I’ve been watching the Coronavirus pattern. Scientists and health experts say, if we do X and don’t do Y things are going to get worse, cases will spike, hospitals will get overwhelmed. And then we do X anyway and don’t do Y, and lo and behold, things get worse, cases spike, hospitals are overwhelmed.
It feels familiar, these warnings. They’ve been coming for years from climate scientists and activists – decades if you’ve been listening, though most of us haven’t. If we do X and we don’t do Y, things will get worse.
Now everyone in my county is making plans for fire season. Buying tiny trailers in which to escape. This is what the privileged, early climate era version of mitigation looks like.
In March we all began to shelter in place, and while anxiety rose, the world quieted, and if the social media tussles became louder in their shut-off-able corner – so did the birds in the trees. It was terrifying and enlightening to see the capitalist machine grind to – well not a halt, but to a pace that allowed the imagination to hear over the normal industrial roar of capitalism’s absolute conviction in its right to exist as it does, to churn through lives and resources.
We watched other governments not do X and instead do Y, and we watched things slowly improve for them and their people.
Ours failed us in almost every way. Squandered opportunities to turn the virus around, let alone the environment.
An article in the New York Times concludes, “There are many futures possible, ranging from quite bad to really catastrophic. Which one plays out is up to us to decide. Each and every one of us.”
It reminded me of the quip by dethroned filmmaker W. Allen: “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
How the hell to have hope, I’ve been thinking, I confess it to you. In my ears I hear Carolyn Forche’s lines, “it is not your right to feel powerless./ Better people than you were powerless.”
And I remember: Hope, we’ve been saying here at the Daily Dose, is our brand. But in fact, it’s our blueprint. Hope is a verb – an action. It requires doing something.
Vote. Make sure you and everyone you know are registered!
Writing letters and making phone calls to get out the vote.
Hanging signs. Making art. Create collage.
Giving money. Speaking up. Performing. Writing poems. Reading Poems. Finding poems.
And whenever you need hope, need to remember how it happens–change, urgent, necessary, seemingly-impossible change, read The Low Road by Marge Piercy:
What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.
But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again and they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know you who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
–Marge Piercy
Ready? We have to replace this regime, and then we will need to push the new one hard. Steer this vessel. Hope is a privilege, but so is giving up, and only one saves lives.
Recent Comments