(See here and here for an explanation, below the exercise for guidelines on doing this yourselves.)
Q: Have you already given up an activity, a system or an institution—or actively tried to destroy it—that benefited you, because of how much it hurts other people?
What was it?
What did you lose by giving it up or breaking it down?
What else happened because of this choice?
Is it a choice you have to make over and over?
What did it feel like the first time you made it?
How has that feeling changed?
When will you have to make that choice again?
Or, if you haven’t made it yet, when do think your next chance to choose will be?
*
PRACTICE: This one may vary depending on people’s answers to the above question
If you aren’t yet: Choose something you’re involved in, and that you and other people are harmed by, that you would like to explore giving up, tearing down or letting go. Learn more about its history and about the history of people fighting it. Learn about each other’s, with people in the group, or choose one together. If possible, learn about it with other people who are involved in it as well—if it’s your career, for example, this might mean inviting people at your workplace to learn this history with you, in addition to (or instead of) learning with the people you usually practice with.
GOOD TO DO
Choose the questions and/or practices you want to do at least a few days before getting together to do them. This means that people have time to feel their way into them and no one is surprised. The reasons for doing them—outlined above—should also be really clear before you do them.
If it’s a short gathering or if you have other things to work on, limit it to one question set or one practice.
Whatever ways you have of looking out for each other while you’re together also apply here. If you don’t have ways of doing that on purpose, developing them before you begin would be a good idea.
Have snacks around during the practice, and share a meal at the end. Do this even if you’re doing it remotely and can’t literally hand each other food.
Remind each other that it’s okay to do the questions or practices in a way that makes sense for you, which might mean changing them a little.
Every so often, offer or take the option to say how you’re feeling in your body, without needing to explain why.
Take both formal/guided breaks where you move, breathe, or otherwise remind yourselves and each other that you live in your bodies on earth, and regular breaks where people can walk around, go pee, have a cigarette, whatever.
Remember that people’s different histories may make these questions and practices difficult for them in different ways and amounts. Choosing a story to share, thinking in a different way, remembering and feeling can all be stressful. Be patient with yourself and others.
Try to keep your attention in the room you’re in and with the people you’re with. People may go “in and out” a little bit in their attention if what you’re doing is stressful for them, and that is okay.
Wind down at the end by asking people to say something about what they want to leave behind and something they want to carry with them, or something similar to help people return to their day or night.
IMAGE: Three or four baby wild turkeys pecking for food in short grass, in a mix of sunlight and shade. It often seems like turkeys couldn’t possibly learn all that well, but every year, more turkeys are born.
Thank you to the Assembly of Light Choir for testing these questions out with me.
(See here and here for an explanation, below the exercise for guidelines on doing this yourselves.)
Q: What is a loss you’ve lived through that you can talk about?
What is a loss you know you could live through if it happened?
What power, knowledge, or freedom has your grief given you?
How can the grieving and the not-yet-grieving hear each other?
PRACTICE: Stand facing each other. Thinking of losses you have felt or fear or are enraged by, someone will start by making a quiet wail or moan, and others will join in. Add your voices, listening and matching the sounds, tones and loudness, making these more intense when it feels right to do so, until you are all as loud, wild and mournful as you can be. Someone can then start bringing the tone and loudness down, until everyone is quiet again. You can do this once or multiple times.
GOOD TO DO
Choose the questions and/or practices you want to do at least a few days before getting together to do them. This means that people have time to feel their way into them and no one is surprised. The reasons for doing them—outlined above—should also be really clear before you do them.
If it’s a short gathering or if you have other things to work on, limit it to one question set or one practice.
Whatever ways you have of looking out for each other while you’re together also apply here. If you don’t have ways of doing that on purpose, developing them before you begin would be a good idea.
Have snacks around during the practice, and share a meal at the end. Do this even if you’re doing it remotely and can’t literally hand each other food.
Remind each other that it’s okay to do the questions or practices in a way that makes sense for you, which might mean changing them a little.
Every so often, offer or take the option to say how you’re feeling in your body, without needing to explain why.
Take both formal/guided breaks where you move, breathe, or otherwise remind yourselves and each other that you live in your bodies on earth, and regular breaks where people can walk around, go pee, have a cigarette, whatever.
Remember that people’s different histories may make these questions and practices difficult for them in different ways and amounts. Choosing a story to share, thinking in a different way, remembering and feeling can all be stressful. Be patient with yourself and others.
Try to keep your attention in the room you’re in and with the people you’re with. People may go “in and out” a little bit in their attention if what you’re doing is stressful for them, and that is okay.
Wind down at the end by asking people to say something about what they want to leave behind and something they want to carry with them, or something similar to help people return to their day or night.
IMAGE: A flat expanse of sand where saltgrasses used to grow, but nothing is growing right now, with strips of vegetation and water in the distance.
Thank you to Janice and to the various crews of We Gather and Interdependence Days for trying out parts of this exercise with me.
(See here and here for an explanation, below the exercise for guidelines on doing this yourselves.)
Q: What reminds you of the truth that you are part of nature?
What distract you from it or leads you to forget it?
What is the cost of forgetting it?
What is the cost of remembering it?
PRACTICE: Stand (if you are able) or sit, recline, etc. with others and close your eyes.
Feel gravity and envision the earth holding you to itself.
Feel your heartbeat and envision water flowing through you.
Feel your breathing and envision air holding you up and outward.
Open your eyes and look at the people you are with.
GOOD TO DO
Choose the questions and/or practices you want to do at least a few days before getting together to do them. This means that people have time to feel their way into them and no one is surprised. The reasons for doing them—outlined above—should also be really clear before you do them.
If it’s a short gathering or if you have other things to work on, limit it to one question set or one practice.
Whatever ways you have of looking out for each other while you’re together also apply here. If you don’t have ways of doing that on purpose, developing them before you begin would be a good idea.
Have snacks around during the practice, and share a meal at the end. Do this even if you’re doing it remotely and can’t literally hand each other food.
Remind each other that it’s okay to do the questions or practices in a way that makes sense for you, which might mean changing them a little.
Every so often, offer or take the option to say how you’re feeling in your body, without needing to explain why.
Take both formal/guided breaks where you move, breathe, or otherwise remind yourselves and each other that you live in your bodies on earth, and regular breaks where people can walk around, go pee, have a cigarette, whatever.
Remember that people’s different histories may make these questions and practices difficult for them in different ways and amounts. Choosing a story to share, thinking in a different way, remembering and feeling can all be stressful. Be patient with yourself and others.
Try to keep your attention in the room you’re in and with the people you’re with. People may go “in and out” a little bit in their attention if what you’re doing is stressful for them, and that is okay.
Wind down at the end by asking people to say something about what they want to leave behind and something they want to carry with them, or something similar to help people return to their day or night.
IMAGE: Black trumpet fungus growing near moss, twigs, dead leaves and other small plants.
Thank you to the Assembly of Light Choir for testing this exercise out with me, and Monster Trux for trying it out on their own.
(See here and here for an explanation, below for guidelines on doing this yourselves.)
QUESTIONS AND PRACTICE FOR THINKING AHEAD
QUESTIONS:
Where do you see yourself in five years?
What parts of your life does your answer include?
What parts does it leave out?
What do you see when you turn your attention to those parts?
Who taught you to see the future?
Whose stories about the future have you been listening to?
What would you hear if those stories were silent?
*
PRACTICE: Take turns choosing one element of the future you’ve imagined for yourself, and write a “budget” for it—everything that would have to come toward you in money, and also time, the effort or work of others, air and food and water, everything that you don’t control that would have to stay true or become true—and the effects that it will have on you and on the world around you. Which costs of this future will you pay? Which will be outsourced to others?
The goal of this practice is to do all of the math around your dream or vision—not just the part that touches you directly. The people whose turn it isn’t should suggest things to take into account, speaking without judgment.
GOOD TO DO
Choose the questions and/or practices you want to do at least a few days before getting together to do them. This means that people have time to feel their way into them and no one is surprised. The reasons for doing them—outlined above—should also be really clear before you do them.
If it’s a short gathering or if you have other things to work on, limit it to one question set or one practice.
Whatever ways you have of looking out for each other while you’re together also apply here. If you don’t have ways of doing that on purpose, developing them before you begin would be a good idea.
Have snacks around during the practice, and share a meal at the end. Do this even if you’re doing it remotely and can’t literally hand each other food.
Remind each other that it’s okay to do the questions or practices in a way that makes sense for you, which might mean changing them a little.
Every so often, offer or take the option to say how you’re feeling in your body, without needing to explain why.
Take both formal/guided breaks where you move, breathe, or otherwise remind yourselves and each other that you live in your bodies on earth, and regular breaks where people can walk around, go pee, have a cigarette, whatever.
Remember that people’s different histories may make these questions and practices difficult for them in different ways and amounts. Choosing a story to share, thinking in a different way, remembering and feeling can all be stressful. Be patient with yourself and others.
Try to keep your attention in the room you’re in and with the people you’re with. People may go “in and out” a little bit in their attention if what you’re doing is stressful for them, and that is okay.
Wind down at the end by asking people to say something about what they want to leave behind and something they want to carry with them, or something similar to help people return to their day or night.
IMAGE: A grapevine seen from below, with vines, leaves, sunlight coming through, and grapes just starting.
Thank you to Monster Trux for testing this exercise out and telling me how it went.
I’m weaving insights from conversations with many wise and brave people, at the Climate Anxiety Counseling booth and elsewhere, into a workbook for change: exercises to adapt our minds, feelings & relationships to the kind of action that climate change and other, related crises require of us. I’m looking for existing groups of people to try out these exercises so that I know whether and how they work for people; over the next few days, I’ll post a few that people have already tested and given me feedback on.
What’s below is an outline of the methods and I’m using to put the workbook together, and guidelines for doing the exercises (which will also appear whenever I post one). Please comment with any questions that aren’t answered here.
THE WHAT AND THE HOW
The questions and practices in this workbook are to help us imagine and practice living in, with, and through the changes that climate change is bringing to our lives, and to become who we need to be to meet them together. The questions are to expand our sense of what’s happening, how we’re reacting, and what’s possible. The practices are to—well, practice—thinking, feeling and acting in ways that may benefit us differently than the ways we’re used to.
You will want to ask and answer these questions, and do these practices, with people you already have some trust with: some of the questions are harder to answer than others, different ones will be hard for different people, and not every question and practice may work well for every group. It may also be better if they’re people you already meet with regularly for another reason, so that you can use the ways of organizing yourselves and looking out for each other that you already have. But if that’s not possible, using these as a reason to start meeting together is okay too.
The guidelines that follow are to help you set yourselves up to do these things together. Trying them out will help me revise them to be better for more people, to make them more widely available, and eventually to include them as part of a longer book on living in climate change. All of the sections will eventually have more in them!
Some of the practices, especially, are based on exercises developed by others; where that’s true, you will see those people’s or organizations’ names along with the name of the question set and practice. I am seeking their consent to include it in the published version. A list of ways to learn more about those people and organizations will be at the end of the workbook eventually. I’m working with an accessibility consultant to make sure that there will be multiple exercises that are doable for many people with various disabilities, but that process is not complete and what makes an exercise doable for some may make it impossible for others. I will also work with translators to make the exercises available in that respect.
While everyone’s reactions are different, some of these questions and practices are more likely to bring up painful emotions or memories, or to be difficult to carry out. The ones marked “yellow” are likely to be easier; the ones marked “red” are likely to require more vulnerability and strength.
You may find that the guidelines below are not the best for you—culture, context, experience, group size, group purpose and more might mean that you need to change them to be useful—but this will give you something to get started with.
GOOD TO DO
Choose the questions and/or practices you want to do at least a few days before getting together to do them. This means that people have time to feel their way into them and no one is surprised. The reasons for doing them—outlined above—should also be really clear before you do them.
If it’s a short gathering or if you have other things to work on, limit it to one question set or one practice.
Whatever ways you have of looking out for each other while you’re together also apply here. If you don’t have ways of doing that on purpose, developing them before you begin would be a good idea.
Have snacks around during the practice, and share a meal at the end. Do this even if you’re doing it remotely and can’t literally hand each other food.
Remind each other that it’s okay to do the questions or practices in a way that makes sense for you, which might mean changing them a little.
Every so often, offer or take the option to say how you’re feeling in your body, without needing to explain why.
Take both formal/guided breaks where you move, breathe, or otherwise remind yourselves and each other that you live in your bodies on earth, and regular breaks where people can walk around, go pee, have a cigarette, whatever.
Remember that people’s different histories may make these questions and practices difficult for them in different ways and amounts. Choosing a story to share, thinking in a different way, remembering and feeling can all be stressful. Be patient with yourself and others.
Try to keep your attention in the room you’re in and with the people you’re with. People may go “in and out” a little bit in their attention if what you’re doing is stressful for them, and that is okay.
Wind down at the end by asking people to say something about what they want to leave behind and something they want to carry with them, or something similar to help people return to their day or night.
HOW A SESSION MIGHT GO
Choose a question set and or exercise to do together next time, maybe one that’s in line with your usual reason for getting together, maybe not.
The next time you meet, do what you usually do to begin your time together.
If necessary, remind each other of the things that are “GOOD TO DO” above, especially if this is an addition to what you usually do when you get together.
Ask and answer the questions or do the practice together.
Do whatever else you were planning to do as part of your gathering. If you’re going to include questions or practices in your next gathering, choose the ones you want to do. End the gathering as you usually do.
As we practice acting with care and courage, we get better at it. That is what these exercises are intended to help us do.
IMAGE: Close-up of chickpeas cooked with tomatoes and spices, which is what I cook whenever I want to feed a large group of people.
Normally at this time of year, I’d be repainting the booth and setting up the season’s first Climate Anxiety Counseling shifts. COVID-19 makes it unsafe to talk to multiple people face to face at close range, so I won’t be rolling out the booth this season.But our climate anxieties haven’t gone away and the systems that drive climate change and distribute its effects unequally–environmental racism, extraction, capitalism, colonization–are also worsening, and distributing unequally, the effects of COVID-19. It is a good time, I think, to adapt our minds, feelings & relationships to the kind of action that climate change and other, related crises require of us, and I’ve started developing a workbook of ways to do that.
The questions and practices in this workbook are to help us imagine and practice living in, with, and through the changes that climate change is bringing to our lives, and to become who we need to be to meet them together. The questions are to expand our sense of what’s happening, how we’re reacting, and what’s possible. The practices are to—well, practice—thinking, feeling and acting in ways that may benefit us differently than the ways we’re used to.
Over the next few days, I’ll be posting exercises that have already been tested–either by me with a group of people I’m part of, or by a group of people that doesn’t include me–as well as some explanation of how I’m putting them together and some guidelines for trying them out yourself. If you’re interested in trying an exercise with a group you’re already part of, write to me at my gmail address, publiclycomplex, or comment here with your interest, your questions, and a way to get in touch with you. I will be grateful for your help in making this workbook more usable and useful.
IMAGE: Photo of flat land with water, grass and a few trees. A white woman with glasses and long dark hair is standing in the foreground on cracked, dry mud, taking notes on a piece of paper. Photo is by Dezaraye Bagalayos.
Meanwhile, the company that wants to build this garbage depot has asked Providence City Plan Commission for another 60-day extension on their application. The Commission will decide whether to grant this request on March 17, 4:45pm, at 444 Westminster St in downtown Providence. Come to the 1st floor meeting room that day to show them that we’re paying attention and need our voices heard.
If you’re able, please come to the RI state house today (starting at 4:30) and testify against Rep. Corvese’s bill that would make protections like masks/face coverings, knee pads–knee pads!–and gas masks illegal for protestors, putting them at risk of a year in prison or a $1000 fine if they use these protections, and at risk of increased harm from both fascist militias and police if they don’t.
Steve Ahlquist has written more about the bill and its effects if it becomes law. He writes powerfully about fascists’ methods of targeting and threatening people online as well as in person if they can see their faces, in order to frighten people into accepting fascist violence–especially people who our government also often fails to serve, or actively targets for violence, in other ways.
If you are someone who for whatever reason can’t attend protests (rallies, demonstrations, marches) but recognize the work they do to bring the wrongdoing of power to light and to resist structural violence, you can help support them in that work by testifying today.
Please come to the RI State House today (Tuesday 3/10) at 4:30 pm to testify against H7543.
WHAT IS IT THIS TIME? Truck exhaust and toxic dust in the air, and garbage juice in the water, from a new scrapyard company that is trying to build on Allens Avenue—unless we stop them.
TRUCK EXHAUST? 188 or more trucks–probably diesel trucks—would go to and from the scrapyard every day, on and off the highway. When they can’t unload right away, they will circle the Allens Avenue area, pumping even more toxic exhaust into the air that we and our kids breathe.
TOXIC DUST? Digging to build the scrapyard will stir up over a hundred years of polluted dirt, containing lead, arsenic and other dangerous chemicals. The construction garbage that the scrapyard wants to process is also full of materials that it’s dangerous to breathe.
GARBAGE JUICE?
Leachate is garbage juice—liquid that comes out of the things that people throw away, including machines and moldy things, and collects in the trucks. Leachate can sink into the soil and get into the water, and the company has even said they’re going to spray more of it to keep the dust down!
WHAT CAN WE DO?
Tell your friends, family and co-workers about it, especially if they live in the neighborhood.
Attend the City Planning hearing on March 17th at 4:45pm at 444 Westminster St, Providence (the big brick building at the corner of Westminster and Empire, downtown).
Weather: We were inside the Arlington Elementary School cafeteria. Outside it was mild, in a post-frost way.
Number of stoppers: 15
Number of walkbys: None (see below for why)
Pages of notes: 15.5
Pictures taken with permission: 1
Conversations between strangers other than me: 6 or 7; again, see below for why
Observations:
The purpose of the Speak Out was to listen to people living in the three neighborhoods covered by the Cranston Health Equity Zone about the factors that contribute to, or tear down, their health and well-being. There were other stations about food access and quality, transportation, housing, trauma, education, affordability and expenses, and a few other things, and the event was set up so that people could enter a raffle if they got a paper signed at every station. So a lot of people stopped to talk with me who might not have otherwise.
Also for this reason, I was talking with people pretty much constantly except at the very end when the crowd thinned out (after the raffle, I think). So if there were walkby comments I didn’t hear them, and because it was inside and no one had a service dog, there were no dog sightings. I didn’t collect money today, although I did tell a couple of people about the Tooth and Nail Community Support Collective, where other donations have gone this season.
The HEZ set me up with a Spanish-English interpreter (plus a floating Khmer-English interpreter, who also translated some signage for me) and a note-taker. As the conversations went on, both of these people talked with the people who were talking with me—sometimes with me involved, sometimes while I was talking with someone else. I loved this and want to do it all the time now! They both appear in these conversations: N is the interpreter, and C is the note-taker. K is me.
My signage was different today, based
on conversations with a few people in and outside the HEZ, and I’m
kicking myself for not taking a picture! The front of the booth said,
“Climate Anxiety Counseling 5¢”
and then, in Spanish, English and Khmer, “Are you stressed? Angry?
Worried?” and then, in English at the bottom, “Here to listen.”
Instead of a blank map of Rhode Island for people to write their
worries on, I drew a map of some of the climate change/health
connections specific to Cranston (there’s a picture below). All the
RI organism cards I gave out were food or medicine plants that grow
wild in the city, and one person recognized one of them, which was my
secret dream!
No Batman sightings today either, but
the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, who was maybe about 6, helped
me pump up the handtruck tire that won’t hold air.
Some conversations:
It’s not something I really pay
attention to. You live in New England, you get what you get.
K: [I said something about high heat days, and she took it a different way than I meant it.]
Oh, yeah, the heat.
Definitely heat. My daughter gets assistance for heat.
K: Or I don’t know if you remember the flooding back in October—
Oh yeah. Yeah ,we live right on Pontiac. … I work for the school department, and I have five grandkids that I pick up every day. I don’t have time to breathe. My husband’s retired, so he’s sitting around all day and I’m doing all this. But I can’t sit around doing nothing. But yeah, my daughter had to move, and she went from gas to oil—now she’s back to gas, and we had to fill out the paperwork again. She’s a single mom with three little girls—seven, six and four, the baby’s almost five.
So it sounds like—obviously you
want to do it, but it sounds like that takes a lot out of you.
Yeah, but like I
said, I need to be doing something. And she does have enough support.
When it’s too much, I call my sister, she’s in Ohio, and we just
vent. She vents to me too—she just found out my brother-in-law has
prostate cancer, and they can’t operate because he’s already had so
many surgeries. But life is life. You gotta have a positive attitude,
you can’t go around every day down in the dumps.
*
Every day there’s a
reminder of the fact that we’ve got twelve years, ten years, before
we can turn the clock around.
K: Sometimes like to ask people how they know what they know about climate change—where have you been seeing that?
Well, the media,
but I’ve also been reading a lot of reports, studies, that say
realistically we need to start changing it around now. But I don’t
know what, if anything, we’re really gonna do. Obviously we do things
in our own communities that are helpful, but what governments and
corporations are doing—I generally try not to be stressed out about
it. I do worry about other people, in my community and elsewhere, who
don’t have the resources to deal with it…
…There just needs to be better allocation of resources. I don’t want to get too political, but Mike Bloomberg bought $30 million of political ads for one week, and he’s got [billions of dollars] total. The UN released a report that the food crisis could be solved for $30 bilion. It’s just really bad allocation of resources. [Climate change] does have real life consequences, but it’s hard for people to conceptualize how to address it on their own local level. There’s this LNG plant they want to build in Providence, down on Allens Avenue … If that thing ever blows, not only is the whole community affected but Cranston and Edgewood are gonna go just like that.*
C: What makes you so involved?
I started when I was eighteen or nineteen, but when I bought a house and I realized I was gonna be staying for thirty years—that’s why housing is so important. That’s what gets you invested in the community—well, there’s family ties, but a lot of people don’t like their hometowns.
*The Univar chemical tanks, which are within the explosion range of National Grid’s LNG facility, have a 14-mile disaster radius.
*
One of the things, for example—it doesn’t have to do with climate change—but where I live, I try to grow things over the summer, and animals come over the summer and they don’t have food, so they eat it, so I never get to grow any food. Sunflowers, tomatoes—these animals, the little chubby ones, they created this tunnel underneath the house. And something that worries me—where I live now there hasn’t been a problem, but at the time when I lived around this area, we had a problem with rats. I worry that they might come through the pipes for the laundry.
*
I’m pretty sure the
school that I live next to has radon in the basement. Supposedly
they’re knocking it down in the next few years, so I don’t know
what’s gonna happen then.
K: Is it something that people talk about in the neighborhood?
I know the kids are scared to drink the water at school. It’s kept pretty hush-hush, but the parents all used to go to the school.
K: Is it the kind of thing where parents might be willing to get together to ask for some kind of action?
I used to do after-school programs there, and the problem with any kind of action is that there’s a lot of languge barriers. A lot of the parents are immigrants coming from other countries, they’re scared to say anything—people don’t know that we live in a democracy [sic] and that they can speak up. And there’s a lot of grandparent-raised families and multi-job families. I work for One Cranston, and we ask people what they would change about their communities, and a lot of people don’t know what they would change about their community.
*
Climate change,
that’s an issue. I’d say I’m pretty worried. I like what Providence
did, with no more plastic bags.
When do you think about it, what
gets you started worrying about it?
Randomly. Or I’ll
start thinking about it over the summer when it gets really hot, or
when weather changes too drastically.
C: What kinds of things do you worry
about?
How animals are
gonna get affected. They don’t really have a choice. I’m a big animal
person—I like them more than people.
Do you try to look out for animals
or help them survive?
In Guatemala I saved a lot of turtles. My family’s from there, so we go down there every year. We were at this restaurant and there were baby turtles in cages, I guess because the bigger turtles [in the pond] wanted to eat them. But there was a little hole in the cage and the baby turtles were getting into the pond. So I was like to the guy at the restaurant, “Do you have a net or anything?” and he got me a long net and I caught them and put them on a little dock. My family’s like, “[NAME], come, the food’s on the table and it’s getting cold,” and I was like, “I don’t care, I’m fishing out turtles.” … I would love to save animals 24/7.
*
Just, like, the
timeline– “We’ve got twenty years and then we’re all dead.”
K: How does it feel to see people saying that?
I just
stopped going on Facebook. But anytime I make—I just graduated from
college, so anytime I’m making large life choices, I’m like, “What’s
the point?” [laughs]
K: You’re laughing but I’m guessing you don’t really think it’s funny, so—what is the feeling?
I don’t know if I
have a good word for it. It’s not one of those stresses that come up
every day.
K: How does it affect your decisions?
I don’t know if
it’s made a specific or conscious choice that I’ve made. There’s just
so many big things [happening] and it’s just like, what’s this big
thing.
*
I feel like I don’t
know enough. I’m embarrassed to say that.
K: [I pointed her towards the map I had made, which you can see below.]
I can say this, I’m
sensitive to high heat days in terms of my workplace. OSHA doesn’t
govern schools. There are days where I can’t even walk up the stairs,
let alone be in that building for six hours. Sometimes people will
pass out.
*
[This person spoke
quietly and it was hard for me to hear them well, so there are some
gaps.]
I’m a little bit worried about myself—from the war, I went through a lot. From 1970 to 1975. I left my country. I’m here helping people, especially with education for people from poor countries. People in my country who were educated were killed by [the Khmer Rouge]–professors, doctors, police…
…I’m still too much in my mind. All the worries for everybody, many things with my job. [He named the schools he worked at.] I retired Friday, June 26, 2015, almost five years now. I’m still thinking too much. My family all graduated from high school, Classical or Central, [I think he also said where some of them were going to college]. Myself, I’m still worrying about living here. I’m healthy, but my mind still misses my country. I want to fight for freedom—not to arrest good people.
[C
asked a question about how he thought the Cambodian government would
respond if there were bad storms.]
They’re selfish.
They didn’t care. The government doesn’t come up with a solution.
They take your family from the ground to the top. Day by day, I’m
safe but I’m thinking about them.
K: When you feel like it’s too much for you, what do you do? Is there someone you talk with, is there something else you do?
I went to the
doctor. The doctor told me I need counseling, but I can control it
myself. Sometimes I get headaches, I take a pill, one aspirin. I
exercise sixty minutes every day. I don’t know what the solution is.
*
[Person 2 was
Person 1’s mom.]
Person 1: Does it
affect us? Not really.
Person 2: Yeah, it
does.
K: I like it when people who are talking with me disagree, because it means we can try to figure out whether you really don’t agree with each other or whether you’re reacting to different things. So can you tell me why you think it won’t affect us?
Person 1: It’s
natural—well, all the gases in the air coming from cars, and coming
from factories, causes climate change, that’s not natural. But it
wouldn’t affect us directly.
Person 2: It’s
affecting us right now, ’cause we have more hurricanes because of the
things that we’ve done to the environment. It’s affecting the
climate—the air gets trapped and it causes natural, what we call
natural disasters.
K: Does it stress you out to think about it?
Person 2: Yeah it
does, because it makes me think, what’s the future gonna be like? All
these things we call natural disasters, but it’s not natural. If you
call it natural—but it’s something we can do something about.
N: So in a sense we’re building it
up. We’re like, “Oh, where is this coming from?” But we built it
up.
Person 2: We’re
living in this earth—it’s gonna affect the generations to come.
We’re all human and we’re all connected! We’re gonna feel something.
… I try to use less vehicles, walk places, riding a bike.
K: Also there’s things like—if the bus was better and went more places, then people would use their cars less.
Person 2: But the
bus is costly for someone who can’t afford it. If it’s free—then
the bus company doesn’t make money, so then we pay for it out of our
taxes. But it could be less costly.
Person 1: They do
offer it for free when it’s too cold.
Person 2: When we really think about it, everything is connected to climate change.
Person 1: I
understand it from that perspective too—but before climate change
we have to get into other things as well. We have to take care of
ourselves as a people before we can worry about the climate.
*
I’m a science teacher. This is in our curriculum, and we spent most of the first quarter talking about it. I know a lot about it, and it does make me anxious.
So I have two questions. How do you
deal with that anxiety with your students? And how do you deal with
it when you’re by yourself?
It’s hard to hide
it, because stressing how important it is is what makes it
worthwhile. I try to spin it as an optimistic thing: you are the next
generation, you have the power to change things.
K: What about when you get home?
It’s peaks and valleys. It can be pretty optimistic and moving to hear things that my students have to say. But it can be pretty depressing knowing that some people are out there actively doing things to spot progressive change. What kind of world—I don’t have children, but if I have children—will they be living in? …. It feels like it would be kind of selfish to [have children]. I studied environmental science, it was my major in college, and I’ll never forget, the first day of class, Environmental Science 101, the professor said, “This is a depressing major …” So it’s always in the back of my mind. It makes me more conscious of trying to make better decisions. I carpool to work … There are so many aspects of the world today that are heavy and depressing.
*
I’m in Sunrise, I’m on the recruitment team. I’d really appreciate it if you could send people my way for the next strike, on December 6th.
How’d you get involved with Sunrise?
I was at Wyatt Detention Center at a protest—that was the first action, the first activism I’d ever done. I was like, “Hey, let me actually do stuff.” There was a Sunrise person there from Philly, and they were like, “Actually, there’s a meeting tomorrow.” So I went to it. I’ve been doing other activist work as well … Climate change is just a bummer. Just doing work about it—I probably don’t dedicate as much time as I should, but doing work around climate-change-adjacent things, it helps keep me not as anxious. It feels like I have nothing to feel bad about. Even if in twelve years Delhi is uninhabitable, it’s 200 degrees in Death Valley, I have the satisfaction of the knowledge that I tried, I did what I could, I tried my hardest. I can’t just not do social justice and climate justice.
*
I really don’t know
that much about it. I have asthma. But it isn’t as bad as it used to
be, so maybe the pollution isn’t as bad. I heard about plastic, I
heard that in Providence you can’t have plastic bags.
What have you heard about plastic?
… How animals are
gonna die—it’s making it [easier] for it to kill the sea animals.
People are taking action upon it though.
[We also talked
a little bit about relationships between humans, plants and other
animals in ecosystems, like how ocean algae produces 2/3 of the
oxygen we breathe.]
*
Climate change
affects our mood. I do see people’s mood change when it’s colder,
they’re depressed and down. I see a lot of people being affected,
especially people who are away or apart from their families. In
summer I see more people getting together, depression seems to get
better with summer being around. Stress is worse during the
winter—people are worried about paying for heat. People are coming
more for assistance so they can be able to afford heat, or for
National Grid to extend services because of heat.
C: In your work with people and
families, do you hear them concerned with big storms, or power
outages, or stuff they hear about the environment in the news?
I haven’t heard
much of that. It’s more people filling out paperwork for National
Grid to say they can’t shut off their electricity or heat.
K: And that’s so wild because that’s
the same people, we have to pay money to the same people who are
making the climate worse.
C: Do you think that people realize
that?
I don’t think
they’re aware of it—I don’t think people realize that many things
are part of the same thing.
K: So your job is really helping people survive. Is that a strain on you? What about when somebody gets turned down?
That’s a terrible feeling. I see the frustration in their face, that they’re not going to be able to survive living here when it’s actually cold.
N: Let’s say they get turned down,
and you see the person’s frustration. How do you
deal with it? Do you allow those reactions to get to you?
Like with situations I’ve encountered at my job, I don’t want to get
too attached because it’s going to affect how I make a decision?
I’ve never gotten frustrated with them. I’ve felt disappointed, and frustrated with National—with the system, when I have my hands tied. It never gets easy to say, “I can’t get the extension and there’s nothing else I can do for you.” It’s not an easy answer…
N: We’re in a sense creating a
barrier, to not allow these emotions to get through.
It takes time …
[But] otherwise you would not have a clear mind to assist them and
help them. It’s not that I have less feelings. If a child comes to
you and tells you they’re being sexually abused, you want to kill
that person. But [over time] you become able to say okay, we’re gonna
get you help and here are the services you need.
C: With the HEZ, there were some
mixed feelings about whether people would be concerned about climate
change to have it be part of where the investments in resources are
made. Is it or is it not a concern? And why do you think that is?
It is, but it’s not
until it starts affecting them.
N: It’s like knowing that the issue is there, subconsciously, but then it gets cold and then your mind is actually talking to you.
It’s the same thing
like if somebody needs new brakes—you don’t do anything about it
till you hear the sound. People are like “I gotta go to work, I
gotta make sure there’s money coming in, I don’t have time to worry
about electricity. I gotta make sure I have my medications.”
C: That’s the insidious part of this. The large companies that create this issue make sure people can’t put the bigger picture together so that they can continue [making money].
N: In school they teach you how to not question these things—it’s more like they’re teaching you how to get a living, so you can just go through life.
[IMAGE: A hand-drawn black-and-white map of Cranston, with a few major interactions of climate change and health–high heat, air pollution and asthma, food supply chains and flooding–marked on it.]
climateanxietycounseling 