My kid is graduating eighth grade this year, in a couple of weeks. In a typical year, his main homeroom/ ELA/ humanities teacher, Sue, takes the eighth grade to San Francisco for a field trip, and they all talk about their plans for the next year, their thoughts and feelings about…well, everything. They’ve been together with Sue since sixth grade, and with each other much longer, several since kindergarten. At graduation, Sue speaks personally about each child. There are roses and lollipops for the graduates to give out to the people who’ve supported them, often saying a few words of thanks or explanation about this support. The graduates also make their own hats, personalized and quirky.

This ceremony is something Leo has been looking forward to since Sue came to the school about halfway through his journey from kindergarten to this moment. But, as we all know too well, this is not a typical year. Obama, Oprah, and Ellen, among others, are delivering virtual commencement addresses, schools are posting photographs of their graduates, creating online ceremonies, and generally doing what they can to celebrate.

Last night, Angie and I got on a zoom call with Sue and most of the eight families who have kids graduating from our rural public charter school to plan what to do under the circumstances. We can’t gather, even in a big open space, at this point, and the kids are pretty burnt out on zoom school.

Sue said the kids had told her they wanted a zoom version of what she usually does, and she’d told them to make hats. What else? Together, the families brainstormed with Sue and we made a plan. It involves a sort of “drive-through” distanced, one-by-one graduation that Angie will videotape. The kids will pick up their diplomas and roses and lollipops for their families. That evening, we’ll gather online for Sue’s talks and the sharing of the flowers. And we can invite anyone in our extended families–one great benefit of virtuality.

I woke up thinking about climate activism in the time of pandemic. We can’t gather to protest, but we must find creative ways for our voices to be heard. We are inside our houses working and tending to families or we are out at work trying to stay safe and keep others safe. We are, mostly, not less busy at all. Many of us are spending a lot of panicked time studying the news as if it were a crystal ball, and we are trying to divine what to do. This can feel like its own action, but we know from years of social media that its a bit of an illusion, this kind of action. I’ve encountered a few lashbacks to some memes I’ve posted, and we can see the divisions of the country in dark outline as the crisis moves from a short-term, we’re in this together solution to a long-term, we’re in the same storm but not the same boat and some people want the right to get out of the boat anyway situation.

I started The Daily Dose with my amazing colleagues because when I finally turned my attention to Climate Activism, I found it hard to get concrete answers for what to do about it. And indeed, individual change is not enough–the reduction in driving has certainly helped lower emissions these past weeks, but much more so has the slowing and shuttering of coal production. 

At the same time, I come from a family of activists, my aunt and grandmother out at Greenham Common protesting nuclear war, my mother taking me on marches: I know that change happens when we act, when we raise our voices not in social media rants, but in unison, in chanting and song, when we keep each other going and we keep saying no to what seems terrible but inevitable and yes to what else we can imagine.

Now we have to get creative–like the eighth-grade families and graduates all over–and keep enacting what matters, in line with the life-saving restrictions we must abide. We can reach out to voters by mail with Vote Forward/ Swing Left. We can educate ourselves about what’s going on, not just in the latest news cycle, but in the deeper sense. We can gather virtually and plan actions. I know there is a National Arts Drive encouraging people to put art in their yards. Mary DeMocker has done incredible front yard protest art, and as I went to post this blog, I was delighted to see that hers this week provides many actions to take now. If we are walking, we can walk in t-shirts that spread the word. Just riffing here…

When we were first told to shelter in place, our family went into a bit of an emergency mode. Screen use–not just for school and work, but for video games and shows–skyrocketed. Bedtime became later as the kids could sleep in. Sugar became more plentiful in our cupboards and freezer, and more a part of the daily intake. Exercise, other than walking the dog around and around the block, dropped off precipitously. School went virtual, but it took a while for the teachers to find how to connect the values of a creative, project-based school with the restraint of online crisis education.

Now we are in this for a longer haul, and we know it. Things will shift, but they are not going to magically go back to normal in an instant. We can look at history and see that a year or two out of the ordinary happens at times. But now we have to find our way back to our values, to what matters, to what might be put aside for a few weeks, but cannot be put aside for years. The future of our planet is one such item. 

I have faith in humanity to be creative and responsive, to rise up and find solutions. We may be slow to react at times, and we may be overwhelmed or befuddled, but we are full of imagination and the need to make art, bread, jokes, and a future that can sustain us all.