Joe Biden, stop distracting us from your disappointing cabinet picks with Girls! Girls! Girls!
Joe Biden is not Barack Obama. But he's trying to distract the people with representation politics, just like Obama did. Obama didn't have to do anything to distract us. He was Black. Our excitement about having a Black president was distraction enough. Biden is...
Tr*mp’s COVID scare, a Disaster Movie Showdown, and Georgia on My Mind
When it was reported that Donald Tr*mp had been diagnosed with COVID, I thought that was it. He...
Stop trying to “reach” Tr*mp voters, focus on meeting the needs of the working class
As a parent I have to help my child learn the difference between wants and needs. There are many...
Jack and the Beanstalk at the End of the World
Regenerative organic farming and ranching has the potential to reverse the effects of climate change, by sequestering carbon in the soil and cooling local weather conditions via the small water cycle. This short story was inspired by the "carbon farming" movement...
My takeaway from the Democratic National Convention? Joe Biden can be my Uber driver
When my partner and I decided to become a one-car family in 2016, I began to use Uber when I wasn't able to walk or bike. Until this happened in 2017: As news of Donald Trump’s travel ban on Muslim-majority countries spread, protests sprang up at airports around the...
News Friday, August 21
Wildfires Threaten 25,000 Structures: Fast-moving fires are spreading across Northern California, with wind-whipped flames sending people out of their homes. Will Kamala Harris Act Boldly on Climate Change? Earth was 130 degrees this week. It will be much hotter one...
The Hope of the Blank Page
Every day, we said, every weekday, we will post something. We will call it The Daily Dose. Art, links, news, poetry, opinion pieces, rants... We've run a free writing class and posted grants, we've analyzed events, written stories, created videos. Our brand is hope....
Seeking teen & adult poets, emcees and spoken word artists for a Climate Activism Residency at UC Berkeley’s Poetry for the People! Deadline 8/31
As a member of the Daily Dose crew, I have been figuring out ways to put the climate emergency at the top of my agenda in all areas of my life: parenting, writing, and work. To that end, I have figured out how to engage climate in my teaching at UC Berkeley. Instead...
Harris and Biden aren’t coming to rescue us. But if we elect them, we could get a chance to save ourselves.
What Kamala Harris needs most right now is us. Not just a cheerleading team, or our pledged support for the Biden/Harris ticket, but all of us. As a Black/Indian woman in politics, she has had to make ugly calculations and compromises with entrenched power. An Afro...
Kamala Harris as Biden’s VP pick: The Daily Dose Crew Responds
Elizabeth Stark: One of my students told me tonight that her grandmother's name was Kamala. "My little diabetic, illiterate grandmother who is no longer with us would NEVER HAVE IMAGINED that she might be vice-pres of the U.S.!!!!!!" she wrote into the chat. These are...
Heading Upstream
A long time ago, an activist told me a story, which I will convey to you now in the mostly gender-neutral terms with which I try to approach our gender-complex world. (This is otherwise not really about gender at all, any more than everything is, in a patriarchy, but...
Voting Rights Collage #1: Get Ready to Fight
In order to win a Green New Deal, defund police, transform our economy and save our nation, we need to get Tr*mp out of office. We need to elect progressives to the House and Senate, as well as in state and local elections. AND we need strong movements to hold those...
Climate, Politics, Uprisings in the News, August 7th
Cori Bush: leading organizer and 'true progressive' on course to make history: The 44-year-old nurse looks set to become the first Black woman to represent Missouri in Congress after her stunning primary win From Outsider to Insider: Karen Bass’s Unexpected Journey to...
The Archeology of Waste
Over five thousand years ago, from about 3500 BCE to about 1700 BCE, the Indus Valley Civilization rooted in the Indus river valley spread out over 280,000 square miles, nearly the size of California and Nevada put together. This civilization covered parts of...
The Discipline of Hope
In an interview, I heard Ira Glass say, every episode of This American Life has a particular theme, but in fact, every episode has the same theme: I thought this would happen, and instead this happened. I will talk about this tomorrow evening at a free class Ellen...
Monday Good News: The Constitution (plus VOTING) Can Protect Us from a Tr*mp Dictatorship
As a mom, I always have a backup plan. An additional snack in my purse. A spare kid’s bike helmet in my car. An extra hair elastic around my wrist. If Moms ran the world, I believe things would be going much better. I have never been a huge fan of the nation’s...
News Friday, July 31st
Here's How We Could Reinvent the Climate Narrative Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation Killer heat: US racial injustices will worsen as climate crisis escalates Are you a first-time voter worried by the climate crisis? We’re looking for guest...
Responding to Covid and Climate with Actions and Thought
I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to feel. I remember a therapist saying, Where in your body do you feel that? And I remember thinking, feel? Body? Where? What was he talking about? I remember going to a workshop in my yoga teacher’s apartment in New York and the...
Namwali Serpell’s exploration of climate catastrophe on the Zambesi River
Namwali Serpell’s exploration of climate catastrophe on the Zambesi River Serpell says: “When we talk about climate change, we talk about our inability to predict and control what’s coming, to step into the same river twice. We’re out of time, in...
Project Drawdown: A Verb Is Not a Goal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=863&v=l3DTKUZsl2Y&feature=emb_logo Recently, in my studies of the-inspiring! amazing! grassroots!--soil solutions to global warming, as encapsulated by the movement toward regenerative organic farming and ranching...
Sending out an SOS: Graffiti on Mayor Libby Schaaf’s Garage and Defunding Police
This past week, I was driving up an unfamiliar street on the way back from a hiking trail in Oakland. I was surprised to see the following graffiti on the garage, and found out that it was the Mayor’s house. What surprised me most was the discord between the Black...
Climate News Friday, July 24th
Sierra Club calls out the Racism of John Muir What Joe Biden’s Climate Plan Really Signals How Much Will the Planet Warm if Carbon Dioxide Levels Double? Essential Workers Hold Walkouts And Protests In National 'Strike For Black Lives' Fossil Fuel Advocates’ New...
Hope, Action, and Consequence
Hope, Action, and Consequence, July 22, 2020By Vijaya NagarajanIt is difficult to imagine how our microactions intertwine with the macro-actions of the day, of how each drop of an action we personally do adds up to the active, bubbling creeks of collective actions,...