about the future; feeling a lack of purpose in study or work difficulty concentrating or making decisions feeling emotionally detached, numb, or crying for what seems like no reason rumination, preoccupation with information about

# data[].attributes.headline
Mapping our social change roles in times of crisis - Deepa Iyer

# data[].attributes.subject
Mapping our social change roles in times of crisis - Deepa Iyer

# data[].attributes.body
H/t @prisonculture https://twitter.com/prisonculture/status/1260335057752985602?s=21

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.tuc.org.uk/CoronavirusProtectingWorkers

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/2020-03/COVID-19%20Guide%20for%20Reps.pdf

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.facebook.com/groups/329192668038673/

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.understandinguniversalcredit.gov.uk/coronavirus/

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/coronavirus-and-your-wellbeing/

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/03/19/colleges-go-passfail-address-coronavirus

# data[].attributes.headline
BEYOND THE FOOD PANTRY:COVID-19 Response for StudentsWho are Homeless or With Experience in Foster Care

# data[].attributes.subject
BEYOND THE FOOD PANTRY:COVID-19 Response for StudentsWho are Homeless or With Experience in Foster Care

# data[].attributes.body
https://hope4college.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/BTFP_COVID19_FosterCare_Homeless_Students_FINAL.pdf

# data[].attributes.headline
Five Key Principles to Guide Sector Response to COVID19 - CharitySoWhite

# data[].attributes.subject
Five Key Principles to Guide Sector Response to COVID19 - CharitySoWhite

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Covid-19 Five Key Principles - Charity So White

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is a rapidly evolving crisis, and each area of the charity sector is developing responses tailored to their communities and their expertise. We ask the sector to hold the following principles in their decision making. To support each area, we have provided a list of resources and case studies to demonstrate how these principles apply in practice.

# data[].attributes.body
A podcast that explores strategies for community survival, intimacy and connection 🙏🏾

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Join Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown, two sisters who share many identities, as writers, activists, facilitators, and inheritors of multiracial diasporic lineages, as well as a particular interest in the question of survival, as we embark on a podcast that delves into the practices we need as a community, to move through endings and to come out whole on the other side, whatever that might be. visit us @ endoftheworldshow.org

How to Survive the End of the World's tracks

published on

published on

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Join Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown, two sisters who share many identities, as writers, activists, facilitators, and inheritors of multiracial diasporic lineages, as well as a particular interest in the question of survival, as we embark on a podcast that delves into the practices we need as a community, to move through endings and to come out whole on the other side, whatever that might be.

# data[].attributes.body
https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=32575127#Assessment&feedback-Settingupyourdigitalassignment

# data[].attributes.body
https://info.lse.ac.uk/staff/education/Covid-19-planning

# data[].attributes.headline
Submission of evidence on the disproportionate impact of COVID 19, and the UK government response, on ethnic minorities in the UK

# data[].attributes.subject
Submission of evidence on the disproportionate impact of COVID 19, and the UK government response, on ethnic minorities in the UK

# data[].attributes.headline
#WeNeedAnswers - Panel Discussion organised by Ubele Collective (UK)

# data[].attributes.subject
#WeNeedAnswers - Panel Discussion organised by Ubele Collective (UK)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Emergency Community Conversation hosted by The Ubele Initiative

# data[].attributes.headline
Moving at the speed of trust - Disability Justice and Transformative Justice - Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Elliot Fukui

# data[].attributes.subject
Moving at the speed of trust - Disability Justice and Transformative Justice - Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Elliot Fukui

# data[].attributes.body
https://youtu.be/TwWdv_uBGNY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Moving at the Speed of Trust: Disability Justice and Transformative Justice

# data[].attributes.headline
Asian American Feminist Antibodies - Zine

# data[].attributes.subject
Asian American Feminist Antibodies - Zine

# data[].attributes.body
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59f87d66914e6b2a2c51b657/t/5e7bbeef7811c16d3a8768eb/1585168132614/AAFCZine3_CareintheTimeofCoronavirus.pdf

# data[].attributes.headline
What does it mean to be made vulnerable in the era of COVID-19?

# data[].attributes.subject
What does it mean to be made vulnerable in the era of COVID-19?

# data[].attributes.body
"A pandemic can be
a call for recognition and repairing
of the sociocultural, sociopolitical,
and sociohistorical ruptures that
generate vulnerability within specific categories of marginalised groups."

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Skin, White Masks: Racism, Vulnerability & Refuting Black Pathology - Prof Ruha Benjamin

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Skin, White Masks: Racism, Vulnerability & Refuting Black Pathology - Prof Ruha Benjamin

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black Skin, White Masks: Racism, Vulnerability & Refuting Black Pathology

# data[].attributes.headline
A debt jubilee to tackle the Covid-19 health and economic crisis - Jubilee Debt Campaign

# data[].attributes.subject
A debt jubilee to tackle the Covid-19 health and economic crisis - Jubilee Debt Campaign

# data[].attributes.body
https://jubileedebt.org.uk/a-debt-jubilee-to-tackle-the-covid-19-health-and-economic-crisis-2

# data[].attributes.headline
Is Covid-19 an “equal opportunity disease”?

# data[].attributes.subject
Is Covid-19 an “equal opportunity disease”?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought an interconnectedness amongst peoples across the globe. When else would China, Iran and South Korea be of such intense interest to understanding how to slow the spread of the virus in the UK? When music playing from balconies in Italy, chime with the sound of #ClapforCarers across the UK, and thalis banging in unison across India. The collective threat posed by the virus have created a shared sense of vulnerability. It would not be surprising if the very commonalities around the frailty of the human condition mean that "we are all in it together". After all, this is a disease that has claimed as victims, both the wealthy and the poor. If Prince Charles and Boris Johnson can both contract Covid-19, then surely this is an equal opportunity disease?

There are dangers to falling into the trap of thinking that Covid-19 affects everyone in the same way. As of the 21 stApril 2020, there have been 124,743 confirmed cases and 16,509 deaths reported in the UK ( Public Health England, 2020). A recent study by Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (INARC) based on a sample of 285 critical care units in England, Wales and Northern Ireland indicates a disproportionate effect of coronavirus on patients from ethnic minority backgrounds. Analysis published in the BMJ suggests that of the 3,883 patients who tested positive for Covid-19, 486 (14%) were Asian and 402 (12%) were Black: nearly double the 14% ethnic minority population in the UK. Even more worrying, the first 10 Covid-related fatality amongst doctors have all been from Black, Asian and Middle-Eastern backgrounds. This has sparked anger in the health and social care community, with the British Medical Association (BMA) asking for an urgent investigation of Covid-related deaths among BAME health workers. As Dr Chaand Nagpaul notes, "We have heard the virus does not discriminate between individuals but there's no doubt there appears to be a manifest disproportionate severity of infection in BAME people and doctors". Yasmin Gunaratnam draws attention to this in her article "when doctor's die", highlighting the vulnerabilities both minority doctors and patients face in the wave of increasing xenophobia and racist attacks on the front-line. The appalling lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for nurses, doctors, social care workers and social workers; and callous remarks from the Secretary of Health and Social Care Matt Hancock, asking frontline staff not to overuse PPE equipment, signals a consistent trend of lack of care for front-line workers.

In order to fully understand how and why minority communities are disproportionately affected by Covid-19, we need to analyse the historical legacies of austerity and the stripping of NHS funds on the one hand, and the deepening of social inequalities among BAME groups on the other. These are not separate, but interconnected issues. The volte face evident in the Conservative government sending impassioned pleas to "Save the NHS", needs to be read alongside the same government's attempts to dismantle the welfare state and underfund the health and social care sector. It is no wonder that Matt Hancock's remarks have been met by anger and outrage by front-line staff: he is asking them to treat personal protective equipment as a "precious resource" while completely overlooking the most precious resource we have, our frontline staff themselves.

Similar contradictions are evident in immigration policy. In February 2020, Home Secretary Priti Patel's released a statement denying visas to "low skilled workers" based on a points-based system. Foreign workers account for one-sixth of the 840,000 social care workers in the UK, and many who are low-paid (not low-skilled) would not qualify for visa status. A bare two months later, the same category of "low skilled workers" are being celebrated as "key workers" within the heroic rhetoric of "saving the NHS". The vital work they do, and have always done has been to protect the most vulnerable. What has not changed is their pay, their material circumstances, their career prospects (the most recent government mandate has been that it is not the right time to consider increasing nurses pay) or the backgrounds they come from which can heighten the level of risk experienced by ethnic minority groups.

Research has shown that ethnic minority social care workers, health workers and nurses are more likely to face abuse during their work, tend to be low-paid and come from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Environmental factors such as living in crowded housing spaces, with multi-generational families, as well as having pre-existing health conditions such as diabetes and hypertension can also increase the risk of contracting and dying from the coronavirus. Rather than locate these risk factors as individual pre-dispositions to the disease, it is important to recognise, how institutionally structured racism and racial discrimination impacts on health, education and employment outcomes in these communities. As Bècares and Nazroo (2020) note, racism is a root cause of ethnic equalities in Covid-19. The hyper-vigilance of Chinese bodies and increased xenophobia during the pandemic is also testament to this.

In a recent piece, Arundhati Roy described the "pandemic as a portal" in which the effects of coronavirus thus far experienced by the wealthiest nations has brought capitalism to a juddering halt. However, it is also a fallacy to assume this inversion of power has created a bizarre form of equality. BBC journalist Emily Maitlis nailed this point in her observations that the disease was not a great leveller, it just enhances vulnerabilities based on existing social inequalities.

Social work as a profession has always been alive to the structural nature of social inequalities and how this plays out in struggle in the lives of individuals, families and communities. We must be cautious about being swept away by rhetoric, and hold fast to anti-discriminatory ways of working, for it is in this value-based terrain, that lasting change can happen. There are a number of ways in which we can promote an anti-racist social work during Covid-19. We need to remember that behind the multi-ethnic solidarity of the social work workforce, there remains a gulf between the anti-racist practice we aspire to, and wider contexts and policies that can be profoundly racially discriminatory. As Mosacha et al (2019) note, anti-racist practice requires us to interrogate racist policies and policy-making. We can do this by demanding accountability from the government in reporting the scale and scope of ethnic minority fatalities and investigating circumstances where disproportionate impacts are felt. We need to be vigilant about individualising discourses around risk among ethnic minority groups, remembering that health inequalities are influenced through social and economic inequalities. We need to recognise that our BAME social work students, practitioners and services users and carers, face stigma and discrimination in everyday life; and this can become heightened under the current crises. Recognising the profoundly unequal ways in which social risk is experienced by ethnic minority groups, and how race and racism shape the wider contexts of social work practice, are key steps in understanding how and why BAME communities are worst hit during the Covid-19 crises.
Dr Sweta Rajan-Rankin, Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Kent. Her interests are in anti-racist social work interventions, race and racialisation, migration and belonging.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Is Covid-19 an "equal opportunity disease"?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought an interconnectedness amongst peoples across the globe. When else would China, Iran and South Korea be of such intense interest to understanding how to slow the spread of the virus in the UK? When music playing from balconies in Italy, chime with the sound of #ClapforCarers across the UK, and thalis banging in unison across India.

# data[].attributes.headline
On Socioeconomic Crisis and the Adaptive Cycle by @dhakshayini

# data[].attributes.subject
On Socioeconomic Crisis and the Adaptive Cycle by @dhakshayini

# data[].attributes.body
https://medium.com/@dhakshayini/structural-re-organisation-of-the-economy-is-happening-patterns-that-are-established-now-matter-5d8acdc6edb

# data[].attributes.headline
Big Tech and Coronavirus Capitalism - Naomi Klein

# data[].attributes.subject
Big Tech and Coronavirus Capitalism - Naomi Klein

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
F or a few fleeting moments during New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's daily coronavirus briefing on Wednesday, the somber grimace that has filled our screens for weeks was briefly replaced by something resembling a smile.

"We are ready, we're all-in," the governor gushed. "We are New Yorkers, so we're aggressive about it, we're ambitious about it. ... We realize that change is not only imminent, but it can actually be a friend if done the right way."

The inspiration for these uncharacteristically good vibes was a video visit from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who joined the governor's briefing to announce that he will be heading up a blue-ribbon commission to reimagine New York state's post-Covid reality, with an emphasis on permanently integrating technology into every aspect of civic life.

"The first priorities of what we're trying to do," Schmidt said, "are focused on telehealth, remote learning, and broadband. ... We need to look for solutions that can be presented now, and accelerated, and use technology to make things better." Lest there be any doubt that the former Google chair's goals were purely benevolent, his video background featured a framed pair of golden angel wings.

Just one day earlier, Cuomo had announced a similar partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop "a smarter education system." Calling Gates a "visionary," Cuomo said the pandemic has created "a moment in history when we can actually incorporate and advance [Gates's] ideas ... all these buildings, all these physical classrooms - why with all the technology you have?" he asked, apparently rhetorically.

It has taken some time to gel, but something resembling a coherent Pandemic Shock Doctrine is beginning to emerge. Call it the "Screen New Deal." Far more high-tech than anything we have seen during previous disasters, the future that is being rushed into being as the bodies still pile up treats our past weeks of physical isolation not as a painful necessity to save lives, but as a living laboratory for a permanent - and highly profitable - no-touch future.

Anuja Sonalker, CEO of Steer Tech, a Maryland-based company selling self-parking technology, recently summed up the new virus-personalized pitch. "There has been a distinct warming up to human-less, contactless technology," she said. "Humans are biohazards, machines are not."

It's a future in which our homes are never again exclusively personal spaces but are also, via high-speed digital connectivity, our schools, our doctor's offices, our gyms, and, if determined by the state, our jails. Of course, for many of us, those same homes were already turning into our never-off workplaces and our primary entertainment venues before the pandemic, and surveillance incarceration "in the community" was already booming. But in the future under hasty construction, all of these trends are poised for a warp-speed acceleration.

This is a future in which, for the privileged, almost everything is home delivered, either virtually via streaming and cloud technology, or physically via driverless vehicle or drone, then screen "shared" on a mediated platform. It's a future that employs far fewer teachers, doctors, and drivers. It accepts no cash or credit cards (under guise of virus control) and has skeletal mass transit and far less live art. It's a future that claims to be run on "artificial intelligence" but is actually held together by tens of millions of anonymous workers tucked away in warehouses, data centers, content moderation mills, electronic sweatshops, lithium mines, industrial farms, meat-processing plants, and prisons, where they are left unprotected from disease and hyperexploitation. It's a future in which our every move, our every word, our every relationship is trackable, traceable, and data-mineable by unprecedented collaborations between government and tech giants.

If all of this sounds familiar it's because, pre-Covid, this precise app-driven, gig-fueled future was being sold to us in the name of convenience, frictionlessness, and personalization. But many of us had concerns. About the security, quality, and inequity of telehealth and online classrooms. About driverless cars mowing down pedestrians and drones smashing packages (and people). About location tracking and cash-free commerce obliterating our privacy and entrenching racial and gender discrimination. About unscrupulous social media platforms poisoning our information ecology and our kids' mental health. About "smart cities" filled with sensors supplanting local government. About the good jobs these technologies wiped out. About the bad jobs they mass produced.

And most of all, we had concerns about the democracy-threatening wealth and power accumulated by a handful of tech companies that are masters of abdication - eschewing all responsibility for the wreckage left behind in the fields they now dominate, whether media, retail, or transportation.

That was the ancient past known as February. Today, a great many of those well-founded concerns are being swept away by a tidal wave of panic, and this warmed-over dystopia is going through a rush-job rebranding. Now, against a harrowing backdrop of mass death, it is being sold to us on the dubious promise that these technologies are the only possible way to pandemic-proof our lives, the indispensable keys to keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe.

It's a future in which our homes are never again exclusively personal spaces but are also, via high-speed digital connectivity, our schools, our doctor's offices, our gyms, and, if determined by the state, our jails.

Thanks to Cuomo and his various billionaire partnerships (including one with Michael Bloomberg for testing and tracing), New York state is being positioned as the gleaming showroom for this grim future - but the ambitions reach far beyond the borders of any one state or country.

And at the dead center of it all is Eric Schmidt. Well before Americans understood the threat of Covid-19, Schmidt had been on an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign pushing precisely the "Black Mirror" vision of society that Cuomo has just empowered him to build. At the heart of this vision is seamless integration of government with a handful of Silicon Valley giants - with public schools, hospitals, doctor's offices, police, and military all outsourcing (at a high cost) many of their core functions to private tech companies.

It's a vision Schmidt has been advancing in his roles as chair of the Defense Innovation Board, which advises the Department of Defense on increased use of artificial intelligence in the military, and as chair of the powerful National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, or NSCAI, which advises Congress on "advances in artificial intelligence, related machine learning developments, and associated technologies," with the goal of addressing "the national and economic security needs of the United States, including economic risk." Both boards are crowded with powerful Silicon Valley CEOS and top executives from companies including Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and of course, Schmidt's colleagues at Google.

A s chair, Schmidt, who still holds more than $5.3 billion in shares of Alphabet (Google's parent company), as well as large investments in other tech firms, has essentially been running a Washington-based shakedown on behalf of Silicon Valley. The main purpose of the two boards is to call for exponential increases in government spending on research into artificial intelligence and on tech-enabling infrastructure like 5G - investments that would directly benefit the companies in which Schmidt and other members of these boards have extensive holdings.

First in closed-door presentations to lawmakers and later in public-facing op-eds and interviews, the thrust of Schmidt's argument has been that since the Chinese government is willing to spend limitless public money building the infrastructure of high-tech surveillance, while allowing Chinese tech companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and Huawei to pocket the profits from commercial applications, the U.S.'s dominant position in the global economy is on the precipice of collapsing.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center recently got access through a Freedom of Information Act request to a presentation made by Schmidt's NSCAI one year ago, in May 2019. Its slides make a series of alarmist claims about how China's relatively lax regulatory infrastructure and its bottomless appetite for surveillance are causing it to pull ahead of the U.S. in a number of fields, including "AI for medical diagnosis," autonomous vehicles, digital infrastructure, "smart cities," ride-sharing, and cashless commerce.

The reasons given for China's competitive edge are myriad, ranging from the sheer volume of consumers who shop online; "the lack of legacy banking systems in China," which has allowed it to leapfrog over cash and credit cards and unleash "a huge e-commerce and digital services market" using "digital payments"; and a severe doctor shortage, which has led the government to work closely with tech companies like Tencent to use AI for "predictive" medicine. The slides note that in China, tech companies "have the authority to quickly clear regulatory barriers while American initiatives are mired in HIPPA compliance and FDA approval."

More than any other factor, however, the NSCAI points to China's willingness to embrace public-private partnerships in mass surveillance and data collection as a reason for its competitive edge. The presentation touts China's "Explicit government support and involvement e.g. facial recognition deployment." It argues that "surveillance is one of the 'first-and-best customers' for Al" and further, that "mass surveillance is a killer application for deep learning."

A slide titled "State Datasets: Surveillance = Smart Cities" notes that China, along with Google's main Chinese competitor, Alibaba, are racing ahead.

This is notable because Google's parent company Alphabet has been pushing this precise vision through its Sidewalk Labs division, choosing a large portion of Toronto's waterfront as its "smart city" prototype. But the Toronto project was just shut down after two years of ceaseless controversy relating to the enormous amounts of personal data that Alphabet would collect, a lack of privacy protections, and questionable benefits for the city as a whole.

Five months after this presentation, in November, NSCAI issued an interim report to Congress further raising the alarm about the need for the U.S. to match China's adaptation of these controversial technologies. "We are in a strategic competition," states the report, obtained via FOIA by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "AI will be at the center. The future of our national security and economy are at stake."

By late February, Schmidt was taking his campaign to the public, perhaps understanding that the budget increases his board was calling for could not be approved without a great deal more buy-in. In a New York Times op-ed headlined "I used to Run Google. Silicon Valley Could Lose to China," Schmidt called for "unprecedented partnerships between government and industry" and, once again, sounding the yellow peril alarm:

A.I. will open new frontiers in everything from biotechnology to banking, and it is also a Defense Department priority. ... If current trends continue, China's overall investments in research and development are expected to surpass those of the United States within 10 years, around the same time its economy is projected to become larger than ours.

Unless these trends change, in the 2030s we will be competing with a country that has a bigger economy, more research and development investments, better research, wider deployment of new technologies and stronger computing infrastructure. ... Ultimately, the Chinese are competing to become the world's leading innovators, and the United States is not playing to win.

The only solution, for Schmidt, was a gusher of public money. Praising the White House for requesting a doubling of research funding in AI and quantum information science, he wrote: "We should plan to double funding in those fields again as we build institutional capacity in labs and research centers. ... At the same time, Congress should meet the president's request for the highest level of defense R & D funding in over 70 years, and the Defense Department should capitalize on that resource surge to build breakthrough capabilities in A.I., quantum, hypersonics and other priority technology areas."

That was exactly two weeks before the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic, and there was no mention that a goal of this vast, high-tech expansion was to protect American health. Only that it was necessary to avoid being outcompeted by China. But, of course, that would soon change.

In the two months since, Schmidt has put these preexisting demands - for massive public expenditures on high-tech research and infrastructure, for a slew of "public-private partnerships" in AI, and for the loosening of myriad privacy and safety protections - through an aggressive rebranding exercise. Now all of these measures (and more) are being sold to the public as our only possible hope of protecting ourselves from a novel virus that will be with us for years to come.

And the tech companies to which Schmidt has deep ties, and which populate the influential advisory boards he chairs, have all repositioned themselves as benevolent protectors of public health and munificent champions of "everyday hero" essential workers (many of whom, like delivery drivers, would lose their jobs if these companies get their way). Less than two weeks into New York state's lockdown, Schmidt wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that both set the new tone and made clear that Silicon Valley had every intention of leveraging the crisis for a permanent transformation.

Like other Americans, technologists are trying to do their part to support the front-line pandemic response. ...

But every American should be asking where we want the nation to be when the Covid-19 pandemic is over. How could the emerging technologies being deployed in the current crisis propel us into a better future? ... Companies like Amazon know how to supply and distribute efficiently. They will need to provide services and advice to government officials who lack the computing systems and expertise.

We should also accelerate the trend toward remote learning, which is being tested today as never before. Online, there is no requirement of proximity, which allows students to get instruction from the best teachers, no matter what school district they reside in. ...

The need for fast, large-scale experimentation will also accelerate the biotech revolution. ... Finally, the country is long overdue for a real digital infrastructure.... If we are to build a future economy and education system based on tele-everything, we need a fully connected population and ultrafast infrastructure. The government must make a massive investment-perhaps as part of a stimulus package-to convert the nation's digital infrastructure to cloud-based platforms and link them with a 5G network.

Indeed Schmidt has been relentless in pursuing this vision. Two weeks after that op-ed appeared, he described the ad-hoc homeschooling programing that teachers and families across the country had been forced to cobble together during this public health emergency as "a massive experiment in remote learning." The goal of this experiment, he said, was "trying to find out: How do kids learn remotely? And with that data we should be able to build better remote and distance learning tools which, when combined with the teacher ... will help kids learn better." During this same video call, hosted by the Economic Club of New York, Schmidt also called for more telehealth, more 5G, more digital commerce, and the rest of the preexisting wish list. All in the name of fighting the virus.

His most telling comment, however, was this: "The benefit of these corporations, which we love to malign, in terms of the ability to communicate, the ability to deal with health, the ability to get information, is profound. Think about what your life would be like in America without Amazon." He added that people should "be a little bit grateful that these companies got the capital, did the investment, built the tools that we're using now, and have really helped us out."

I t's a reminder that, until very recently, public pushback against these companies was surging. Presidential candidates were openly discussing breaking up big tech. Amazon was forced to pull its plans for a New York headquarters because of fierce local opposition. Google's Sidewalk Labs project was in perennial crisis, and Google's own workers were refusing to build surveillance tech with military applications.

In short, democracy - inconvenient public engagement in the designing of critical institutions and public spaces - was turning out to be the single greatest obstacle to the vision Schmidt was advancing, first from his perch at the top of Google and Alphabet and then as chair of two powerful boards advising Congress and Department of Defense. As the NSCAI documents reveal, this inconvenient exercise of power by members of the public and by tech workers inside these mega-firms, has, from the perspective of men like Schmidt and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, maddeningly slowed down the AI arms race, keeping fleets of potentially deadly driverless cars and trucks off the roads, protecting private health records from becoming a weapon used by employers against workers, preventing urban spaces from being blanketing with facial recognition software, and much more.

Now, in the midst of the carnage of this ongoing pandemic, and the fear and uncertainty about the future it has brought, these companies clearly see their moment to sweep out all that democratic engagement. To have the same kind of power as their Chinese competitors, who have the luxury of functioning without being hampered by intrusions of either labor or civil rights.

All of this is moving very fast. The Australian government has contracted with Amazon to store the data for its controversial coronavirus tracking app. The Canadian government has contracted with Amazon to deliver medical equipment, raising questions about why it bypassed the public postal service. And in just a few short days in early May, Alphabet has spun up a new Sidewalk Labs initiative to remake urban infrastructure with $400 million in seed capital. Josh Marcuse, executive director of the Defense Innovation Board that Schmidt chairs, announced that he was leaving that job to work full-time at Google as head of strategy and innovation for global public sector, meaning that he will be helping Google to cash in on some of the many opportunities he and Schmidt have been busily creating with their lobbying.

Democracy - inconvenient public engagement in the designing of critical institutions and public spaces - has been the single greatest obstacle to the vision Schmidt has been advancing.

To be clear, technology is most certainly a key part of how we must protect public health in the coming months and years. The question is: Will that technology be subject to the disciplines of democracy and public oversight, or will it be rolled out in state-of-exception frenzy, without asking critical questions that will shape our lives for decades to come? Questions like, for instance: If we are indeed seeing how critical digital connectivity is in times of crisis, should these networks, and our data, really be in the hands of private players like Google, Amazon, and Apple? If public funds are paying for so much of it, should the public also own and control it? If the internet is essential for so much in our lives, as it clearly is, should it be treated as a nonprofit public utility?

And while there is no doubt that the ability to teleconference has been a lifeline in this period of lockdown, there are serious debates to be had about whether our more lasting protections are distinctly more human. Take education. Schmidt is right that overcrowded classrooms present a health risk, at least until we have a vaccine. So how about hiring double the number of teachers and cutting class size in half? How about making sure that every school has a nurse?

That would create much-needed jobs in a depression-level unemployment crisis and give everyone in the learning environment more elbow room. If buildings are too crowded, how about dividing the day into shifts, and having more outdoor education, drawing on the plentiful research that shows that time in nature enhances children's capacity to learn?

Introducing those kinds of changes would be hard, to be sure. But they are not nearly as risky as giving up on the tried-and-true technology of trained humans teaching younger humans face-to-face, in groups where they learn to socialize with one another to boot.

Upon learning of New York state's new partnership with the Gates Foundation, Andy Pallotta, president of New York State United Teachers, was quick to react: "If we want to reimagine education, let's start with addressing the need for social workers, mental health counselors, school nurses, enriching arts courses, advanced courses and smaller class sizes in school districts across the state," he said. A coalition of parents' groups also pointed out that if they had indeed been living an "experiment in remote learning" (as Schmidt put it), then the results were deeply worrying: "Since the schools were shut down in mid-March, our understanding of the profound deficiencies of screen-based instruction has only grown."

I n addition to the obvious class and race biases against children who lack internet access and home computers (problems that tech companies are eager to be paid to solve with massive tech buys), there are big questions about whether remote teaching can serve many kids with disabilities, as required by law. And there is no technological solution to the problem of learning in a home environment that is overcrowded and/or abusive.

The issue is not whether schools must change in the face of a highly contagious virus for which we have neither cure nor inoculation. Like every institution where humans gather in groups, they will change. The trouble, as always in these moments of collective shock, is the absence of public debate about what those changes should look like and whom they should benefit. Private tech companies or students?

We face real and hard choices between investing in humans and investing in technology. Because the brutal truth is that, as it stands, we are very unlikely to do both.

The same questions need to be asked about health. Avoiding doctor's offices and hospitals during a pandemic makes good sense. But telehealth misses a huge amount. So we need to have an evidence-based debate about the pros and cons of spending scarce public resources on telehealth - versus on more trained nurses, equipped with all the necessary protective equipment, who are able to make house calls to diagnose and treat patients in their homes. And perhaps most urgently, we need to get the balance right between virus tracking apps, which with the proper privacy protections have a role to play, and the calls for a Community Health Corps that would put millions of Americans to work not only doing contact tracing but making sure that everyone has the material resources and support they need to quarantine safely.

In each case, we face real and hard choices between investing in humans and investing in technology. Because the brutal truth is that, as it stands, we are very unlikely to do both. The refusal to transfer anything like the needed resources to states and cities in successive federal bailouts means that the coronavirus health crisis is now slamming headlong into a manufactured austerity crisis. Public schools, universities, hospitals, and transit are facing existential questions about their futures. If tech companies win their ferocious lobbying campaign for remote learning, telehealth, 5G, and driverless vehicles - their Screen New Deal - there simply won't be any money left over for urgent public priorities, never mind the Green New Deal that our planet urgently needs.

On the contrary: The price tag for all the shiny gadgets will be mass teacher layoffs and hospital closures.

Tech provides us with powerful tools, but not every solution is technological. And the trouble with outsourcing key decisions about how to "reimagine" our states and cities to men like Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt is that they have spent their lives demonstrating the belief that there is no problem that technology cannot fix.

For them, and many others in Silicon Valley, the pandemic is a golden opportunity to receive not just the gratitude, but the deference and power that they feel has been unjustly denied. And Andrew Cuomo, by putting the former Google chair in charge of the body that will shape the state's reopening, appears to have just given him something close to free reign.
This is the first installment in an ongoing series about the shock doctrine and disaster capitalism in the age of Covid-19.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Under Cover of Mass Death, Andrew Cuomo Calls in the Billionaires to Build a High-Tech Dystopia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
F or a few fleeting moments during New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's daily coronavirus briefing on Wednesday, the somber grimace that has filled our screens for weeks was briefly replaced by something resembling a smile. "We are ready, we're all-in," the governor gushed. "We are New Yorkers, so we're aggressive about it, we're ambitious about it.

# data[].attributes.headline
Noam Chomsky on Coronavirus: What is at Stake? 

# data[].attributes.subject
Noam Chomsky on Coronavirus: What is at Stake? 

# data[].attributes.body
https://youtu.be/t-N3In2rLI4

# data[].attributes.headline
Humanity’s Catastrophe: Following Sylvia Wynter in the Age of Coronavirus - by Anamika Misra aka @walking_killjoy

# data[].attributes.subject
Humanity’s Catastrophe: Following Sylvia Wynter in the Age of Coronavirus - by Anamika Misra aka @walking_killjoy

# data[].attributes.body
https://criticallegalthinking.com/2020/04/10/de-prioritising-humanity/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation are extreme food deserts with only 13 grocery stores on Navajo to serve some 180,000 people and only 3 small grocery marts on Hopi to serve some 3,000 people. These communities also have high numbers of elderly, diabetic, asthmatic, and cancer-afflicted (i.e., high risk) individuals. These communities could be devastated by coronavirus and COVID-19. We want to help these individuals, especially the elderly and high risk individuals, and families with children, to gain access to the food and water (1/3 of Navajo residents do not have running water) and other essential items they will need to weather this pandemic, such as food, PPE, and diapers. The need is so great. Navajo regularly has roughly 50% unemployment (most of the residents are elderly or children; those who can work often leave the Nation to find jobs), and Hopi has roughly 60% unemployment. Please give if you can. Our goal will be to help the elderly (especially those raising their grandchildren), the immunocompromised and mobility impaired, single parents, and struggling families by helping them buy groceries, water, health supplies, and necessary items so they (and their vulnerable communities) can be protected from exposure to the virus by engaging volunteers to make these purchases and deliver them to a safe transfer location for our beneficiaries. We are also helping to stop the spread of COVID-19 on these reservations by engaging volunteers to sew masks for medical workers and first responders on Navajo and Hopi. We will also use these funds to help purchase the fabric for these masks. And we will invest in a media campaign to urge folks to stay home and socially distance, and to embrace sterilization practices. Our team is led by enrolled Navajo and Hopi tribal members. Given the amazing support for this effort, we are forming a nonprofit to manage this work and expend these funds. Our initial withdrawals will be deposited with our nonprofit's fiscal sponsor, Rural Utah Project, which has done incredible work on the Navajo Nation in Utah with respect to voter registration, get out the vote, and a rural addressing project. The funds from this campaign will be used to make direct purchases, or reimbursement of purchases by volunteers, of bulk food and medical items, and other purchases made on behalf of our beneficiaries, such as water, food from supermarkets, PPE, and other items necessary to keep our beneficiaries socially distanced.

Read more

Raised $223,733 from 3157 donations

Rural Utah Project Education Fund

See all

#1 fundraising platform

People have raised more money on GoFundMe than anywhere else. Learn more

GoFundMe Guarantee

In the rare case that something isn't right, we will refund your donation. Learn more

Expert advice, 24/7

Contact us with your questions and we'll answer, day or night. Learn more

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund organized by Ethel Branch

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation are extreme food deserts with only 13 grocery stores on Navajo to serve some 180,000 people and only 3 small grocery marts on Hopi to serve some 3,000 people. These communities also have high numbers of elderly, diabetic, asthmatic, and cancer-afflicted (i.e., high risk) individuals.

# data[].attributes.body
Open till 30 Aug 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The global Black Lives Matter movementhas seen people also uniting to demand justice for Black trans folks. While it'snecessary to call attention to the " epidemic of violence" they face, that attention can reinforce a narrative that constantly equates being transgender with being a victim of violence, especially forBlack trans women. Expanding on what justice looks like for the community also means facilitating their dreams and success.

This is where Queer|Art, an organization that connects and uplifts LGBTQ+ artists, comes into play. Today it announced a new $10,000 annual grant for self-identified Black trans women and trans femmes. Called the Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists, it aims to celebrate the under-recognized contributions of Black trans women visual artists.

The grant was made possible by Aaryn Lang, Mariette Pathy Allen, and Serena Jara. Through her consulting and writing, Lang advocates for the social, economic, and political well-being of the transgender community, specifically the needs of Black transgender women. In the creation of the grant, she consulted Jara, a multidisciplinary artist, and Allen, a photographer of transgender, gender-fluid, and intersex communities.

"The Illuminations Grant not only highlights the lacking representation of Black trans women in the visual arts but also seeks to confront the systemic barriers that deny them artistic opportunities and a sustainable craft," said Lang in a statement. "By supporting this grant, Mariette Pathy Allen challenges herself and the art industry to see Black trans women as more than mere subjects, while forging a new pathway for visual artists within this community to thrive."

Each year, various judges will conduct a studio visit with the winning artist as part of the award's focus on supporting creative and professional development. This year's judges include Thelma Golden, Juliana Huxtable, Texas Isaiah, and Kiyan Williams. Applications are open from June 29 to August 30, and the grant will be awarded in November. So if you're a self-identified Black trans woman or trans femme working in visual art and based in the United States, apply here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A New $10,000 Grant For Black Trans Women Artists

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The global Black Lives Matter movementhas seen people also uniting to demand justice for Black trans folks. While it'snecessary to call attention to the " epidemic of violence" they face, that attention can reinforce a narrative that constantly equates being transgender with being a victim of violence, especially forBlack trans women.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As an organization dedicated to Black liberation and to collective liberation, we need a radical and ongoing investment in our own healing. By claiming love for our own bodies, our own psyches, our own experiences, and by building the resources we need to integrate healing justice into all that we do, we are insisting on conditions that can carry us towards the next generation of work, and towards a deeper place of freedom for all of us.

Powerful Campaigns

BLVC is committed to a long term vision in which ALL Black lives not only matter, but are able to thrive. What we know to be true in order to create this world is that oppressed people, especially Black people, need to build collective power in order to create systems transformation. Through the development of powerful strategic campaigns, we seek to expand the power of Black people across the Twin Cities metro area and Minnesota. This can look like delivering mobilization and action goals as part of a national coalition in which Black lives are centered, but it most often looks like visioning and leading targeted collaborative local campaigns that advance a concrete impact for people's lives here, while also advancing a shift in public narrative that connects to transformative long-term change.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As an organization dedicated to Black liberation and to collective liberation, we need a radical and ongoing investment in our own healing. By claiming love for our own bodies, our own psyches, our own experiences, and by building the resources we need to integrate healing justice into all that we do, we are insisting on conditions that can carry us towards the next generation of work, and towards a deeper place of freedom for all of us.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Education is at the heart of growth and transformation in our society. Today we stand at a critical juncture in our collective history - things cannot continue the same after this moment. It is imperative we focus on what the production of knowledge looks like after this point.

The Free Black University is a hub for radical and transformative knowledge production. The fight to decolonise education has been going on for years and it has become ever clearer that more is required than what the current education system can offer.

Universities hold a deep responsibility when it comes to racism, the knowledge that introduced the very ideology of racism into our society was born in British Universities.

The Free Black University exists to re-distribute knowledge and act as a space of incubation for the creation of transformative knowledge in the Black community. We firmly believe education should centre Black people healing and it should be free, anti-colonial, and accessible to all - so we will provide it.

This project also brings climate justice to the fore as we recognise the relationship between the climate crisis and colonialism. Climate justice will run through all of the threads of our work as we centre structural and holistic approaches to preserving the world we all live in.

We MUST engage critical thought in the wider mission for liberation and freedom, the world is ever changing, and the thought leaders of the next generation need deep and transformational spaces to develop their thinking in the face of the present challenges.

The long-term vision for this work is to:

1) The transformation of minds is critical to the transformation of society and so we will specifically provide Black radical books to people right across the community who would otherwise not have access to it - this includes those incarcerated

2) Deliver a range of open access and very accessible online lectures and teachings to the community exploring radical and transformational topics

3) Create a space of community and care for Black students - there is a mental health crisis amongst Black students that universities are failing to sufficiently address. As an organisation healing is a foundational principle - this will be a space through which Black students can connect to various modes of support and healing work. mental health support and healing work. We will connect with Black therapists, counsellors, and community healers to offer a range of support to our community

4) Build an open access, free, and expansive online library of radical readings writings from people across the world - we will no longer stand for the gatekeeping of knowledge for those who desire access to it

5) Build a publication - the type of knowledge that is being produced will only ever be as radical as the 'peers' reviewing will allow it to be. Our journal, and later our Press, will centre radical and transformational thought that may not be respected under the current frame of knowledge. Our work will be driven by the radical Black imagination, it is all that can cut through Eurocentric thought.

6) A member's space for emerging Black academics that need support and community during and beyond their academic journey

7) A podcast that will explore complex and transformational ideas in accessible and simplistic ways - this podcast will speak to Black thinkers, organisers, academics, spiritualists, creatives, etc. The podcast is to allow absolutely anyone to tune in and learn something new about the history, present, and futures of Black liberation through a critical lens

8) We will build a physical space - a hub for our work and a space for all Black people to access. This space will include; teaching rooms, a book shop, restaurant, and healing areas. The entire space will be created intentionally and in the interest of anti-colonial and healing work.

9) An annual conference that brings together Black radical thinkers (that are not only academics) to collectively produce knowledge and vision for Black liberation

10) FREE AND ACCESSIBLE EDUCATION CENTRED ON THE FREEDOM OF BLACK PEOPLE WHICH NECESSARILY SUCCEEDS THE FREEDOM OF ALL PEOPLE

What we are doing here is transformative - it has the potential to entirely transform the landscape of education and knowledge production. This world CLEARLY needs new and transformative ideas if we are to ever stamp out the visceral racism that exists across the world. Black thinkers and Black visionaries need to lead this intellectual revolution - the best way that we can do that is through creating intentionally anti-colonial and caring spaces for Black students to do this work.

Let us show universities all over the world just what can be done when the agenda of Black liberation is at the heart of building spaces that produce knowledge and teach. This project is Black, queer, trans, anti-colonial, and revolutionary from its very heart. Help us bring this vision into fruition.

What your donation could do:

£15 will buy one book for people in the community

£50 would pay for a podcast episode and equipment

£150 would pay for a days work behind the scenes

£200 would pay for one free admission to our annual conference

£300 would pay for a collective healing session for Black students

£350 would pay for one community radical workshop for Black folk to attend

£500 would pay to create one publicly accessible lecture

£1000 would pay for the process of publication for a journal article and building towards our University Press

£50,000 is the suggested initial contribution from UK universities - this is less than the cost for two students to complete a 3-year degree - this money would go directly to the fund to build a physical space

If you have any enquiries please email us at [email redacted]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Free Black University organized by Melz Owusu

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Education is at the heart of growth and transformation in our society. Today we stand at a critical juncture in our collective history - things cannot continue the same after this moment. It is imperative we focus on what the production of knowledge looks like after this point.

# data[].attributes.headline
Into the Portal - Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein

# data[].attributes.subject
Into the Portal - Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Global Green New Deal: Into the Portal, Leave No one Behind

# data[].attributes.body
https://artistrelief.submittable.com/submit

$5000 US-based grants for 'artists able to demonstrate a sustained commitment to their work, career, and a public audience' who are 'experiencing dire financial need due to the COVID-19 pandemic.'

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.swarmcollective.org/donate

# data[].attributes.headline
Voice for Domestic Workers COVID Relief fund

# data[].attributes.subject
Voice for Domestic Workers COVID Relief fund

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Lots of us have got nice stuff in our bathrooms that we are never going to use.
Women for Refugee Women can use those lovely perfumes, lotions, shower gels that are cluttering your cupboards! 😀🎄🎁 https://t.co/hLbaWILc9g

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lots of us have got nice stuff in our bathrooms that we are never going to use. Women for Refugee Women can use those lovely perfumes, lotions, shower gels that are cluttering your cupboards! 😀🎄🎁 https://t.co/hLbaWILc9g

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You can also write a check to the Lake Street Council and send it to 919 E Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN, 55407. However, please note that local mail service in our area has stopped for now and we may not receive your donation for some time.

For more information and updates please follow us on at @VisitLakeStreet.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You can also write a check to the Lake Street Council and send it to 919 E Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN, 55407. However, please note that local mail service in our area has stopped for now and we may not receive your donation for some time.

# data[].attributes.headline
Intro to Critical Race Theory - Adrienne Keene

# data[].attributes.subject
Intro to Critical Race Theory - Adrienne Keene

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Introduction to Critical Race Theory 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
My name is Adrienne Keene, I'm an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University. I am a white-coded Indigenous woman, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and I study Native students navigating the college process, as well as Native representations, which I write about on my blog Native Appropriations. I'm also active on twitter, which is probably how many of you are finding this site. After I posted my syllabus for this course on my academia.edu, there was a lot of excitement and interest around creating a space for folks to read through the texts together, so this site is meant to facilitate that process.

This course is a labor of love, and comes out of my experiences co-teaching Critical Race Theory in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with Drs Kimberly Troung and Daren Graves, as well as support, insight, and beautiful assignment ideas from Dr. Leigh Patel. I am indebted to the hundreds of CRT scholars who have come before me and continue to do this work, and the dozens of students who have learned with me in the various iterations of this course. I'm by no means an expert, and am very much still learning right along with all of you this semester.

Course Description:

This graduate seminar will explore the foundations and central tenets of Critical Race Theory, from its origins in Critical Legal Studies, to current applications, debates, and evolutions, with particular attention to CRT's intersections with the field of American Studies. We will also bring in CRT "offshoots" such as TribalCrit, LatCrit, AsianCrit, and DisCrit. CRT posits that racism is endemic to society, but that we must also remain committed to social justice and praxis. How do we navigate these tensions, use CRT to provide a toolkit for navigating scholarship, and work toward social change in the realms of race and racism?

How to use this site:

This site is meant to serve as an online interactive space and resource hub for those who would like to learn with the course this semester, but are not at Brown or able to take the course in person. Along the lefthand side of the blog you will find the syllabus, with links to many of the readings that are available online, as well as the Weekly Posts, that will offer discussion questions and links to PDFs of any readings not available online. The comments sections of these pages can serve as discussion spaces, as well as the hashtag #IntroCRT17 on Twitter, with the week added (ie, #IntroCRT17 #Week2).

This class will not "meet" in any formal sense, this is meant to be a self-guided course. I will post any relevant powerpoints or materials, but our physical class at Brown is a seminar, so there aren't typical lecture slides to share. The assignments are included if you'd like to participate, but with over 600 people subscribed to the course(!) I won't be able to offer feedback or grades. I'm working on getting a forum up and running to facilitate discussions more fluidly, so will update when it's ready!

For a broad overview of CRT and the central tenets, this is the powerpoint from the first week of class: Intro CRT class 1 2017

This is a work in progress, and my first time attempting something like this, so feel free to leave feedback or questions, and I'll be updating as we go!

Wado (Thanks),

Prof Keene
introCRT@gmail.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Introduction to Critical Race Theory 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
My name is Adrienne Keene, I'm an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University. I am a white-coded Indigenous woman, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and I study Native students navigating the college process, as well as Native representations, which I write about on my blog Native Appropriations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Pay northern police monitoring project using PayPal.Me

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Go to paypal.me/npolicemonitor and type in the amount. Since it's PayPal, it's easy and secure. Don't have a PayPal account? No worries.

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
a thread on ways we can demand justice for Belly Mujinga, who you can call and email and demand the British Transport Police further investigate her death #justiceforbellymujinga #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/hEiQvPHrNd

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
a thread on ways we can demand justice for Belly Mujinga, who you can call and email and demand the British Transport Police further investigate her death #justiceforbellymujinga #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/hEiQvPHrNd

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.referenced_tweets[].text
British Transport Police says no further action will be taken in relation to the death of a railway worker following an incident at London Victoria station following "extensive enquiries" by detectives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
a thread on ways we can demand justice for Belly Mujinga, who you can call and email and demand the British Transport Police further investigate her death #justiceforbellymujinga #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/hEiQvPHrNd
— filsdeputerie (@miskiwareegto) May 29, 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
a thread on ways we can demand justice for Belly Mujinga, who you can call and email and demand the British Transport Police further investigate her death #justiceforbellymujinga #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/hEiQvPHrNd

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.includes.tweets[].text
British Transport Police says no further action will be taken in relation to the death of a railway worker following an incident at London Victoria station following "extensive enquiries" by detectives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
a thread on ways we can demand justice for Belly Mujinga, who you can call and email and demand the British Transport Police further investigate her death #justiceforbellymujinga #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/hEiQvPHrNd

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
a thread on ways we can demand justice for Belly Mujinga, who you can call and email and demand the British Transport Police further investigate her death #justiceforbellymujinga #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/hEiQvPHrNd

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.referenced_tweets[].text
British Transport Police says no further action will be taken in relation to the death of a railway worker following an incident at London Victoria station following "extensive enquiries" by detectives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Dear friends, we are all slowly trying to find a way to come to terms with the agonising loss of our loved one Belly Mujinga, a loving caring Mum, a colleague and mostly a first class friend.

Belly has been with the GTR family, based at London Victoria for over 9 years and made a huge impact with those that she worked with.

This GoFundMe is to fund her funeral; to give her the burial she deserves, so that her loved ones and the many whose lives she touched can visit her.

If you'd like to donate to Belly's collection and leave a message please do so.

This page has been set up by Victoria staff Representative on behalf of her family.

"Ain't no sunshine when she's gone" - Bill Withers.

Read more

London, Greater London, United Kingdom

#1 fundraising platform

People have raised more money on GoFundMe than anywhere else. Learn more

GoFundMe Guarantee

In the rare case that something isn't right, we will refund your donation. Learn more

Expert advice, 24/7

Contact us with your questions and we'll answer, day or night. Learn more

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
R.I.P Belly Mujinga organized by Nnadozie Nwokocha

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dear friends, we are all slowly trying to find a way to come to terms with the agonising loss of our loved one Belly Mujinga, a loving caring Mum, a colleague and mostly a first class friend. Belly has been with the GTR family, based at London Victoria for over 9 years and made a huge impact with those that she worked with.

# data[].attributes.headline
Anti Racism Resources (Victoria Alexander @victoriaalxndr) - US specific) 

# data[].attributes.subject
Anti Racism Resources (Victoria Alexander @victoriaalxndr) - US specific) 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
We Cannot Stay Silent About George Floyd | Patriot Act Digital Exclusive | Netflix

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Fire This Time: The New Uprising Against Racism and Police Violence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 2019, there were only 3 days where the police did not kill someone. In the glow of fires set to an old system in Minneapolis, the Movement 4 Black Lives (M4BL) has been leading the call to action. From their national week of action to mass political education, Black feminist leaders are forging a path to a world without prisons and police. Through their vision, we are already seeing major wins across the country. While politicians do political theatre and "take a knee," people are out here getting work done, levelling a massive call to #DefundPolice, raising millions of dollars for mutual aid funds, and moving towards abolition and caring economies.

Equality Labs is committed to the solidarity work of supporting partners like M4BL and 8 to Abolition, calling in South Asian communities to #DefundPolice, while recognizing our complicity in Hindu fascism and carceral politics - that aids and abets these ecosystems of hate. South Asians, with our complicated regional and immigrant legacies of anti-Blackness, displacement, and casteism, must simultaneously look inward, while reflecting outward. Solidarity is a verb, and hope is a discipline (as organizer Mariame Kaba says).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
South Asians for Black Lives - EQUALITY LABS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 2019, there were only 3 days where the police did not kill someone. In the glow of fires set to an old system in Minneapolis, the Movement 4 Black Lives (M4BL) has been leading the call to action.

# data[].attributes.headline
Decolonizing the Business School Webinar

# data[].attributes.subject
Decolonizing the Business School Webinar

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cass Business School - Decolonising the Business School

# data[].attributes.headline
Naomi Klein & Avi Lewis: A High-Tech Coronavirus Dystopia – Technology and Surveillance Meet the Shock Doctrine

# data[].attributes.subject
Naomi Klein & Avi Lewis: A High-Tech Coronavirus Dystopia – Technology and Surveillance Meet the Shock Doctrine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Transcript
Rob Johnson:
I'm here today with Naomi Klein, who is the Gloria Steinem chair of media culture and feminist studies at Rutgers University and the author of many prominent books including Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything, No Logo, and many, many more. Avi Lewis is a documentary film maker. He's been very involved in Canadian politics and he's the strategic director of the Leap, something that they found together. Thank you both for joining me today.
Avi Lewis:
Nice to be with you, Rob.
Naomi Klein:
Great to be with you, Rob. We should admit that we're in the same house, for transparency. Avi and I are at different microphones in the same house in isolation because we are married.
Rob Johnson:
That's right, husband and wife.
Avi Lewis:
Yeah, and a long term sharing of germ biomes.
Rob Johnson:
Very good. We're talking now here in early May at the time where the pandemic related to COVID-19 is all around us. I'm curious, how do you see what's unfolding and what is the call to action that we should do? What should we do about it and what do you see not going well that you would like to criticize at various places around the world?
Naomi Klein:
You know, Rob, Avi and I have been working together officially. We've always collaborated. Avi called me his shadow producer when he was doing TV shows in Canada. He's always been my first editor. When I wrote This Changes Everything, the book about climate change, we decided to formalize the collaboration. Avi made a documentary film alongside the book. Ever since we did that, ever since we both immersed ourselves in the climate crisis, we have been thinking together and collaborating on how we move the needle to the point that we get the structural change at scale that we need. That's why we confounded the group The Leap where Avi works full time which is really about how we win a green new deal.

I would say in the midst of the pandemic, that we have a division of labor in our home right now where Avi has been focusing on the good stuff, like how we actually win the transition that will keep us safe in the long term. I have unfortunately been dragged back into Shock Doctrine disaster capitalism territory because I feel like if we don't win the battles against the corporate predators who are moving in this moment to push a really dark future, whether it's a techno surveillance state or doubling down on fossil fuels or both, then we blow our chance of winning a greener deal. I have you covered on the bad stuff and Avi has been working on the good stuff, if that helps.

Avi Lewis:
We can ping pong on the hope and despair-
Rob Johnson:
Yeah.
Naomi Klein:
How depressed do you want to get, I guess? I'm down in the basement here.
Rob Johnson:
My inclination is to get very depressed and then have Avi come to the rescue and have us send off our listeners in a joyous and with great conviction that we're going to get over this at some point.
Avi Lewis:
It's a classic art, Rob, and I think your movie background is showing. I think you can execute a-
Rob Johnson:
Right.
Avi Lewis:
... I just want to say at the beginning that, Rob, you're an important interlocutor for both of us. It was in 2009 I believe, if I recall correctly, that I convinced you to get on the Coney Island roller coaster with me for a B-roll sequence for an Al Jazeera documentary that I was writing and hosting on what happened in the debt bomb crash of 2008, 2009.
Rob Johnson:
That's right.
Avi Lewis:
Diagnosing the extraordinary profitability of prices for the masters of the universe, the people who inhabit the upper reaches of the global economy, is even more important now than it was then. We've had an even more monumental and global and simultaneous change in the material conditions of life for humanity in 2020 than we ever had in 2008. What happens next I think is going to be more dramatic. That's also in support of some of Naomi's really important new research on the different players in the corporate world who are perfectly poised to reshape the policy environment and the economy of the world in the phase that follows this crisis. I think our responses and the openings and opportunities have to be correctly calibrated for the crisis, as well. Let's get into disaster capitalism 2020.
Rob Johnson:
Yeah, yeah. Naomi, where do you see the fault lines, the structural impediments? In the Shock Doctrine since, who's got an evil plan that needs to be thwarted?
Naomi Klein:
Oh, okay. Great question, Rob. Look, I mean, I think that we've got some overlapping plans. Some of them are really dusty and moldy and have been around for a long time but are nonetheless being advanced in this moment. These are very familiar, pretty much hackneyed plans to deregulate, to starve the public's fear, to attack social security, to save big businesses from their own failings and package it as a COVID bailout. We see this particularly with fossil fuel companies right now. Look, the Trump administration is doing all of it.

I like to remind people that I began and ended the Shock Doctrine by talking about what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as kind of a gruesome case study of what I mean by the Shock Doctrine. I tell the story of this meeting at the Heritage Foundation where all of the so called free market think tanks gathered together under the auspices of the Republican study group to come up with what they called free market solutions to hurricane Katrina and high oil prices. There were, I think 32 of them in all. It was everything from don't reopen the public schools, give parents vouchers that they can use in private schools to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to unrestricted drilling to create a tax free free enterprise zone, et cetera, et cetera.

The reason why this is relevant is that the name at the bottom of that list was Mike Pence because he was chair of the Republican Study Group. Here he is once again heading up the Trump administration's COVID response. We are seeing all of those old bad ideas re immerge. We're seeing a suspending of EPA regulations. We're seeing a bailout for every dirty business. We are seeing a deliberate starving of the public's fear at the state level. In the midst of this public health crisis, we have doctors and nurses being laid off. I mean, it just makes absolutely no sense. The plan that I am even more worried about and that is related to this plan because of that starving of the public's fear is what I'm calling the screen new deal. That is-

Avi Lewis:
I'm still not sure how I feel about the reverse appropriation of our treasured-
Naomi Klein:
... It's entertaining to me.

Okay. Well, what this is is a vision of the world that predates the pandemic, that was being pushed by Silicon Valley, that is a future that delivers everything to us on app through exploited gig work. A future of endless streaming entertainment and everything delivered to our doorsteps, every human interaction on eminently surveillable and data minable platforms. Our streets filled with driverless cars, our skies with drones delivering us Amazon packages.

This is a vision of the world that was receiving a lot of push back before the pandemic because of concerns about safety and the ethics of these companies, the working conditions of gig work. You know, you had accidents with driverless cars that kind of put that whole experiment on hold. You had Google pushing what they called their sidewalks lab project in Toronto, this sort of privatized city within a city, that was receiving a lot of push back because of the surveillance and the bad deal that the public was getting. You had push backs on telehealth and remote learning for concerns about the quality of the services there.

I guess what I'm saying is that all of this is now being repackaged as a way to keep ourselves safe in the midst of the pandemic, or a no touch future which sees humans as a bio hazard. Driverless cars and drones and remote teaching and telehealth and remote work as the solution. You know, folks like Eric Schmidt and Jeff Bezos are very much at the center of pushing this right now. They see the pandemic as their way of overcoming democracy and resistance that they were encountering before with people like Elizabeth Warren promising to break them up if she got the chance and all kinds of questions being raised about surveillance capitalism by people like Shoshana Zubof.

They are very excited that they are the ones keeping us alive right now with delivery and streaming and keeping us going. They expect a lot of power in return. That's what I'm really worried about because I don't think we get a green new deal if they get their screen new deal because that vision is very, very expensive. It'll drain our public resources. It's, frankly, a really bleak future. Now Avi can try to get us out of that hole.

Rob Johnson:
I just want to interrupt for a second and say that of all of my Canadian friends, I thought that Margaret Atwood painted the most vivid dystopian portraits but you're now in the running, Naomi. This is very competitive.
Naomi Klein:
Listen, I am just repeating Eric Schmidt's talking points.
Rob Johnson:
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying I'm scared. Margaret knew how to get me scared and you do too, now.
Avi Lewis:
Google is what we're looking at.
Rob Johnson:
Yeah. I think you're reporting with vision and insight into process in a way that illuminates something that's genuinely scary.
Naomi Klein:
And genuinely happening. You know, I was keeping an eye on this and seeing the communications change from these tech companies. I've been teaching a course on surveillance capitalism at Rutgers so I was following it already with my research assistant. I don't know when this will air but just yesterday, and that yesterday being May 6, Andrew Cuomo announced a partnership with Eric Schmidt. He put him in charge of the blue ribbon commission that will decide how New York is going to reopen. Basically, Cuomo offered up New York as the laboratory for the future that I described. They talked about telehealth and remote learning and remote work. Believe me, you'll be hearing a lot about smart cities. This is the plan. It isn't a secret.
Rob Johnson:
Wow, wow. Avi, I was going to wait till the end to get cheered up a little bit but I got to invoke you sooner, now.
Avi Lewis:
I think ping pong-ing is smarter, otherwise by the time Naomi is done, we will just be on the floor in fetal position. I mean, I think it's obvious to everyone that we are in an unprecedented moment of both peril and promise. I'm getting all the cliche's out of the way. There are cracks of possibility that we have never seen in our lifetimes. They owe a huge amount to the political movements and the opening of political possibility in the policy space and in the political imagination, particularly in North America but also in Europe and to some extent other parts of the world that was happening before the pandemic.

We were calling for a green new deal in North America and the corresponding movements in Europe, as well. I think it looks different in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia. The terminology doesn't work, as well. The intergovernmental analog climate change and the scientists who advise the world's governance on the climate crisis, had already said a couple of years ago now that the only way we can keep temperatures to a safe level, and this was the famous report that made clear the necessity of a 1.5 degree temperature rise as the safe limit for humanity, would require rapid and unprecedented changes in every aspect of society. That's what the science was telling us two years before this crisis descended.

That means we already knew we needed transformative policies to change the way we live in cities, where we house ourselves and how we get our food and how we move around and our transit systems. Also, global supply chains and resource extraction that was happening at a level that exhibit the caring capacity of the earth many times over. We already knew all that. We were having a real momentum in popular movements. You know as an economist, Rob, that the overtone window, the window of the range of policy proposings, was opening. We had transformative political figures on the left, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and of course Bernie Sanders and his whole campaign, as well as Elizabeth Warren and a much, much, much bolder policy proposals that were being floated.

They were hitting the usual walls. The walls of we can't afford it, the walls of people aren't going to change their lives that rapidly in response to a slow moving crisis like the climate crisis, which of course was untrue for the large populations around the world, usually the most vulnerable. People of the coastal areas, people in marginalized communities who are already suffering under environmental racism of all kinds and the location of fossil fuel industries.

It was already a crisis for a huge part of humanity but we were hearing the usual reasons why we couldn't move so fast and so big. Then we had this movement that we've had in the past couple of months. It recalls the moments in 2009. When you think on the 780 billion dollar bailout that was engineered in the transition into the Obama era, it was dwarfed. It's been dwarfed six times over, seven, eight times over. The money is still going to be pouring. More than six trillion and counting in the United States. Even a country like Canada is approaching a trillion dollars in commitments of public spending. Nobody thinks we're anywhere near the end.

Obviously, what the heterodox economists have been saying is just self evident for everyone now that which indoctrinalized countries have immense capacity to spend, to save people's lives, to float the economy through a period of hibernation and pause and crisis, and to reignite the economy again on the other side. Those limits are not set by deficit hysteria or by the hoarding of the hoarding class who collect their profits in corporate tax cuts and shelter them offshore. Those capacities just in rich countries, they're based on the industrial infrastructure of centuries of fossil fuel driven capitalism and colonialism. We are rich countries and we can spend.

Nobody can deny that anymore. If we can spend unprecedented money to pay people not to work, to bail out corporations, to hand out money to a multi hundred billion dollar slush fund for Steve Mnunchin, we can absolutely guarantee shelter for people who need to shelter in place, homes for all, an education system that is not done by computers but is done safely in smaller class sizes, in public education for all, in public healthcare for all. Even in a country like Canada that has a universal system of paying for healthcare. If healthcare doesn't cost people money, there are many populations that are included, like people who have uncertain status, migrant farm workers if they get sick, they can set home in Canada and many parts of the healthcare system like drugs and eye care and dental care are not included in our universal health system and our public health systems that have to track and warn and test, as well as treat people in something like the COVID-19 crisis are vastly diminished by these decades of austerity.

We know now that the capacity is there and we know what we need to do to keep ourselves safe. Now the environment is much more open for people pushing for what used to be much more radical demands and are now also a matter of life and death like housing for all. I think that's a tremendously hopeful development.

Rob Johnson:
Yeah. You talked about our roller coaster ride. I remember at the time the phrase I was using is it might be the mother of all moral hazards. The polluters got paid and the victims were left to fend for themselves. It created a tremendous demoralization in the Untied States where the energy that the candidate Barack Obama had created about hope and change seemed to dissipate. The Republicans took over the house, then the Senate. Then Donald Trump was elected. A number of people have brought to my attention the I guess what I would call the commodification of social design, meaning laws, regulations, their enforcement, appointments, has become so ferocious as the concentration wealth and size and big monopolies and corporations has narrowed who can influence or control the politicians.

I don't think it was the mother of all moral hazards. That was an intermediate stage. Like you said, six times bigger and a lot crazier now is really demoralizing. The question I want to ask you is what kind of systemic response to this wide spread corruption and this callousness can we mount to turn this super tanker around?

Avi Lewis:
Naomi, I feel like this could be a place to think a little bit about the global nature, too, of the response. We're so hemmed in by these nation programs.
Naomi Klein:
Yeah, I agree. I think that Avi has been doing work with some colleagues around the world. We were working on this before but bringing together a convening to talk about a global green new deal. We aren't just talking about it in our individual nation states when we know that what we do in our nation states has huge impacts on people on the other side of the planet and the north, south injustices built in to the climate crisis. Too much of the talk had been in the north without input from the South and had been overly nationalist.

I think one of the hopeful things about it, there's a few things that I'm taking hope from right now in this moment, which as you say, there's lots to be terrified about. One is that unlike in 2009, we are not just saying no to the Shock Doctrine. We are not just saying no to the austerity that was being imposed on working people and laid off people and pensioners and students in the aftermath of the 2008 meltdown. The cries went up around the world we will not pay for your crisis. What we didn't have in those key years was our own plan for how to get out of crisis. You had individual intellectuals putting forward ideas but you didn't have mass movements championing those ideas.

I remember Avi and I were in Greece in 2010. We both met with Alexis Tsipras and actually interviewed him for the documentary, for This Changes Everything. I had an argument with him privately where I was asking him, why aren't you proposing a pathway out of crisis that is also a solution to the climate crisis? That brings together the ecological and the economic crisis? Why are you just saying no to the austerity? He said to me literally, "In this moment, we believe that no is enough." That's why I called my book No Is Not Enough because I really do believe that it isn't enough.

I can't tell you how many groups we are collaborating with who are all running different iterations of a people's bailout, of understanding we have to have our own pathway out of crisis. I think that that's a big, big shift. The other piece of it is Avi says is the international one because I think what makes this crisis extraordinary is the extent to which we are simultaneously experiencing the same thing in different ways. We are all of us trying to figure out what to do about this incredibly contagious, often lethal virus. All of us are trying to figure this out. The solutions we're coming up with are not the same. That can be really radicalizing.

I had a conversation yesterday with a climate minister of New Zealand, the climate change minister. You know, I asked him, I said, "Do you guys still have this pandemic under control? The last I heard, there were only 19 deaths even though the virus is there but 19 people had died." He said, "Well, unfortunately, the number is now up to 21." I said, "That's too bad. That's not good but I'm speaking to you from New Jersey and more people than that died before 10 AM today." Right? We're up against the same thing but our institutions are different, our collective values are different. That is leading to very different measurable outcomes.

Some countries are just stepping in and saying, "We're going to pay for 80% of everybody's salaries." Some people are saying nobody has to pay rent. Some countries are saying we're going to forgive student debt, we're going to erase student debt. Some cities are saying, "You know what? When we reopen, we don't want the cars to come back. We want to take the streets back for pedestrians and café patios and bicycles." I think we need to life that up because I think even in an insular a country as the United States, which is very resistant to believing it has anything to learn from anyone else, because this virus is a shared experience, I feel like this might be a moment of common receptivity, of particular receptivity to these different stories.

Avi Lewis:
I think it's not just the policies and the responses that could move more freely. I think there's actually some of the fundamental doctrines of our economic age are being exploded in this moment. I think if we can name it, it could be massively useful particularly to countries in the global south. For instance, I think this crisis has revealed the tragedy of the doctrine of competitive advantage.

I actually think that what this crisis is showing every country on earth is that China producing the vast majority of personal protective equipment on planet earth is an incredibly vulnerable, inefficient system designed to give the richest countries, like the United States, who are bundling the response to the crisis first call on the vast majority of the lifesaving equipment needed. This is an omen. Every country on earth should be able to manufacture ventilators, masks, gloves, and other necessary life saving devices in the midst of a healthcare of the likes with which we've never seen.

Supply chains that are global can allow Jeff Bezos to amass 26 billion dollars more of personal fortune in the first couple of months in the pandemic serves no one but Jeff Bezos. That needs to be shortened. This doesn't mean we have to reverse the globalization of everything. It does mean that local economies are safer and stronger and can preserve life if every economy is free from the shackles of debt, from the IMFN world bank policy stretching decade, from the trade agreements that specifically prevent a country from investing in their domestic manufacturing capacity and preferring smaller, shorter supply chains to longer ones.

We need to start... Like, this crisis is actually giving us an opportunity to pull down the pillars of the neo liberal age going all the way back to classical economics in some of those doctrines that are not serving humanity in this moment and that are actually preventing national economies from doing what they need to do to save lives. That strikes me as a huge opening and I hope that there are countries that are going to take advantage of it in organizations like the World Trade Organization.

Rob Johnson:
I remember Andrew Haldane who's a very creative research director at the Bank of England and I took a walk a few years ago. We were talking about how odd the notion in orthodox, what you'll call neo liberal economics was that if you unshackled everything and everything is mobile and it can be more efficiently deployed, he said, "Have economists never studied biology where instead of everything being a good, some things are bad and need to be compartmentalized and you endanger the system?"

What we were really talking about was the intertwine nature of large, too big to fail financial institution and how they would propagate like dominoes and make everybody insolvent and everybody's system fragile by allowing them to have too much what I'll call cross holdings of one another. It's even more evident now. What I find fascinating and I'll turn this into a question. When we talk about the nation state and we talk about globalization. I heard you say earlier, Avi, that people can keep their money off shore. It used to be called tax evasion. Then they made it legal. Now you get all these sermons about how we can't afford it because we don't have the tax revenue because we let the most powerful people hide it wherever they want on the planet. The Panama papers were a nice unmasking of that little dimension.

Then there's the other side and, Naomi, I'm sure you're quite tuned to this which is we need collaboration across national governments vis a vis climate deterioration because, how would I say, it's not within the domain even though the large country like the United States or Germany or the EU to be able to control their outcomes. Then we were talking about the deterioration of US-China relations right now that's rather fierce and ugly dynamic. That's not going to help with climate change.

At one level is the nation state, the treaty of Westphalia dead? All kinds of factors like technology and finance can fly all over. At another level, how can we put together the kind of governance that starts to protect us all through collaboration coordination and recognition that each nation has the potential to do great damage to others through neglect.

Naomi Klein:
Well, there's no doubt that the biggest crisis we face, we can only confront together. A pandemic is among them. There was a brief moment where it seemed like there was a renewed appreciation for multi literalism, that there was suddenly people were talking about the World Health Organization as if it mattered in the United States. Then in no time, you have this outrageous attack on the World Health Organization by the Trump administration.

I mean, the same thing goes for closing down tax havens. Individual countries really can't... We have to do this in a coordinated way. We've seen some examples, you know, some of the bright spots in the way government have responded to the pandemic include some governments including Canada's. I don't know how much we should trust them on this but Canada and even Poland has said that they're not going to give bailouts to companies that don't pay taxes. If they hide their money in tax havens, they're not going to get a public bailout. If this were truly coordinated internationally, I could see some progress coming out of it.

When it comes to the climate crisis, we can't be overly romantic about what we were doing before the Trump era where there was a high level of international cooperation, the much celebrated Paris Accord. The fact is is that what that deal represented was the biggest polluters coming together and agreeing to keep polluting and to set targets far off into the future that their predecessors would have to deal with while they were able to continue with pretty minor tweaks in the status quo, which were in no way aligned with science.

I mean, the Paris Accord, the best thing that we can say about it is it had temperature targets in it that said that countries were going to try to keep temperatures warming below two degrees celsius and make best efforts to keep it below 1.5 degrees celsius. If you add it up what every country committed to in Paris in terms of their own emission reduction targets, which were voluntary, it put us on a course of three to four degrees of warming. There was never a plan, a multi lateral plan to keep us safe. I think the lesson of that is that these deals that don't have enforcement built into them are not going to keep us safe. Right? It was too easy for Trump to walk away from that deal without penalty.

I think that we will see some countries coming together, kinds of coalitions of the willing. We also need international cooperation from below. That's what this green new deal gathering is about. Avi, maybe you can talk a little bit about it because you've been the one on all the calls.

Avi Lewis:
Well, there's no question that this very exciting vision of pre-crisis vision of making a shift away from fossil fuels in a way that guarantees a full employment economy and a massive redistribution of wealth and better universal public services for all, which is my best short way of describing a green new deal. There's tremendous excitement around that vision. Now I have to include things like health and local manufacturing of all kinds of goods, an emphasis on the food system. All the things that have come to light in the COVID-19 crisis generate a vision of a future economy very available, with the resources we now know available that genuinely guarantees basic rights for all.

The conversation we were starting to have as the green new deal emerged in the last two years in the North American and European conversation was, "Okay, sure. We're going to build 12 million units of public housing," like some of the legislative proposals in the United States have and really, really attack the housing crisis and make homes for all, a homes guaranteed, a meaningful thing in the United States. That's a shit ton of building materials. That is a huge amount of finite resources.

How are we going to do those things without sparking an extraction boom in the sites where resources are extracted in the global south, in the third world within the first world what we used to say in those communities, resource communities in every country where extraction is already devastating communities who live next to it without seeing? There's this question of, like, where the exciting transition in that economic sense? All the economic track be implied by unprecedented changes to every factor of society, where that actually meets the customer planetary methods.

There's this extremely important debate emerging around how we can transition for a safe future for everyone on the planet without sparking this extraction mud ball, which is particularly felt in the continent of Africa and Asia and where so many of the raw resources come from, where earth minerals, construction materials. You can fill it out in your mind. Now, the truth is right now we have an extremely chaotic market based global system for the extraction and manufacture of resources in a consumption based economy. Nobody is really at the wheel, well Jeff Bezos is at the wheel, for deciding what gets produced where and for whom. It's all based on the premise that the only way we can add prosperity for all is maximum consumption, over consumption in the former, or maximum end production and in the global south. That just can't sustain.

This crisis is telling us that the climate crisis before it was already seen. The truth is that if we had public procurement, if we had services and programs like a home for all guaranteed in the United States run on a public basis, you actually can have supply chains which are right now fueled by consumption and fossil fuel use, which could be redirected in a sustainable way using more sustainable methods, guaranteeing better work and safety protections at the site of extraction, more local benefits in the countries with which finite resources are extracted.

You can have a public procurement process with governments speaking to each other and working out a rational way to use those resources. You can have a massive transition on planet earth. That also starts to guarantee homes for all in the global south at the same time as it does for the vast majority of people in the global north who will face a housing crisis of a different nature, housing bubbles and speculation bubbles in countries like Canada and United States. It can be done. We are already consuming finite resources at a furious rate on planet earth. We could lower the extraction and consumption of those resources if they were rationally allocated.

The market and the principle of maximum profit has been doing an extremely irrational job of allocating those resources. We have to assert public control over the entire process of them. What gets built, where, and with what, and by whom, and benefiting whom, and harming whom? Once we start to get that stuff in focus, we can have a transition to a 100% carbon free economy in a rapid fashion that doesn't have to exhaust the caring capacity of the earth. It's going to have to be done on a non profit basis. It's going to have to be done with public [inaudible 00:40:57] of these essential services.

I think a health crisis like the one that we're in actually gives us a much better map and model for how countries can work together on best practices, on sharing the finite protective equipment, for instance. I know that's not happening right now. What's happening right now is US officials go to China and buy pallets of stuff at airports and half of the countries are being told it'll be at least 18 months before you get a single ventilator, saying that to countries who currently have four or six for an entire nations of population.

There is a model in a health crisis that allows people to think of the rational allocation of resources. That's precisely the way we can have agreement deal, a global agreement deal that benefits countries in the global south. It's perfectly possible but it's going to actually take governments sitting down. That's going to take pressure from below and organizing our demands and our proposals so that the principles are clear and the people who need to benefit, benefit. Right now, Rob, as you know the masters of the universe who are fashioning their I'll gotten games in various corners of the global economy are going to have to be confronted. We need our money back.

Naomi Klein:
Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that's really great about the work you do at INET is that you are developing those international pathways and sharing ideas and expertise across nation state borders. The truth is that there has been a return to insularity among a lot of progressive social movements. I was part of the so called anti globalization movement. The irony is that was a far more international movement than the movements that I've been a part of since. I think really since September 11 and the Bush era of endless wars, we've been focused on our own governments here in North America. It's come at the expense of those relationships from below.

One of our key partner in designing this green new deal convening is War on Want in the UK. It's executive director Asad Rehman. In a call that we did, he just casually noted that right now the far right, the Trumps and the Bolsonaros and the Dutertes and the [Artegons 00:43:45], they are more coordinated than we are. They are doing a better job thanks to Steve Bannon et al in sharing their own worst practices than we progressives are doing in sharing our success stories and our strategies. That needs to change.

Rob Johnson:
I find many of the things that you've explored over the course of this conversation fascinating. Particularly when you were talking early on how the notion of scarcity. You couldn't pay women's pension in healthcare after they worked 45 years in the city of Detroit. Their pensions had to be restructured because "We can't afford it." We can do these bailouts like you see. Perhaps that creates a window of opportunity and possibility for the green new deal, which how they say, the transformation of energy is so imperative to life on earth that this challenge and this unmasking will help us move along.

I find that it's fascinating when you study the history of central banks. Central banks were not founded to stabilize macro economies. They were not even founded to manage financial crisis. The original founding of central banks was to be able to mobilize resources for preparation for war. We're just now, the war might be an alien called the COVID pandemic in this instance, but the marshaling of social resources for very important purpose is something that central banks can do.

In our conversation, I don't know, I always am harking back the first time that you and I met, Naomi, we had lunch. You had just finished an article. I think it was called Baghdad year zero in Harpers magazine. You were about to receive an award for it. I remember William Greider, the late William Greider, the brilliant man, had introduced us. He had introduced us and we had lunch. I was absolutely spell bound at the intensity of your insight and your courage. We did dinners together related to Shock Doctrine.

Avi, you and I got to know each other watching the work you did on the Take and other film projects that, how I say, add extra dimensions. I guess I kind of see you illuminating the darkness. I'm reminded I'm going to use a musical verse that came into my mind as we were talking. It's from Bob Dillon's song The Masters of War. He says, "Let me ask you one question. Is your money that good? Will it buy you forgiveness? Do you think that it could. I think you will find when your death takes its toll, all the money you made will never buy back your soul."

The side of you each and together, I'm jealous of Tommy, he gets to stay home from school and hear the dialogue of these two brilliant people every day. I think he just upgraded his education tremendously.

Avi Lewis:
If only that were what it was like.
Rob Johnson:
The place where I'm always invigorating, whether it's David Burn playing piano in celebration of your speeches at the Cooper Union, or seeing you at marches or what have you reminds me of the work and the song by Natalie Merchant in 10000 Maniacs. The second verse, given that we're in the month of May, says, "These are days that you'll remember. When May is rushing over you with desire to be part of the miracles you see in every hour, you'll know it's true that you are blessed and lucky. It's true that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you." They go on to say, "These are days you might fill with laughter until you break. You might feel a shaft of light across your face, make its way across your face. When you do, you'll know it was meant to be. You'll see the signs and know their meaning. It's true. You'll know what was meant to be and hear the signs and know they're speaking to you."

The two of you, in many ways, feel to me like a miracle. You have been touched by something and the things that you illuminate are the basis of hope. I know, Naomi, I teased you a little bit about Margaret Atwood. Between the two of you today, I'm more hopeful because you're taking off the mask and you're relentless and you're moving forward. I think we should all take heart. Like they say, hear the signs and know they're speaking to us. Those signs come from you. Thank you both for joining me. I hope we can get together in a couple of months and revisit these issues. Please keep us informed about the Leap, your films. I have 11000 members that are quite active in our young scholars initiative. We'd love to introduce them more and more not only to your work but to the example of your two careers. Thank you.
Naomi Klein:
Thank you so much, Rob. It was such a pleasure to have this visit with you. I just want to say that the work of hetero docs, economists, of progressive economists, of people who got into this field because they wanted to build a better world and give people the tools, we have never needed you more to use your expertise to expand our sense of the possible and to keep that window that you talked about open for as wide as possible. My God, there are people who want to slam it shut now that they just raided the bank.
Avi Lewis:
I think we've all been thinking about what's essential. What is an essential worker? What is most important? What do we need to live? Rob with those beautiful quotes from great songs and, as Naomi said, the work that you've been doing in economics, why is the point of the economy not to give everyone what is essential for life? I think we have some real, moral clarity in this moment and conversations like this really spill the light all over it. Thank you.
Rob Johnson:
Well, Martin Luther King once said, "We call came in on different ships." He was referring to slavery, "But we're in the same boat now." It's my viewing that while we might not be in exactly the same boat now, there's still a lot of inequality in relation to the dreadful pandemic playing out. We have a common challenge and perhaps that can help us weave society into that awareness and start using the economy again as a means to an end, not as a deity to be worshiped and to defend by suborning people and their needs and create a broader prosperity.
Avi Lewis:
Amen to that.
Naomi Klein:
Thank you, Rob.
Rob Johnson:
Very good. Thank you both. We'll talk again soon. Bye-bye.
Naomi Klein:
Yeah, thank you so much.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Naomi Klein & Avi Lewis: A High-Tech Coronavirus Dystopia - Technology and Surveillance Meet the Shock Doctrine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Rob talks to activist and author Naomi Klein and to documentarian Avi Lewis about how the pandemic has spurred the "shock doctrine": the sudden imposition of neoliberalism and austerity in response to a crisis. They also discuss the possibilities of a new international solidarity around a global Green New Deal.

# data[].attributes.headline
Screen New Deal: Naomi Klein on How Companies Like Google Plan to Profit in High-Tech COVID Dystopia

# data[].attributes.subject
Screen New Deal: Naomi Klein on How Companies Like Google Plan to Profit in High-Tech COVID Dystopia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Naomi, we wanted to turn right now to your major piece in The Intercept. You talk about the "pandemic shock doctrine" beginning to emerge, as we turn to your new report that looks at how this crisis is more high-tech than previous disasters and how the future we're being rushed into could transform our lives into a, quote, "living laboratory for a permanent - and highly profitable - no-touch future."

This future was on display a week ago during New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's daily coronavirus briefing, when he welcomed a video visit from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and announced Schmidt will be heading up a blue-ribbon commission to reimagine New York state's post-COVID reality.

ERIC SCHMIDT: The public-private partnerships that are possible with the intelligence of the New Yorkers is extraordinary. It needs to be unleashed.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO: Well, great. You are the person to help us do that. We are all ready. We're all in. We are New Yorkers, so we're aggressive about it and we're ambitious about it. And I think we get it, Eric. You know, we went through this period, and we realize that change is not only imminent, but it can actually be a friend, if done the right way.

This comes as Eric Schmidt has also been selling his services to the military-industrial complex. The New York Times reported on Schmidt's, quote, "Pentagon offensive."

Well, Naomi Klein, I want to ask if you can comment on all of this, and particularly lay out your piece in The Intercept, called "Screen New Deal: Under Cover of Mass Death, Andrew Cuomo Calls in the Billionaires to Build a High-Tech Dystopia." Lay out your thesis.

And during all of these announcements, there's just been sort of effusive praise heaped on these billionaires. They're called "visionaries" over and over again. And the governor talks about how this is an unprecedented opportunity to put their preexisting ideas into action. And this is what I've described as the shock doctrine previously.

And we have talked on the show during the pandemic about what I would describe as kind of lower-tech shock doctrines of the kind we've seen before - immediately going after Social Security, immediately bailing out fossil fuel companies. And I want to stress that all of this is still happening, right? The suspending of EPA regulations. So, there's still this kind of lower-tech shock doctrine underway with the bailout of these industries, the suspending of regulations they didn't want anyway.

But there is something else going on, that Eric Schmidt really epitomizes. And this is this, what I'm calling a "Screen New Deal." And this is an idea that treats our months in isolation, those of us who are privileged enough to be self-isolating - and that, in and of itself, is an enormous privilege, because we have seen this sharpening and widening of a class dichotomy. And this relates to the calls to open up the economy, right? The people who are making these calls are not the people who are going to be most at risk. They're calling for other people to be putting themselves at great risk, and there is a feeling of being immune to the worst impacts of the virus. But that's another issue.

What this, what I'm calling a "Screen New Deal," really does is treat this period of isolation not as what we have needed to do in order to save lives - this is what we thought we were doing, right? - flattening the curve, but rather - and Eric Schmidt has said this elsewhere. He said it in April in a video call with the Economic Club of New York. He described what was happening now as a "grand experiment in remote learning." So, all the parents out there who are listening or watching, you've been struggling with supporting your kids on Google Classroom and Zoom calls, and you thought you were just trying to get through the day. Well, according to Google, you've been engaged in a "grand experiment in remote learning," where they are getting a great deal of data and figuring out how to do this permanently, because they actually believe this is a better way of educating kids, or at least, and coming back to our earlier conversation, a more profitable way.

Eric Schmidt talked, in that clip that you just played there, Amy, about all of the opportunities for public-private partnerships. And what he is really talking about is public money going to tech firms, like Google, like Amazon, to perform public functions. So, once again, a bonanza for the tech companies - who, by the way, have been doing very well during the pandemic already - where they see huge opportunities in telehealth, in the educational market in public schools, in supporting us working from home and learning from home.

And they're not looking for a kind of a traditional reopening, but, rather, a new paradigm, where the privileged classes, who are able to isolate themselves, basically get everything that we need either delivered through digital streaming or by drone, by driverless vehicle.

And we're seeing a massive rebranding effort going on in Silicon Valley, where all of these technologies that were very, very controversial, and where there was a lot of pushback way back in February - whether it's driverless vehicles, because there have been all kinds of accidents, or drones delivering packages, or telehealth, because of concerns about security for patients' sensitive information, or the benefit of having our kids in front of screens all day. I mean, I could go on and on. There was a lot of pushback.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Naomi - Naomi, if I can -

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I'd like to raise something here, both in terms of remote learning and in terms of telehealth services. My students at Rutgers did a survey of their fellow students on this issue of remote learning. And they found - they did a survey of several hundred students. Eighty-five percent of them said that their ability to concentrate on subject matter had been seriously reduced since the move to remote learning, and 65% of them said that their homes were not conducive to remote learning. So, no one is taking into account the impact on the actual quality of the kind of education that students are receiving.

The other aspect of this, I think, also is that, whether it's in telehealth services or in remote learning, all of the material is then saved by the providers, so that -

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: - whether it's a professor's lecture or whether it's the interview between a doctor and a patient, that is no longer a private situation. It's now recorded and saved, to possible detriment of both the professor's right as a teacher or the patient's right in their private discussions with their doctors.

And that's where these so-called solutions, that do allow you to archive information and engage in what they call predictive medicine, which requires fewer healthcare professionals, supposedly, or remote learning, where you can archive the videos put online by teachers. And they don't have to do it again; you just replay them the next year. Right, Juan? So there's two forces here, right? There is the desire to cut back the actual human beings who are employed on an ongoing basis, in favor of these kind of one-off, big-ticket payments for Silicon Valley.

And, you know, what you were talking about before, Juan, about these huge inequalities in who is able to work comfortably from home - and I personally don't think it's a - you know, I think most students are not enjoying this experience. There are huge inequities in who has access to broadband, who has access to laptop computers and tablets, but also who is able to learn well on screens. You know, there are kids with developmental disabilities who have much more trouble just sitting in front of a screen for long periods of time.

The tech companies are very quick to say, "We can solve the technological gaps. We can buy tablets for every kid." Right? Because that's another bonanza for them. That's public dollars that are going to go to paying for tech.

Schmidt, in his capacity as chair of the Defense Innovation Board and the National Security Commission on AI, which is - Amy, you talked about that New York Times piece - where he has been engaged in this long - well, long, a couple of years - push to increase federal spending on all of these technologies, and saying, you know, "We're losing the AI arms race to China, because they're investing much more in surveillance tech and also on 5G infrastructure." So, all of these tech companies benefit massively if there are big public investments in broadband. So those are things that they're saying they can solve.

But what they can't solve is whether kids are in a home environment that doesn't have a private space for them to work, that is very loud, that is abusive. These are not things that Eric Schmidt and Google can solve. And they can't solve for developmental disabilities that just mean that kids need to move around, as most kids do, right?

So, I think we're going to see very incomplete so-called solutions, and solutions obviously that massively benefit private tech interests. And we're not having a discussion about, "Well, look, if it is true that we are going to need to be spending more time in our homes, and if it is true that access to technology is a lifeline, then should we be treating the internet as a commons, as a public utility, that we govern, that is governed by our regulations and by democracy?" As soon as you outsource the solutions to Eric Schmidt, who still has $5.3 billion in Alphabet shares, which is the company that owns Google, and who has holdings in all kinds of these tech companies, they are not going to put those public interest questions on the table.

We're going to break and then come back to our discussion with Naomi Klein. She has a new piece out at The Intercept, "Screen New Deal: Under Cover of Mass Death, Andrew Cuomo Calls in the Billionaires to Build a High-Tech Dystopia." We'll be back with her in a minute.

[break]

"The Damnedest Thing" by Beauty Pill. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York, the epicenter of the pandemic. Juan González is in New Brunswick, New Jersey, as is our guest today, because both Juan González and Naomi Klein are professors at Rutgers University. Naomi has now just written a "piece": piece for The Intercept, "Screen New Deal: Under Cover of Mass Death, Andrew Cuomo Calls in the Billionaires to Build a High-Tech Dystopia."

I wanted to go back to Tuesday's surreal Senate Health Committee hearing, where the chair was there remotely because his staffer had tested positive for COVID. Those who were testifying were all remote, in various levels of quarantine. But we're going to go right now to North Carolina Republican Senator Richard Burr, who was criticizing the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, for being too slow to develop and implement surveillance tracking. This is Burr talking to the Centers for Disease Control director, Dr. Robert Redfield. We also hear some off-screen barking.

We've seen the private sector go out and use data available to track the progress and spread of coronavirus around the world. Why has CDC not contracted with private sector technology companies to try to use their tools for biosurveillance?

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD: This is under critical review now. We do have contracts with some of the private sector groups now to try to make the type of availability of data that we've seen with Florida available in all of our jurisdictions across the country, and in the process of making that happen.

SEN. RICHARD BURR: I'm hopeful that we won't just talk about surveillance, we'll actually execute it, and we'll focus the unbelievable amounts of money that we've provided for you, that they will show some - some benefit to the American people.

So, there you have Redfield being questioned by Burr. Naomi Klein is our guest for the hour, senior correspondent at The Intercept. If you can talk about what he's asking about surveillance? Also, just as we came to the show today, BBC did a piece on Israel turning surveillance tools on itself, that they developed for Palestinians, and then turning it on themselves to track people during the pandemic. Your thoughts, Naomi?

Well, I think it's - we talked about that a little bit earlier. Israel has been doing this from the beginning, and there's been lawsuits about it, about their use of tracking apps. But it goes well beyond that. And I think one of the things that's important to understand about Israel is that the technology that they use in their surveillance state - and for the most part, it is Palestinians who are under this constant state of surveillance, but, as you say, that BBC story is talking about a kind of a migration of those surveillance technologies into being used against Israelis - these are all technologies that Israel looks to export. There is a huge amount of cross-pollination between police forces, military forces, intelligence services, you know, going to Israel, communicating with Israeli intelligence, where all of these technologies often migrate to the rest of the world, are sold by Israeli companies as the solution. We saw it after September 11th.

And I think a lot of what we're seeing, frankly, follows a pattern that Shoshana Zuboff, the Harvard professor who wrote The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - she talks about how before the September 11th attacks, there had been an aggressive move to protect consumer privacy against increased surveillance by tech companies, and that immediately after those attacks, there was, rather, a very aggressive push by government to collaborate with tech companies to get at the access - to get access to the same data that they were worried about the tech companies mining before the attacks. And so, now we're in a moment where there was a huge amount of concern about what Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism, and now many people who had been raising those alarms are going, "Well, maybe it's OK if we let our governments collaborate with tech companies to store this very, very sensitive data about us."

Now, I want to be clear. I think there is absolutely a role, an important role, for technology in figuring out how we are going to live under these extraordinary circumstances. But the question is whether tech companies and government get the kind of carte blanche that they got in 2001 to massively invade our privacy. What is going to - where is this data going to be stored? Who is going to have access to it? Australia has rolled out one of these apps very quickly, and it turns out that Amazon is controlling the data. So, you know, that clip, I think, is a very worrying one.

The other thing that I think we need to be really acutely aware of is, a lot of the narratives that we've heard early on about countries that successfully controlled the virus, or at least much more successfully than the United States, a lot of it was attributed to these kinds of apps, to this kind of surveillance. And that narrative is a very convenient one for these tech companies. And in many cases, it erases the role of a functioning public healthcare system, of the fact that it was not merely an app that was placed voluntarily on people's phones, but, much more importantly, a well-staffed public health system that allowed human tracing and tracking of the virus, which means a human being. Not an alert on your phone, but a human being calls you - best of all, a human being in your community, somebody who you might trust, who speaks your language - and says, "OK, you may have come in contact with this virus. What would you need to be able to self-quarantine? Can we get you a hotel room? Can we help you to make sure that your kids are cared for?"

This is the kind of human work and job creation that it actually takes. And what we're being sold now, whether with the idea that everything is going to be solved with more surveillance and an app or remote learning and telehealth, is really taking the humans out of the equation. Right? It is humans who are setting up these systems. It is humans, like whether it is the teachers in their homes or the parents in their homes, who are helping students learn right now. It isn't just Google Classroom that is doing it. But humans are being erased from this story. And we aren't hearing the kinds of human solutions that, with proper control over good technology, we could actually come up with some viable models here.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Naomi, I wanted to ask you - in your article in The Intercept, you talk about this new form of yellow peril that Eric Schmidt is peddling, that now it's China that is the threat when it comes to artificial intelligence. The United States is falling behind. It dovetails with Trump's blaming China for the trade gap of the United States. What about this issue of artificial intelligence and whether we are in a new space race with China over it?

Yeah, absolutely. So, in my article, I quote some documents that were FOIA'd by EPIC, which is Electronic Privacy Information Center. They got a trove of documents out of the National Security Commission on AI, NSCAI, which is the commission that - one of the two commissions that Schmidt chairs. And it advises Congress on ways that it can increase its uses of technology, particularly AI, but not exclusively AI.

And it's all framed in this yellow peril language of China is on the verge of beating Silicon Valley in the technology race that began in Silicon Valley. So, basically, the narrative is, you know, American innovation is responsible for these technologies - of course, Silicon Valley takes much of the credit, but, as we know, a lot of it comes from public research, and a lot of it comes from military research - but because China does not have the same privacy concerns - indeed, you have a government that is erecting a high-tech surveillance state - and because China has leapfrogged over a lot of what this report calls sort of legacy structures - so, they go directly to cashless, digital payments; they are going directly to telehealth because there's a big shortage of doctors - they -

Well, we want to thank you so much for being with us. There's so much more in the piece, and people can read it. We will link to it. Naomi Klein, senior correspondent at The Intercept. The new piece, "Screen New Deal: Under Cover of Mass Death, Andrew Cuomo Calls in the Billionaires to Build a High-Tech Dystopia." Naomi is the author of many books, including The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism; her latest, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal.

That does it for our show. Democracy Now! is working with as few people on site as possible. The majority of our amazing team is working from home. We thank them all. I'm Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Stay safe.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Screen New Deal: Naomi Klein on How Companies Like Google Plan to Profit in High-Tech COVID Dystopia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In her new report for The Intercept on the "Screen New Deal," Naomi Klein looks at how the coronavirus pandemic is more high-tech than previous disasters - and how the future we're being rushed into could transform our lives into a "living laboratory for a permanent - and highly profitable - no-touch future."

# data[].attributes.headline
Body Politic Queer Feminist Wellness Collective

# data[].attributes.subject
Body Politic Queer Feminist Wellness Collective

# data[].attributes.headline
July 14, 2020 • Saidiya Hartman on insurgent histories and the abolitionist imaginary 

# data[].attributes.subject
July 14, 2020 • Saidiya Hartman on insurgent histories and the abolitionist imaginary 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Five centuries of white supremacist terror: not just a past to which we are ineluctably fastened, but a present which produces us, albeit in differing orders of magnitude and vulnerability. The United States has long maintained the fiction that this country had molted its foundational violence, and yet, just as your skin sheds daily only to live dispersed atop your furniture and knick-knacks, so too does the grime of history make up the loam in which a person is destined to flourish, struggle, or wither. The work of Saidiya Hartman has charted a path in and through the social arrangements produced by the sedimented forces of accumulation and dispossession. Her writing, in numerous essays, and in such books as Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (1997), Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (2007), and Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019) has not only reshaped the contours of scholarly inquiry, but has given form to what she has called "the as-yet-incomplete project of freedom." Below, Hartman speaks about the continuity of the Black radical tradition, the insurrectionary qualities of Black life, and the "wild exercise of imagination" required to challenge the reigning order.

WHAT CONSTITUTES RADICAL THOUGHT? How do we bring into view the constancy of Black radical practice-a practice that has overwhelmingly fallen from view-and a certain lexicon of what constitutes the political, or the radical political, or an anarchist tradition, or a history of anti-fascism? In looking at the lives of young women, gender nonconforming and queer folk in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019), one thing was absolutely clear: the practices of refusal-shirking, idleness, and strike-a critique of the state and what it could afford; and an understanding that the state is present primarily as a punishing force, a force for the brutal containment and violation and regulation and eradication of Black life. In Wayward Lives, I discuss the "jump warrant," which enabled police to enter apartments at will. We know that Breonna Taylor was murdered in the contemporary equivalent of that jump warrant, which is the "no knock" warrant. The police just enter a place and do as they will.

Because the "wayward" are largely acting in and conceiving of the world in a way that exceeds the boundaries of the norm--the legitimate, the respectable--traditional political actors and thinkers have failed to understand their actions as animated and inflected by the spirit of radical refusal. But to me, that was utterly clear. I would like to think of waywardness as prefigurative of today's protests and insurgency and also as a sustained practice. In Frederick Douglass's My Bondage, My Freedom, he describes the plantation as a nation within the nation, as a space of exception outside the embrace of democracy, as an enclosure. Black people have been abandoned by the law, positioned outside the nation, and excluded from the terms of the social contract-and this recognition is in fact hundreds of years old. Wayward Lives gives young Black women credit for understanding this, for their acute understanding of relations of power, and the book attends to the ways they tried to live and sustain themselves, never forgetting the structure of enclosure that surrounded them, and the forces intent on conscripting them to servitude.

My work tries to think about the question, the open question-the almost impossible question-of Black life in this context, and the ways to best convey the rich texture of existence in these circumstances: to render visible the brutal and abstract relations of power that make violent domination and premature death defining characteristics of Black life. How does one push against particular plots or impositions of the subject? Defy the script of managed and regulated life? Persist under the threat of death? One of the things that I love about W.E.B Du Bois-and my work is in dialogue with and indebted to his-is his imaginative capacity and commitment to experimentation. To understand the epistemic revolution that takes place in Black Reconstruction (1935) is to understand the abolition of slavery and Reconstruction as the making of American democracy, and to conceive the radical and insurgent political practice of enslaved actors. Even C.L.R. James marvels at Du Bois's ability to conjure that revolutionary consciousness and reflects on his own shortcomings, in comparison, in Lectures on The Black Jacobins (1971).

There is always an open question of form: How does one bring a minor revolution into view? Most often we want to maintain a fiction that desire exists on one hand and violence and coercion on the other, and that these are radically distinct and opposed. We might instead think of sexual violence as a normative condition, not the exception. Under heteropatriarchy, violence and rape are the terms of order, the norm; they are to be expected. So how does one lust after or relate to or want or love another? How does one claim the capacity to touch when touch is, in so many instances, the modality of violence? As I say repeatedly, Wayward Lives is not a text of sexual liberation. But I really wanted to think about sensory experience and inhabiting the body in a way that is not exhausted by the condition of vulnerability and abuse. What does it mean-for those persons whose bodies are most often subjected to the will, desire, and violence of others-to imagine embodiment in a way that's not yoked to servitude or to violence? For me, this was essential to thinking about radical politics: What does it mean to love that body? To love the flesh in a world where it is not loved or regarded? To love Black female flesh. Breonna Taylor's murderers have still not been charged.

The possessive investment in whiteness can't be rectified by learning "how to be more antiracist." It requires a radical divestment in the project of whiteness and a redistribution of wealth and resources. It requires abolition, the abolition of the carceral world, the abolition of capitalism.

Incredible vulnerability to violence and to abuse is so definitive of the lives of Black femmes. And so, what does it mean to want to imagine and to experience something else? It can't but be political-simply to want to free one's body from its conscription to servitude, to no longer be made a servant in the reproductive project of the world-all of this is part of an abolitionist imaginary. We have been assigned a place in the racial capitalist order which is the bottom rung; the bottom rung is the place of the "essential" worker, the place where all the onerous reproductive labor occurs. Not just reproductive labor in the terms of maintaining and aiding white families so that they might survive and thrive, but the reproductive work that nurtures and supports the psychic life of whiteness: that shores up the inviolability, security, happiness and sovereignty of that master subject, of man. In large measure, this world is maintained by the disposability and the fungibility of Black and brown female lives. Intimacy is a critical feature of this coerced labor and of care. Black intimacy has been shaped by the anomalous social formation produced by slavery, by involuntary servitude, by capitalist extraction, and by antiblackness and yet exceeds these conditions. The intimate realm is an extension of the social world-it is inseparable from the social world-so to create other networks of love and affiliation, to nurture a promiscuous sociality vast enough to embrace strangers, is to be involved in the work of challenging and remaking the terms of sociality.

What we see now is a translation of Black suffering into white pedagogy. In this extreme moment, the casual violence that can result in a loss of life-a police officer literally killing a Black man with the weight of his knees on the other's neck-becomes a flash point for a certain kind of white liberal conscience, like: "Oh my god! We're living in a racist order! How can I find out more about this?" That question is a symptom of the structure that produces Floyd's death. Then there's the other set of demands: "Educate me about the order in which we live." And it's like: "Oh, but you've been living in this order. Your security, your wealth, your good life, has depended on it." So, it's crazy-making. The largest loss of Black property since the Great Depression was a consequence of the subprime mortgage crisis, and proliferating acts of racist state violence occurred under a Black president. The largest incarcerated population in the world; the election of 2016 and the publicly avowed embrace of white supremacy by 45-all of these things we know, right? We know the racially exclusive character of white neighborhoods; how in urban centers upper-class people monopolize public resources to ensure their futures and their children's futures over and against other children. I'm a New Yorker-the city has the most racially segregated school system in the country. The Obama and Clinton voters are invested in a school system that disadvantages Black and brown children and they resist even the smallest efforts to make it more equitable. The possessive investment in whiteness can't be rectified by learning "how to be more antiracist." It requires a radical divestment in the project of whiteness and a redistribution of wealth and resources. It requires abolition, the abolition of the carceral world, the abolition of capitalism. What is required is a remaking of the social order, and nothing short of that is going to make a difference.

Everyone has issued a statement-every elite racist university and cultural institution, every predatory banking and investment company-has issued a statement about being down with Black Lives Matter. It's beyond hypocrisy. It's utter cynicism. These institutions feel required to take part in this kind of performance and this kind of speech only because of the radically capacious demands of those in the street, those who are demanding abolition, and who have said: "We are not a part of the social contract, we will riot, we will loot." These are legitimate political acts. These are ways of addressing the violence of that order at the level of the order-the police precinct, the bank, the retailer, the corporate headquarters.

There's a great disparity between what's being articulated by this radical feminist queer trans Black movement and the language of party politics, and the electoral choices, which are so incredibly impoverished they're not choices at all. The demand to defund the police was taken up because there's been a movement unfolding for decades, an analysis that has been in place-building on the work of Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, The Combahee River Collective, Marsha P. Johnson, Audre Lorde, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mariame Kaba, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi and Alicia Garza, Michelle Alexander, Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor. It's not a surprise that so many of the people in the street are young. They're in the streets with these powerful critical and conceptual tools, and they're not satisfied with reform. They understand reform to be a modality of reproducing the machine, reproducing the order-sustaining it. I do feel that there is a clarity of vision that won't be lost. That's what has been so inspiring about these protests and uprisings-the clarity and the capaciousness of the vision.

- As told to Catherine Damman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Saidiya Hartman on insurgent histories and the abolitionist imaginary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Five centuries of white supremacist terror: not just a past to which we are ineluctably fastened, but a present which produces us, albeit in differing orders of magnitude and vulnerability.

# data[].attributes.headline
What comes after states and capitalism? 

# data[].attributes.subject
What comes after states and capitalism? 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I am kind of an agnostic as to what comes after states and capitalism, as long as it meets some minimum criteria, as such, I am going to link here to a ton of DIFFERENT hints at what our future could like, so that I like more than others.

Because they are relevant, I am going to link to some other works by Scott, Graeber, Wengrow, and Sahlins on value, the origin of state/agriculture, re-defining civilization to not be evil, and on ceasing to romanticize the noble savage.

Against the Grain
astudygroup.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/agains...

Every work I have linked to thus far is united by a subset of several themes:
Anthropology
Archaeology
Deep History
Hunter/Gatherers
Agriculture
The Rise of the State
Anarchy in Every Day Life
Anarchy 'Works'
Value
Leisure
Hierarchy
State Violence
Current Anarchist Praxis

Many of them attempt to denaturalize the state, agriculture, 'noble savages', teleological history, civilization, stratification, work, settlement, etc &, situate them in history, showing them to be contingent. They emphasize human's anarchist past & present.

The other theme is that anarchism is practiced every day in different forms, and has been for a while. Continuing this theme, I move to works that explore very similar topics, but are focussed on movements from the last 100 year or which are contemporary.

These are similar to the books by Ward, Gelderloos, Gordon, and Graeber (he's one of them), in that they focus on anarchy today in practice, but more so on movements rather than everyday practices (both do both of these, however).

So we have roughly 4 temporalities here--deep pre-history, early civilization, the contemporary, the last century, we have 3 modalities--everyday life, culture over time, and social movements, and we have 2 goals--descriptive, and normative.

My point is that this is a rich, wide ranging, and informative set of works that are scholarly important, AND politically important (it's rare to be both), and they would be helpful to any leftist, not just anarchists, because they give us a deeper history & glimpses of a future.

These four books tackle specific topics:
1. Education
2. Economics
3. Governance
4. Co-operatives & growth

and thus are helpful for more specific subjects. I vary in my endorsement of them.

Kevin Carson is a dear MuFo, and I think C4SS does good work. Dixit isn't an anarchist, like Benson & Caplan, he is an economist. The Dixit, Benson & Caplan books apply economic theory to show why anarchism works OR how law/organization happens without the law.

I included Wolff because he argues that anarchism stems from liberalism & individual rights. In this way he is similar to Chomsky.

libcom.org/files/13452669...

From here I move to Bookchin, Libertarian Municipalism, and other social movements such as the Zapatistas, Indignados, Rojava, and OWS which are either not anarchist or their anarchism is disputed.

All of these focus on contemporary social movements and struggles, including Rojava, the EZLN, Occupy, and the Indignados, all of whom were influenced by anarchism or Bookchin, or some other such thing, but are arguably or explicitly not anarchist.

All of these focus on contemporary social movements and struggles, including Rojava, the EZLN, Occupy, and the Indignados, all of whom were influenced by anarchism or Bookchin, or some other such thing, but are arguably or explicitly not anarchist.

I'm getting tired so I am going to rush thru the last bits.

These all focus on classic Anarchism and syndicalism. Marshall and Black Flame (one of whose authors is now problematic) take opposite stances on what to include in anarchism, and whether or not insurrectionary vs. mass is a tactical or fundamental split.

Now for the final, most galaxy brain, and closest to my heart stuff--communization, nihilist communism, autonomism, etc.

I had to create a link chain Cus I didn't do it right, but anyway

Almost all of the previous stuff, Communization, Nihilist Communism, Autonomism, Insurrection, Tiqqun, Crimethinc, Endnotes, Inhabit, Zerzan are post left

They're defined by opposition to the older forms of leftism, to most organization, to optimism (some), to hierarchy, to the economy, to civilization, and so on.

If you ask me which I support, I would tell you the truth:
I have taken an insight, sometimes even a negative one or from a critic, from every single source I have linked to here today. I am agnostic about what the future will hold.

Here is a megathread on tactics, praxis, revolution, insurrection, values, ethics, states, strategy, and so on. I discuss many of these works and what I take from each:

For a quicker summary of those values:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Thread by @yungneocon: "I am kind of an agnostic as to what comes after states and capitalism, as long as it meets some minimum criteria, as such, I am going to lin [...]"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Thread by @yungneocon: "I am kind of an agnostic as to what comes after states and capitalism, as long as it meets some minimum criteria, as ng to link here to a ton of DIFFERENT hints at what our future could like, so that I like more than others.

# data[].attributes.headline
History of Anarchist Influence on the Left

# data[].attributes.subject
History of Anarchist Influence on the Left

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
, 148 tweets, 25 min read

"Absorption of anarchism into the left" lmao from where? Itself? Like one of those twins people absorb in the womb? Anarchism has been part of the arc of the left for 200 years. This isn't disputed by any reputable left wing historian, even anti-Anarchists.

Indeed, a set of common realizations emerged:
1. Globalization had more or less 'won' but this provided new alternatives in the disruption of the circuits of global capitalism
2. Traditional left wing party, guerilla & conspiracy cells had become impractical

3. The main task at present was the disruption of hegemony as such, because only in that space could movements actually form
4. Attention must be paid to all the struggles & identities given short shrift before
5. A central, perhaps THE central crisis of capitalism, was ecology

This makes OPs argument hilarious, as if you look to the:
1. origins of the left, anarchism is present
2. 'heroic' years & every successful revolution, it is there
3. decline & recuperation of the left, anarchism is less present
4. resurgence of the left, it returns

Most obviously, any decline of anarchism can be attributed to the following:
1. Repression & subversion by the capitalist powers
2. The rise of the USSR, its client states & other ML revolutions
3. The losses in Spain etc & repression by socialists
4. Recuperation
5. Cold War

So, what events were key here:
1. Repression, immigration, speech, organization bans & so on, of different types in both capitalist & socialist areas-criminal anarchy laws still exist
2. The 'bad rep' played up by official stories acquired by attentat or those like Sac&Van

3. The Spanish Civil War, the beginning of WWII & 'The God that failed'-Namely:
A. Allies refuse to support Spain
B. The mass international support
C. The loss in part due to betrayal by the Soviets
D. Molotov Ribbentrop
E. Revelations, true or false, of Soviet conduct

4. A. Allies treaty-between the capitalists & Soviets, commented on by Trotsky himself
B. The Holocaust
C. The apparent betrayal of partisans
D. The Post war & post colonial movements

5. These, however, can only be narrated in sync with other events, concerning the Cold War:
A. The resumption of hostility between Soviets & Capitalists
B. Revolutions in China & Korea
C. American projections as fighters for freedom & welcoming of some refugees

For sources on this I recommend:
1. Marxism & the Jewish Question - Traverso
2. Vivarium- Mueller (this is on the broader intellectual history)
3. Helge Kragh's histories of Cold War science
4. Cold Warriors by White
(Cont.)

6. Work on the Spanish Civil War & Anarchism generally
-Hochschild's 'Spain in Our Hearts', Thomas' history of the war, Cornell's 'Unruly Equality', Marshall's 'Demading the Impossible', and others i can DM

The central questions were:
1. How does one fracture the Neoliberal hegemony to create space for the left?
2. What to do with globalization & the postcolonial world ?
3. How to analyze the collapse of the Soviet Bloc & 'end of history'?

8. What to make of new technology, ICT, computation, biotech, space tech, as well as the military industrial complex, tech industry, the booms they caused & so on, if anything

This continued until the 00s when several new questions were rapidly added

But, to breach some sources that could be useful:
1. All of the sources I mentioned earlier, esp
A. Marshall's 'Demanding the Impossible,'
B. Cornell's 'Unruly Equality'
C. Jones' 'More Powerful than Dynamite'

2. the volumes
A. 'No Gods No Masters No Peripheries',
B. 'Decolonizing Anarchism' & 'Unsettling the Commons'
C. & despite the controversy & discrediting of the author, Schmidt & Van Der Walt's work on 'Black Flame' & 'Cartography' Stand up on an academic level. Pirate them

D. Eley's 'Forging Democracy',
E. Graham's 'We Do Not Fear Anarchy'
F. The book 'Immigrants Against the State'
G. The books 'Anarchism in Latin America', and Gittlitz' 'I want to Believe', & various specialized histories of anarchism in Cuba, China, Korea, Egypt, Japan

H. Leonard & Gallagher's 'A Threat of First Magnitude' and the work 'Heavy Radicals'
I. Bray's 'Antifa Handbook' & 'Translating Anarchy'

L. Priestland, Pantsov, Davin, Dirlik, Popov have written various accounts of The PRC I liked
M. The book 'Wobblies of the World', & the book 'Wobblies & Zapatistas'
N. Ward's works on anarchy, Goodways 'Anarchist Seeds', and Cohn' 'Underground Passages'

O. The larger scale histories & theoretical works of Eric Hobbsbawm, David Harvey, Mike Davis, Benedict Anderson, James Scott, and others
P. Grubacic & OHearn on Life on the Peripheries, Ruivencamp & Hilton on commonsing, the work of Hardt & Negri

**above should say most not both

Anyway hopefully the relevance of these links is self evident

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Thread by @yungneocon: "Absorption of anarchism into the left" lmao from where? Itself? Like one of those twins people absorb in the womb? Anarchism has been part...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Thread by @yungneocon: "Absorption of anarchism into the left" lmao from where? Itself? Like one of those twins people absorb in the womb? Anas been part of the arc of the left for 200 years. This isn't disputed by any reputable left wing historian, even...

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
The connection between right wing dark money, the Neoliberal Thought Collective, the hive of reactionary political groups, the resurgence of right wing militants, the Conservative establishment & the Natsec/Military Industrial complex is scary af.

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
The connection between right wing dark money, the Neoliberal Thought Collective, the hive of reactionary political groups, the resurgence of right wing militants, the Conservative establishment & the Natsec/Military Industrial complex is scary af.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
The connection between right wing dark money, the Neoliberal Thought Collective, the hive of reactionary political groups, the resurgence of right wing militants, the Conservative establishment & the Natsec/Military Industrial complex is scary af.
— The Cosmist Insurrection, Inc. ™ (@yungneocon) October 1, 2018

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
The connection between right wing dark money, the Neoliberal Thought Collective, the hive of reactionary political groups, the resurgence of right wing militants, the Conservative establishment & the Natsec/Military Industrial complex is scary af.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
The connection between right wing dark money, the Neoliberal Thought Collective, the hive of reactionary political groups, the resurgence of right wing militants, the Conservative establishment & the Natsec/Military Industrial complex is scary af.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
The connection between right wing dark money, the Neoliberal Thought Collective, the hive of reactionary political groups, the resurgence of right wing militants, the Conservative establishment & the Natsec/Military Industrial complex is scary af.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation infiltrated, spied on, and harassed progressive and radical organizations and individuals across the country, often employing informants and provocateurs to disrupt, disorganize, and discredit leftist movements and groups.

FBI surveillance and the use of paid informants were nothing new to the U.S. domestic security apparatus. While much of the political repression of the 1950s Red Scare and McCarthy era-a period when political repression was largely directed at the Communist Party USA and Communist-led groups like the Civil Rights Congress, the Council on African Affairs, and the International Workers Order-would eventually be declared unconstitutional (the Smith and McCarran Acts, specifically), by the early 1960s a newly invigorated repressive apparatus had emerged.

In A Threat of the First Magnitude: FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration From the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union, 1962-1974, by Aaron J. Leonard and Conor A. Gallagher, we get a bird's-eye view of just some of the nefarious and illegal ways in which the FBI utilized its massive domestic repressive security apparatus, particularly through the use of "informant penetration...[a] key element of counterintelligence."

The FBI's COINTELPRO-counterintelligence program-was not only aimed at the Communist Party USA but also at an array of New Left, New Communist Movement organizations, including Students for a Democratic Society, various Maoist groups like the Revolutionary Union, as well as Black Power groups like the Black Panther Party.

The results were mixed: FBI informants often ended up recruiting other FBI informants who were unknown to each other. This was particularly true of many of the small ultra-left groups that emerged during this time. According to FBI informant records, many of these groups, like the so-called Ad Hoc Committee for Scientific Socialist Line, which sprang "from the counter-intelligence imagination of the FBI," had but a handful of members, many of whom were FBI informants.

Unwittingly or not, many of the activists recruited into these ultra-left groups worked to discredit prominent Communists, like CPUSA general secretary Gus Hall, with material provided by the FBI. The CPUSA, as one of the oldest and most influential left groups in the U.S., was often targeted.

For example, Maoists helped distribute "[Gus] Hall Must Fall" cards at the 1966 Philadelphia May Day Rally. As Leonard and Gallagher note, the FBI "paid two 'vagrants' $1" to pass out the cards and then "sought to make it seem that the Progressive Labor Party-formed by two former CP members that came to support Mao's China-were behind" the attempt to sow discord and resentment.

One of the more illuminating aspects of A Threat of the First Magnitude is what it tells us about how some leftists saw themselves and their organizations during this period, a mix of exaggerated self-importance and acknowledged isolation.

Leonard and Gallagher quote Richie Perez, a leader of the Young Lords and later the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization (PRRWO): "We began to convince ourselves that we were the greatest threat to American imperialism. We were down to about 40 people [members]."

The PRRWO would "split into armed factions and violence became its own end," it was added. Perez and his wife "were kidnapped by an opposing faction and tortured" as suspected informants-a consequence of zealous, irrational ultra-leftism, and FBI manipulation. Many ultra-left groups, like PRRWO, would self-implode with the help of the FBI.

If FBI records are to be trusted, the use of informants as an investigative and disruptive tool would change dramatically toward the end of the 1970s. As Leonard and Gallagher note, the "Bureau went from 21,414 open investigations in July 1973 to 4,868 in March 1976. By May 1978...the Bureau was 'practically out of the domestic security field,'" which, they add, was "an overstatement to be sure." This development occurred because of Congressional revulsion at the abuses of the Nixon administration symbolized by the Watergate affair.

A Threat of the First Magnitude is a welcome introduction to anybody interested in a concise and readable overview of the FBI's misuse and abuse of its power, domestic surveillance and the intentional disrupting of leftist organizations during the 1960s and '70s.

Aaron J. Leonard and Conor A. Gallagher
A Threat of the First Magnitude: FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration From the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union, 1962-1974
Repeater Books, 2018, 330 pages

GET PEOPLE'S WORLD UPDATES

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'A Threat of the First Magnitude': A history of FBI counterintelligence and infiltration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation infiltrated, spied on, and harassed progressive and radical organizations and individuals across the country, often employing informants and provocateurs to disrupt, disorganize, and discredit leftist movements and groups. FBI surveillance and the use of paid informants were nothing new to the U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
@sarahchandar comments on data collection as a form of violence, citing state resources used to criminalise populations, e.g. ProKid predictive policing system in Netherlands vastly profiling Moroccan children. "This isn't just about privacy but racial justice and child rights."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Thread by @DigitalWomenUK: 22 JULY (IN 30 MINS!)| @eldiadia, our academic partner & co-founder of #FoundersinFormation, will be speaking alongside @yassmin_a @Dhak...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
@sarahchandar comments on data collection as a form of violence, citing state resources used to criminalise populations, e.g. ProKid predictive policing system in Netherlands vastly profiling Moroccan children. "This isn't just about privacy but racial justice and child rights."

# data[].attributes.headline
Tech x Racialised Surveillance Webinar Recording

# data[].attributes.subject
Tech x Racialised Surveillance Webinar Recording

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Technology and its role in racialised surveillance | WebRoots Democracy & The Portal Collective

# data[].attributes.headline
Transfeminist Priniciples to Envision Futures Deck 

# data[].attributes.subject
Transfeminist Priniciples to Envision Futures Deck 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
this oracle is a hands-on card deck designed to help us collectively envision and share ideas for transfeminist technologies from the future.

throughout history, human beings have used a wide variety of divination procedures - such as tarot decks - as technologies to understand the present and reshape our destinies.

the wisdom of the oracle, embedded with transfeminist values, will help us foresee a future where technologies are designed by people who are too often excluded from or targeted by technology in today's world.

i have provided the cards below.

you must now envision a futuristic technology using my cards as a guide.

don't worry about what seems (im)possible. we can draw our own future.

i remind you of who you are. i offer you an object as a receptacle for your new technology. it should be embedded with the two values i grant you. your creation should address the given situation.

dont forget to the futures you envision. let us imagine together.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Feminist Principles To Envision Futures | Transfeminist Tech

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
this oracle is a hands-on card deck designed to help us collectively envision and share ideas for transfeminist technologies from the future. throughout history, human beings have used a wide variety of divination procedures - such as tarot decks - as technologies to understand the present and reshape our destinies.

# data[].attributes.body
Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Now Available: Free Download Print from booksellers In Spanish Interactive Web Version Will be available in: French and German, thanks to our global volunteers! "The CI toolkit is my go-to reference...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Zine Story

Over the years, we've traversed the country from coast to coast holding space to facilitate workshops, trainings, survivor healing circles, organizational culture shifts, among many other things, for those in communities seeking space to heal from trauma, address harm, and respond to/prevent gender based violence.

Time and time again, we've put love and intentional labor into creating tangible tools and interactive activities for different audiences to meet their needs, often universally rooted in vision to be in healthier relationships with one another; relationships rooted in open communication, ongoing consent and feedback, ability to voice desire, and respect for individual boundaries and self autonomy.

With movements to end sexual violence and rape culture on the rise, especially #MeToo which has sparked transformative conversations online, we felt it was time to translate the tools and resources we've gathered into a workbook for all to use.

What The Zine has to offer

The zine is complete with key learnings/tools we determined over a period of time as most transformational for our participants in our trainings, workshops, and fellowships, including our consent toolkit with information to analyze power dynamics and coercion, practice open and ongoing communication, and utilize trauma-informed survivor response strategies in our relationships. Included in different sections of the zine are tools to:

Identify your internal boundaries, desires, and needs with boundary mapping and vent diagrams.

Lay out and identify your support systems to enhance self and community resiliency.

Identify and honor your self-care and healing practices.

Identify and practice non verbal forms of communication, as well as understand important signs of dissociation.

Practice different ways of asking and answering questions, especially as it relates to our varied communication styles.

Address harm and violence through a harm reduction framework.

Explore how you relate to gender based violence with historical context and background.

We strive to create the resources our younger, current, and future selves need to navigate the world in a way that feels safe and empowering.

Consent Workbook Zine (Set of 5)

Order a pack of zines for you and your friends, colleagues, or students. We choose to sell in sets of five because we want communities to skill up together. If you just want one copy, we will send you one if you subscribe as a $5 or higher patron at patreon.com/cultivateconsent

The zine is complete with key learnings/tools we determined over a period of time as most transformational for our participants in our trainings, workshops, and fellowships, including our consent toolkit with information to analyze power dynamics and coercion, practice open and ongoing communication, and utilize trauma-informed survivor response strategies in our relationships. Included in different sections of the zine are tools to:

Identify your internal boundaries, desires, and needs with boundary mapping and vent diagrams.

Lay out and identify your support systems to enhance self and community resiliency.

Identify and honor your self-care and healing practices.

Identify and practice non verbal forms of communication, as well as understand important signs of dissociation.

Practice different ways of asking and answering questions, especially as it relates to our varied communication styles.

Address harm and violence through a harm reduction framework.

Explore how you relate to gender based violence with historical context and background.

Check Out Our TEDX talk to learn about our Book

and Sexuality Education Program:

A few years ago, we took a full year off to write our first 2 books: Millennial Sex and Millennial Sex Education, acknowledging the widespread lack of access to comprehensive sex ed for young teens and adults.

From birth through to adulthood, many of navigate the world with false, often always harmful/violent, perceptions of what healthy sexual relationships look like. Identifying this as one of the main causes of gender based violence, especially sexual violence, we came up with sex-positive solutions that wouldn't merely demonize the scripts of our culture, but instead would inspire people to new, liberating possibilities of sexual engagement.

We decided to write the sex-ed curriculum we wished we'd had; the stories, the scripts, and scenarios that would have helped us engage in the sexual culture with more knowledge and maturity ourselves.

Get the print books on Amazon ( Millennial Sex or Millennial Sex Education) or purchase the e-book below. You can get a signed copy if you sign up to join our Patreon community at $10 or more.

The difference between the two

The white cover version is appropriate for ages 16+ and is intended to be an educational resource for individuals, couples, families, and communities. It contains interactive, reflection questions at the end of each chapter. We cover themes of consent, trust, fetishization, trauma, intimacy, and respect.

The black cover version is written for more adult audiences and contains more explicit descriptions and narratives. It doesn't come with reflection questions at the end of each chapter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Over the years, we've traversed the country from coast to coast holding space to facilitate workshops, trainings, survivor healing circles, organizational culture shifts, among many other things, for those in communities seeking space to heal from trauma, address harm, and respond to/prevent gender based violence.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
TransformHarm.org | A Resource Hub For Ending Violence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
TransformHarm.org is a resource hub for ending violence. It offers an introduction to transformative justice. You can use what is here, and submit recommendations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"What Does It Mean to Be An Abolitionist in 2020?" AMC Panel by CR

# data[].attributes.headline
Psychedelic medicine and cultural trauma workshops MAPS

# data[].attributes.subject
Psychedelic medicine and cultural trauma workshops MAPS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Psychedelic Medicine & Cultural Trauma Workshop in Kentucky (August 10-11, 2019)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.