social justice

100 Day Sustainability Challenge: Lessons Learned

Posted on by ekojoshuagoldberg

And that’s that. October 12 was the last day of my 100 Day Sustainability Challenge. This week, some time to reflect on the Challenge and lessons learned.

Recap of the backstory: the idea for the challenge came in early July, inspired by discussions with people around the world who were also taking the online course Learning for Sustainability: Developing a Personal Ethic, my sweet spousey’s “My Summer in Photos” creativity project (taking at least one photo every day), and also spousey and a friend CM’s environmental action challenge done a while ago on Facebook. I decided to do a “100 days of sustainability” project where every day I do something that is related to sustainability, and not count in the list of 100 any actions that are repeats from something I already listed during the challenge. In our house we already do a lot of the “50 simple things you can do” type stuff, so in this challenge I aimed to be creative and think about things I can do that reflect specifics of who I am, where I live, what I value, etc. and that genuinely did stretch me a bit.

In part this was sparked by the past year of mental health struggle that started with a total breakdown and severe depression, which then morphed into alternating between depersonalization/dissociation (being totally checked out) and hypersensitivity/agoraphobia (being hypervigilant and overwhelmed by intense memories, thoughts, and feelings). As I worked on recovery I got to a point where it was obvious that to be able to recover personally, I also needed to recover politically. To feel real, I needed to actually do things that felt important and meaningful.

So, how did it work out in the end?

In going back over all my posts from the Sustainability Challenge, I was struck by five things:

  • Lesson #1: Even if you’re a mess, you can get a lot of shit done in 100 days.
  • Lesson #2: There’s always something that can be done.
  • Lesson #3: You have to start where you are, but you can’t stay there; there is no final resting place.
  • Lesson #4: Sometimes it’s better to do something badly than do nothing at all.
  • Lesson #5: I have so much to learn.

I’ll write a bit more about each of these in the next few posts. First things first:

Lesson #1: Even if you’re a mess, you can get a lot of shit done in 100 days.

Here’s the list of everything I did during this Challenge – with no repeats, as per the Challenge rules.

Rallies, gatherings, and other “on the ground” actions

  1. Action to support the Regional Housing First initiative: worked with a small group of people to plan the action, learned how to set up a Facebook event and created the event listing, created a poster and handbills, put together a list of groups to send event info and promo materials to, and sent promo materials out
  2. No consent, no LNG! action in solidarity with camps at Lax U’u’la, Madii Lii, and Unist’ot’en: worked with a small group of people to plan the action, created an information flyer and event promo handbills, sketched out a banner, attended the event, and helped cover event costs
  3. Went to Sanctuary City rally calling for Victoria city council to implement a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy so undocumented migrant workers, refugees, and immigrants can access health and social services without fear of imprisonment or deportation
  4. Supported local “Refugees Welcome” rally that was part of a cross-country mobilization organized by various organizations and movements: talked with organizers about how to address the many things that are fucked about Canadian immigration laws without reinforcing colonial control of Indigenous lands and participated in discussion about this post-action; folded booklets and helped paint a banner for the event; went to the event
  5. Participated in Community Tool Shed to help remove invasive plants from Meegan (aka Beaconhill park) as part of a broader initiative to reinstate the Lekwungen Kwetlal (camas) food system
  6. Went to Unist’ot’en camp solidarity action (banner hanging from a local highway overpass) and connected with a couple people at that action about ways to provide ongoing support

Lobbying: government, businesses, etc.

  1. Talked with my local MP and current NDP candidate Randall Garrison about my concerns around the NDP’s shift to the right
  2. Challenged a Conservative Party canvasser who came to our house about the party’s stance on immigration and Canadian nationalism and xenophobia
  3. Signed a petition and wrote letters to regional and municipal governments supporting a proposal for regional housing first strategy that would include building 367 units of supported housing by 2018
  4. Wrote Victoria City Council regarding the need to address conditions for people who are currently sleeping outside, and to build non-exploitive, genuinely mutual relationships between housed and unhoused people where together we can think about how as a community we can make sure everyone has a safe place to live
  5. Contacted our municipality’s sustainability coordinator to encourage linking to the current City of Victoria food security initiative and offering to volunteer to help with something similar in Saanich
  6. Signed petition opposing BC government’s agreement with commercial water companies, including Nestlé, permitting them to take groundwater for access rights of $2.25 per million litres and then resell it at a huge profit
  7. Contacted the local 40 Days for Life (an annual anti-abortion vigil) group to urge them to move their location away from the Island Women’s Health clinic, to reduce the harm and stress on clinic patients and staff
  8. Wrote a letter supporting release of Eddie Africa, one of the MOVE 9, who is (after 37 years in prison) scheduled to appear before the Pennsylvania State Parole Board in October
  9. Marked Labour Day by signing the “No 4 and 4” petition calling for the Canadian government to meet 4 demands relating to justice for migrant workers
  10. Sleuthed transit systems in Canada to look at alternatives to disposable monthly plastic bus passes, then contacted BC Transit to request & suggest alternatives
  11. Contacted the maker and seller of our home’s air purifier system to press them on how to recycle HEPA air filters
  12. Participated in provincial government climate action consultation process both to be able to learn more about how the BC government is spinning things, and also to provide comments that challenge the fundamental assumptions embedded in the consultation
  13. Wrote a letter on the 1st of each month to all Canadian federal party leaders & environment reps/critics, as part of the ClimateFast campaign

Mutual aid: Supporting community initiatives to address real community needs

  1. Explored right livelihood, i.e., what it means to make one’s living in a way that does not cause harm and that is ethically positive: followed job ads over a period of time, did sleuthing on farm internships and volunteer opportunities, and scouted farms that are realistically bikeable from where we live
  2. Started volunteering with Mother Felker Farms (MFF), an organic neighbourhood-scale suburban food farm farmed primarily with hand tools and bike-accessible from our home; talked with the farmer who runs MFF about ways to support the MFF community-supported agriculture program in the next growing season
  3. Wrote local government about Bullfrog Power’s new biofuel option as part of supporting localized community-controlled, environmentally sustainable power and fuel generation
  4. Wrote piece and invited input on idea of safe house network as a way of addressing homelessness – as, just like food security, the problem is not that we don’t have enough physical buildings for everyone to have safe shelter, but rather that we have collectively created a culture of fear, mistrust, isolation, hoarding, and individualism, and have lost practical skills around how to look after, relate to, and share with each other

Building and sustaining relationships

  1. Reconnected with old friends/activist comrades who I worked with on Palestinian solidarity and Indigenous solidarity years ago, but had lost touch with, to find out what they are doing and get their suggestions/advice on how to start getting involved again; and asked new friends for input on this question
  2. Started getting to know and working with a local network of people doing local Indigenous solidarity work from an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist perspective
  3. Looked into renting American Revolutionary, a documentary about brilliant activist Grace Lee Boggs (who died in October at age 100), and approached a collective house to put on a film night
  4. Met with the Pie Project coordinator to try to connect with other local folks interested in working on climate change at a neighbourhood level
  5. Reached out to support other people struggling with mental health challenges (inc. depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and panic disorder)
  6. Connected with a local trans health researcher who is interviewing trans people and primary health care providers about best practices in the primary care setting: participated in the study (did an interview), and shared history of past work and materials/reports from past work as part of supporting her current work
  7. Signed up to be a remote letter writer for the California Coalition for Women Prisoners responding to 3-5 letters per month from non-trans women and trans prisoners, as CCWP receives a lot of mail but has limited staff capacity to respond
  8. Talked with local folks interested in ongoing work on refugee rights to brainstorm ideas about local organizing
  9. Celebrated my 11th anniversary with my beloved partner and talked about how to intentionally put energy into sustaining our relationship over the long term; reconfigured our living space at home to reflect other changes happening in our lives, and started discussing a possible longer-term change that would provide more opportunities for collective living with other families
  10. Supported my sweet spouse through return to work and the start of a new school year, by taking care of making dinners and doing house chores for 1 week
  11. Visited my sister, talked with her about sustainability, and decided on sustainability work that we could do in our visit
  12. Practised calling in when white people in my life said things I felt were racist
  13. Went to the Alt Pride All Bodies’ Swim and connected with other trans people for the first time in a long time
  14. Invited my neighbourhood association to sponsor a screening of the film The Good Life, The Green Life as part of an attempt to build connections between people interested in working on sustainability and environmental/social justice

Fundraising, donations, and other financial support

  1. Put call out through personal networks for individual donations to support the Society of Living Illicit Drug Users (SOLID) Indigenous Women’s Action Group, and did some sleuthing for potential longer term grant funding
  2. Donated funds to charity:water to support a running buddy who has committed to running up to 500 miles (!) in 2016, in exchange for funds to support community-based projects to build simple clean water technology (for accessible drinking water, safe sewage disposal, etc.)
  3. Donated funds to support the Medicine Drive for the Unist’ot’en Camp and contacted local herbalists and herbal medicine stores asking them to support the drive
  4. Donated funds and shared public support/solidarity requests from Indigenous land and water defenders, including the Madii Lii camp, the Lax Kw’alaams Lelu Island camp, the Yaakswiis Action Camp, and the Unist’ot’en Camp
  5. Donated funds to support a local group that is working within the Canadian refugee system to sponsor a Syrian family of 5 to come to Canada
  6. Donated funds to the Equal Justice Initiative
  7. Put together cookie dough ingredients for sale to people in line for a local music festival, to raise funds and awareness of Indigenous land struggles
  8. Approached a friend who lives in a collective house to see if they would be willing to host an anarchist seder in spring 2016 (using a haggadah adapted from the one I grew up with) as a fundraiser for Palestinian solidarity initiatives

Building and supporting a sustainable Buddhist sangha (community)

  1. Worked with my Zen teacher to revamp our sangha’s financial accessibility guidelines to further reduce barriers to participation
  2. Started working on a way for our Zen sangha to explore environmental and social responsibility together: discussed possible project structure with my teacher, contacted 4 Buddhist sanghas seeking advice about how to increase sangha engagement in environmental and social justice, organized a Zen crew to go see a local screening of This Changes Everything and participated in post-film discussions
  3. Wrote article on sangha (community) for my Zen sangha’s newsletter
  4. Put up posters for the upcoming Zenwest Orientation to Zen course
  5. Started hashing out with my Zen teacher some ideas for the new Administrative Assistant role I’m taking on
  6. Participated in my Zen sangha’s annual strategic planning session
  7. Transcribed a session of the One Earth Sangha EcoSattva Training, to make the content more accessible to people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, and committed to transcribing two more sessions; explored possibilities for providing real-time closed captioning
  8. Attended trans* Buddhist virtual meditation and participated in post-sit video chat
  9. Started drafting a chapter for the Trans* Buddhist anthology

Using resources responsibly (including time)

  1. Worked on taking basic care of our home and food garden: e.g., daily cleaning of kitchen/living room, fall cleanup of food garden, pulling invasives from our garden, harvesting and processing food from our garden
  2. Worked on reducing compulsive computer use, esp. compulsively checking email and Facebook, and reducing time spent on online entertainment (e.g., Netflix)
  3. Did research on potential rain barrel setup at our home to help divert roof water away from the storm sewer system
  4. Went on a date with my sweet spouse to a local organic food store to try to source plastic-free alternatives to food that our usual grocery store only carries in plastic packaging
  5. Helped my sweet spouse set up a drying rack for indoor clothes drying during rainy/colder weather
  6. Looked into sourcing for LED bulbs to replace regular lightbulbs as they burn out
  7. Looked into how to make one’s home a net zero energy building (including looking into offsetting)
  8. Checked all electrical appliances in house and, where possible, reduced standby power draws by setting up power bars or unplugging appliance when not in use
  9. Water conservation: took shorter showers, skipped showers, experimented with capturing clean water in kitchen and bathroom, looked into ways to safely use greywater to water garden, re-used dishes to reduce dishwashing; used cloth wipes instead of disposable toilet paper; checked water consumption stats against previous year to confirm water conservation efforts were going in the right direction
  10. Sleuthed ways to reduce fossil fuel dependence and made a list for future actions
  11. Retired an old, energy-sucking beast of a desktop computer and moved everything over to an energy-efficient laptop; made arrangements to donate our excess computers (including 2 donated by friends to be used by youth who had been living with us) to not-for-profit organizations
  12. Increased my use of bike for transport rather than bus/carpooling, including some long (> 20k) trips
  13. Returned to being vegan after a few months of eating dairy and eggs in large quantities
  14. Experimented with looking at everything from a “I have enough” mentality instead of anxiety that I don’t have enough ____ (time, money, food, happiness, information, meaning etc.) and racing around trying to get more of whatever I feel I am lacking
  15. Looked into making food for our cats using local sustainably caught fish, rather than relying on commercial product

Personal well-being and mental health recovery

  1. Created a balanced structured weekday schedule
  2. Re-established daily meditation and yoga practice
  3. Reconnected with my spiritual home and family, going out to Kokizan-ji (Red Flag Mountain Temple) for the first time in a long time
  4. Worked on re-establishing basic personal hygiene: showering, clean clothes, etc.
  5. Worked on relationship with food: tried to reduce compulsive eating, eating low-nutrient food, and using food to try to soothe anxiety; practiced eating when hungry and stopping when full
  6. Worked on exercising on a regular basis: daily dog walks, running and strength training as part of a half marathon training group, did part of the Zenwest annual pilgrimage
  7. Worked on improving sleep
  8. When I had a relapse of agoraphobia, read about lapse, relapse, and how to respond in future so a lapse doesn’t turn into a relapse
  9. Worked on challenging fear-based avoidance (not leaving house, making excessive commitments, procrastinating to put off doing an activity I’m scared of, etc.)
  10. Practiced setting goals, making commitments and taking responsibility/making amends where possible for times when I didn’t fulfill commitments to other people
  11. Went to appointments with psychologist who specializes in the mental health stuff I struggle with
  12. Tried out BCALM’s Art of Living Mindfully course

Learning (all reading materials available for free online or through the Victoria public library)

  1. Watched a live stream of the last in Our Place’s 3-part series Transformation Through First Nations History – Gwawaenuk Hereditary Chief Dr. Robert Joseph speaking about reconciliation and the importance of engaging in sacred, respectful dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to transform the relationship
  2. Attended online Refugees Welcome direct action webinar facilitated by Toronto migrant justice organizers
  3. Participated in first 4 sessions of One Earth Sangha’s EcoSattva Training (in process; 4 more sessions to go)
  4. Completed “Story of Stuff” Citizen Muscle Boot Camp
  5. Completed the Coursera course Learning for Sustainability: Developing a Personal Ethic and wrote & posted reflections on what I learned in the course
  6. Learned more about the work being done by the Anti-Violence Project and visited the harm reduction resource space at UVic Pride
  7. Participated in discussion with other Buddhist Peace Fellowship members about actions by Black Lives Matter activists interrupting Bernie Sanders’ speeches to draw attention to racism, anti-black violence, and black liberation
  8. Participated in discussion with other students in my Coursera sustainability course on multiple topics, including food sustainability and food justice; water sustainability; environmental racism; immigration policy and social cohesion with respect to sustainability; re-skilling; what we each do in our own lives to try to live sustainably; environment and social impacts of mining and implications for “green” technologies, esp. “renewable” energy; and environmental impacts of keeping animals as pets and the ethics of domesticating animals
  9. Sleuthed information on the history of voting rights for prisoners and people with disabilities in Canada, and posted information as part of online discussion about women’s voting rights
  10. Commemorated the 44th anniversary of the Attica Rebellion by watching film Attica is All of Us and looking back through archival writing by Dacajewiah, an Attica survivor and longtime Indigenous rights activist. **Warning**: The film includes graphic footage of the state massacre of prisoners and prison staff in Attica, as well as graphic footage of the state humiliation and torture of prisoners following the massacre.
  11. Marked Labour Day by watching the No One Is Illegal video We are the Silent Slaves
  12. Marked the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and learned more about the rebuilding of New Orleans by watching 10 Years After Katrina: ‘Resilience’, ‘Recovery’, and REALITY
  13. Watched A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA, a TED2013 talk by Ron Finley
  14. Read Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace, by Rev. angel Kyodo williams
  15. Read The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the 21st Century by Grace Lee Boggs
  16. Read For Indigenous Minds Only: A Decolonization Handbook, edited by Waziyatawin and Michael Yellow Bird
  17. Read Tsawalk: A Nuu-Chah-Nulth Worldview and Principles of Tsawalk: An Indigenous Approach to Global Crisis, by Umeek – E. Richard Atleo)
  18. Read Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society, edited by Dr. Amie Breeze Harper
  19. Read Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
  20. Read Plastic-free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and You Can Too, by Beth Terry, as well as various articles by Beth on her site My Plastic Free Life
  21. Read The 100 Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating, by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon
  22. Watched documentaries on addiction & the war on (people who use) drugs and posted a review/critique on a local addiction recovery website, and read Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari
  23. Read the Commit to Racial Justice pamphlet produced by participants in an activist camp and wrote a piece on taking anti-racist vows (commitments) as a white settler
  24. Read articles: Privilege Discomfort: Why You Need to Get the Fuck Over It, by Noor Al-Sibai; Why it’s so Hard to Talk to White People About Racism, by Dr. Robin DiAngelo; and Challenging Racism and the Problem with White “Allies”, by Dr. David Leonard
  25. Sleuthed information about the environmental and social justice implications of computer use (including manufacture and disposal)
  26. Started reading the NOII Vancouver Principles and Statements
  27. Started reading Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations, edited by Leanne Simpson
  28. Started reading Active hope: How to face the mess we’re in without going crazy, by Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone
  29. Started reading about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (TPP) to try to understand what some of the local impacts might be
  30. Compiled list of anti-colonial, anti-racist reading and learning materials to work on during and after the Sustainability Challenge

Other

  1. Started working with yes2scs to put together a visual map of their social justice approach to harm reduction
  2. Drafted and put out for feedback a draft piece for two local art projects — All Bodies Are Good Bodies, a fundraiser for the Vancouver Island PWA Society, and Free All Bodies

So, geez. What a great way to challenge my feeling that my mental health problems make me a waste of space (in and of itself a weird capitalist equation of value with productivity). Even struggling as I do, and as frustrated as I often feel with my limitations, I can still get a lot of shit done when there is a setup that is sufficiently flexible to enable me to participate in things.

And, in many ways this ability to get shit done is a reflection of my privileges. My basic physical, emotional, and spiritual needs are covered: I have safe housing, disability insurance that provides enough money for food and water and heat and other necessities, and also extended health insurance that subsidizes to some extent my health care expenses. I have an amazing supportive partner, parents, and sibling, and broader support through networks of friends, spiritual community, political community, and online peer networks. I have a long-time spiritual practice, many opportunities for group practice, and access to a teacher. I have a computer at home that provides me with a way to get shit done and also receive and offer support on days where I can’t leave the house. For many people with mental illness, this is NOT the situation and people are profoundly struggling with day to day survival resulting from poverty, exclusion, and isolation. I am also cognizant that the shit I have been able to do in part reflects that I have an abundance of time – as my illness means I’m not able to be consistent enough to work, and I have no caregiver responsibilities for looking after kids or aging parents.

This lesson is, fundamentally, another reminder to appreciate what I have, and an opportunity to recommit to using my privileges to work towards a society without these kinds of inequities and injustices — where nobody benefits from the exploitation of others and we collectively look after each other and share our responsibilities and resources in an equitable and joyous way. And also to challenge beliefs, including my own, around measuring a person’s worth by a particular kind of productivity and accomplishment – an ideological system that has been so profoundly devastating to people with disabilities, children, and elders.

And what about you?

I would love to get feedback from you. What do you think of all of this rambling? What resonates with you, and what doesn’t? Are you trying your own sustainability initiatives and if so what are you learning?

100 Day Sustainability Challenge: Results from Week #9

Posted on by ekojoshuagoldberg

Recap of the past week

Last week I mentioned that many of the activities that I’ve started doing through this Challenge are ones that I want to continue to do for the long haul, and so I’m having difficulty doing a new thing every week. Because there are so many longer-term actions already on the go, this week I decided to go back to my list of more contained, one-off actions so I’m still stretching myself to try something new every day.

In the first part of the week I did a number of the actions I had planned out:

  • Marked the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and learned more about the rebuilding of New Orleans by watching 10 Years After Katrina: ‘Resilience’, ‘Recovery’, and REALITY. The film, produced by the Greater New Orleans Organizers Roundtable, exposes the spin doctoring behind the 10th anniversary celebrations, documenting the US government’s attempted opportunistic use of the hurricane to advance an agenda of gentrification, displacement of communities of colour, and privatization of public places and public services in New Orleans and other storm-damaged communities of the Gulf Coast region; and the lived experiences of African American, Vietnamese American, and Latino community organizers defending human rights against a tide of disaster-profiteering and displacement.
  • Attended trans* Buddhist virtual meditation and participated in post-sit video chat. The stories of violence, disrespect, and marginalization trans people have experienced from their Buddhist communities, and the continuing impacts, were painful to hear. I was reminded (yet again) how fortunate I am to have a Zen sangha that is inclusive and respectful.
  • Did research on rain barrel setup to help divert roof water away from the storm sewer system. Unfortunately it’s looking like we won’t be able to pursue this as from the type of roof we have the regional district recommends only using the water for non-food plants, and having turned almost all of our space into a food garden that’s all we’ve got at this point. Will continue to sleuth options to see if there is something we can do on this…and definitely will be looking at alternatives to asphalt roof tile the next time we are needing to repair a roof!
  • Went on a date with my sweet spouse to a local organic food store to try to source plastic-free alternatives to food that our usual grocery store only carries in plastic packaging. This was a bit of a bust as although they have a great bulk food selection their jars and bottles all have the same plastic seal as our regular grocery store – will have to keep sleuthing.
  • Talked with the farmer who I’m volunteering with about ways to promote her CSA program in the next growing season.
  • Attended the first session of BCALM’s Art of Living Mindfully course (an 8 week course that “provides participants with a firm grounding in mindfulness based strategies useful in navigating stress and in recognizing patterns of thought, speech and behavior that may be contributing to stress and suffering”). The setup totally didn’t work for me — doing body-centred work is often tricky for me both around gender dysphoria and also trauma, and doing it in an unfamiliar setting with unfamiliar people and squished in so close that the guy next to me kept touching my leg, I was a triggered dissociated panicking mess for 90 minutes. So, I won’t do the rest of the course but am happy that one of the 800 (!) people on the waitlist will have a chance to do it – there are so few resources in the public mental health system. The experience, and the resulting reoccurence of agoraphobia for the first time in a month, was a good lesson for me about how difficult I still find it to recognize and respect my boundaries, and the difference between unhelpful avoidance behaviour (which can > agoraphobia) vs. unhelpfully staying in a situation that doesn’t work for me.

And then on Wednesday Nilufer Demir, a Turkish press photographer, was snapping a picture of Pakistani migrants by the coast when she noticed 3-year-old Alan Kurdi’s tiny fragile body washed up on the beach. Alan, his 5-year-old brother Ghalib, their mother Rehanna, and 9 other Syrian refugees drowned when the boats they were in capsized on its attempted journey to Greece.

This horror is not new. The United Nations refugee agency (UNCHR) estimates that there are currently more than 51 million people who have been forced to flee their homes as a result of war, violence, persecution, oppression, environmental disasters, climate change, and extreme poverty (16.7 million people who have fled their home country and 33.3 million internally displaced people). Every day an estimated 42,500 new people become refugees. And as wealthy countries such as Canada, the USA, European nations, and Australia have become increasingly hostile to refugees, increasing both physical and financial barriers to people seeking asylum, people are forced into more and more precarious means of trying to find refuge. Thousands of Eritrean, Somali, Syrian, Yemeni, Nigerian and Balkan refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean, with the United Nations estimating 3500 deaths last year and 2500 deaths thus far this year. Following last year’s expansion of Border Patrol searches along the US-Mexico border, there has been an increase in the number of people drowning while attempting to cross the Rio Grande as the expanded patrols and surveillance have caused people to try to cross the river in more dangerous and secluded areas. Earlier this year hundreds of Rohingya people from Burma and Bangladesh died at sea and on land-based human smuggling routes, refused entry by multiple countries.

But the story of the Kurdi family — the family photos showing the children full of life and beautiful bright smiles, the photo of a tiny toddler’s lifeless body being carried by a Turkish paramilitary officer, the anguished interview with husband and father Abdullah Kurdi who described how his wife and children slipped out of his hands as the boat capsized, the news that Canadian family members had been trying to bring the family here but had been thwarted by the bureaucratic nightmare that is the Canadian government application system — made directly and viscerally real the human face of the suffering, and the complicity of affluent countries. As one friend put it, “people woke up to what is happening”.

Like many other people I was horrified by the story and wanting to do something constructive with all of that emotion, both to express my grief for the family and also to call attention to the Canadian contributions to the conditions that caused their deaths. “The things that happened to us here, in the country where we took refuge to escape war in our homeland, we want the whole world to see this,” Abdullah Kurdi told reporters. “We want the world’s attention on us, so that they can prevent the same from happening to others. Let this be the last.”

Through Facebook I found out about an event being organized by a few local activists as part of a cross-country mobilization organized by various organizations and movements across the country.

Although support for recent immigrants and refugees have been part of my personal, cultural and political landscape for as long as I can remember, and No One Is Illegal has definitely helped shape how I’ve approached anti-colonialism work with respect to Indigenous solidarity and anti-Zionist work, I have not been directly involved in organizing specifically for immigrant, refugee, and migrant worker rights. I’ve written in earlier posts about having to come at activism as a beginner again after so many years away, and in this movement that is even more true.

So, I have been very grateful to new friends for helping me figure out some things I could constructively do to support the action (the lesson for this week: “There is always something you can do”), and for providing me with a sense of connectedness and confidence to be able to have some difficult public and private conversations with a number of people relating to how to address the many things that are fucked about Canadian immigration laws without reinforcing colonial control of Indigenous lands. This week I have been getting tons of practice calling in, and hopefully am getting better at constructively discussing when there is something I disagree with. Helping fold booklets and paint the banner in the photo at the top of the blog post, and then sharing food and laughs and discussion around a big kitchen table with a group of very thoughtful, smart, funny, and caring people, was wonderful. I have so missed that! The action itself was, as is usually the case for me, pretty overwhelming with a lot of people packed into a small space so we stood at the back the whole time and didn’t stay for the march, but it was good to do something to contribute, even if all the things I did were small contributions.

And it was also fun to engage with a Conservative Party canvasser who is probably wishing he did not come to our house… 🙂 My intention was to practice engaging with him in a respectful and firm way, and not just beak off at him, but try to genuinely find out why on earth someone would support that party. We had a very interesting discussion about the party’s stance on immigration and Canadian nationalism and xenophobia and he admitted at the end that he didn’t actually support the party’s policies, he just believed that the other candidates were professional politicians and he wanted to support someone who he felt was more grassroots. Surreal!

Looking ahead to the next week

It is so important not to just do a one-off action and flit from crisis to crisis in a superficial way. The experience this week affirmed for me that anti-colonial, anti-racist activism is where my heart is. So, I’ve thought a lot in the past couple days about what the next steps could be in the upcoming weeks. Here are some ideas:

  • Continue to learn, in various ways – reading, having conversations, observing, practicing, and learning from my mistakes. This week my goal is to finish reading Tsawalk: A Nuu-Chah-Nulth Worldview and Principles of Tsawalk: An Indigenous Approach to Global Crisis (both by Umeek – E. Richard Atleo) and read the NOII Vancouver Principles and Statements. I am also looking forward to reconnecting with an old friend who I worked with on Palestinian solidarity some years ago, and curious to talk more with her about what if anything is happening in the Jewish community on this.
  • Contribute funds to support a local group that is working within the Canadian refugee system to sponsor a Syrian family of 5 to come to Canada.
  • Continue talking with local folks who are interested in ongoing work, to discuss what next steps might be to support the beautiful vision articulated in Urbane Adventurer: Amiskwacî: “What does it mean to build solidarity between racialised peoples desperate to find refuge here while also asserting Indigenous self-determination?…What would Canada look like if we centred the solidarity between self-determining, self-governing Indigenous peoples and those people also violently displaced by neo-colonial wars, resource projects, climate change?”
  • Pitch in to support a Unist’ot’en solidarity event – not sure yet what that might look like but open to doing any kind of logistical support (e.g., making copies of posters and putting them up to help advertise the event, room setup/cleanup).
  • Attend the Our Place series Transformation Through First Nations History to learn more about local Indigenous history and resistance to colonialism. This will be a big challenge for me to be in a space that is unfamiliar (and a church to boot), with people who I don’t know and nobody accompanying me for support if I have a panic attack. But I have been reminded again this week that my own personal mental health healing is inextricably entwined with communal political healing and that even though it is scary to stretch in these ways, it is important to do so, both for accountability and also for my own sanity.

And there are also some other actions that are important to me in the next couple weeks:

  • Support my sweet spouse through return to work and the start of a new school year – nourishing and sustaining our family is super important. It is going to be a huge change of pace and lots of ambiguity/uncertainty as support staff can be moved all over the place for the first month.
  • Make knishes. I have been really missing my grandparents and hankering for Jewish food lately, and we have beautiful potatoes from this year’s harvest.
  • Participate in my sangha’s annual strategic planning session and help sustain the long-term viability of my spiritual community.
  • Work on my draft chapter for the Trans* Buddhist anthology.

And what about you?

I would love to get feedback from you. What do you think of all of this rambling? What resonates with you, and what doesn’t? Are you trying your own sustainability initiatives and if so what are you learning?

Have a great week!

100 Day Sustainability Challenge: Results from Week #8

Posted on by ekojoshuagoldberg

Whew, intense week.

Recap of the past week

In last week’s post I chronicled my failure to do something every day that contributes to local and global movements for survival and liberation. This week my goals were to keep working on that by reaching out to the people who I know locally and have some kind of activist relationship with, explaining where I’m at and where I want to get to, and asking for help; doing some more searching; being open and seeing what comes up and not spending all my time on the computer (i.e., making time for actual engagement).

I started the week by sending friends the following message (via email and Facebook):

Hello friends. I am slowly and stumbling-ly getting back into grassroots activism after many years away and am struggling to reconnect. So, a question to those of you who do amazing work that I have been inspired by over the years as well as new friends who are involved in grassroots work – any suggestions for people doing good work here that might want volunteer/$ support? I’m particularly interested in anti-racism & anti-colonial organizing. Thanks for any suggestions you can offer! And thank you also for keeping me hopeful about grassroots work even during my most bleak, cynical, and unhappy times.

Am very grateful for all of the suggestions and ideas, thank you. It seems that there is nothing to instantly plug into but much that can be done to nurture old and new relationships and see what emerges. This week I was really happy to visit with a friend-of-a-friend who has been doing local organizing for a while, and next week will be reconnecting with an old friend who I worked with on anti-colonial organizing 8 or 9 years ago. It makes such a difference to spend time with other people who are committed to social and environmental justice, principled solidarity, and actual organizing (as well as wrestling with some of the same questions as the ones I have about how to use race & class privilege to be of maximum benefit).

While continuing to build relationships I have been wanting a framework to help me keep perspective on what well-rounded activism looks like and not go down an overly narrow, unproductive path (e.g., endless social media). The Commit to Racial Justice pamphlet produced by participants in an activist camp outlines 11 anti-racist commitments that I found useful in thinking about how, as a white person, to educate myself in order to see racism and then take action to end it.

  1. I commit to viewing mistakes as opportunities for learning.
  2. I commit to disrupting patterns of domination.
  3. I commit to working on my own defensiveness.
  4. I commit to including the interests of oppressed groups while making decisions that affect them.
  5. I commit to respecting the complexity of issues in my community.
  6. I commit to disrupting the status quo in order to share power and privilege to all.
  7. I commit to reflecting on topics that might feel uncomfortable.
  8. I commit to promoting cooperation over self-interest.
  9. I commit to serving the interests of people over my own personal objectives.
  10. I commit to recognizing the legitimacy of people’s concerns.
  11. I commit to educating myself and working to address the issues that contribute to oppression.

Thus far I’ve mostly been educating myself. Having been away from activism for a while it’s been pretty obvious as I take tentative steps back in that I’m out of touch with what is going on, and need to educate myself. And, that is not where it stops – as I’m well aware from Zen practice, reading about something is not the same as doing it; in the list above “educating myself” is half of one of 11 commitments white people need to make. But it is a place I can start.

So, I spent 3 days nursing a wheezy drippy cold and spending massive amounts of time online – reading articles and collecting future reading materials relating to decolonization and anti-racism and anti-colonial organizing, as well as specific things white people need to learn, challenge, and practice with respect to our own racism. Grateful for a public library system that makes so much accessible; it was great to read Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society (edited by Dr. Amie Breeze Harper) — totally re-inspired me around food — and am looking forward to reading Tsawalk: A Nuu-Chah-Nulth Worldview and Principles of Tsawalk: An Indigenous Approach to Global Crisis (both by Umeek – E. Richard Atleo), Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations (edited by Leanne Simpson), Black Girl Dangerous on Race, Queerness, Class and Gender (by Mia McKenzie), and The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence (by John Ralston Saul). Also looking forward to reading online resources Unsettling Ourselves: Reflections and Resources for Deconstructing Colonial Mentality (compiled by Unsettling Minnesota), Catalyzing Liberation Toolkit: Anti-Racist Organizing to Build the 99% Movement (compiled by Catalyst Project and Chris Crass), the Victoria Sexual Assault Centre’s core training resources, and the Anne Braden Anti-Racist Organizer Training Program 2015 Reader, and the archived articles on the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and Meta-Activism sites.

With all this reading material now piled up I have been trying to move away from obsessively looking for more resources (although your suggestions are always welcomed) and balance reading with practising taking action. Thus far it has been all spontaneous actions as things arise, for example practising “calling in” when white loved ones say things I feel are racist, getting the word out about RCMP and industry harassment of the Unist’ot’en Camp, sharing public support/solidarity requests from the Madii Lii camp and the Lax Kw’alaams Lelu Island camp, and contributing money where I can. Thus far all of these actions are pretty small and not world-changing, but through these small actions I am practising old skills that I’m rusty at, learning new skills, doing something that hopefully is of bigger picture use, and also taking tiny steps to build relationships with other people who also care about these issues.

This week there were also opportunities for other actions:

  • Completed “Story of Stuff” Citizen Muscle Boot Camp
  • Helped my sweet spousey set up a drying rack for indoor clothes drying during rainy/colder weather (their engineering system for our cloth wipes is genius)
  • Harvested drying beans and had a mini-shelling party
  • Learned about the history of prisoner rights to vote in Canada as part of discussion about women’s voting rights
  • Started a discussion with my Zen teacher about a climate change-focused initiative within our sangha as my project for the upcoming One Earth Sangha EcoSattva Training
  • End of month is bus pass time – reminded of the insanity of throw-away monthly plastic passes I sleuthed transit systems in Canada to look at alternatives to disposable monthly plastic bus passes, then contacted BC Transit to request & suggest alternatives

Looking ahead to the next week

As this Challenge progresses I am struggling with how to do all the things I want to do, as many of the activities that I’ve started doing through this Challenge are ones that I want to continue to do for the long haul (for example practicing from the 11 anti-racist commitments listed above is a long-term commitment, and my volunteer work with a local farmer will continue till the work winds down for the winter). Because there are so many longer-term actions already on the go, this week I decided to go back to my list of more contained, one-off actions so I’m still stretching myself to try something new every day. Planned actions are:

  • Mark the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and learn more about the rebuilding of New Orleans by watching 10 Years After Katrina: ‘Resilience’, ‘Recovery’, and REALITY
  • Promote local food – talk with the farmer I’m volunteering with about ways to raise her profile and encourage community-supported agriculture (CSA) sign-up for next year, e.g., local “farm feast” event, neigbourhood flyers; contact friends who might be interested in CSA
  • Look into rain barrel setup for roof runoff: check gutter/downspout options for barrel placement, and source non-plastic rain barrels
  • Excursion with my sweet spousey to a local organic food store to try to source plastic-free alternatives to food that our usual grocery store only carries in plastic packaging (e.g., tamari, seaweed)
  • Finish reading The Pet Poo Pocket Guide and sort out what to do with critter poop (other than sending to landfill, which is what we currently do)
  • Mental health: Attend first session of BCALM’s Art of Living Mindfully course (an 8 week course that “provides participants with a firm grounding in mindfulness based strategies useful in navigating stress and in recognizing patterns of thought, speech and behavior that may be contributing to stress and suffering”)
  • Spiritual health: Attend trans* Buddhist virtual meditation and participate in post-sit video chat

And what about you?

I would love to get feedback from you. What do you think of all of this rambling? What resonates with you, and what doesn’t? Are you trying your own sustainability initiatives and if so what are you learning?

Have a great week!

100 Day Sustainability Challenge: Results from Week #7

Posted on by ekojoshuagoldberg

As I started to write this I realized that last night I reached the halfway point of this Challenge (50 days done, 50 days to go). So, today starts the 2nd half of the Challenge.

Recap of the past week

In Week #7 I had two goals: (1) reduce computer use (with a gradual cessation of specific computer activities), and (2) use that freed up time to do something that contributes to local and global movements for survival and liberation. I already wrote quite a bit last week about the reasons behind these goals, so won’t recap that context here.

What I learned this week: The short answer — it can be a lot easier to refrain from doing an activity (even an entrenched habitual activity) than to actively do something outside my comfort zone. The long answer — read on!

My computer reduction plan for the week went mostly as scheduled. I went for 7 days without Netflix, 6 days without Facebook, 5 days without checking the news, 4 days without email, 3 days without YouTube or any other form of online entertainment, 2 days without internet sleuthing, and most of the final day completely unplugged from the computer (I ended the week’s challenge at 6:30 PM as without the ability to do any of the other stuff, I ended up unplugging a day early). There were two minor “life happens” glitches – did a quick internet sleuth when my sweet spouse needed help with something that could not be sorted out via phone, and computer problems prior to a planned Skype meeting required I shoot off a quick email to let my long-distance colleague know I’d be late. As I know already that it’s pointless to be perfectionistic, I didn’t stew about either of these.

The experience of being unplugged was really pleasant. I was shocked by how much time it freed up (a good reality check on how much I have been using the computer lately). I was also surprised by the cessation of the feeling that I am never doing enough to keep on top of things, always feeling pressed for time and rushing through each task – which speaks to the emotional and mental fatigue that comes from information overload. Definitely I enjoyed life a lot more the less I was plugged in.

As for using my freed up time to do something that contributes to local and global movements for survival and liberation…FAIL! This was a really interesting experience as it is the first time since this Challenge started that I totally hit a wall. Without the computer, I could not think of more than a couple things that I could do. And even of the few things I had planned out, I did not do most of them. Before I get into what I think was going on with that, I want to first identify the things that I did do, as there are some amazing initiatives that I hope readers will consider supporting:

  • Community Tool Shed (CTS): For many years a member of the Lekwungen community has invited Indigenous people and allies to work together in reinstating the Kwetlal (camas) food system. This food system has endured over 150 years of colonial impacts, and today the 5% of the remaining Kwetlal food system remains threatened and weakened through the suppression of cultural roles, land fragmentation, and proliferation of invasive plant species introduced by colonial settlers. Through the CTS participants come together for a couple hours once a month to help restore and caretake the Kwetlal food system, learn about the impacts of colonialism, and learn about traditional food systems and the land. This month we met in Meegan (Beaconhill park) and removed Scotch broom and English ivy. I’ve known about the CTS from its inception in 2011 but this was my first time actually participating.
  • Unist’ot’en coastal tour: As mentioned in Challenge Week #4, for the past six years Wet’suwet’en people from the Unist’ot’en clan and allies have been maintaining a community in Unist’ot’en yintah (territory) that is directly in the path of planned oil and gas pipelines that are opposed by grassroots Wet’suwet’en people. The Unist’ot’en camp is, in the words of the Unist’ot’en Declaration, “an expression of the continuing and unbroken chain of occupation and use of our territory by our clan”. This past week Unist’ot’en hereditary chiefs and the official camp spokesperson have been travelling in Coast Salish territories to share their experiences and also raise funds to support the camp. I had planned to go to the local event but was overwhelmed after having a bit of an adventure getting home from visiting sweet spousey’s campsite 28k from where we live, and decided to spend the night at home and just send a donation separately.
  • Equal Justice Initiative: From a friend’s book suggestion, this week I read Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson. The book is a beautifully written, heavy and important indictment of the prison-industrial complex and capital punishment, and the ways that racism and poverty tie into both; and also tremendously hope-filled stories of grace and compassion from the individuals and communities most affected. The author founded and still works for the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), and wow – the EJI does amazing prison justice, economic justice, and anti-racism work, including litigating on behalf of prisoners who have been sentenced to death, youth in prison, people wrongly convicted or charged with violent crimes, people living in poverty who have been denied effective legal representation, and others whose trials are marked by racist bias or prosecutorial misconduct; working with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and racism; advocating for reform of the criminal justice system; and raising public awareness about the impacts of mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and the ways that the prison-industrial complex both reflects and re-entrenches systemic oppression. As a starting point I donated money to the EJI last week and this week plan to work through the EJI’s other posted suggestions for ways people can get involved.
  • Catalyst Project’s Anne Braden Anti-Racist Organizer Training Program for white social justice activists: This 4 month political education and leadership development program is designed to support the vision, strategy, and organizing skills of white activists in becoming accountable, principled anti-racist organizers building multiracial movements for justice. I first learned about the program in 2013 when a dear friend and very inspiring activist, organizer, and all-round amazing human being took the training. The program’s course reader is publicly available and I had hoped to, at minimum, use some of my time this week to start reading from the 2015 reader. But I didn’t do this – instead I read 2 other books: Plastic-free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and You Can Too, by Beth Terry (who runs My Plastic Free Life, a great online compendium of resources) and re-read The 100 Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon.

Some reflections on these efforts: honestly, I’m disappointed in myself, and also curious about why I took this route. Having identified in last week’s post so many potential issues I could have learned more about and found ways to contribute to, why didn’t I actually do anything on most of them? Why, if I wanted to learn more about plastic, didn’t I look at social justice and survival issues relating to the plastic industry? There are many resources I found in a quick Google search, e.g., Van Jones on the link between the concept of disposability of plastic and the white supremacist ideology of disposability of certain groups of people, the Center on Health, Environment and Justice factsheet on the disproportionate location of PVC plants in low-income communities of colour, or the PBS documentary on North American/European countries dumping toxic plastic waste in Ghana, China, and India. Why then did I focus on a book that deals only cursorily with the intersections between social justice and environmental justice? Ditto re industrial agriculture – reconnecting food with place is super important on so many levels but why did I go with a book that is mostly a personal foodie journal by two white people, and a book I’d already read to boot (and how freakin twisted is it that I did that right after taking part in something specifically about Indigenous food systems?!).

There are some obvious answers:

  1. Individually: I’ve been racist and buying into white-supremacist thinking (dismissing, marginalizing and trivializing the expertise of Indigenous people and people of colour; positioning white people as more central, knowledgeable, and relatable to me; and not being consciously aware of this process).
  2. Systemic: On a systems level what I just described about individual thinking applies as well to who gets coverage in media, library $ allocation for book purchases, etc.

Both of these are I suspect true to some degree. But I think that in large part the answer comes from what I wrote in Week 6: “I was also reminded this week of how my race and class privilege gives me the option to decide if, when, and how I put time and resources into supporting certain survival/liberation movements, and the obscenity of that privilege when so many people are fighting every day for their lives and the survival of their loved ones.” That it is uncomfortable, painful, and challenging to confront the reality of one’s own privilege is not news to me, but my resistance to following through on it was a bit of a surprise.

I often clarify my own thinking by reading other people’s writing, so started by reading Noor Al-Sibai’s piece Privilege Discomfort: Why You Need to Get the Fuck Over It, and was struck by this:

It’s an enormously uncomfortable feeling to sit with — to be accused of racism by one’s simple existence, by the accident of birth and genetic pigmentation, or accused of sexism by being comfortable with the male gender one was assigned at birth. Most white people and men choose not to continue that line of thinking….But the fact remains that it is the discomfort and isolation of the privileged that stops them from recognizing and doing something about the oppression of others. I could lament all day about how difficult it has been for me to come to grips with my white privilege, but that struggle is nothing in comparison to the oppression faced by people of color.

That moment of discomfort and isolation is so essential to becoming a better ally and to becoming a better person, because it’s at that moment that, consciously or not, the privileged person recognizes that their whole entire life is based upon a system of inequality that is inescapable and wrong. It’s at that moment that the majority of “liberals” become turned off to race, gender, queer and disability theory. To look at oneself and claim that “I benefit from institutional racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and ability-discrimination” isn’t exactly a walk in the park.

And it’s at that moment that we must remind ourselves that as dissonant and uncomfortable and perhaps even painful as it might be to admit that we perpetuate oppression simply by existing, it’s a hell of a lot easier than actually being oppressed.

Buddhist practice gives me lots of tools to work with resistance to a feeling of discomfort, to just be with it (not hanging onto it and not pushing it away), and the curiosity to investigate it and try to understand it more deeply. I haven’t used any of those tools this week. What I’ve done instead is to fill up my time with something that is less challenging and more comfortable, to try to move back into ignorance, to fall asleep again. Without the computer to give me busy-ness (and simultaneous feeling of accomplishing something), this pattern has been more exposed.

In Why it’s so Hard to Talk to White People About Racism Dr. Robin DiAngelo describes “white fragility” — stress/discomfort experienced by white people as a result of a challenge to the belief structure, cultural norms, expectations, centrality, control, and sense of entitlement that white people have (often unconsciously) as a result of living in a white supremacist society; and a corresponding push back when challenged through withdrawal, defensiveness, crying, argument, minimization, ignoring the challenge, or otherwise seeking to regain “our racial position and equilibrium”. As an antidote to this harmful brittleness Dr. DiAngelo suggests:

  • Being willing to tolerate the discomfort associated with an honest appraisal and discussion of our internalized superiority and racial privilege.
  • Challenging our own racial reality by acknowledging ourselves as racial beings with a particular and limited perspective on race.
  • Attempting to understand the racial realities of people of color through authentic interaction rather than through the media or unequal relationships.
  • Taking action to address our own racism, the racism of other whites, and the racism embedded in our institutions — e.g., get educated and act.

Although the content above is specific to racism, and there are unique features of each type of privilege/oppression that bear examination and consideration, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend similar strategies for cisgender people wondering how to deal with their transphobia, or straight people wanting to work on their homophobia.

And this brings me to the other element that this week’s experience pointed out for me — the importance of real life relationships. It is telling me to me that this week’s fail was during a week where, through my reduction in computer use, I could not do online activism. At this point, having been away from in-person activism for so long, I rely completely on the internet to hear about things that are happening and mostly on the internet to participate. Through Facebook I’m starting to be able to put names/faces to some local activists but do not have actual real life relationships with people who are doing local Indigenous resurgence, anti-colonial, and anti-racism work; although I kinda sorta know what is going on with anti-poverty work through friends who are involved in those movements, it is still not a real personal connection for me — in contrast with earlier decades of my life, none of the people in my life now are struggling with homelessness, addiction, imprisonment, criminalization, or working in the survival sex trade, and there is no immediately visible street community in the suburban neighbourhood that I live in. We’ve lived in this neighbourhood for 8 years and although it is one of the most mixed I’ve experienced in Victoria in relation to language, ethnicity, and culture, I only know my most immediate neighbours by name, and they are white, relatively affluent people. If someone asked me what the immediate survival issues are in our community, other than very general responses like “colonialism”, I honestly wouldn’t know. Showing up for one Community Tool Shed is the first real-life thing I’ve done to connect with local Indigenous survival and resurgence efforts in almost a decade.

So, reality check – I am a total beginner again, and need to continue to press myself (and set up accountability) to actually take the many uncomfortable steps necessary to move forward. And when I get uncomfortable, try to catch it as quickly as possible and do something constructive with it instead of staying stuck.

Looking ahead to the next week

I’ve been sitting here for an hour now staring at this screen, Googling various search terms trying to find local groups doing work on survival issues and figure out what the heck to write here.

Dr. David Leonard offers this pith advice in Challenging Racism and the Problem with White “Allies”:

I focus on words like those articulated @prisonculture, ‘JUST DO THE WORK. Don’t talk about, “reflect” on it, pontificate, Just ACT. That’s it.’ And while doing the work, be accountable.

This is a totally unsatisfying way to end this post. I want to have a plan, or at least a framework for what to do next. But I really am at the starting point, and don’t know what to do other than the very next step. So, my plan is this: reach out to the people who I know locally and have some kind of activist relationship with. Explain where I’m at, where I want to get to, and ask for help. Do some more searching. Be open and see what comes up. Don’t spend all my time on the computer.

And what about you?

I would love to get feedback from you. What do you think of all of this rambling? What resonates with you, and what doesn’t? Are you trying your own sustainability initiatives and if so what are you learning?

Have a great week!

100 Day Sustainability Challenge: Results from Week #6

Posted on by ekojoshuagoldberg

Hello everyone! It’s been an interesting week, transitioning from a mostly opportunistic approach to finding things to do each day, to a much more structured/planned out approach.

Recap: Week #6

I mentioned last week that the theme for this week would be energy conservation and reducing fossil fuel dependence (and related greenhouse gas emissions), and planned the following actions:

  1. Look into LED bulbs to replace regular lightbulbs as they burn out
  2. Look into what kind of system we could use for indoor drying of clothes during rainy/cooler weather
  3. Finish reading The Pet Poo Pocket Guide and sort out what to do with critter poop (other than sending to landfill, which is what we currently do)
  4. Write local government about Bullfrog’s new biofuel option as part of converting to green energy
  5. Do research on how to make one’s home a net zero energy building (including looking into offsetting)
  6. Start compiling list of zero-waste resources and ideas for actions
  7. Check all electrical appliances in house and, where possible, reduce standby power draws (e.g., by setting up power bars or unplugging appliance when not in use)

How did the week actually go? I ended up doing 5 of the actions listed above (did not do #3 or #6), as well as a few actions responding to things that came up as the week went along that were not on the list:

  • contacted the maker and seller of our air purifier system (which helps those in our family with asthma as well as skin allergies) to press them on how to recycle HEPA air filters
  • inspired by a post by the ever-amazing Katie Loncke, co-director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, read more about the recent actions involving Black Lives Matter activists interrupting Bernie Sanders’ speeches to draw attention to racism, anti-black violence, and black liberation, and engaged in discussion with other Buddhist Peace Fellowship members about the tactics and purpose of those actions
  • watched documentaries on addiction & the horrific mess that is the war on (people who use) drugs, and read book on drug war policy, decriminalization, and legalization

This mix of planned actions and room for spontaneity feels great. I like having a plan and not being overly attached to the plan. I was also reminded this week of how my race and class privilege gives me the option to decide if, when, and how I put time and resources into supporting certain survival/liberation movements, and the obscenity of that privilege when so many people are fighting every day for their lives and the survival of their loved ones. So, as part of Week 7 I decided to do a combo action each day – refraining from something that is a waste of time, and using that time to do something that supports survival/liberation movements. Which leads me to…

Looking Ahead: Week #7

Last week I mentioned my intention to use Week 7 to tackle my longstanding and sticky habitual overuse of the computer. I often pat myself on the back for not having an iPhone or even a cell phone, but lately I have been plugged into the laptop most of the day and compulsively checking email, Facebook, and local news. By interrupting this habit pattern I hope to really have a look at how I’m spending my time and using electricity, with the aim of, in the longer term, using the computer only when actually necessary (both to reduce my consumption and also make more time for deliberate and useful activities).

I started by mapping out 6 ways I use the computer, and staggered them throughout the week so each day I add something new to my “I’m not doing this activity this week” list and am thereby cumulatively reducing my computer use. I wanted to start with the ones that are most challenging so I can get more practice days on those activities. What the plan looks like thus far:

  • Saturday > Friday (7 days): No Netflix
  • Sunday > Friday (6 days): No Facebook
  • Monday > Friday (5 days):  No news checking
  • Tuesday > Friday (4 days): No email
  • Wednesday > Friday (3 days): No online entertainment (YouTube, TV shows, etc.)
  • Thursday > Friday (2 days): No internet sleuthing
  • Friday (1 day): Completely unplugged – no computer use at all

To be clear, I don’t think any of these activities are intrinsically bad or wrong; I primarily use Facebook, online news, email, and internet sleuthing to find out what is going on politically, stay connected with loved ones, and achieve other goals that have real meaning and value to me, and most of what I watch on Netflix, YouTube, and online TV has at least some educational value. Personal computers have made many good things possible in my life and in society at large, including mass-scale actions, increased accountability and transparency in corporate and government dealings, democratization of media, increased accessibility of information, improved communication and networking between marginalized communities, crowdfunding, production and sharing of creative arts, health and environmental research, etc.

But even “good” computer use is a form of consumerism with definite environmental and social justice implications. As electronic devices, computers require a wide variety of resources for production and operation (e.g., metals, chemicals used in plastic construction, and electricity), many of which are associated with social and environmental justice concerns. As an example, coltan mining is an unregulated industry and although coltan is found throughout the world, rich countries have primarily supported resource extraction from poor countries with extremely vulnerable populations. Accordingly coltan mining has been implicated in the development of slave labour operations, child labour, financing of dictatorships and military conflicts, destabilization of traditional economies and Indigenous cultures, water pollution, wildlife predation, and a host of other ills. Additionally disposal is a concern as computers contain components that can be toxic to humans and other animals, and the sheer volume of waste from consumer demand for new and improved models is staggering – according to Wikipedia, in the USA alone 30 million computers are discarded annually. There is a huge energy demand for electricity to make, transport, operate, and dispose of computers.

And if I’m being honest, not all of my computer use has any redeeming value. I find it strangely relaxing to watch movies where people blow shit up – arguably an immoral waste of resources, and often accompanied by misogynist, racist, militaristic, and otherwise hugely offensive plotlines, stereotyping of characters, etc. Less offensive but equally wasteful are the many hours I’ve spent watching videos of cute baby animals.

Additionally I’m not sure what computers are doing to our brains and bodies. In my own life, I notice that with my increased reliance on the computer, I have become rusty at old-school skills like having a face-to-face or telephone conversation with someone, looking up information in a book, or figuring stuff out on my own. The computer makes stuff way easier, and that is both a blessing and a curse – the more I opt for the easy path, the more I expect everything to be easy and the more resistant I become to doing something that requires even a little bit of effort, let alone actual struggle. Computer over-use has also been implicated in significant health problems including muscle pain, eyestrain, headache, stress disorders, and changes in how our brains process and respond to stimuli (as a result of the visual and auditory hyperstimulation involved in many forms of on-screen entertainment). Computer use can be highly addictive, with compulsive and excessive fixation on internet interactions, gaming, etc. persisting despite serious negative consequences in a person’s personal, social, or work life.

There is an obvious and urgent need for people like me who use more than a sustainable share of resources to use less – for the planet’s health, social health, and our own personal health. There is also an obvious and urgent need for all of us to use our time wisely, including meaningfully contributing to social and environmental justice.

And so, in Week 7 I’ve decided to do two types of activities each day – (1) refraining from some aspect of computer use, and (2) using that time to do something that contributes to local and global movements for survival and liberation. There is no shortage of things to do given settlers’ attempts to exterminate Indigenous people and cultures; legislated poverty and repression of people who do not have shelter; police brutality, particularly against Indigenous people and black people; deaths resulting from the drug war, criminalization of the sex trade, and the prison industry; refugees forced into dangerous migration attempts and squalid living conditions; communities of colour dying from disproportionately high rates of cancer due to environmental racism; farmworkers subjected to toxic agricultural chemicals; high rates of heart disease among people living in poverty who do not have access to nutritious food; people living in countries torn by conflict and civil war; people living in countries with past conflict where landmines and other unexploded ordnance continue to kill; people dying of treatable illnesses because big pharma will not make affordable medicines available…the extent of death and destruction is overwhelming but also means that there should be no difficulty in finding something useful to do! I have not planned out what each of the day’s “do something useful” activities will be as it has been a long time since I’ve been involved in this kind of work so it might well be that much of this week is just baby steps to find out what is going on, what I can usefully do, etc. Still, I am excited to be taking even these small steps, and curious to see what happens when I move away from the computer and into the world.

And what about you?

I would love to get feedback from you. What do you think of all of this rambling? What resonates with you, and what doesn’t? Are you trying your own sustainability initiatives and if so what are you learning?

Have a great week!

100 Day Sustainability Challenge: Results from Week #4

Posted on by ekojoshuagoldberg

Wow, it’s already been nearly a month since I started this Sustainability Challenge. Cool! Seems like a good time to reflect on the Challenge as a whole, as well as reporting back on lessons learned from week #4.

Week #4: This week it really felt like a lot was about relationships and starting to take some baby steps around connecting with people and building principled community. I know in theory that relationships and community are important for sustainability, health, and creating positive change, but a lot of my experiences of political community have sucked. Rather than working to improve my skills to be in community I have mostly dealt with my disappointments and hurts by holing up at home. So my relationships have dwindled over time and I have become quite rusty at community-building skills. To change this I will need to actually get out there and practice being in community, and developing relationships with people who, however shyly or clumsily, are also interested in the same kind of issues as I am. And on that note, some actions from Week #4:

  • Unist’ot’en solidarity. Six years ago Wet’suwet’en people from the Unist’ot’en clan set up a permanent community in their traditional territory that is directly in the path of planned oil and gas pipelines that are opposed by grassroots Wet’suwet’en people. The Unist’ot’en camp allows Unist’ot’en people and allies to continuously monitor the roads through the area to protect Wet’suwet’en lands from incursion (the road leading into the territory has been closed to all further industry activities and a protocol is in place to ensure that anyone travelling through the territory has consent to be there). In addition to protecting Wet’suwet’en lands there are also efforts to build a healing camp to help extend the leaning, healing, reconnecting with nature, and decolonization work that happens every day at the camp, with Indigenous youth as the main focus. This week I attended a solidarity action (banner hanging from a local highway overpass) and connected with a couple people at that action about ways to provide ongoing support. I was very embarrassed that I have been away from Indigenous solidarity work for so many years but glad to take some small steps towards this again and to meet other people with similar interests.
  • Trans community. Since burning out in trans community work many years ago and dealing with a lot of hurtful criticism by other trans people related to the work I was doing, I have for the past 10 years avoided trans community events and now do not have many trans people in my life. Impressed by the Alt Pride parade that we went to a few weeks ago, this week I went to the Alt Pride All Bodies’ Swim and connected with other trans people for the first time in a long time. It was an amazing thing to have my shirt off in a public setting, scars and all, and to be in the presence of other people who have experienced shaming around their bodies but are determined to love themselves and each other, and to build a world where all bodies are valued and seen as beautiful. This week I also connected with trans Buddhists in Vancouver and New York. All of a sudden after many years of hiding from trans people, there are a whole bunch of trans people are coming into my life and I am grateful!
  • Housing. There has been heavy local controversy recently about Victoria City Council’s exploration of setting up a tent city, micro-housing village, and other band-aid solutions to homelessness. Many people have pointed out how ineffective these initiatives are in addressing the root causes of homelessness, such as poverty and lack of affordable housing, and have called for the provincial and federal governments to step up around providing housing funding. In response to the proposal of setting up a tent city in a local park there has also been the predictable NIMBY (not in my backyard) poor-bashing, stereotyping and fear-mongering about people who are homeless being a danger to children and home-owners. So, this week I wrote Victoria City Council to express my support for their efforts to improve things for people who are currently sleeping outside and to ask for their input on the idea of a network of safe houses (more on this below), and more generally ways to build non-exploitive, genuinely mutual relationships between housed and unhoused people where together we can think about how as a community we can make sure everyone has a safe place to live, instead of waiting until government provides money to build more housing.
    More on the safe house network idea: For some time now I have been thinking that the problem is not that we don’t have enough physical buildings for everyone to have safe shelter, but rather that we have collectively created a culture of fear, mistrust, isolation, hoarding, and individualism, and have lost practical skills around how to look after, relate to, and share with each other. Definitely there are some people who need solo living options as they are currently too traumatized to be able to live with other people, and homeless people should not be forced into housing that is not of their choosing, but for people who are open to sharing space, if everyone who was housed shared their resources with people who do not have housing, there would already be more than enough to go around. (This is like the situation with food. Hunger exists not because there is not enough food, but because there is inequity in food affordability and distribution.) This kind of informal sharing of space already happens, between people who know and trust each other (family, friends, friends of friends, etc.). Sometimes these arrangements are horrible, exploitive, unsafe, and totally substandard; it is not uncomplicated, but sharing bathrooms, kitchens, sleeping space, and storage space is a possibility if there are genuine relationships between people with and without housing.
    And that is where I see a big gap. Currently the main ways that housed people get to know people without housing is typically through some kind of formal service relationship – whether as a paid professional or as a volunteer. And in those relationships it is considered unprofessional and unethical to have a real mutual relationship that might include people who are “clients” coming to the house of the person who is the “service provider”.
    For some time I have been kicking over the idea of having a voluntary safe house network, where people with housing agree to share what they have with people who need space. That sharing might take the form of having people be able to come have a shower, or share a meal, or stash their stuff, or put up a tent, or stay in a spare room, or use a computer…there are many possibilities.
    When I think about the kind of neighbourhood I want to live in, I want my neighbourhood to be very diverse, connected, and caring. I want to live in a neighbourhood where we can not only borrow a cup of sugar, but someone could go to someone else’s door and ask to use the bathroom, or where there could be an open invite to come over and share dinner – that is the way I remember my grandmother approaching the world and I have seen examples of this throughout my life that have really moved me. When our next door neighbour’s bathroom wasn’t working they came over to use our shower, and they let us use their washing machine when ours was busted. How can we extend this concept of “neighbour” to include people who do not have housing but have many other things they can share? This is something that has been restless in me for a while, living in this beautiful house and not having shared it with many people, and is an ongoing conversation with my sweet spousey about how to make sure he gets what he needs in terms of safety and privacy and home as a place of refuge from the world, which is something I value but also have some different feelings about. No doubt this will be an ongoing discussion…I am grateful he is willing to have these conversations!
  • Learning. This week I completed week 1 of the “Story of Solutions” 4 week Citizen Muscle Boot Camp program. Week 1 is about figuring out your purpose and the course uses short creative exercises to help clarify your skills, interests and passion. I wrote: “My purpose is to use my writing and problem-solving skills to, working with others who are engaged in a contemplative practice, inspire and empower people to challenge and change the ways we think about our relationships to ourselves, each other, and the earth!” The wording is clunky but I found the process of working on this helpful not only in thinking about how to focus my activist efforts but also giving me some ideas of what I want to look for in paid work.
  • Visiting family. This week I visited my sister, who is living up-island on K’ómoks traditional territory. It is the first time that I have travelled in over a year and I was pretty nervous about it, so didn’t set any particular sustainability goals, but aimed to travel as lightly as possible. I made the trip by commercial bus, and the bus was not very full, so was likely a heavy fossil fuel use per person – next time I will look into taking a smaller shuttle bus instead. Both going there and returning, I brought healthy home-made food in a reuseable container and a refillable bottle for water, instead of buying unhealthy over-packaged food/drinks. I also continued water conservation practices, not difficult to keep in mind as up-island they are also in a drought, and their local government has, unlike ours, put signage up everywhere and has implemented appropriately stricter restrictions around water wastage. Under the terms of this Challenge actions that I’ve already written about earlier don’t count as actions this week, but I was proud to do them in another location. My sister set up a rain barrel to help collect roof water for her garden and I checked out her setup as part of thinking about how we could set up a rain collection system here to divert water from the storm sewer system and into the ground. We also did some work around garden planning and problem-solving around how to keep her garden soil healthy while minimizing invasive weeds. While at her place we also talked about how to do food and decided to home-cook meals instead of eating out, and then planned and made healthy delicious vegan meals using local produce as much as possible. Yay! It was great to talk with someone else about sustainability and find things that we could do that required a bit of effort but were simple and satisfying.

This week I have also been reflecting on the connection between my mental health recovery and the collective state of deep disturbance that we are in. After two glorious weeks of being free of agoraphobia and not having any panic attacks, this week I had several days of great difficulty (with repeated panic attacks, both out in public and at home). It was deeply upsetting and disappointing and made me question what to do around work, volunteering, and other out in the world stuff – am I doing too much, or am I just having rational and sane feelings arising from breaking out of denial and getting more in touch with the disconnect between my values and the really sick culture that I live in? How does one stay sane in a suicidal culture, and move from shallow level actions into deeply nourishing, transformative work? I don’t know what the answer is but still feel that to recover integrity of self I need to keep going with this path of using my time and energy to work on things that I hope will help create positive change in the world, just keep going and see what happens…

General reflections on the Sustainability Challenge thus far: In this first month I have mostly been opportunistic about ways to do something new around sustainability. I have made lists of ideas for actions to take, but haven’t actually mapped out when I will pursue any of them. And thus far there have been many opportunities to do something each day so it has, for the most part, not been challenging to find things to do. But I would also like to experiment with being more intentional about it and also planning specific actions to take so that the more complicated actions that require a bit of planning do not get forgotten, and I’m not just looking around at the end of the day for simple/easy things I already do, or things that may not be particularly effective, just so I can say I did something. Ideas? Suggestions?

Thanks for reading! I look forward to comments 🙂

Sustainability course and 100 day challenge

Posted on by ekojoshuagoldberg

A couple weeks ago I was reading an interesting piece from raptitude.com and there was mention of Coursera, an online platform/repository for free online university courses that can be taken by anyone anywhere who has internet access. I had heard in passing of MOOCs (massive open online courses) through my university job, but had never looked into it. So, I browsed the Coursera catalogue and wow, there are courses on everything. Really.

With so much time on my hands right now as I plod through treatment & recovery, I am definitely missing intellectual stimulation but don’t want to take on too much volunteer work as I have a lot of difficulty concentrating some days and am not able to be super consistent at this point, and don’t want to let people down if I say I’ll do something but then can’t follow through. So, a course with lots of flexibility about when you do the coursework sounded great.

I initially signed up for a course titled Learning how to Learn that sounded quite interesting (and is on demand so you can start it whenever and do it at your own pace) but then noticed a course with a set start date called Learning for Sustainability: Developing a Personal Ethic, and the start date was…the same week I was checking out Coursera! Kismet. So signed up for that, along with 11,499-ish other students. Wow.

We are on week 2 of the course and it runs for another 3 weeks. Thus far it has been very interesting. The didactic material is presented mostly through short videos, plus marked and non-marked assignments done through a variety of means (thus far, filling in a map, doing a short survey, drawing a chart, coming up with a personal definition of sustainability, as well as posting/commenting on the course discussion forum). My favourite part, no surprise, is definitely the discussion forum – anyone who knows me even a teensy bit knows I love to chew things over with other people. And how freakin cool is it to talk about things with people who are literally all over the world. The (voluntarily entered) map of students’ locations shows people from every continent; thus far I have had fascinating conversations with people living in Canada, England, France, Germany, India, Peru, Scotland, South Korea, and USA (and if you take into account where each person came from originally, an even wider range of countries – Brazil, Bulgaria, Liberia, etc.) about food sustainability and what we eat for breakfast, water sustainability, environmental racism, immigration policy and social cohesion with respect to sustainability, re-skilling, and what we each do in our own lives to try to live sustainably. In each of these topic threads there have been many other people chatting, and these are only a few of the several hundred discussions going on between class participants on a very wide range of issues. Pretty cool!

Inspired by the discussion forum conversations I’ve had thus far, my sweet spousey’s “My Summer in Photos” creativity project (taking at least one photo every day), and also spousey and a friend CM’s environmental action challenge done a while ago on Facebook, I have decided to do a “100 days of sustainability” project where every day I do something that is related to sustainability, and not count in the list of 100 any actions that are repeats from something I already listed during the challenge. Typically I find that we already do a lot of the “50 simple things you can do” type lists, so in this challenge I want to be creative and think about things I can do that reflect specifics of who I am, where I live, what I value, etc. and that genuinely do stretch me a bit.

I tend to think of sustainability in environmental terms but of course social justice is inextricably linked to environmental sustainability so there are lots of things I can do to try to make a difference. My actions could be learning more about a local organization’s work and supporting them in some way (however small), trying something to reduce my consumption of natural resources, writing letters, having discussions with people and learning from what they are doing, whatever. And why not use this blog to write about what I’m learning, collect resources, etc.? Am not planning to blog here every day, but think it might be fun to do a periodic summary of what I’ve learned, high points/challenges, etc.

So, starting tomorrow…off I go! 🙂

(Note: 100 days from tomorrow = Oct 12 so this challenge is going to run from the US Independence Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Interesting. Maybe I will kick things off and end things with an anti-colonial action.)