If voting is considered to be a baseline criteria for being “politically engaged,” the percentage of Zoomers that fit the bill would drop from 75% to 28.4%, which is . It is true that young people, historically, tend to have lower turnout in elections. . But why is a generation described as the most not translating that fervor into votes?

Daijah Wilson, a 19-year-old college student from New Jersey who currently lives in Texas, says, “I primarily see people around my age advocating on social media and in person [because] �ɱ�’r�� tired of just sitting on the sidelines. We just want to be involved because it seems like if we ��Dz�’t talk about it or if we ��Dz�’t call it out, then who’s willing to?” She adds, this is “because the older generation seems to have given up.”&�Բ�����;

Wilson also notes that Gen Z’s anxieties about the future play a large role in their political engagement. “A lot of the issues that are being talked about, voted about, and acted upon are going to affect us the most because �ɱ�’r�� the upcoming generation.” She cites the specific ways in which her generation is impacted: “We’re coming into not being able to afford rent, not being able to buy homes, not being able to find jobs, competing for resources, and facing environmental problems.”

Wilson speculates that Zoomers are pessimistic about their voting choices. “It doesn’t matter if the leadership is Republican or Democrat; we have been facing the same issues time and time again. Nothing’s really changing. I think our generation is cynical about voting but not about social issues.” In other words, she believes that “we can have a better world, but it just feels like my vote doesn’t matter. The candidates ��Dz�’t care about us.”&�Բ�����;

Her words echo Michelle Cottle’s recent in The New York Times that Gen Z is more motivated by issues and values than by candidates or parties. Peter de Guzman, a researcher at (CIRCLE), speaking more broadly about people aged 18 to 24, says, “Young people are more likely than older people to not affiliate themselves with a political party, and there has been a [of independents among] young people recently.” Those youth who do identify with a political party are significantly more likely to identify with Democrats, but that may be changing as Zoomers’ with Biden and Democrats grows. Young people think Democrats are not doing enough when it comes to climate change, the violence of policing, and Palestinian oppression.

Zoomers’ connection with political issues and disconnection with voting might also have to do with the fact that they get from the internet, particularly . De Guzman explains that “we’ve seen throughout the surveys we’ve conducted that young people are really interested in a variety of issues … and [are] using social media to talk about these issues with each other.” This is consistent with Wilson’s personal experience. She says, “Social media is where I get a lot of information; once it’s on my social media, it’s on my radar.”&�Բ�����;

The problem is that social media is not as good at disseminating logistical information about how to vote in one’s county as it is at increasing political polarization and playing on people’s emotions—by . The result: Gen Z is well informed about social and political issues but is lost on the basics of voting. “�ճ�����’s a lot of advocacy work going on social media [because] a lot of Gen Z is focused on more emotionally targeted political issues, and then the specifics kind of get lost. Like, how to enact change for the things that they believe in,” says Wilson. 

De Guzman adds, “When we ask people why they did not register or why they did not vote, they often cite information or access barriers.” To combat the lack of access to information, de Guzman points out that “increasingly, we see young people use social media [for information]. It’s really about meeting people where they are.” Further, he believes that election administrators “could be doing a better job of social media messaging to get that information out.”

What exacerbates confusion about the logistics of voting is that young people frequently move out of their home state or county for college. Wilson points out that the differences in switching voter registrations can create an additional barrier for young people who want to vote. “I think having a universal or standard [system for registering to vote] would be a lot easier, because a lot of people ��Dz�’t even think about voting until it’s getting close to voting time because they simply ��Dz�’t have the time.” She adds that “restricting the registration period to weeks before the actual vote is also a problem.” Nearly half of all states do , but many young people may not be aware of this.

Making voting easier directly fuels youth voter turnout. De Guzman explains that “states that have facilitative election laws—such as pre-registration, automatic voter registration, and online voter registration—have higher rates of youth participation.” Inversely, it is for younger people to vote in states that have more restrictive voting laws.

For example, 19-year-old Patricia, who lives in Texas, the state to vote in, was not able to cast a ballot in a recent election despite registering in Harris County. She assumed that she did not have the right identification to vote in person. “I did register to vote,” she says. After she obtained the appropriate documents from volunteers, Patricia says, “I was able to fill out a short little form that had all my information, and I got my receipt. Then, I was looking on the website [for instructions] on how to go vote, and I thought I needed some sort of identification, like a Texas driver’s license, a Texas ID, or a passport. I said, ‘OK, I ��Dz�’t have a Texas ID because I’m from Florida, and I ��Dz�’t have a birth certificate or my passport with me.’ I just figured I’m probably ineligible,” she says. 

She realized only after the election that she could have filled out a Reasonable Impediment Form that would have allowed her to vote. “They’re trying to make it as hard as they can for people like college students to vote,” she adds. barring college students from using student IDs to vote is poised to create a similarly confusing experience for youth in that state. De Guzman says, more broadly, “Young people have less access sometimes to IDs. They might not have a driver’s license, so a college ID might be their best form of identification. If they ������’t use that to vote, that’s another barrier they’re facing that may dissuade them from participating.”&�Բ�����;

As November approaches, there’s been increased scrutiny on what Gen Z’s voting tendencies might mean for the 2024 election and how to get the eligible youth voters . This is especially challenging as some because they ��Dz�’t see either party working to end Israel’s genocide. Overall fewer young voters are in November 2024 than in 2020.��

Rebuilding the link between caring about politics and actually voting will require various solutions. As de Guzman points out, “There are so many factors that impact participation.”&�Բ�����;

Two of the more straightforward solutions are reducing barriers to voting and leveraging social media to better inform youth about elections, voter registration, and other logistics. Reiterating the importance of facilitative voting practices, de Guzman adds, “We have seen that if you control for factors like education and income, voter registration was higher among young people in states that had automatic voter registration.” And since “a lot of young people ��Dz�’t have information on elections, social media can be a way for them to get that information.”&�Բ�����;

Combating young voters’ cynicism with candidates, especially their current dissatisfaction with Democrats, is trickier. When asked about in primaries and, de Guzman doesn’t have an answer but hopes to learn more after the election. “Our upcoming survey will be a post-election survey. It would be interesting to see how young people ended up voting, and if more voted third party.”&�Բ�����;

For now, it is clear that Israel’s assault on Gaza, and President Biden’s unconditional support via arms sales and the decades-long oppression of Palestine more broadly, is an . “With the genocide going on right now, I see a lot of my peers involved, and I see people around my age attending rallies and events and boycotting. I boycott as well and try to allocate my funds to places that better represent my values,” Wilson points out. 

The mass on college campuses across the nation in the form of protest encampments suggests that Gaza will remain a crucial political issue come November. Andrew de las Alas, a junior at Washington University in St. Louis, participated in the encampment there and was among the . De las Alas says that while he is still processing his arrest and suspension, “What stands out to me is that our current president has both the political authority and the diplomatic capital to push for an end to the genocide, but he hasn’t. Instead, billions of dollars were promised to Israel. I know that I won’t be voting for Biden again.”

De las Alas says he is considering voting for the Green Party presidential candidate, at Washington University’s encampment. “I am going to be looking more at the Green Party and other parties and really weighing my options. I think it’s important to reconsider all of our options every election, but with this one, we know that millions of lives are on the line,” he states.

But the dissatisfaction of young voters and their disconnect from both major parties’ presumed nominees for 2024 is not just about . “Gen Z is tired of the BS; we are tired of being told to go vote without tools to go vote, and then the candidate that we elect—for example, Joe Biden—does not do the things that they said they were going to do,” explains Wilson. 

She adds, “We’re tired of people being in office who ��Dz�’t look like us or care about what we care about.” But she, like other young people, is optimistic about and the causes she cares about. “I think politics is definitely going to change in the future with this generation. We just need more tools about how to actually enact that change.”

Unfortunately, right now . For the past half-century, union opponents have steadily chipped away at the rules protecting workers’ rights—in courts, in laws, and in our American culture. We’ve reached the point where there are to winning a union election. Even though the in August 2023, organizing rights are not fully protected and can be changed on the whim of the administration in power. 

Rest assured, there’s a better way. It’s time for progressives to launch a push for something called card check elections. 

To understand both the problem and the solution, we first need a little union history. After the great age of union agitation in the 1920s and 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as part of his New Deal reforms, passed two urgently needed laws: the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which protected workers to a degree never previously seen. Among other safeguards, these laws outlined the rules for unionizing and bargaining with employers without fear of retaliation. These acts helped usher in a golden age of American unions. 

However, over the last 80 years, conservative movements like the Tea Party and groups like the (ALEC) have—bit by bit, regulation by regulation, and court case by court case—managed to weaken or dismantle many of these protections.

That’s not to say collective bargaining doesn’t exist. It does, as we’ve seen with the , which established substantial pay increases and improved working conditions. But as the right-leaning federal government (yes, even Democratic administrations have been less-than-friendly to unions for decades now) scorches our current path to unionizing, it is becoming easier for employers to legally block workers’ attempts to protect their rights.��

The is stomping all over our forgotten laborers. (Don’t forget that someone that provided shade for striking SAG-AFTRA workers in last summer’s heat.) According to MIT professor Thomas Kochan, when employers resist. 

In addition to the union process being extremely friendly to business, it is long and arduous. Right now, union organizers must get the support of 30% of a business’s employees just to file a petition asking to hold an election to unionize. Once that’s filed, the employer is notified and has the option to accept the union flat out, without waiting for the vote. (Once in a blue moon that does happen, such as in ) 

In most cases, the employer declines. If they make it to the voting stage, union organizers and employers negotiate to establish the rules of the union election—covering logistics such as the time and place of the election. Then, union organizers must persuade a majority of eligible workers to vote in favor of a union. To block unions, employers deploy aggressive tools like anti-union propaganda, threats of termination, increased employee monitoring, and reduced hours to remove benefits eligibility. All this makes it nearly impossible for workers to fight for and win unions—and often leaves employees in the crappy position they were in before.

But there’s another way. 

In 2008, Senator Ted Kennedy introduced the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have allowed the NLRB to certify a union without employer approval and an official election. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party did not make that bill a priority at the time. But it offers an opportunity we can organize around and pressure lawmakers into passing now: “card check” unionizing. 

The two-step card check process is simple and efficient, making it vastly easier for workers to unionize. First, more than 50% of employees would need to sign “authorization cards” in favor of a union. Once that happens, union organizers could file paperwork to establish the union. 

It’s that simple. No employer recognition would be required, and there would be less time and money spent on campaigning for the union, not to mention less red tape. This process would help everyone, from the Starbucks barista to the Amazon warehouse employee to the overworked graduate student. And that’s important. Workers ��Dz�’t organize a union for fun; they know they’re risking their jobs and security, and do so only when they really need one—because of unsafe working conditions, unfair labor practices, and low wages and benefits. Card check would make organizing collectively far more achievable, and on a schedule that could actually deliver timely relief.��

It’s true, though, that with the card check method, employees’ votes would be public, which some worry would lead to more employer coercion and retaliation. It’s also possible that without highly regulated federal processes where the government facilitates the election, the burden of organizing will be placed on the employees—especially in large companies.

These are the kinds of objections that organizers and policymakers can figure out solutions to as they go. We needn’t remove the current union organizing process, which has worked for some groups. But if we want to empower all workers in all companies, the card check method is one new tool we can use to get past the conservative dismantling of employee protections. Indeed, the card check method is effective in promoting unionizing efforts across levels of government, both federally (as we see in ) and at local levels (such as in and ).��

The card check method has made its way around the U.S. legislative branch, having been introduced in five different Congressional sessions. We can urge our representatives to re-introduce the bill in Congress and work with to make the card check method a suitable reality for our laborers. 

So let’s learn from strikers; let’s organize. Progressives have forced the Democrats to champion such issues as student loan debt cancellation and universal health care. We can further organize around protecting the long-term health of our employees that looks beyond 2024. Let’s bring our union rates back up. Let’s protect employees. Let’s take the power back from corporate greed and show lawmakers who have the real power in this country: the everyday worker.

Then, inevitably, grief came knocking. Almost 12 years after Chavan’s departure, while she was sitting in her apartment in Winnipeg in early 2020, Chavan’s stomach dropped as her mom called with the news. Chavan’s grandmother, who lived in Sydney, Australia, had fallen sick, and over the course of a few weeks, had passed away. There was no way she could go to mourn in person for her grandmother, one of the most important people in her life. Flights to Australia were expensive, and she couldn’t afford to apply for the visa she would need to even get into the country. So instead, Chavan emotionally shut down. “I felt very frozen for a very long time,” she says.

Migrant researchers and psychologists call what Chavan was experiencing transnational grief, or transnational bereavement. It refers to the unique experience of losing someone you love while in another country. Although grief is already a difficult process, immigrants who experience transnational grief often go through additional layers of guilt, denial, and suffering since they are unable to attend the typical rituals associated with loss.

The inability to see their loved one in person makes it difficult to achieve closure, and the bereaved may be unable to process the loss and move forward. In recent years, this reality has become more apparent, as COVID-19 claimed millions of lives while simultaneously forcing border restrictions. The pandemic further highlighted the critical role of community support and immigration policy shifts to help those who grieve from afar.

The Toll of Long-Distance Loss

Experiencing grief from a distance has long been the reality of immigrants. Anyone who leaves their family behind also risks being apart from their loved ones during times of loss—and often this grief comes with a whirlwind of complicated emotions. 

“There is a strong sense of guilt. There is a strong sense of regret that they weren’t able to be with their loved one as the loved one died,” says , a grief researcher at the University of Alberta. She recalls a conversation she had when she interviewed an Iranian-Canadian immigrant who had lost their brother during the lockdowns in the COVID pandemic. Because they were unable to travel back home, or even see his body before it was buried, they refused to accept that their brother’s death was real.

Chavan recalls similar experiences, being separated by borders. “I did not feel like I had permission to grieve, because I had not been there,” she says.

Without this space to mourn, grief can become difficult to move past—especially for immigrants who are undocumented., a sociologist at the University of Michigan’s Center of Racial Justice, works with these communities, and continuously hears about how grief affects everyday lives. “People described these experiences of grief and long-distance mourning as one of the most difficult parts of being undocumented in the United States,” she says.

For instance, while this phenomenon between 2017 and 2023, Fullerton Rico met a woman whom she calls Florencia (a pseudonym used to protect her privacy) who said, “When you experience grief [as an immigrant], your only option is to accept that you ������’t do anything.” Fullerton Rico also shares a conversation she had with a man she calls Felipe: “Felipe told me grief changes you deeply.” The depth of that grief is exacerbated by distance when you ������’t get closure from saying goodbye or attending a funeral, he told her. “It’s a chapter with no ending, and it remains unfinished.”

To make matters worse, the weight of transnational grief often remains a burden borne alone. “It isn’t something that people usually talk about,” Fullerton Rico says.

Bridging the Distance

Social rituals, in any culture, are an important part of the grieving process. Wakes and other celebrations of life can help people actively engage with memories of an individual, says, a neuroscientist who studies grief at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Thinking of these memories allows your brain to sort of remodel and think about how these memories now fit into your life,” she says. But for those who ��Dz�’t witness deaths or funerals in person, this process may be disrupted or made more difficult.

, a psychologist who works with expats, helps clients construct their own rituals so that they can celebrate their relationship with their loved one. She walks them through the process of grieving from afar, through actions like letter-writing, eating a loved one’s favorite meal, or participating in a favorite shared activity. The process takes time. Several sessions of goodbyes and rituals are often necessary for someone to make peace with a sudden death, says Encina.

Similarly, during the pandemic, Chavan found her own turning point for bereavement in creative nonfiction. She had lost her job at the time and decided to attend a writing class, taking on a project that allowed her to dive into her experiences with transnational grief. , Chavan slowly broke the ice that had encased her for eight months. She sobbed as she remembered all the details about her grandmother: the spirited debates they would get into, how she commanded a room despite her small size, how she brought the family together with her love. 

“It was awful. It was devastating. It felt like losing her all over again,” Chavan says. 

But it was this act of writing and remembrance that allowed her to reconnect to her memories—and start to heal.

Systemic Solutions

Ultimately, making space for transnational grief requires the restructuring of how we think about immigration and loss. Currently, it takes years for an undocumented immigrant to become a legal, permanent resident in the U.S., and the few who are able to adjust their immigration status typically receive work authorization before the ability to travel back home, Fullerton Rico says. And so the opportunity of visiting loved ones becomes a waiting game, even as family members age or pass away. 

“If we pass laws that prioritize a fast path to citizenship, we could avoid having people go through these experiences,” Fullerton Rico says.

Many undocumented immigrants also have inflexible, low-wage jobs, which pressures them to make painful decisions, like watching their loved ones’ funeral on a smartphone in between helping customers or preparing meals at a restaurant. “Instead of being there in person, they had to sneak away to the bathroom, or hide in a walk-in refrigerator to get glimpses of one of the most significant rituals in somebody’s life,” Fullerton Rico says. 

Giving time and space for a person to grieve in the form of paid bereavement leave can help. This allows grievers to take time off work without facing the potential consequences of losing a paycheck or their job. Chavan recalls the pressure to continue to work in the midst of her grief because she didn’t have the financial flexibility to lose out on paid hourly work, which gradually degraded her mental health. Currently, only five states in the U.S. mandate employers to give bereavement leave, Fullerton Rico says, only two of which require the leave to be paid.

Most importantly, it’s crucial to “let people know that they’re not alone in this pain,” Fullerton Rico says. She urges more immigrant-serving organizations to recognize this reality and help immigrants get access to counseling, other mental health resources, or religious rituals so they’re less at risk of conditions like clinical depression. She shares the example of a Catholic priest she interviewed in New York City, who has helped perform memorial Masses for transnational mourners since the 1990s. Today, these funeral ceremonies are held and streamed through Facebook Live, YouTube, or Zoom, helping families feel some sense of togetherness.

Experts agree that forming this social support is a key factor in the grieving process. “Grief is something of a social experience,” Bayatrizi says. “It’s an emotional experience that’s shaped through our social interactions.”

Chavan says that the only reason she finally felt ready to face the emotions was because her partner and her in-laws were supportive, giving her a small but strong community in an isolating time. After writing about the experience, she also started having more conversations with family and friends who had read the article, about the struggle of grieving from afar and how they coped. 

“It meant that I had this community, this global community that I could reach out to essentially,” she says. “Learning that you are not alone in something that you have gone through can be very powerful.”

CORRECTION: This article was updated at 1:55 p.m. PT on May 1, 2024, to clarify Fullerton Rico’s recommendations for better supporting immigrants.��Read our corrections policy here.

As the survivor of domestic abuse perpetrated by my, if you had asked me before reading the novel if it was OK to imbue humor into the discourse surrounding domestic abuse, I would have said, “Hell no.” But Casale doesn’t make light of violence; instead, she uses humor as an advocacy tool to illuminate a grim truth: Too often, the legal system rather than abusers. To stay safe and out of prison, women frequently have to (green thumb or not) take matters into their own hands.

If that’s too dark a thought, Casale gets it. “People ��Dz�’t want to hear about the grim reality of male violence against women and girls,” she writes in her author’s note. “This novel is an attempt to use humor to cut through people’s reluctance to engage.” If readers giggle along as Sally covers her husband’s body in cat litter to dry it out, sprinkling on some rice for good measure—“just like our wedding day!”—then they’re not looking away from domestic abuse. And that’s the whole point.

The Lockdown Ladies’ Burial Club never had the pandemic luxury of baking sourdough or tie-dyeing tees. If their common bond was a love of Agatha Christie mysteries—rather than surviving abuse—they might have met in a virtual book club, cementing their friendship over wine-induced theories on how to get away with murder. Instead, they’re tasked with something much more difficult: figuring out how to avoid prison.

Women who claim self-defense against their abusers are than men who shoot strangers under. The law is more willing to side with a man who fires a gun at a nonviolent burglar than a woman who fights back against a husband who’s abused her for (as in Sally’s case) 20 years. That means Sally’s likely at fault, legally, when her husband, Jim, “punishes” her for making his tea too light—by pouring boiling water over her hand—and she reaches for her granny’s skillet to defend herself.

“There is a practical side of self-defense that can be empowering,” says Shaunna Thomas, co-founder and executive director of UltraViolet, a feminist advocacy organization. “But the concept is often grounded in a misogynistic idea that women who are harmed are and are solely responsible for their own safety regardless of the circumstances.”

In Sally’s case, the “circumstances” seem pretty clear-cut: Jim attacked her, and she defended herself, accidentally killing him in the process. But “self-defense law was not created with women or victims of abuse in mind,” says Elizabeth Flock, author of . Flock, an Emmy Award–winning journalist whose book examines what happens when, says the “” was “created by and for property-owning white men to protect their so-called ‘castles.’”

If that sounds disgustingly patriarchal,, and outdated, that’s because it is. The law allows deadly force to protect your home but “doesn’t account for women who defend themselves and their bodies against abusers who reside in their home and often have wielded violence for years,” Flock says. The result? “Women claiming self-defense often get convicted of murder or manslaughter, or take and end up spending years in prison.”

������Ƶ years, in fact, than men who kill their female partners. Abusive men who kill women face in prison, while women who kill men——are sentenced to an average of. Unsurprisingly, prisons are filled with .

After Sally fights back, instead of calling the police, she eats some cake. Jim’s rotting on her kitchen floor, no longer capable of telling her she’s too fat or undeserving of treats. So she pours herself a glass of wine, grabs a bag of chips, and takes a bubble bath. The sense of relief and possibility Sally feels in Jim’s absence is overwhelming, so she makes a “be happy” list to extend her serotonin boost (bake! rescue a cat! get a job!). Then her “get rid of Jim” list takes precedence, because if she waited this long to call the police, would anyone really believe she acted in self-defense?

“In a court of law, a woman can put her hand on a bible and swear to tell the whole truth, but if her word isn’t valued, the whole truth may not be heard,” domestic violence court advocate Tonya GJ Prince says. Prince can still remember the haunting screams that pierced the courtroom 20 years ago when a survivor she was assisting played a recording of her violent attack. 

She was seeking a restraining order, but knew that without proof of violence, her request was likely to be denied. Her abuser was—as is often the case—seen publicly as a “nice guy.”

“When the recording ended, no one in the courtroom moved,” Prince recalls. “It was one of those moments where you had to remind yourself to breathe.”

The judge granted the woman’s request for a restraining order, but not without chastising her “dramatic and over-the-top” screams. If that sounds familiar—and sickening—you may remember that Amber Heard’s of was seen not as but of her.

The inherent in our is why an NYPD detective told my mom in the ’90s that the law couldn’t protect us from my father and that our only options were for my mom to either kill him or go into hiding with my sister and me. (She chose the latter, and if this sounds like a Lifetime Movie, it.)

New York didn’t have any stalking laws at the time, so my father—and the hit man he hired—was free to hunt and terrorize us. Unless it became a murder case, there was nothing the cops could do. 

Before we escaped our home in Canada and fled to New York, my father attacked my mom outside his office in Michigan and threw her into oncoming traffic. He spent a single night in jail, and the felony assault case against him was dismissed in less than 30 minutes. Despite my horror-fueled objections, I was forced by court order to visit him. If my mom refused to hand me over, she would be held in contempt and possibly jailed.

Too often, the law protects abusive men and abused women, and the media aids and abets this abuse. Recently, The New York Times when it wrote—then seemingly—that O.J. Simpson’s “world was ruined” after being charged with killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. Yet problematic language remains in the paper’s of Simpson’s obituary, which briefly mentions that he Brown Simpson—whom prosecutors said he —yet calls him “congenial” and his marriage “stormy.”��The way the press has while is eerily reminiscent of the that failed Brown Simpson—and continues to fail domestic violence survivors 30 years later.

In the U.S. legal system, only dead women—who ������’t speak up or defend themselves—are considered. My mom, thankfully, was not a perfect victim. Neither were Amber Heard or any of the members of fictional Lockdown Ladies’ Burial Club. These women didn’t only fight back; they survived.

Even when Williams can find a specialist who is willing to see her son and accepts his insurance, there’s a long wait for appointments. At times that’s meant Marc has gone without medication to manage his seizures or been unable to see a speech therapist to help him learn to talk. When he was 2, he had to wait two years to see the various specialists needed to approve the removal of his breathing tube.

“Always they kept postponing it or it was hard to get an appointment to see the doctor,” Williams said. “Or we would see the doctor and then we would need to get a clearance from other doctors, and then it’s hard to get those appointments and all the appointments are always months down the line.”

California has a severe shortage of pediatric specialist doctors. The state has only one pediatric medical toxicologist for all 8.7 million children in California, for example, and one child abuse specialist for every 258,000 children, according to . The shortage spreads out over most disciplines, with one pediatric sleep medicine doctor for every 224,939 children, one sports medicine doctor for every 204,015 children and one hospice and palliative care doctor for every 190,709 children.

This shortfall puts medically fragile children at risk for worsening health and missed opportunities for life-changing treatment and support. Many families wait months—and in some cases a year or more—to get appointments. Sometimes they’re forced to drive halfway across the state to see a doctor. Sometimes by the time they see the specialist, the child’s condition has deteriorated or the window of opportunity for treatment that could halt or significantly reduce the progress of a disease or disorder has closed.

The shortage of specialists affects all children but is especially pronounced for children with disabilities and those from low-income families, because these children rely on the state’s health insurance program, Medi-Cal. Some specialists won’t accept the state health insurance plan and if the children’s families cannot afford to pay for private insurance or out-of-pocket care, then—despite having health coverage—they will not have access to doctors they need to see.

Pediatric specialists are pediatricians who undergo extra years of medical training so they can treat children with complex health care needs such as cerebral palsy, congenital heart disease, cystic fibrosis and cancer. Children’s hospitals and medical centers across California that it often takes a year or more to fill these positions—if they can fill them at all.

“It’s become a crisis,” said Dr. Carlos Lerner, a pediatrician who oversees a program providing specialty care for medically complex children at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. “The fear is not just about today, but just projecting the current trend into the future, that’s where we really get worried.”

Children’s hospital leaders and pediatrician groups are calling on the state and federal government to increase the amount they pay these doctors for treating children and provide more training incentives, which are well below those of Medicare and private insurance. Without these actions, experts warned that shortages will only get worse.

Close to 360,000 children in California have medically complex conditions, according to the Children’s Specialty Care Coalition, an organization representing medical groups and hospitals treating children with special health care needs across California. That number is expected to double in the next decade as medical and technological advances reduce mortality rates for seriously ill children. Like Marc, these kids typically require care from multiple subspecialty physicians.

The American Board of Pediatrics report, using , found that the number of specialists varied widely across disciplines, ranging from the one pediatric medical toxicologist for the entire state to 606 neonatal-perinatal pediatricians in California, or one for every 14,476 children. A child will require a specific specialty based on their condition, and it’s common for children with complex health care needs to need treatment from a range of specialists. The wait times compound for these children, as they wait months for one appointment, and then months for another, often delaying their diagnoses or treatment.

While there are no defined ratios for how many specialists per child there should be, California ranked in the middle compared to other states when averaged across disciplines, although in some subspecialties such as sleep medicine, nephrology, emergency medicine and hospice and palliative care it ranked in the bottom half. Specialty shortages are a problem nationwide.

that children are more likely to survive when treated by pediatric specialists rather than those trained to treat adults.

To become a pediatric specialist, medical students typically train for 10 years—that’s an additional three years on top of completing four years of medical school and a three-year general pediatric residency. But that extra training doesn’t pay off financially. On average, pediatric specialists earn 25% percent less than adult medicine physicians trained in the same specialty. Many also earn less than general pediatricians, despite their extra years of training. This difference in compensation—exacerbated by rising levels of student medical school debt—is discouraging new doctors from entering pediatric specialty professions, even as the health care system faces a wave of older doctors retiring.

“It makes it very, very difficult to attract people to take this on as their life’s work, and to embark on this journey,” said Dr. Sherin Devaskar, executive chair of the Department of Pediatrics at UCLA. “They want to help children and their families. But they want to be in a situation where they can at least pay back their educational debt and at least be comfortable and have a life.”

The consequence is that medical students are increasingly shunning pediatric specialties. Hospitals and medical centers that train specialists report that they ������’t fill their residency programs. In some specialties, such as pediatric infectious disease, nephrology and developmental pediatrics, there are only enough applicants to fill about half of the training slots nationwide.

Recruitment of experienced specialty pediatricians is also suffering as hospitals and medical centers compete for a shrinking pool of potential applicants. The problem is particularly acute in rural areas. Dr. Satyan Lakshminrusimha, the pediatrician-in-chief at UC Davis Children’s Hospital which treats children from northern California and Oregon, said he’s been trying to recruit a child abuse specialist for seven years. He’s also had unfilled openings for two genetic specialists for almost three years, and only just managed to fill a position for a pediatric gastroenterologist after a year-long search. California’s high cost of living and relatively low salaries for pediatric specialists are major factors, he and other physician leaders said.

The crux of the problem is low reimbursement rates, experts said. Upward of 70% of children with complex health care needs in California are covered by Medi-Cal, the state’s name for the federal health insurance program Medicaid, which serves people who qualify based on income or have certain disabilities. Many children also depend on a related program for children with disabilities called California Children’s Services. This means that compensation for doctors who treat children needing specialty care is usually heavily reliant on these programs.

But Medi-Cal doesn’t pay doctors as well as other health insurance programs. Medicare, the federal health insurance for people 65 or older and some younger adults with disabilities, for care than Medi-Cal, often for the same procedures. A comparison by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that Medi-Cal reimbursement rates amount to only about 70% of the rates paid by Medicare. Medi-Cal rates are set by the state, while the federal government sets Medicare rates.

“Medi-Cal in California compared to other states is generous in the range of services that it provides, but it’s near the bottom of the list in terms of how much [it] pays for each service,” Lerner said.  “As a predictable consequence, you may be eligible for a service, but the access to it is poor.”

Meanwhile, the average pediatric specialist nationwide is over 50 years old, and many are retiring. In a 2022 survey, over 90% of Children’s Specialty Care Coalition members said they expected a significant number of pediatrician specialists to retire within their organizations in the next five years. 

Impact on Families

Ultimately, the consequence is that families are having an increasingly hard time getting appointments with pediatric specialists. When they do find one, they must often travel further and wait longer for an appointment than they did in the past. This puts children at risk for more serious medical problems, emergency department visits, developmental setbacks, missed school, and delays in diagnoses that would allow them to get vital treatment and special education services. The delays also can create stress and anxiety for caregivers as they struggle to care for their child, sometimes without diagnoses or treatment. Some resort to paying out of pocket at considerable cost.

“Waiting for answers is not only stressful for families but is detrimental to that child’s health and wellbeing,” said Assemblymember Akilah Weber, an OBGYN who has pushed for the state to increase Medi-Cal reimbursement rates to pediatric specialists. “The earlier a child is diagnosed and treated, the better the potential outcome.”

Living in Adelanto, a desert community in San Bernardino County with fewer than 40,000 residents, has made finding specialists particularly difficult for Williams. The nearest children’s hospital, Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital, is more than an hour away. Sometimes she has to drive even further to Los Angeles or Orange County to take Marc to see the specialists he needs. Those drives are often a day-long ordeal.

“As a parent it’s a lot of drive time,” she said. “I’ve got to take hours to get ready, then drive in the traffic, and the appointment might only be 15 to 30 minutes to 45 minutes, and then hours of traffic coming back home. … It’s kind of draining.”

In of children and youth with special health care needs by the University of California San Francisco in 2023, a quarter of families reported waiting more than three months for new appointments. And in 75% of cases, wait times exceeded standards set by the state, which require that health plans ensure patients can get an appointment within 15 business days, or three business days if the matter is urgent.

Some families reported dire consequences because of the extended wait times, including failure to gain weight because of a faulty feeding tube, unsettling allergic reactions, and a child who fell behind with developing eating, communication and walking skills.

Williams said she had to wait over two years for her son to have a breathing tube removed from his neck that he was fitted with as a baby. She said she noticed he no longer seemed to need help with breathing when he was 2 years old. But it took so long to get appointments that Marc didn’t have the surgery until last summer. Marc now has difficulty swallowing because he had the tube in for so long, she said, and it’s interfered with his ability to get speech therapy.

“I just wish the health care was better out here,” she said. “… I wish I could afford better health care because then I could get better help.”

Solutions

Raising Medi-Cal reimbursement rates to equal or higher than those offered by Medicare is the top solution proposed by experts to ease the pediatric subspecialty recruitment crisis. Devaskar said rates should be set above those of Medicare because working with children and their families is often more complex and time consuming than treating adults, which also affects physician compensation.

So far, efforts in California to do this have been unsuccessful. A to increase Medi-Cal reimbursement rates to physicians serving children with special health care needs failed to advance in the legislature. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has also called on Congress to provide federal funds to states to increase Medicaid payment rates for pediatric services.

Additional proposed solutions from the National Academies and others include legislation to expand access to telehealth, improve collaboration between primary care and specialty pediatricians, increased funding for pediatric specialty residency programs and expanding loan forgiveness programs for those entering pediatric fields.

“It’s not just about the present,” said Devaskar. “20% of the country is children. They’ll be 100% of the future population. We’re investing in the health of the future of this country.”&�Բ�����;

Williams, meanwhile, is still trying to find a pediatric pain specialist for Marc and has trouble getting timely appointments with his other specialists. She spends about four hours a week on the phone trying to secure appointments. Sometimes she can get some scheduled.

And sometimes, the calendar stays blank.

Having trouble getting a medical appointment? Here’s what to do:

California law requires health plans to provide timely access to care. In general, that means you should be able to get an appointment:

• Within 10 business days for non-urgent primary or mental health care
• Within 15 business days for non-urgent specialty or diagnostic care such as lab tests.
• Within 2 days for urgent care that doesn’t require prior authorization from your health plan.
• Within 4 days if urgent care requires prior authorization.

Urgent care is not the same as emergency care, which is for life- or limb-threatening conditions. For emergency care dial 911 or go to the nearest hospital.

Health providers may extend wait times for appointments if they determine that waiting longer will not affect a patient’s health, but they must note this in your medical record.

If you ������’t get a timely appointment:

1. Contact your health plan and ask for help. They must help you get an appointment with another provider in or outside of your network.
2. If you ��Dz�’t get the help you need from your health plan, call the Department of Managed Health Care’s Help Center at 1-888-466-2219 (TDD: 1-877-688-9891) or to file a complaint.   

��This story was produced in collaboration with the��.

CORRECTION: This story was updated at 2:32 p.m. Pacific on April 30, 2024, to provide more detailed information about California’s pediatric specialist shortage, using data from a 2023 American Board of Pediatrics report. Read our corrections policy here.

Like many other officials, Plant viewed the British Columbia government as the clear landlord of provincial lands, including those of the Haida Gwaii archipelago—10,000 square kilometers of forested islands located roughly 650 kilometers northwest of Vancouver, British Columbia, and.

So here was Plant’s pitch: The British Columbia government would give the Haida control of 20 percent of their lands, but that would require the nation dropping  it had recently filed with the British Columbia Supreme Court. “Title”&�Բ�����;refers to the inherent right to own and manage Indigenous territories based on traditional use and occupation. The Haida maintained that their territory included all of the land area in the archipelago, as well as the surrounding airspace, seabed, and marine waters.

The Haida saw Plant’s offer to the door.

“Why would we give up 80 percent of our land to get 20?” said Gidansda (Guujaaw), the then president of the Council of the Haida Nation, to media at the time. “This case is about respect for the Earth and each other. It is about culture, and it is about life.”

The Haida’s steadfastness paid off. Although Haida leaders have kept a potential court case in their back pocket all these years for leverage, they ultimately haven’t needed it. In April 2024, the Haida Nation and the province of British Columbia announced the . In it, the British Columbia government formally recognizes Haida ownership of all the lands of Haida Gwaii. This is the first time in Canadian history that the colonial government has recognized Indigenous title across an entire terrestrial territory, and it’s the first time this kind of recognition has occurred outside of the courts. Experts say it marks a new path toward Indigenous reconciliation.

“It’s groundbreaking, really,” says John Borrows, a member of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation and an expert in Indigenous law at the University of Toronto in Ontario. Although Indigenous title is widely considered an inherent right that doesn’t need to be granted by an external government or court, Borrows says, First Nations struggle to enforce it without legal backing. And so far, only two courts in Canada have recognized Indigenous title.

In 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld title for the  in the interior of British Columbia, and just last week, in mid-April 2024, the British Columbia Supreme Court affirmed it for the coastal . However, neither ruling recognizes title across an entire traditional territory, and since the 1970s, Canadian courts have urged federal and provincial governments to resolve such differences through negotiation. Now, with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and growing public support on their side, the Haida and the province have finally done just that.

Gaagwiis (Jason Alsop), president of the Council of the Haida Nation, says the agreement ends a dark chapter in his nation’s history with the provincial government and provides a fair starting point for real reconciliation.

“What it signifies,” says Gaagwiis, “is a new foundation based on �۲���’g�ܻܳ岹�Բ�, or respect, of recognizing this inherent title that preexisted [European contact] and will continue to exist as the basis going forward. And, essentially, the province kind of ceding their claim to this land.”

The new agreement will soon be enshrined into British Columbia law, naming the Haida as the rightful owners of all 200-plus islands of Haida Gwaii, which they have been stewarding for millennia. After a two-year transition period, the Haida Nation will manage the 98 percent of its archipelago that was formerly considered Crown land, including protected areas and other forested lands. Having more of a say over the logging industry—which has clear-cut over two-thirds of the islands’ old-growth forest since 1950—. The agreement won’t affect private property or municipal and provincial services, from highways to hospitals, which will continue to be regulated by the province.

“The idea that each legal system is recognizing the other one is a turning point,” Borrows says. “It’s also radically democratic and participatory.” This marks a new kind of relationship, which can draw on the best of Haida and Western influences, he adds. And unlike a treaty or court decision, which are more set in stone, this approach requires ongoing negotiation that can adapt and evolve with the times.

“It can keep people at the table, learning and working together with one another and trying to find that path to mutuality,” Borrows says.

The federal government of Canada is notably absent from the agreement for now. Both the province and the Haida Nation say their federal partners were delayed by procedural constraints but plan to sign on eventually. (The Feds were part of two other agreements—a  and a —that led up to this title recognition.)

Gaagwiis says the Haida are also still negotiating with Canada over their rights to control the waters surrounding Haida Gwaii, which fall under federal government jurisdiction. These waters—teeming with shellfish, herring, sea cucumbers, five types of salmon, and more than 20 species of whales, dolphins, and porpoises—are not included in the land agreement but are paramount to the coastal First Nation and are a key part of its overall title declaration.

If marine areas or any other outstanding issues, such as financial compensation for past damages, ������’t be sorted out through negotiation, the courts are still a fallback. The Haida Nation’s 20-year-old title claim, which hasn’t been judged in court, could still be heard as early as 2026.

While Indigenous people in Canada and abroad are hailing this land title agreement as inspiring and precedent setting, Murray Rankin, British Columbia’s minister of Indigenous relations, says the Haida’s unique circumstances made the process more successful.

“Haida Gwaii is not downtown Vancouver,” Rankin says. It’s a remote territory where the provincial government controlled the vast majority of the land, which is mainly protected and unprotected forest, as opposed to an urban environment comprised mostly of private properties. The population of Haida Gwaii is 45 percent Haida. The Council of the Haida Nation, which represents the Haida people, has a 20-year-old , agreements with every local municipality, and widespread support from non-Indigenous residents. And they’ve been on better terms with the provincial government since 2009, when they hashed out the  (which translates to “the beginning”).

Of course, they also have a strong historical claim to the archipelago, complete with extensive archaeological evidence. And, unlike some other Indigenous communities whose territories overlap, the Haida Nation doesn’t have to contend with competing land claims.  on a forestry lawsuit called these facts “inescapable.”

All of this has created ideal conditions for negotiation that may elude other Indigenous communities, such as Cowichan Nation on the south coast of British Columbia, which is currently fighting the province in court over its own title claim. The province says it prefers negotiation, however. That’s in part because court rulings are not only costly but often opaque, Rankin says. “I hope [the Haida agreement] is a step toward other kinds of positive resolutions,” he adds.

Perhaps unexpectedly, the provincial government’s marked shift is a welcome one to Geoff Plant, the former attorney general who once offered the Haida 20 percent of their land. Plant now works for a Vancouver-based law firm and spends a lot of time in meeting rooms trying to convince business people of the benefits of acknowledging Indigenous title; he says doing so breeds better engagement, harmony, and certainty. And he now recognizes how flawed the government’s former approach was, which he compares to building and defending a wall between the province—which he once referred to as the landlord—and First Nations. “It’s clearer in hindsight what’s wrong with that,” Plant says.

Indigenous leaders in Canada and around the world have helped society reckon with the injustices Indigenous communities have faced, and power, public opinion, and legal precedent have all shifted in response. “We should see that, collectively, as an opportunity to build a better society,” Plant says. “Let’s figure out how to work constructively within that world rather than pretend that it doesn’t exist.”

The provincial wall may not have fully crumbled, but the tide is rising against it. And at least on Haida Gwaii, a colonial government is no longer lord of the land.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission. Read more stories like this at .

In the decades since, the birth mother has become a paradox. According to mainstream media depictions, she is both brave and lazy, selfless and selfish, loving and careless, a heroine and a villain. She is a drug-addicted, abusive lay-about who makes the ultimate sacrifice–relinquishing her child to give them a better life.

And when her children are adopted into their “forever home,” she disappears. 

The term “birth mother*” is often used to refer to a woman whose biological child is adopted by another person, either voluntarily or forcibly. Often left out of happy adoption stories, villainized, or shamed into silence, these mothers are rarely given a platform. Now, three authors are aiming to change that.

The idea of the birth mother is the beating heart that connects three recent books: by Roxanna Asgarian, which explores the murder of six Black children by their adoptive white parents; by Gretchen Sisson, which spotlights mothers who relinquish their children through the private adoption industry; and by Jessica Pryce, which takes on the foster care system.

While the books examine foster care, adoption, and motherhood from different angles, they all surface and center the voices of the mothers who have (voluntarily or forcibly) relinquished their children. Their stories are at turns compelling, heartbreaking, rage-inducing, and sometimes—but rarely—hopeful. Together, they create a choral voice of pain and loss that cries out for a world in which their children could have remained theirs, and illuminate a path toward that world.

Mothers Who Are Missing, Martyrs, and Murderers

We Were Once a Family goes behind the headlines of a 2018 story that captured the country’s attention: , a white married couple, drove their six Black adoptive children off a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway in what was ruled a murder-suicide. While news coverage of this tragedy often centered on what drove the Hart mothers to commit such a violent act, little was reported about the children other than the abuse they endured. Even less attention was paid to their birth families.

In fact, as Asgarian uncovers with dismay, neither Sherry Davis, birth mother of three of the children, Devonte, Jeremiah and Ciera, nor Tammy Scheurich, birth mother of the other three children, Markis, Hannah and Abigail, were informed by authorities of their deaths. Because their parental rights were terminated, there was no law that required this humane act.

“If [Shonda, my lawyer] hadn’t found out, I ��Dz�’t even think they would have told me,” Davis told Asgarian.

Asgarian tells the story of these birth mothers and their family members who fought to keep the children with precision and care, interweaving their narratives with details and data about the Texas foster care system that ultimately tore these families apart. Asgarian does not ignore the Harts in this story, but her focus is more on why the Harts escaped CPS scrutiny despite multiple reports of abuse, while Davis and Scheurich did not.

In sharp contrast to the abuse the white, middle-class Harts were able to get away with for so long, Davis—who is Black and poor—and Scheurich—who is white, poor, and struggling with mental illness—did not receive the same benefit of the doubt. Importantly, both women did not lose their children due to charges of abuse; the impetus for the termination of their parental rights was Davis’ positive test for cocaine after giving birth to Ciera and Scheurich’s charge of medical neglect after she struggled to secure a ride to a hospital to treat Hannah’s pneumonia. 

“The children’s birth families were not beating their children or starving them,” writes Asgarian. “They were clearly struggling with substance use and mental illness, but instead of receiving help, the parents were punished.”

In Broken, Pryce, a Black woman who became a CPS caseworker after college to help ensure children were safe, explores the system from the inside. 

In the author’s note, Pryce explains that over the course of writing the book, she decided to focus on her own experiences as a case worker and the stories of women she knew or worked with personally. 

“My publisher and editor challenged me to dig deeper,” Pryce writes. “It required a level of vulnerability and culpability. But it also created an opportunity to get to the essence of how CPS plays out with families.”

The result is a deeply honest, intimate, and harrowing narrative. I desperately turned its pages to find out whether these women and their babies would be OK, and followed alongside Pryce as she slowly and painfully shifts from believing in the child welfare system to questioning it and ultimately aiming to dismantle it entirely. While never shying away from the brutal realities of the system, Pryce also shows deep compassion for her fellow case workers, many of whom are Black women, and her younger self.

“I saw humanity in my colleagues even in the face of difficult cases and complex circumstances,” Pryce writes.

The stories of the birth mothers threaded throughout this book are that much more fraught because of Pryce’s personal stake in them. One woman, Erica, takes in the 4-year-old daughter of a dear friend who is struggling to parent, only to find herself under investigation by CPS for abuse—and Erica also happens to be Pryce’s best friend. Pryce even admits to reporting her own sister to CPS over concerns of an abusive ex-partner. As these stories unfold, we watch Pryce evolve from an uncertain intern to an expert advocate as she realizes all the ways in which Black mothers bear the brunt of a system that, in Pryce’s words, requires not just an evolution but a revolution to truly serve the purpose it claims to.

Relinquished takes a look at another group of birth mothers—those who relinquish their children within the private adoption industry. Unlike the mothers from Asgarian’s and Pryce’s books, the mothers whose stories we hear, often firsthand, voluntarily gave up their parental rights, often just a few days or even hours after giving birth. Yet through these stories, we learn just how often the choice isn’t really the mother’s at all.

Many of the women in the book were preyed upon by for-profit adoption agencies or anti-abortion clinics and, in their words, coerced into giving up their children. Some would have chosen to parent if they felt they could. 

Taylor, who discovered she was pregnant when she was in her early 20s without a stable income or partner, received misinformation about birth control and abortions at an anti-abortion clinic. When she Googled “help for single moms,” she was flooded with ads for adoption agencies. She reached out to a large Christian adoption agency who connected her with a financially stable couple who she thought could provide for her son where she couldn’t.

“I was starting to feel unsure and I �ɲ�����’t ready,” Taylor said of her time in the hospital after giving birth. She was told she had already signed her termination of parental rights paperwork while she was on pain meds, something she didn’t remember doing. “I sobbed. [The agency worker] never told me I had a revocation period, nothing.”&�Բ�����;

Common among the birth mothers’ stories is the expression that a small amount of money—as little as a few hundred dollars—could have allowed them to parent their child. Instead, they selected adoptive parents from a set of profiles of two-parent households with steady incomes and homes with yards. These profiles presented a life for their child they could not imagine themselves providing under their current circumstances.

The stories in Relinquished can feel repetitive in their similarities, but the ubiquitous nature of the experiences is also the point. One scene that is repeated over and over again: the sobs of the birth mothers that follow the moment when their child is taken from their arms forever.

Many of the women in Relinquished express feelings of regret, guilt, depression, and anger years after their child was adopted, but they also have ideas about how the industry could better support them: required waiting periods between birth and termination of parental rights, less money involved in the process, true options counseling that includes abortion, lifelong support for relinquishing mothers, and legally enforceable open adoption agreements. Some believe in adoption abolition, which means erasing the situations, like poverty or lack of housing, in which adoption becomes necessary.

“You just have to learn to find your voice,” says Erica, a birth mother. “That’s what the oppressed need to do: find their voice.”

A Radical Reimagining of Motherhood

That is ultimately what these three books do: give voice to the women who have been silenced, coerced, and shamed. “The stories we tell about adoption are part of both cultivated and incidental efforts to promote adoption as a social good,” Sisson says.

Giving visibility to these women is just one of the many steps these authors see toward a better, more just world for all mothers. Pryce argues that the incremental changes the child welfare system has undergone, such as mandates requiring foster children see a therapist or doctor within their first few weeks in state care, added funding for programs, or improved training for case workers, while positive, is not enough. “It’s time to dig into the foundational assumptions, mindsets, and biases that guide every policy and operational procedure within the system,” she says. “And yes, that digging will pull apart a system that we have always known—and it will take courage to create something new.”&�Բ�����; 

Asgarian presents similar calls to move beyond the current systems. She says that a true abolition of the system requires a “radical reimagining of what support for parents looks like.” This would include monetary, mental, and social support that prevent situations that require—or even suggest—the need for child removal.

In Relinquished, Sisson speaks with Renee Gelin, an advocate for family preservation who lost one of her own children to adoption. Gelin founded , a small collective of birth mothers who help women looking to parent but are feeling pressured into adoption. She spoke of a long-term dream in which a “commune of mothers who are all parenting without partners and can help each other.”

“It’s about being a village,” Gelin said.

At the core of all of these solutions is that village, one that reimagines what family and family support means. That village includes systems that ��Dz�’t punish mothers for poverty or mental illness but provide the monetary and health support that allows them to be the best mothers they can be. Systems that elevate the importance of kinship when determining necessary temporary placements. Systems that do not abide the heteronormative, white-centered ideals of what a family should look like. That reimagining means a society that views motherhood not as a solitary role deserved by a select group, but as the foundation for the growth of the happy and healthy children we claim to want to see thrive.

*It’s important to note the language “birth mother” is offensive to some, while welcomed by others. Other terms with similarly mixed reactions include “first mother” and “natural mother.” Birth mother is primarily used in the texts �ɱ�’r�� discussing so I chose to use it throughout this article.

Chronic mental and physical health issues have long plagued my family. It is now known that epigenetics impact health over generations. Cycles of abuse, especially with men in my family, have been passed down, and impact how I view the world. It is my responsibility to break those cycles and heal not only myself, but my ancestors.

I did not grow up Native. Neither did my father, nor his father. On the Fort Peck Reservation in northeast Montana, my family was colonized early when my great-great grandmother was given to a wealthy, white cattle rancher in 1891 at the age of 15. I do not have all the answers about why this happened, but from what Native Elders have told me, this was not uncommon. She would later be called a “Native American cattle queen” in a newspaper out of Butte, Montana. 

After she died from strychnine ingestion, her husband sent their three daughters (one of them my great-grandmother) away from their home in Montana to attend a private Christian school. Their father (my great-great grandfather) and the U.S. government wanted to erase their Native identity. They were successful for 125 years, until I met the women who would inspire my photography project titled “Matriarch: Portraits of Indigenous Women in the Pacific Northwest Fighting for our Collective Future.”

In 2023, I received an art grant to do a project that had been brewing in my mind for five years. I had spent a few years on the frontlines, fighting proposed fracked gas and methanol facilities in the Port of Tacoma, both as a water protector/land defender and a photographer. I met many strong Indigenous matriarchs who inspired me to protect the land and water. At the time, I did not realize these encounters would turn into lasting friendships. I did not realize these women would help me come to terms with my own Native ancestry and colonial trauma. 

Elizabeth Satiacum was the first woman I met while photographing a public hearing in my hometown of Tacoma, Washington, in 2016. I was drawn to her cedar-woven hat and the red cape that covered her shoulders. Her warm smile made me feel comfortable enough to ask if I could sit next to her. 

The hearing we attended focused on a proposed methanol refinery planned to be built on Puyallup Tribal land. The refinery was being planned by Northwest Innovation Works, a private shell company This could explain why, five months earlier, Xi Jinping was in Tacoma visiting with Lincoln High School students and then-Tacoma Mayor , who is now a Democratic member of Congress representing Washington’s 10th Congressional District.

It was the first time I saw so clearly the tie between corporations and our local government. Witnessing the way these companies were responsible for destroying the environment and still had access to our elected officials further motivated our protest actions. We filled city council meetings, petitioned, door-knocked, and protested around the city through artful activism. The community made such an outcry about the methanol project that the plan was scrapped.

I met Nancy Shippentower when we spoke on a panel about environmental activism in Indigenous communities at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Her parents fought for fishing rights, and their actions helped impact the Boldt decision of 1974, which continues to guide issues of Native sovereignty 50 years later. 

Today, she instills that same strength and determination in her grandchildren. She teaches young people that everyone has a responsibility to help restore the balance in the ecosystems that sustain us.

In 2017, Carolyn Christmas and I attended the same actions opposing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility at the Port of Tacoma. Puget Sound Energy was successful at greenwashing the project by saying LNG burns cleaner fuel than oil or coal. The majority of people do not understand that the LNG to be stored in the facility comes from areas in Canada and the Rocky Mountain states where Native people are dying from poisoned air, water, and soil due to fracking. Nor do Tacoma residents make the connection between man camps at the extraction sites and the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. 

The women in my photography project did make these connections, and taught me to think holistically.

Still, it was not until years later that Carolyn would impact how I view myself as a Native person. We reconnected when my father donated firewood for her inipi (sweat lodge) in 2023 and she invited me to attend. Her joy and humor were infectious and we hit it off right away. 

Our experiences are similar in some ways; we were not raised in Native households, and we felt disconnected from ourselves. We felt invisible and lost until we learned about our People. While photographing Carolyn, I asked her what she wants the next generation to know. She replied: “Know where you come from. Know who you are. Know who your people are. Once you know those things, no one can change you.”

Spending time with these eight matriarchs and listening to their experiences helped put me on the path to finding myself and my ancestors. If I had never met these inspiring women, I might still be lost with my identity. I might not have learned about how colonization directly affected my family. I might not have learned about ancestral trauma and how it affects our DNA, even generations later. 

Now I hope to pay forward the transformative wisdom and friendship these matriarchs shared with me. I share their photos and stories of building a better collective future for all of us, including generations of our grandchildren to come, so they may enlighten and inspire others. 

Twenty-two hours later, he was assassinated.

King’s prophetic words express the virtue of hope amid hardship. He was not optimistic that he would reach the “Promised Land,” yet he was hopeful about the ultimate goal.

In conversation, “hope” and “optimism” can often be used as synonyms. But there’s an important gap between them, as psychology research suggests.

One of the most common tools to  asks people how much they agree with statements such as, “In uncertain times, I usually expect the best.” Those who strongly agree are regarded as highly optimistic.

But optimism can rely on a sense of luck over action. Self-help books on optimism are lined with hacks—like imagining your greatest possible self or focusing on the best-case scenario.

 studies how people perceive hope and justice. Long-term hope is not about looking on the bright side. It is a mindset that helps people endure challenges, tackle them head-on and keep their eyes on the goal—a virtue that Dr. King and other community leaders exemplify.

We, Not Me

Hope is often  as having strong will to succeed and plans to reach a goal.

Hope is stronger than optimism   and people’s ability to . Plenty of scientific evidence suggests that hope  and boosts their .

But branding hope as a self-improvement tool cheapens this long-established virtue. Hope has benefits . Thus, many psychologists are expanding the  beyond personal success. My research team defines this “” as striving toward a purposeful vision of the common good—a hope often shaped by hardship and strengthened through relationships.

Many leaders, including Dr. King, have channeled that lesson to inspire change. Centuries of spiritual and philosophical work describe hope  that, like love, is a decision, not a feeling.

The Myth of Time

Dr. King �ɲ�����’t known for looking on the bright side or expecting the best from others. He faced repeated waves of criticism, and, at the time of his death,  of him than of the .

In “,” Dr. King lamented the optimism of moderate white Americans who said they supported his goals but took little action. There is a “strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills,” he wrote. “Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively.”

He chastised society for believing that improvement would simply happen on its own. When he said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, ,” he was not describing its natural trajectory, but what people have the power to change. You cannot expect greener pastures if they are not tended today.

Dr. King was not alone in leveraging virtuous hope for justice. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire described hope as an “” that promotes action. Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison, called hope a “.”

Forged in Adversity

What makes hope a virtue is not its ability to promote happiness and success, but its commitment to a greater good beyond the self.

I study virtuous hope in a South African Zulu community, where there are few reasons for optimism. South Africa has . , and  is low. This is the part of the country where , with the percentage  in some communities.

We studied , based on their reputation and community suggestions. These individuals demonstrated an unwavering focus on striving for a better future, often unglued from expectations of personal success.

One local farmer nominated by his community struggled to buy seeds for his crops but still helped others apply for grants to buy them. Even when his own future was uncertain, he was not hoarding. He described his hope as a commitment to help others. His hope is not a positive expectation but a moral commitment.

Our interviewees did not describe hardship as a suppressor of hope but as its context to grow.

One unemployed young woman said she had applied for jobs for four years and would continue, though she was not naïve about the tough future. She said applying for jobs and reading to her child were her acts of hope. Her hope didn’t expect a quick improvement, yet it warded off paralysis.

Many of our interviewees anchored their hope in their Christian faith, as did Dr. King. Dr. King  St. Paul, one of the first Christian writers, , “Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Now this hope does not disappoint us.”

Hope, in other words, plays the long game: enduring suffering with integrity. Like Dr. King’s, it manifests in hardship and is refined in adversity. Hope enables communities to march for  even while tasting the danger of dictatorship, apartheid or oligarchy.

Hope knows it may take another generation to reach the Promised Land, but it acts today to  toward justice.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read .

The month has been gaining steam thanks to an initiative launched in 2017 by the Arab America Foundation. Each April, the foundation has gathered hundreds of acknowledgments from officials such as governors, mayors, and school boards. Last year was the first time a U.S. president recognizing it. 

While this was a big step forward, I admit that I’ve tended to dismiss celebratory months as problematic, especially because people live their identities every day of the year. I’m not Arab American only in April, nor am I a woman only in March during Women’s Herstory Month. 

�ճ�����’s also a potential for what journalist S. Mitra Kalita calls “” actions by corporations and organizations who use such months as self-serving marketing opportunities even if they ��Dz�’t support marginalized communities. Postcolonial studies scholar R. Benedito Ferrão also points out that “indigeneity is invisibilized when immigrant groups seek to center themselves in the U.S. narrative,” a fact that doesn’t go away even if November is . Additionally, Ferrão warns that cultural months can become assimilationist. They sometimes highlight how underrepresented communities align with the U.S. mainstream narratives in order to vie for a piece of the pie rather than questioning the pie—“the pie” being what Black feminist scholar bell hooks aptly called “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”—and highlighting individuals who have overcome personal obstacles rather than those who have challenged the status quo. 

Despite these contradictions, perhaps cultural months can offer the opportunity for programming and representation that may not otherwise be possible. I’ve had to challenge myself to look at this year’s Arab American Heritage Month with fresh eyes, especially given the current conditions in which the U.S. is actively funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and has recently in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. School administrators across the country have suppressed pro-Palestinian activism, particularly on high school and . Given this climate, I’ve been wondering whether this April might offer a unique opportunity for education and advocacy, particularly about Palestine.

Warren David, co-founder of the Arab American Foundation, which has been the driving force behind Arab American Heritage Month, says, “Arab Americans have been part of the mosaic of this country for nearly 150 years, but the discourse is the opposite. It paints Arabs, Arab Americans, and Muslims as terrorists and enemies of the state. Unfortunately, there are so many issues that Arab Americans have to deal with—being constantly demonized by the media and U.S. foreign policy, for example.”&�Բ�����;

To him, Arab American Heritage Month is important “because people need to hear something good about us—that we are human beings.”&�Բ�����;

Perhaps the real reason I’ve been so quick to dismiss the month is that it’s hard to face that anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia are still so bad today that there’s a need to remind the rest of the nation that Arabs are human. Indeed, so much of the messaging coming from and on behalf of the Palestinians in Gaza has been for people to acknowledge the humanity of those being massacred, which as of this writing is —13,000 of whom are . 

What if we viewed Arab American Heritage Month as a jumping off point, an opportunity to lean into thoughtful representation, education, and advocacy for the entire year, rather than treating it as a one and done? And what if this April we used our collective power to demand justice for Palestinians? 

Rana Sharif, a coordinating member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC) and faculty member in gender and women’s studies at California State University, Northridge, recognizes the value of identity politics, including cultural months, in mobilizing communities to think about bigger questions of belonging. She asks, “How do we create a culture of care and compassion as opposed to overemphasizing competition, and neoliberal and capitalist economies?” Sharif sees “people power” as the starting point of such cultural change. “How do we go into spaces and teach people that 1) they have power, and 2) that collectively they are powerful?” she asks. 

“We are oversaturated by harmful images of Arabs, Arab Americans, Muslims, Muslim Americans, and Palestinians and Palestinian Americans,” states Sharif. She recommends conscientiously making choices to seek out, learn, and read about these communities from voices within them, honoring their legacies, traditions, and histories, and doing the work to unlearn assumptions in order to create a space for something new. Sharif also hopes that Arab American Heritage Month can become more meaningful by “centering the affirmative and generative works of Arab American scholars, creatives, artists, and poets, for example.

Make It About Justice for Palestinians

Wherever you are, with all of your networks, it ought to be possible to celebrate Arab American Heritage Month while not looking away from the violence in Gaza. Given the rise in , we have an opportunity to make the month about standing in solidarity with Palestinians.

Sharif emphasizes that the war on Gaza did not start on Oct. 7, 2023, but did intensify then. “We’re in the midst of an active genocide, so any of the work we do has to begin with that acknowledgement,” she says. “The first objective is an immediate and permanent cease-fire,” which as of this writing has still not been achieved.

So, to your elected officials—and ��Dz�’t do it alone. Organize a letter writing or postcards for Palestine party, where you encourage people of all ages to ask their members of Congress for a cease-fire. Show up and speak up at their offices. Interrupt business as usual.

To get involved with and support the , Sharif recommends following her organization on social media and using “,” a digital action toolkit that PFC published last October. 

David suggests that collective activism can have a ripple effect in the long term. He believes people can use the month “to empower and build accurate and powerful images of Arabs and Arab Americans.” Even though people may not be in a celebratory mood because of the genocide, the Arab America Foundation plans to host celebrating Palestinian people, culture, and heritage. 

Consider financial activism. Find out where your money is and move it if it’s with a bank or in accounts funding Israel’s genocide in line with demands from the. The is a new phone application designed by Gazan Ahmed Bashbash that helps you scan barcodes to see whether products should be boycotted.��

In the spirit of educating ourselves and others, how about for your neighborhood, workplace, or place of worship? And for your book club, how about suggesting a Palestine-related book? Consider these reading lists as a good place to start: , , and “.”&�Բ�����;

Much of the misinformation about Arabs (and Palestinians in particular) comes from the media, wherein men are portrayed as terrorists and women as oppressed and voiceless. To push back against this, media literacy is key, particularly with young people. The Arab American National Museum has to use in classrooms or with the young people in your life, which include resources on how to talk about depictions of heroes and villains, and using Disney’s Aladdin as a jumping off place. 

Eid al-Fitr, which marks the culmination of Ramadan, the holiest month of the year for Muslims, took place on the eve of April 9. While not all Arabs are Muslim, most Gazans are. Fasting this year during what the United Nations has called Israel’s “” was complicated for many. I recommend reading Zaina Arafat’s new essay, “.” Also Reckon’s “” sheds light on how LGBTQ Palestinians are finding unique ways to honor family, faith, and the fight for justice.

Uplift and experience the art and cultural expressions of Palestinians. with the Arab Film and ������Ƶ Institute or . by in Gaza, and the amazing youth who . Dance helps us remember that it’s good to be alive even in dire circumstances. But if your intention is to be an ally, be careful about cultural appropriation. For example, ��Dz�’t take up belly dancing. And if you ��Dz�’t understand why from Randa Jarrar’s on the topic, then read her as well. (Although a decade old, they’re timeless.) 

Through all of this, lean into your grief. Remember that it’s OK to shed tears while thinking and talking about Gaza. Grief is an essential part of healing. It makes room for sharper thinking, more collaborative strategizing, and the ability to think bigger. Offer to listen to others without interruption. Bring tissues and try not to talk them out of their feelings. This in itself will be a radical act. 

In this climate of intense suppression, even attending online meetings with a virtual background honoring Arab American Heritage Month could be a powerful symbol of solidarity. I recommend created by St. Jude’s Research Hospital not only because it quotes the Lebanese American author Khalil Gibran but also because my great-aunt Sophie, who emigrated to the U.S. from Greater Syria as a girl, had embroidered and hung this quote on her wall where it hung until her final breath: “He who denies his heritage, has no heritage.”

Woods, who is trans and nonbinary, works as a birth doula in the Seattle area. As part of their job, Woods extensively plans for a client’s post-labor recovery, and they wanted a similar level of care after their surgery. Top surgery was going to be vulnerable and challenging, Woods knew, and rather than rely solely on a partner or friends, they decided to hire an expert: a gender doula. 

Similar to birth doulas, gender doulas are non-clinical companions who provide advocacy, knowledge, and support. These days, you can count on two hands the number of people who have assumed the formal title of “gender doula,” but they have existed over the decades in other forms as “transgender transition coaches” or more informal word-of-mouth mentors. With exploration of becoming more common and , people are turning to gender doulas to navigate an often unwelcoming environment.

The gender doula could remind Woods to take their medication, supervise them on a walk in case they started feeling dizzy, or record how much fluid was draining into their post-surgical plastic bulbs to ensure they weren’t at risk of infection. The doula could also act as an advocate at doctors’ appointments and ensure Woods’ correct pronouns were being used, given that they are often misgendered at the hospitals where their clients are giving birth, though “they/them” pronouns are clearly written on their badge.��

“When you’ve fought for so long, and have been silenced or not seen, and are finally stepping into your body, and then someone doesn’t see or acknowledge it … it’s just a dismissal of your existence,” Woods says. “And it’s crushing.”&�Բ�����;

According to a , nearly half of the 1,500 transgender adults surveyed reported experiencing mistreatment or discrimination with a health provider. This includes misgendering, care refusal, and verbal or physical abuse. The rates are higher for transgender respondents of color, with 68% reporting a negative interaction. This in turn leads to health avoidance and delay, which can further exacerbate chronic health problems.

stef shuster, author of the 2021 book , says medical providers are often not trained as experts in gender, which means they bring in a lot of assumptions—sometimes bias—into their work about what they think a trans person should look or sound like.

“A�Բ�DzԱ� who doesn’t fit that mold, providers get really concerned about opening up access to care,” shuster says. “The structure of this system is flawed because it amplifies medical authority and minimizes trans people’s autonomy.”

Gender doulas help maintain autonomy, and sometimes, that looks like educating medical providers. Luigi Continenza, a gender doula in Tacoma, Washington, —like using the word “chest tissue” rather than “breast tissue,” or not asking patients about their top surgery scars when they’re seeking care for their ankle. 

Woods wanted a gender doula who could navigate the system, so they chose Ken McGee, a fellow birth doula who’d recently transitioned. He was also a physical therapist for a decade who’d seen how isolating gender-affirming surgeries can be and didn’t want people going through the process alone. McGee began pursuing gender doula work during the pandemic. He’s especially excited about educating clients and planning for rehabilitation post-surgery. “How are you going to be set up for sleeping? How do you think you’re going to wipe your bum? What’s showering going to be like?” he says. “I’ve never seen a surgeon’s office have a handout that covers all of that.”

For those who decide to medically transition—not a requirement for a transgender identity—a gender doula might offer guidance about how a patient can communicate with their doctor. But they won’t dish out medical advice. Gender exploration can be delicate, and many doulas are there to listen and help people process, though it’s important to note they are not trained therapists. 

, one of the first and only full-time gender doulas, says people often seek him out when they’re exploring their gender and feeling scared or confused. Like McGee, he started during the pandemic and much of his practice is online. He hosts virtual workshops such as “” and , but a bulk of his work is one-on-one consultations.

Lawliet holds a Ph.D. on the history of transgender medicine—one of his clients dubbed him the “trans librarian”—but he also has lived experience. “It took me a long time to realize that actually, I’m a gay man,” he says. “If I had had somebody just talk it through with me, I feel like I could have saved eight years of consternation, you know?”

Lawliet says listening to Erica Livingston, a birth doula with Birdsong Brooklyn, on the podcast inspired him to pursue his current path. “She said this line: ‘We need a doula for every threshold.’ Of course, the threshold I was working with was transition,” Lawliet says. “I had a huge, thunderous, lightning moment.” Eventually, Livingston and her partner, Laura Interlandi, became his mentors, teaching him the skills to guide people through their most vulnerable and tender moments.

From his apartment in Los Angeles, surrounded by Dolly Parton art and tarot decks, Lawliet meets his clients over Zoom, which allows him to see people anywhere in the country—more than 115 of them so far with a growing waitlist. On a given day, it’s not uncommon for Lawliet to discuss everything from the spiritual aspects of transitioning and not feeling trans enough to the current political climate. Then there’s the logistics—insurance, clothing, name change—all the complex, moving parts of being trans, he says.

�ճ�����’s currently no certification process. (Birth doulas have a certification process, though it isn’t a .) However, Lawliet is continually receiving requests for mentorship, so he is planning to offer a structured mentorship program in the future. For now, he has only taken on one mentee, who is Filipinx and Yaqui, which gives clients of color an option for someone with more shared experience.

Given the lack of official training, Lawliet strongly believes a deep interrogation of self needs to happen before someone assumes the title of gender doula. He’s always thinking about the ethical considerations of the role—confidentiality for one, or not trying to force people to grow or heal in a way that he thinks they need. He also created an online community with other gender doulas, including McGee, Luigi Continenza, Bowie Winnike, and Ro Rose, where they share resources, troubleshoot, and refer clients to one another.

In the end, McGee worked with Woods for a month. He taught them the signs of abnormal swelling and of course, made smoothies. When Woods wanted to step out into the world, McGee was right there alongside them, reminding them to take pauses when they felt winded, filling in the awkward silences, and stopping when they wanted to admire the exuberant branches of their favorite monkey puzzle tree. 

Eventually, Woods healed. The first time they slipped their favorite black hoodie over their head and looked in the mirror, they cried and thought:��“That’s how it’s supposed to look.” Woods and McGee are still in touch, and every now and then will go for a walk, together.��

“�ճ�����’s more to community resilience than the physical protection of properties,” Owens, who works with Louisiana’s state folklife program, told Grist.��

Radical change is already occurring. Louisiana’s coast is slowly being swallowed by the sea; the Southwest is drying out; Appalachia’s transition from coal has been no less disruptive than a recent battery of floods and storms. These crises, which are unfolding nationwide, interrupt not only infrastructure, but the rituals and remembrances that make up daily life.

The study of those rituals and remembrances may seem like an esoteric discipline, one relegated to exploring quaint superstitions of the past, or documenting old men in overalls playing homemade instruments. It’s true that those who study and preserve folklore ��Dz�’t concern themselves with high art—that is, the sort of thing supported by networks of patronage and philanthropy and gallery exhibitions. Their mission is to record the culture of ordinary people: us. Our jokes, our songs, our spiritual practices, our celebrations, our recipes. Such things are the glue that holds society together, and as the climate changes our ways of life, Owens and her peers say, it’s important to pay attention to how culture adjusts.��

Doing that goes beyond the practical question of how people will carry their heritage into a world reshaped by climate change. It requires looking to tradition-bearers—the people within a community who are preserving its customs, songs, and stories and passing them on—for clues to how best to navigate this tumultuous time without losing generations of knowledge. In that way, folklorists across the country increasingly strive to help communities adapt to a new reality, understand how tradition shifts in times of crisis, and even inform climate policy. Folklore doesn’t seem like it would teach us how to adapt to a warming world, but even as it looks over our collective shoulder at the past, it can prepare us for a future that is in many ways already here.

In the coal towns of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, Emily Hilliard has written extensively on this idea, which she calls visionary folklore. She looks for ways to sustain culture as those who practice it experience incredible change so that they might “send traditions on to the future.” As climate disaster threatens to wipe away entire towns and ways of life—both literally, in the case of the communities lost to the floods that ravaged Kentucky in 2022, and figuratively through the loss of archives and museums to those inundations—she considers this continuity an essential part of retaining a sense of place and identity, two intangible feelings that help give life meaning.��

“Folklorists can help communities pass on these traditions,” she said.

Hilliard is a former West Virginia state folklorist who has, among other things, collected oral histories, songs, artwork, and legends for the West Virginia Folklife Program. It’s impossible to talk about climate in Appalachia without talking about coal, and the communities she has documented have a gnarled and thorny relationship with that industry, which has both sustained them and helped create the climate impacts they’re left to grapple with. 

People, Hilliard said, face a grave risk in “the way that climate disaster breaks up communities, so that communities may no longer be able to share food and music traditions.” Visionary folklore is, in part, about trying to restore, replace, and sustain these things, while finding ways to bulwark and adapt traditions for an uncertain future.

Climate change, like the coal industry that fostered it, threatens to rewrite some of the region’s cultural memory. Hilliard recalls members of the Scotts Run Museum in Osage, West Virginia, a place where town elders regularly play music, tell stories, and share meals, talking of rising floodwaters threatening their community gathering spaces. She sees collaboration with communities to preserve these important community resources as part of her life’s work.

As she strives to help communities sustain old traditions, Hilliard sees new ones emerging as coping strategies for a world in which foundations are shifting. As floods have repeatedly swept through Appalachia, she has seen communities come together to repair and replace family quilts, musical instruments, and other heirlooms and keepsakes, some of which were painstakingly crafted by hand and many of which have been handed down through generations. Community members in Scotts Run established “repair cafes” where people with various skills helped neighbors recover. Coal company towns’ often hardscrabble existence made such expertise necessary, and in an era of looming environmental destruction, those knowledge pathways allow people to simultaneously come together to grieve and to begin to rebuild their community. Such things are not limited to Appalachia, of course.

“There may exist beneficial practices and adaptations to crises within our historical and current practices,” said Kimi Eisele, a folklorist with the Southwest Folklife Alliance in Tucson, Arizona. Eisele, who is beginning a folklife project focused on climate change, manages Borderlore, a journal operated by the Southwest Folklife Alliance. It recently received a $150,000 grant to collect oral histories that amplify the environmental history and future of the Southwest through the eyes of Indigenous peoples, immigrants, and other historically excluded people.

In southern Arizona, where Eisele lives and works, triple-digit temperatures, aridity, and groundwater depletion present a dire threat to agriculture and even long-term human settlement. Many of the interviews Eisele and others have collected focus on the impacts of climate change on Indigenous traditions and how those traditions are changing. The Tohono O’odham, whose ancestral land is divided by the border with Mexico, have, for example, long relied on willow for basket-weaving, but as farms and groundwater diversion have lowered the water table, willows have dried up and died. Basket-weavers now use the hardier yucca plant. Climate change is also causing traditional adobe homes to crack and decay; Native architects are working to shore them up and explore how modern technology can preserve them, even as the structures provide a model for building cooler, more energy-efficient homes.��

The interviews describe adaptations made over millennia that still work—mind-boggling, perhaps, to a society that has managed to nearly deplete its resources in just a few hundred years. The Hopi, Tohono O’odham, Diné, and other peoples have weathered climate fluctuations, droughts, floods, and famine in the tens of thousands of years they’ve lived in the Southwest. Hopi farmer Michael Kotutwa Johnson, who raises corn, believes that heritage provides essential tools for adapting to the climate crisis. He is working to ensure others learn to use them.

“As Hopis, we adjust to these environmental fluctuations,” Johnson told Eisele in an interview for the Climate Lore oral history series. “It’s part of our faith.” Even if this period of climate crisis is unprecedented and unpredictable, Johnson says, he feels prepared to bear it out.

Johnson is a dryland farmer, meaning he uses traditional farming methods that ��Dz�’t require��irrigation. He relies on the annual monsoon to water his fields, and on what he knows of the land to prepare for the season ahead. In 2018, for example, he realized early on that a drought was intensifying because “biological indicators that usually appear in April weren’t there,” he told Eisele. “Plants weren’t greening up, so we knew the soil moisture �ɲ�����’t going to be there.” In response, he and other Hopi farmers planted only a quarter of their usual crop to avoid depleting the soil. What he describes as “bumper” years can take communities through leaner times—if everyone is careful and pays attention.��

“We’ve had a system in place to handle a lot of it. We plant enough to last three to five years,” Johnson told Eisele. “When you have everybody doing that, then you have to have a good supply to get through climatic changes.”&�Բ�����;

He hopes other farmers, particularly Native farmers, collaborate in practicing regenerative agriculture rather than relying on destructive groundwater withdrawal to maintain crops the desert simply ������’t support. Eisele finds stories like Johnson’s invaluable in helping people everywhere adapt. “We are really looking at folklife as a tool for liberation,” she said.

Along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Maida Owens takes such work a step farther, trying to use folklore to shape public policy and make the world more welcoming toward those displaced by the climate crisis.

The Bayou State has been losing up to 35 square miles of coastland each year for the better part of a century. As erosion and rising seas have remade the state, entire communities have had to move. Climate migration, new to some parts of the world, is as much a fact of life for Louisianans as the changing of the tides.

Even as Louisiana has focused on reclaiming lost land and restoring coastal wetland, Owens has urged special attention to adaptation, teaching people in harm’s way how to adjust their ways of life without losing what’s most important to them. She works with the Bayou Culture Collaborative, which brings together tradition-bearers from impacted communities to talk “about the human dimension of coastal land loss” so residents, and their elected leaders, can better plan for the migration already afoot. Research has shown that when people make the difficult decision to pack up and leave, most of them go only a few miles.��

“People from all over the coast are starting to leave and move inland,” Owens said. In the parlance of her field, the places they leave behind are “sending communities”; where they’re headed, “receiving communities” await them. Owens has begun to convene meetings online and in receiving communities to discuss cultural sensitivity to help people prepare for their new neighbors, knowing that migration can exacerbate class and racial tension. 

In the Louisiana folklife program’s ongoing “Sense of Place—And Loss” workshop series, Owens hosts discussions about the future of bayou traditions to collectively imagine what the near future might look like as the Gulf Coast changes. Artists, other tradition-bearers, and community leaders are invited to envision how they might make their towns and counties more welcoming for climate migrants, and Owens assists them in developing concrete action plans. Such an effort includes having receiving communities inventory their cultural and economic resources to see what they can offer newcomers, invest in trauma-informed care for disaster survivors, and consider what they might need to make themselves ready to integrate newcomers.������

The Louisiana state coastal protection and restoration authority has identified some towns that might have the capacity, and need, for more people; many of these places have the space but lack the social infrastructure to support the continuation of rural peoples’ foodways and artistic traditions. Though receiving communities may not be far away, those most vulnerable to displacement are often Indigenous, French-speaking, or otherwise culturally distinct, and moving even a short distance can expose them to unfamiliar circumstances. In her workshops, Owens is proposing ideas lifted in part from the adaptation strategies immigrants often rely upon, like cultural festivals and an emphasis on cultural exchange and language education. In a recent project, several coastal parishes (what Louisianans call counties) near Terrebonne created a collaborative quilt at a regional community festival as a way to draw attention to the beauty and ancestral importance of their wetlands and deepen their connections with one another.

That’s where Owens hopes folklorists can affect policy change, too. Owens is keeping a close eye on the state’s Coastal Master Plan, providing feedback with an eye towards supporting the culturally rich, and vanishing, coastal parishes. The Louisiana Folklore Society has urged the state to conduct its planning with respect to the desires and needs of the people who live on the coast, prioritizing engagement before any major mitigation project, and saving habitat not merely for its inherent value but also for its importance to the coastal tribes it sustains.

Though climate disasters have already thrown towns along the Louisiana coast and beyond into disarray and prompted seismic changes in how residents live, this is just the beginning. As floods and fires, droughts and erosion, and the myriad other impacts of a warming world wreak greater havoc, some of the answers to the crisis won’t be found in engineering or science, but in the cultural fabric that binds us together.

This article originally appeared in Grist at . Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at 

“In this moment, after 100 years of erasure, false narratives, and racism built into the country industry, it’s important to shine a light on the Black co-creation of country music—and creation is the correct word, not influence,” Giddens writes. “Black musicians, along with their working-class white counterparts, were active participants and creators, not empty vessels with good rhythm.”

Sometimes these myths have been weaponized violently. Black country veterans, including , Charley Pride, and have shared their experiences performing in country music spaces, including the racial slurs and threats directed at them. For example, in his 1994 memoir, Pride writes about touring the U.S. South in the late 1960s, where some of the concert venues he played received bomb threats.

As both a Black fan and writer of country music criticism, I’ve thought twice about bringing my child to a country music festival or concert with me, out of��fear she might witness or be the target of another fan’s violence. But while criticisms of Beyoncé have sometimes gotten ugly (’s dehumanizing comparison of��Beyoncé to a dog peeing against a tree to mark her territory is one particularly vivid example), in the wake of Cowboy Carter, listeners who might not have heard their stories told in mainstream country music are into the genre.

Black country artists, including Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, Reyna Roberts, Willie Jones, Linda Martell, Brittney Spencer, and Shaboozey, who all appear on Cowboy Carter, have seen an uptick in and overall listenership on streaming services. Perhaps we could dub this the “Beyoncé Effect,” a wave that lifts all who surround her, but Beyoncé’s impact goes beyond opening the door wider for a handful of Black country artists.��

Cowboy Carter also opens up conversations about Black creativity and imaginative freedom within country music and beyond, planting the seeds for deeper social change. On the album, Beyoncé cites and performs an expansive history of Black musical creativity, while also bringing her own unique energy and style. Throughout the album, Beyoncé channels Ray Charles’ showmanship and swinging reinterpretations that made his 1962 album, “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,” a in the country genre.

You can especially hear her power to freshly reinterpret classics on her version of “Jolene.” We get the sunny optimism of Charley Pride’s “Kiss an Angel Good Morning,” on “Bodyguard,” though it’s tweaked for modern times. (She even sings to her lover, “I could be your bodyguard/ Please let me be your Kevlar (Huh)/ Baby, let me be your lifeguard/ Would you let me ride shotgun?”) On “16 Carriages,” Beyoncé tells a story of lost innocence and sacrifice as a young performer, echoing themes present in Allison Russell’s “Night Flyer,” “Persephone,” and other songs about survival that appear on her 2021 album, “Outside Child.”

On her tender lullaby “Protector,” performed with her daughter Rumi, Beyoncé promises to nurture her daughter’s light: “Even though I know someday you’re gonna shine on your own/ I will be your projector.” I hear a resonance with Black country songwriter Alice Randall’s wonderful “My Dream,” performed by Valerie June and included on the 2024 album, “My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall.”&�Բ�����;

We get the muscular country rock spirit of Tina Turner’s “Nutbush City Limits” (especially of the song) on records like “Ya Ya” and “Texas Hold ‘Em.” (I can imagine these songs as production numbers in the style of Tina Turner and Beyoncé herself, seeing as Beyoncé performed “Proud Mary” with her icon at .)

And might Beyoncé’s flirty duet with Miley Cyrus, “II Most Wanted,” (“Making waves in the wind with my empty hand/ My other hand on you”) be the sequel (or prequel?) to Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” a sapphic provocation from the shotgun seat, Luke Combs left behind in the dust? “II Most Wanted” is one of several songs on Cowboy Carter that speak to the centrality of stories of finding love and mobility in Black country, blues, and rhythm and blues music. Whether by horse, train, Cadillac, or Starship, Black music is shaped by stories of leaving, returning, and wandering to places known and unknown.

Beyoncé’s crossing and melding, hybridizing and swirling on this album, has everything to do with reclaiming, an artistic action denied just about any Black artist who wants to make it in country music. For earlier Black artists like Bobby Womack, Millie Jackson, and Joe Tex, there has often been a double standard to “stay in your lane,” while white artists have been free to experiment, as Charles L. Hughes makes clear in his 2015 book, .

Cowboy Carter is a provocation, a new chapter, a clapback. It is not so much a rejection of the past as much as a sometimes-neck-popping conversation with that past, and with that, a rethinking of it. As both an improviser and re-interpreter, Beyoncé carries forward the tradition of African American art-making that is deeply invested in the changing same, bringing new energy to past songs. This spirit of circularity, a key African American aesthetic is evoked in the very first lyrics of the album: “Nothing really ends/ For things to stay the same/ They have to change again.”

In that way, we might see her as continuing a legacy of Black innovation in country music, whether it’s because of the ill fit of the instruments she inherited, the countrypolitan storytelling of Linda Martell, or the sex-positive grooves of Millie Jackson and Tanner Adell.

Ultimately, there is a kind of recovery at the heart of this album—a healing of the spirit of Black innovation in a genre that has worked so hard to repress it: “Hello, my old friend/ You change your name but not the ways you play pretend,” Beyoncé sings in “American Requiem.” A requiem is normally a mass for the dead, a ritual of remembrance. In traditional white and western ways of thinking, the purpose of a requiem is to lay souls to rest. But on this album, the purpose is to raise the dead, to animate histories and memories once forgotten, or misnamed.

This is an album meant to lift the lid off of the coffin of music that has grown stagnant. Like the exorcism that it is, this process of challenging old narratives and animating lost stories can be risky, vulnerable work. But perhaps it is time to abandon the old “pretend” narratives of “three chords and the truth” to honor other stories, to conjure in order to set all of us free.

Typhoon Haiyan—or , as most Filipinos call it—was one of the deadliest cyclones in history, leading to and more than 28,000 injuries. At least are still considered missing. Haiyan hit Tacloban City the hardest, collapsing and flattening the city’s most formidable buildings and infrastructures and causing . 

In November 2023, the people of Tacloban gathered to remember Haiyan—the great mourning and the long journey to overcoming one of the world’s worst climate catastrophes. They’ve risen from deep calamity, modeling how the people of the Global South have been—and continue to be—tenacious and united as they rebuild. There are lessons to be learned here. What has helped this community collectively survive the unimaginable?

An Avenue of Care for Survivors

Jaime Gravador, a news reporter in Tacloban, was 12 when Haiyan devastated the city. In the hours after the storm, which Gravador describes as “dark,” “heavy,” and “apocalyptic,” he and his father roamed neighborhoods where they encountered mass death. “Lahat ng nakikita mo sa daan puro patay [you find dead bodies everywhere you turn],” he remembers wearily. Even after Haiyan passed, he couldn’t look at certain roads without having a flashback of the lifeless bodies that once lay there. “It brings you back to all the deep emotion … memories na hindi mo kayang maalala. Maluluha ka talaga [memories that you ������’t bear to remember anymore. You’ll always end up in tears],” Gravador says. 

In the aftermath of the super typhoon, survivors developed severe mental health conditions. Approximately 80.5% of survivors involved in typhoon relief efforts , and the rate of people with mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and depression, .

However, the country �ɲ�����’t fully equipped to handle this increase in mental distress. Gloria Enriquez-Fabrigas, an officer in charge of Tacloban’s health office, told the in 2019: “When Yolanda struck, we were all shocked. … The focus [then] was really more on the need for food and basic needs. Mental health was set aside during that time.” Gravador says that some of these survivors became psychologically distressed not just because their loved ones died, but because there were others who were never recovered. For some survivors, the lack of closure, with no bodies to bury and grieve, was too much to tolerate.

After Haiyan, there were only serving Eastern Visayas, even as the . But in 2014, officials in Eastern Visayas implemented , which allotted $90,380 or 5 million Philippine pesos, “to enable government agencies and personnel to respond to psychosocial needs through community-based intervention,” according to .��

Eastern Visayas was the first region in the Philippines to provide mental health support at all levels of care: primary, secondary, and tertiary, assisting up to “384 [patients] in 2017,” , a provincial health officer in Northern Samar. Health workers in Eastern Visayas offered care to communities using the Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP), an international program that “aims at scaling up services for mental, neurological and substance use disorders for countries especially with low- and middle-income,” according . 

The program is designed for large-scale communities who suffer mental health conditions like depression, suicidal thoughts, and other psychological disorders, especially when there is a great lack of resources. In summary, on destigmatizing mental health issues in the community, suicide and substance-use prevention, community follow-up, human rights awareness, and more.

Health personnel, even those who were not mental health specialists, were trained with the mhGAP curriculum. The implementation of the curriculum aided the national health staff and local communities to identify and manage mental health conditions

Lyra was 10 when Haiyan flooded her Tacloban home. At the time, she couldn’t process the magnitude of the typhoon—until she and her family needed to climb on top of their roof to avoid violent floods.

After Haiyan, Tacloban didn’t have electricity for three months. Haiyan also completely wiped out Tacloban’s water and sanitation services, including the . Lyra recalls drinking baby milk so she could have adequate nutrition. “Siniguro lang nila Papa na may tubig kami kahit water lang na galing sa ulan. Tapos yung mineral water, parang talaga sa mga baby lang, so yung tubig namin, [ay] tubig ulan. [Our dad found ways for us to have enough drinking water, even if it meant rainwater. The mineral water was only reserved for infants].” For Lyra, nothing was ever the same.

When Lyra returned to school, most of her classmates were no longer there. Some died during Haiyan while others moved away. Thanks to the lingering trauma from Haiyan as well as the sudden changes in her everyday life, her social skills diminished: “After ng bagyo, mas naging silent ako. Hindi ako marunong makihalubilo. [After the storm, I became more silent. I didn’t know how to get along with others].”&�Բ�����;

She also noticed psychosomatic effects from climate anxiety: “Pag umuulan ng malakas o’ pag malakas ang hangin, parang natatahimik agad ako o’ natutuliro. Hindi ko ma-explain yung feeling na traumatized, kasi hindi ko siya na-express nung bata ako. [Whenever I see heavy rains or hear strong winds, I get quiet and disoriented now. I couldn’t explain the feeling of being traumatized at the time since I was only a child].”&�Բ�����;

, climate anxiety is “an adaptive psychological response to the actual threat posed by the climate crisis,” which manifests in “intrusive worrying, fear, and behavioral impairment.” Aruta and Guinto found that the Philippines has the highest number of youth who suffer from negative emotions like hopelessness, anger, and frustration in response to the climate crisis.

After Haiyan, communities from different parts of the Philippines and around the world traveled to Tacloban . Some humanitarian organizations, such as , were birthed from these efforts. FundLife, an organization mostly led by youth leaders and mentors, provides relief goods and psychosocial support to climate survivors in Tacloban. The organization utilizes , , and —especially football—to help youth cope with the impact of the climate disaster.��

Lyra, who was one of the organization’s first mentees, is a living testament to the impact of FundLife’s community efforts. “FundLife became a second family to me,” Lyra shares. “I wanted to share the hope I have through sports and play. Yung play, naging forgotten right na ng mga bata [Play has become a forgotten right to kids].” Lyra believes that sports can be an avenue where a young person discovers how resilient they are: “Sa paglalaro… dun mo malalaman na pwede kang bumangon [Play makes it possible for anyone to rise up].”&�Բ�����;

She’s since returned to the organization to work as one of its football coaches. “Nung nag-join ako sa FundLife, hindi ko lang na-develop yung football skills ko, mas na-improve ko yung confidence at social skills ko [Since joining FundLife, my football skills improved, as did my confidence and social skills],” she says. 

The Power of Collective Storytelling

“L�����Dz� are what you call the sediments at the bottom of a tuba jar,” Joanna Sustento says as she welcomes attendees to Larog, a community storytelling project where climate survivors share stories, music, and art to process the tragedies from Haiyan. “Very much like what we have here [in this gathering], the stories we tell are remnants of what has conspired a decade ago: stories, memories—however much we pour out, there will always be something else to tell: the remnants,” Sustento says.��

Sustento, who co-created Larog in 2017, lost her family during the super typhoon. She then became an active frontliner, providing basic necessities to affected communities in Tacloban. While her story was widely known in climate activist spaces, she didn’t have enough time to process the trauma and grieve. “At that time, [I was on] survival mode,” she says. “[I focused] more on finding my family members, kasi noong time na ‘yon, hindi ko pa alam kung sinu-sino ba yung nag survive, and siyempre, find shelter, food [because during that time, I didn’t know who else in my family survived, and of course, I needed to find shelter and food].”

After Haiyan passed, Sustento and her friends felt like something was missing during the annual commemoration ceremonies. “We realized that there’s this gap,” she says. “[�ճ�����’s no] space for people to come together and share stories. [Only] amongst ourselves, we’d tell stories of how we survived [and] our experiences during the typhoon. Pero wala yung isang space na pupunta yung mga taong hindi magkakakilala [but there was no central space where strangers can gather and tell stories], and we want to provide that.”&�Բ�����;

The first Larog event ended around 11:00 p.m., but people continued to share their experiences until the following morning. “Wala na yung program. Wala na yung microphone. Pero yung audience mismo nag-usap usap na sila [There was no more program. No more microphone. But the audience members remained and kept talking amongst themselves].”

At the 2023 gathering, Kay Zabala, a mental health coach, told her story about losing 11 family members during the typhoon. “I experienced hell because of Yolanda … imagine [losing] only one [family member], what about 11?” she said. After Haiyan, Zabala sought psychological and psychiatric help among other treatments so that she could heal. In turn, she’s become a mental-health practitioner.

While the pain of surviving a climate disaster will never go away, Zabala says our bodies and collective spirit are resilient: “We are capable of surpassing and overcoming anything … because we are naturally capable of doing that,” she continues. “If you get wounded in the morning and [when you get to] the afternoon or evening, makita ka nagsasara na [the wound will close]. You see that it’s already dried.”

When I asked Sustento about the healing power of storytelling, she said that collective grieving helped the community immensely: “Nag-purge kami ng mga trauma namin [We purged out our trauma together]. Nakakalungkot because yun yung pinagdaanan namin [It’s sad because we went through all of this], but at the same time, it’s just so beautiful to know that you’re not alone, [and] to know na may mga taong naiintindihan kung ano yung mga pinagdanaanan mo [to know that there are people who understand you and all that you are going through].”&�Բ�����;

Sustento says that telling her story has restored her sense of purpose. Though Haiyan took everything from her, she knows, “Enough pa rin ako [I’m still enough]. I can still contribute to something bigger.” She desires this for other climate survivors as well: “Hopefully, [they] find it in them [that] hindi ito yung end [This is not the end]. �ճ�����’s still so much more.”

Walking for Climate Justice 

The Philippines contributes , yet it’s the world’s country and has the highest risk of being impacted by climate change. As the threat rises, a community of humanitarian organizations have been demanding world governments respond to the climate crisis that’s impacting countries, especially in the Global South.��

Members and volunteers of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, Bikers United Movement, DAKILA, FundLife, Living Laudato Si, Philippine Movement for Climate Justice, and various archdioceses in the Philippines walked from Manila to Tacloban City—a journey of more than 600 miles—to uplift their urgent call for systemic change through the Climate Justice Walk.

is a monthlong action that began on Oct. 8, 2023, . The walk highlighted the demand for climate reparations, which urges fossil fuel companies to provide reparations for the loss and damage costs for the areas most impacted by climate disasters, including but not limited to Tacloban City. The walk also supported , including the Philippine Commission on Human Rights’ “that found legal grounds to hold big fossil fuel companies and other corporate entities accountable for their climate-destroying business models that lead to human rights harms.” This meant investigating 47 corporations, including��Shell, Exxon, and BP, for human-rights violations that triggered the climate crisis. However, have shown up to face the communities who filed these landmark petitions.

Greenpeace campaigner Jefferson Chua believes that reparations is “the strongest form of accountability.” Yet he and his team have sensed the resistance from Global North governments when discussing climate reparations: “I do think it’s opening the wound up again that relates to the colonial past of a lot of Global North countries, because we do know that the word ‘reparations’ connotes postcolonial meanings, right?,” he says. “I just ��Dz�’t think [Global North governments] want to pay. They ��Dz�’t want accountability in terms of their historical emissions, and also, [they are] not acknowledging the accountability for the expansion plans of [their] companies.”

Beyond the Climate Justice Walk, Greenpeace Southeast Asia has been pressuring governments and companies to account for their complicity in climate change. This includes to the Shell import terminal in Batangas, Philippines, as well as establishing , which displays stories and art by climate survivors. 

Yeb Saño, lead walker of the Climate Justice Walk, says that “Filipinos refuse to accept the vicious cycle of destruction and reconstruction.” As the executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, he also said in a : “We also refuse to accept that we are reduced to numbers, so it is our aim to remind the whole world.”��

������Ƶ than 10 years after Haiyan, it’s important to recognize that there are many ways to process and survive climate catastrophes—with community-led mental health interventions, play, and creative storytelling—while also strategically preventing them from escalating any further.

A Game for Everyone

A chessboard with black and white boxes and 32 pieces are the tools that Teglia found to face violence and marginality. He shared his method with children and teenagers from vulnerable areas and others in juvenile criminal institutions.  

Growing up, Teglia heard the prejudice that chess was a game for the smartest and, in many cases, the affluent. However, he discovered that through practice, the activity could become a pedagogical device capable of fostering group dynamics and integration. He also found that with some simplifications, anyone could start playing on the first day at any age.

“We start by telling the story of the game and the pieces, suspending some more abstract rules like checking for direct combat where pieces are captured. Then, we gradually incorporate more rules to make the game more complex and strategic,” he says.

“When I started working in Villa 21 [a low-income area in Buenos Aires], I had to discard my prejudices. Five-year-old kids got excited when I told them the history of chess and immersed them in the cultural world of the game,” he recalls.

Teglia emphasizes the advantages of chess as “a playful activity that develops active attention.” He mentions working with children diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, highlighting that sometimes it’s not a flaw but a strategy to navigate the world.

Although he doesn’t keep track of the number of participants in his workshops, Teglia estimates that in the 13 years of his work, there have been several hundred people in groups of 20 to 40. Currently, he is planning classes simultaneously at a psychiatric institution and at the admission and referral center for juvenile penal cases, where he divides the children into levels based on their ages.

To Socialize and Concentrate

“In 2010, I began organizing workshops in children’s homes and incorporated chess into literacy workshops in Villa 21 as another proposal for artistic expression and play,” he recalls. He explains that “this game affects how children relate to knowledge and problem-solving, thus aiding in the learning process.” One of his students expresses it in his own words: “I like it, and I get hooked because it helps me think.”

The gaming sessions are not oblivious to the clock: “It’s very necessary because it allows working on time management. Each participant has to manage it for moves and, in a broader sense, in organizing the activity,” clarifies Teglia.

The expert also points out the “socializing” potential of the activity. “It’s a good way to generate a mediator, a common code to form a group. There can be children of different ages and levels, and each one has a role to receive and integrate classmates or teach them rules.”

Emotions can surface during board games. Teglia gives examples: A boy hesitated to sacrifice the queen to save the king because he wanted to protect his bonds. “They identify pawns with kids like them, and the king and queen with their dad and mom,” he says. He adds that besides socializing and resolving conflicts, the game encourages participants to learn how to follow rules.

In addition to taking his proposal to vulnerable neighborhoods, Teglia added workshops at the primary school of Club Racing de Avellaneda and in psychiatric institutions for children, teenagers, and adults: “Practice facilitates better organization of thought for people with mental health disorders and allows their subjectivity to emerge,” he says.

Another implementation of the game is in the juvenile penal area of the Council of the Rights of Children and Adolescents, through which he organizes workshops in closed and semi-closed educational centers. In these spaces, where there is some degree of confinement, the black and white pieces allow children and young people to play out unknown or hidden internal forces and release tensions and conflicts, explains Teglia, paraphrasing concepts from Argentine writer and thinker Ezequiel Martínez Estrada. He then gives an example: A boy detained with his mother during a supermarket robbery refused to lose the queen and preferred to lose the king, losing sight of the game’s main objective.

Recycling and Building Pieces

Workshops ��Dz�’t require significant infrastructure in public or private institutions. “Materiality is secondary; first, I teach them to experience the rules of the game,” Teglia clarifies. Sometimes he works with very limited resources but finds alternatives with cardboard and bottle caps to create games that can even be taken home or given as gifts. “You add art and the perspective of recycling, and the game emerges from scratch.”

So in meetings in homes and emergency neighborhoods, the game starts with making the board with bottle caps, plastic containers, and pieces of stone or wood that transform into kings, queens, knights, pawns, bishops, and rooks. “But it’s curious because both children and adults care about materiality. Large and beautiful pieces generate enthusiasm or curiosity in the youngest or people with depression,” he argues.

The Dream of Multiplying Workshops

Teglia is convinced that workshops can be multiplied in different institutions and in all provinces of the country: “The possibility of replicating them and generating a crosscutting proposal at the national level always depends on public policy. There are some established programs like Ajedrecear that promote chess practice and organize tournaments, but they are being defunded. The same goes for public education. However, it would be desirable to incorporate the activity in all possible contexts. I promote it, but it’s increasingly difficult for me to coordinate with institutions that have their problems.”

As an alternative, Teglia gathered his experience and step-by-step guide to set up and sustain a workshop over time in Caballito de Troya, a book by Editorial Marat. The text isn’t a collection of anecdotes or the story of the experience of bringing chess to these environments, but a teaching manual for the game. “I seek to add tools for teachers, for their toolbox, so they have more possibilities for intervention,” summarizes the author.

The comments shared by workshop participants (children and young people) and their parents support this. “The best part is making the board and taking it home to play,” says one of the kids. “Since he started playing chess, it not only helped him concentrate, but also he started doing better in school. I ������’t explain why, but it’s true,” says one of the participant’s fathers, while the teacher listens more than satisfied.

This story was (Argentina) and is republished within the program, supported by the ICFJ, .

According to Euro-Med Monitor, those in the Gaza Strip have access to just for all needs, including drinking, cooking, and personal hygiene. The established international emergency water threshold —ten times what Gazans have now. At least 20 people have already , a number that will continue to rise as due to lack of clean water, leaving many unable to retain what few calories they ingest.

While the water crisis in Gaza is now catastrophic, the Palestinian struggle to access water long predates the current onslaught and is an issue in the West Bank, too. Before Israel’s October 2023 invasion, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had access to just 80 liters of water per person per day, while the World Health Organization estimates that individuals need as much to meet basic needs. 

Despite significant investment in water and wastewater infrastructure in Palestine from (USAID), continues to fall. 

The root cause of Palestine’s water crisis is not a lack of investment but the political reality that Israel, , manages water in a way that denies Palestinians fair access. call this “water apartheid.” They say that recent Israeli tactics in Gaza, such as , are just the latest examples of

“Water apartheid describes a form of segregation that results in unequal access to water, where policies and practices ensure that water resources are disproportionately allocated to privileged groups while marginalized communities face scarcity and denial of access,” explains Saker El Nour, a sociologist and co-founder of , a collective of researchers and activists that publishes a newsletter on water in Palestine.

While the specifics of these unfair water policies and practices look different from Gaza to the West Bank, the overall water crisis is by design. “Water is weaponized as a tool of occupation and control,” says El Nour.

In Gaza, as early as 2017, UNICEF estimated that from the enclave’s sole aquifer was unfit for consumption due to untreated wastewater and seawater pollution. Still, before Israel’s October 2023 invasion, the aquifer of Gaza’s water, with three desalination stations and three pipes from Israeli company Mekorot providing the remainder. 

One of the largest contributors to the aquifer’s degradation is overuse. The aquifer is not overused because Gazan families consume too much water. It is because the aquifer is not able to sustain the territory’s population, which has swelled through to make way for Zionist settlement. Today, of those living in Gaza are refugees or descendants of refugees who were expelled from their homes elsewhere in Palestine. 

While there were three operational desalination plants in Gaza before the current onslaught, these only of the enclave’s water supply, and . Those same restrictions have made it almost impossible for Gaza to scale up its wastewater infrastructure to prevent untreated waste from polluting the aquifer. 

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, an agreement made in the persists, although it was only . “The agreement ended up being just a way to police water and Palestinian water professionals and water institutes,” says Mariam Zaqout, a water and economics researcher at University College London.

Wielding this power, Israel uses the majority of the water pumped from the West Bank’s main groundwater basin and restricts . Israel uses all the water from the Jordan River, leaving none for Palestinian communities. It has also created a system of forced dependency where West Bank cities are left with no choice but to import water from Israel via its national network, which has been built out into the West Bank to support illegal settlements. Today, those Israeli settlers as West Bank Palestinians. 

“There has been a lot of infrastructure building by Israel mainly to support settlements in the West Bank, all connected to Israel’s national water network,” explains Jan Selby, a professor of International Politics and Climate Change at the University of Leeds. “But Palestinian communities have been connected to it at the same time, partly to make them dependent.”

While Ramallah, a city in the central West Bank tucked into the Khalil Mountains, gets more annual rainfall than even famously gray London, it imports its water from Israel because restrictions on developing its own infrastructure, drilling wells, force it to do so. 

“There is a segregationist thing of investing in water infrastructure for the settler population, allowing them to dig deeper wells to pull out more water, and constraining the Palestinian population, not letting them invest in improvements in their water infrastructure,” explains Michael Mason, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics.

Solutions to these issues will include new infrastructure and water management agreements, but those must be developed within a new political reality. Even in Gaza now, where UNICEF estimates requires repair, Zaqout says she believes solutions must go far beyond the standard post-conflict paradigm of rebuilding and rehabilitating. 

“Development aid is just a band-aid put on to make things look good, but it does not necessarily offer a sustainable solution,” she says. “The United Nations or USAID, for example, could spend a hundred million pounds to build a big water treatment plant, but then it gets bombed and that’s it—nothing is protected.”

What is needed instead, Zaqout says, is an end to Israel’s control over Palestinian resources and its attacks on infrastructure and autonomy for Palestinian decision-makers to “think about their water needs, design their own infrastructure, and manage and decide on how they want to allocate funds.”

Mason says that the political pressure needed to push governments like those of the United States and the United Kingdom toward withholding support for Israel’s occupation could come from international courts and rights groups. Many of these are already spotlighting Israel’s weaponization of water. 

When South Africa gave opening arguments in its case at the International Court of Justice in January, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, it argued that genocidal acts included the deprivation of access to adequate food and water and the deprivation of access to adequate sanitation. United Nations agencies have also been highlighting the acute water crisis in Gaza, with Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, arguing that “ preventing the provision of safe drinking water [is a] brazen breach of international law.”

At the grassroots level, Water Justice for Gaza is mobilizing popular support to help end water apartheid in Palestine and make connections to other struggles for water justice. Last December, to coincide with , it held a “Day of Movement to End Water Apartheid.” spoke and distributed information about Palestine’s water crisis, and online participants, including water protectors, farmworkers, researchers, and activists from around the world, shared their stories and support for the cause.

El Nour says the response “indicat[ed] a broad recognition of the interconnectedness of justice movements worldwide and the global resonance of the water crisis in Palestine.”

Bringing about an end to this crisis in Palestine is ever more urgent as insufficient access to clean water threatens Palestinians nationwide and Gazans face an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Whether in the courtroom, online, or out on the streets, many in the global Palestinian rights movement are speaking out about water apartheid as part of their demands for meaningful change.

“The water issues are a reflection of those broader issues and the other way around,” says Selby. “If you resolve or address or manage to negotiate some kind of resolution or settlement to the core political issues of the conflict, the water issues are relatively easy to address.”

She’d joined the crew of elders practicing, their moves fluid as the stream that ran by the village. She’d spotted him then, the only other face as young as hers: a thin man with glasses, thick curls of hair, and a gentle smile. Naturally, they’d felt drawn to each other, and Huaxin struck up a conversation.

After that, they met up for tea following each tai chi session. He was a lot like Huaxin: opinionated, particular, averse to vulnerability. He was also impulsive. He picked up new topics easily, researched them with relish, constantly talked to her about how the world was changing.

One day he led her back to the park and removed a ring from his pocket. It was no diamond, but Huaxin still gasped when she saw it: a smooth stone, well-worn like a comforting friend. “The world may be changing,” he said with a cheeky grin, “but I want you to be my constant.”

He moved in with her and she introduced him to her livelihood: beehousing. They shared bowls of noodles, talked about having children, and continued to practice tai chi, nurturing their slowly aging bodies.

And then, nine years later, he left her.

“And why do you need this information again?” Huaxin snapped into the phone.

“Science,” the person on the other end said. This was the third time Huaxin had asked, and now it seemed like the man was going for the simplest explanation possible. “It’ll provide useful data to prevent natural disasters. We know your region is highly flood prone. This will help you prepare for that.”

Huaxin chewed her lip. Did they know how her parents had died? If so, of course they’d come running to her. “And you’re saying the bees will provide this data?”

“Yes. Just click on the link I sent you. Again, I’d like to offer our services to install digital monitoring systems in the hives. It’ll be completely free and will make it easier—”

“No thanks,” Huaxin said, hanging up. On her computer, she clicked on the unread message.

They wanted her to download an app. Didn’t she have enough shit clogging up her phone? Wasn’t there an option to just send an email with whatever observations they wanted her to make? She clicked the “Support” button and typed: i ��Dz�’t want your fucking app

Huaxin’s phone buzzed. She’d received a text.

Support: 
hey there, can you explain your dilemma to me?

Huaxin eyed the screen in suspicion. Was this an automated response? Or worse, AI? She didn’t want to talk to a robot.

Huaxin: 
are you a human?

Support: 
yes, i am.

Huaxin: 
who are you?

Support: 
i’m a scientist with sichuan resilient. i help implement the nature-based early warning system we’ve partnered with the beijing office of meteorology on. is that what you’re asking about today?

Huaxin: 
i guess

Support: 
may i ask why you ��Dz�’t want to download our app?

Huaxin: 
too many apps on my phone

Support: 
i understand. do you prefer another method of reporting data?

Huaxin: 
can i just email it to someone

Support: 
you can email it to me.

The scientist sent Huaxin an email address, and Huaxin breathed a sigh of relief.

Huaxin: 
thanks

Huaxin: 
what’s your name

Support: 
my name is anshui. you are huaxin lin, correct?

Huaxin: 
mhm

Huaxin: 
so the guy on the phone said i’ll get paid for this?

Support: 
yes. think of it like a part-time job. we know it takes time out of your day to record these observations and send them to us, so we want to make sure you’re compensated.

Huaxin: 
i still ��Dz�’t know how bees will help prevent flooding

Support: 
several studies show that some species of animals, including bees, exhibit specific behaviors prior to an extreme weather event. this program is two-fold: by telling us how the bees are behaving, we can predict if something like a flood is going to happen, and we can distribute emergency messaging to your region. on the research side, if we collect enough data that connects certain bee behavior to weather events, we’ll have more ways of predicting disasters in the future.

Huaxin: 
you’re telling me you ������’t predict floods already with your fancy science tools?

Support: 
with the unpredictable ways climate events are unfolding, meteorological stations can only do so much. �ɱ�’r�� testing supplemental methods by using nature-based solutions. nature is very wise; we just have to listen.

Huaxin: 
sounds like some hippie bullshit to me

Support: 
�ɱ�’r�� included in that nature. doesn’t your body sometimes tell you when it’s going to rain?

That was true. If Huaxin didn’t smell it in the air, she literally felt it in her bones. She’d brought it up to a doctor once, who told her that sometimes people with joint issues could feel pressure changes in their knees. She didn’t like the idea of having weak joints. She was 37, hardly ancient.

Huaxin: 
i guess

Support: 
if you have any other questions, please let me know.

Support: 
have a nice day 🙂 

This person seemed like they had the role of a customer service representative plus IT person. Basically, the worst job ever. She put her phone away and went outside.

It was spring. From her home in the hills, Huaxin could see cracks of color speckling into view as new buds bloomed across the valley. The bees stirred from their slumber, buzzing more than they had in the previous months.

Over the years, Huaxin had departed from her family’s traditional beekeeping and veered into beehousing, an emerging practice that was more about providing for bees’ needs than managing bees. She still had one Chinese honey bee hive, but she’d also dotted her garden with bee motels, plant matter, and soil mounds to serve as wild bee habitats. Similarly, she’d filled her garden with a diverse mix of native plants: sweetly fragrant lychee and peach trees, traditional Chinese medicine staples like black cardamom and butterfly bush, native pea shrub and milkvetch, and vegetables like sponge gourd and radish.

Other than harvesting honey, Huaxin didn’t “keep” any of the bees. Certainly not the wild ones. She provided them shelter and food and they pollinated her plants. The bees were gentle with her. She liked this relationship; it was easy to understand. Give respect and receive respect in return. It �ɲ�����’t the same with humans.

After collecting data, she sipped homemade jasmine tea with a dollop of honey and took out her phone.

Huaxin: 
6am, roughly 50 bees per hive en route to flowers, determined dance, will report on return times in afternoon

Support: 
thank you.

Support: 
you can send me one report at the end of the day if you prefer, rather than multiple throughout.

Huaxin: 
i won’t remember all the details if i do that

Huaxin: 
would you rather me not text you every hour

Support: 
no, this is fine.

Support: 
determined dance, i like that.

Huaxin: 
thinking of their routes as dances helps me characterize them

Huaxin: 
sometimes it’s a lion dance, sometimes it’s tai chi

Huaxin: 
anyways you’re right, i ��Dz�’t want to bother you with notifications

Support: 
i ��Dz�’t mind. i like the frequent texts, i ��Dz�’t get a lot of messages.

That was … sad. Or maybe not? Maybe it meant Anshui had a rich social life completely offline. That sounded amazing.

Huaxin: 
aren’t you texting other bee people

Support: 
they’re not all beekeepers. and most of them use the app, which automates the data delivery.

Huaxin: 
ah so i’m just a high-maintenance bitch

Support: 
you like doing things your way. which i admire.

Something tingled in Huaxin’s stomach. She bit her lip.

Huaxin: 
are you flirting with me

Support: 
… no. apologies if it came across that way.

Support: 
i can stop if you want.

Support: 
texting you things unrelated to the data monitoring, i mean.

Huaxin didn’t know what to say, so she stashed her phone.

The rest of the day was like any other, with the addition of her data duties. She tended to her garden. She visited the porch when people rang to buy her products. She made lunch: yellow squash from her garden, stir-fried with fermented black beans and tofu from the weekly market. She texted updates to Anshui, who didn’t respond until the end of the day with a “thank you.”

Someone knocked on the door. The sun had set by now, so Huaxin already knew who it was. “H��, Ms. Chen. The usual?”

Ms. Chen gave a curt nod. “And two lychee honey sticks, please. Need something to drown out the medicine tonight.”

Huaxin nodded, fetching the jars and sticks. Ms. Chen was her elderly neighbor—well, if one counted a neighbor as someone who lived two hills away. She’d lived a nocturnal life ever since she lost her job decades ago when countrywide protests caused the country to shut down its last coal mines. Their little town had celebrated. Ms. Chen had not. With no family, she’d taken pride in her work and found her purpose lost after that work disappeared. She’d lived in isolation ever since, except to visit town every once in a while to grab groceries, or buy honey from Huaxin.

Huaxin felt a kinship with her.

“Hot today,” Ms. Chen said as she took the honey. Their few exchanges of conversation had to do with the weather. As it was with people who never talked to others.

�Ԩ�𲹳�.”

“I hope it was worth it.”

��ٴǰ�����?”

Ms. Chen gazed into the distance. “Shutting down the mines. I hope it helped. The heat would be worse, right?”

Oh. She was talking about climate change. Huaxin always avoided the topic with Ms. Chen. It was the global effort to decarbonize that had lost her her job, after all. And yes, shutting down the coal mines was a good thing. But the government had not made sure she’d had another livelihood to jump to after the transition.

Still, it �ɲ�����’t bitterness in Ms. Chen’s voice. Instead there was … guilt? Regret?

No. Ms. Chen’s eyes were watery. She’d been forgotten. Abandoned. She wanted to know her abandonment was worth it. It �ɲ�����’t the income she would have missed the most; the country’s social programs meant no one needed to work to survive. But Huaxin knew that for Ms. Chen, her job had also provided her a sense of routine, of camaraderie. Ms. Chen mourned the loss of that.

�Ԩ���,” Huaxin said. “It would be worse.”

The next morning, Huaxin woke up feeling empty. She texted Anshui.

Huaxin: 
hi

Huaxin: 
you can talk to me

Huaxin: 
i ��Dz�’t want this to be weird

Support: 
ok, thank you.

Support: 
sorry again.

Huaxin: 
��Dz�’t apologize

Huaxin: 
how did you sleep

Support: 
not bad. it was warm but i have good AC. you?

Huaxin: 
no good AC but i’m used to the heat

Huaxin: 
gonna get started on the bees now, will report in a bit

She went through the motions faster today and poured herself another cup of tea before going back to her phone.

Huaxin: 
6:15am bee workday start. lazy bastards. 40 bees per hive, more like tai chi

Support: 
the bees deserve to rest too.

Huaxin: 
i’m joking, i like bees more than humans

Support: 
what’s wrong with humans?

Huaxin: 
we made the mess that’s making you have to do this whole early warning thing, right?

Huaxin: 
selfishly polluting and not caring about nature

Support: 
we also realized our mistakes and put ourselves on the path to healing the planet. isn’t that a good redemption arc?

Huaxin recoiled. Some people didn’t deserve a redemption arc. But she couldn’t say that. Not good to come off as a bitter divorcee.

Huaxin: 
i guess

Support: 
such as you. i read your hive setup and it’s interesting. one honey bee hive, 3-4 wild bee hives.

Huaxin: 
having too many honey bees can actually hurt wild bees. they outcompete them for the same resources

Support: 
that’s mostly the case with european bees, isn’t it? asian honey bees are threatened, even here in china

Huaxin: 
yeah and the invasion of european bees are the reason for that lmao

Huaxin: 
but wild bees have it worse. people ��Dz�’t care about them because they ��Dz�’t make a marketable product like honey

Huaxin: 
wild bees are better at pollinating native plants, but that’s a service that goes unnoticed

Huaxin: 
ok you’re right, i’m biased toward wild bees, what can i say

Support: 
you like supporting the underdog, that’s a good thing.

Huaxin realized that no one had let her ramble on about bees like that in a long time. Her heart was beating fast from the flurry of typing. Or perhaps there was another reason.

Huaxin: 
eh, i’m not the only one beehousing. more people are seeing the benefit of it

Support: 
so there are others. humans aren’t so bad after all.

Huaxin: 
so eager to stifle my inner misanthrope

Huaxin: 
but true. at least humans aren’t robots

Huaxin: 
that AI shit is what’s really going to destroy the world

Huaxin: 
anyways thanks for listening to me monologue

Support: 
anytime. i like hearing your thoughts.

Support: 
make sure those bees stay hydrated.

Huaxin hated to admit it, but she was getting horrifically, deliciously addicted to texting Anshui.

Her routine had changed. After her morning data collection, she’d sit outside for a few hours, sipping her tea and texting. She learned more about Anshui’s role as a scientist—not that she understood all the technical aspects of it—and she answered Anshui’s many questions about bees.

Once, they shared a meal together. At least, they did it the best they could digitally; Huaxin wanted to have a video chat, but Anshui refused. Instead, Huaxin sent Anshui a recipe and they made it individually before eating together. Anshui, who in their words was “vaguely Buddhist,” taught Huaxin how they gave thanks for their food: consider the land it grew on, the hands that touched it, the human and nonhuman creatures who helped nurture it to harvest. Think of it as providing sustenance and strength for your body. Now use your newly given energy and put that care back into the world.

Huaxin: 
that’s hippie as shit

Huaxin: 
but i like it

Support: 
i thought you might.

Support: 
this recipe is really good by the way. you should share it with the center, i’m sure they’re always looking for new vegetarian meals with locally grown produce.

Huaxin: 
the what

Support: 
you haven’t been to the community resilience center in your town?

Fifteen minutes later, Huaxin heard a knock on her door. She opened it, and then stared at the young woman who stood on her patio, grinning under a thin layer of sweat. “H��!” the woman said. “Huaxin? I hear you’re overdue for a tour of the center.”

“How,” Huaxin said, numb.

The woman laughed. “Anshui called me and said you hadn’t heard of us. And then they said you’re a beehouser, and I was like ohhh, I totally know where she lives, I buy honey from her! I ������’t believe you’ve never made it down to the center. My bad for not advertising it better.”

Huaxin plastered on a fake smile as the woman talked, all the while discreetly texting.

Huaxin: 
what the fuck

Support: 
go with her.

“It’s only 10 minutes away,” the woman said, pointing over her shoulder. Behind her stood a solarbike with a passenger cart attached to the back. “I can give you a ride.”

And not have a way to leave early if she didn’t like it? “I’ll follow you,” Huaxin said, grabbing her keys.

They biked down the hill, veering toward a large, elevated building near the edge of the town center. As they parked, Huaxin examined the building in surprise. She’d passed this hundreds of times, but always assumed it was some government office. It looked very boring, nondescript save for the giant gong beside it.

“It’s bland, but we have plans to spice it up,” the woman, who introduced herself as Min, said. “We’ve only been running the center for two years. This used to be a utility office, but after they shut down the coal mines, it stood empty.”

“Oh, right. That explains the gong,” Huaxin said in realization. Back when the mines still ran, the gong rang every morning to signal the start to the workday.

Min nodded. “Yes! Now we use the gong to supplement the early warning messaging, for people who ��Dz�’t have phones. The town agreed to give this whole place to us after communities around here petitioned to repurpose it.”

Huaxin hadn’t heard of any such petition. Had she isolated herself that much?

Inside, the center felt much cozier. It had a huge open space with tons of tables and couches, kitchens, bathrooms with showers, libraries, private rooms for sleeping or other activities, power stations, a clinic, recreational activities like ping pong, playsets for children, and both an indoor and outdoor garden. It felt like a home but meant for hundreds of people.

“Who lives here?” Huaxin asked, examining the photos pinned to a corkboard.

“A�Բ�DzԱ� who wants to,” Min said. “People who need a temporary place to stay. People who need help. Visitors. Those displaced by—well, anything. We built it initially as a gathering space if another natural disaster happens. Like a flood. That’s why the whole thing’s elevated. Or a heat wave, since we know AC penetration here is low.”

“You ��Dz�’t have to live here to visit, either,” another voice said, and Huaxin looked up to see a young woman in a wheelchair rolling toward them. Min made a noise of delight and ran over. “The center is a general gathering space. We have all sorts of events here. Open mics, dinners. You can come if you’re just bored.”

“This is Huaxin. She’s never been to the center before, so I was showing her around,” Min said to the woman. She gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Huaxin, this is Kunyi, my fellow cofounder. And my wife.”

The affection with which she uttered “my wife” bit the tender meat of Huaxin’s heart; she tried not to show it. “This is a great place,” she said. She meant every word of it. She was trying to tamp down her jealousy. Couldn’t this have existed eight years ago, after she’d been discarded?

“Please spread the word,” Kunyi said. She touched Min’s hand, and Huaxin had to look away. “It looks like we haven’t reached everyone, despite our best attempts. We’d love for everyone to feel connected.”

Huaxin’s thoughts went to Ms. Chen. She wondered if she could get that hurting old lady to come here.

She zipped home on her bike. She still had data to record.

Support: 
have any pictures of the center to share?

Huaxin: 
i thought you would have seen it already

Support: 
i haven’t been in a while, i bet it’s changed.

Huaxin: 
how do you know what’s going on in my own town and i ��Dz�’t

Support: 
min is my friend from secondary school. i used to live nearby, you know.

Support: 
i’m glad you got to visit, it’s a special place. somewhere that makes you feel less lonely.

Right. Huaxin felt something bitter in her throat and grabbed a honey stick to swallow it down.

Bees never stopped working. Huaxin liked that about them. They knew the value of discipline and all played a role in their community. One day, as the haze of summer approached, Anshui asked her why she never took a vacation.

Huaxin: 
who will take care of the bees

Support: 
i know a few beehousers near you who would be happy to send staff your way.

Support: 
there are also ecology students here who would love an opportunity to shadow your farm.

Huaxin: 
i ��Dz�’t trust them. no offense

Support: 
that’s fair. i suppose the bees are like your family.

Support: 
you could also try digital beehousing? that way you can watch them remotely.

The question made Huaxin flinch. She forced down the coldness rising up in her, but her fingers trembled as she typed.

Huaxin: 
eh.

Huaxin: 
i ��Dz�’t trust tech

Support: 
i’ve noticed.

Huaxin: 
remember that flood? my parents were trying to evacuate and they used one of those dumbass navigation tools

Huaxin: 
drove right into a flooded road and drowned

Huaxin: 
wouldn’t have happened if the tool actually knew our roads. but no, its fancy algorithms got people killed

Support: 
i’m very sorry to hear that, huaxin.

Huaxin: 
whatever, i’m over it

Support: 
i ��Dz�’t fault you for not trusting tech. we should create a world where tech works with people. if it just tries to replace them, things go very wrong.

Huaxin: 
tell my ex-husband that

She paused. She didn’t know why she brought that up. She hated talking about him. It was a shame that always hung in the back of her mind, made her wonder if she was unlovable. Replaceable. Worse than that—trash.

Hell. She couldn’t hide it forever.

Support: 
what were his opinions on tech?

Huaxin: 
we fought a lot about it. he wanted to, among other things, digitize my beehousing

Huaxin: 
he said tech would save the world and anyone who didn’t adopt every new innovation was going to fall behind and be forgotten

Huaxin: 
and then he proved that prophecy true by leaving me for someone better hahahahaha

Support: 
i’m sorry, that’s shitty of him. you didn’t deserve that.

Huaxin felt her cheeks grow warm. She felt drunk on something. Anshui’s attention, maybe. Unearthed rage from the hurt she’d tried to bury for so long.

And at the same time, something else. A seed of a feeling that nagged at her.

Huaxin: 
why are you being so nice to me

Support: 
i ��Dz�’t think i am? no one deserves to be treated that way. if he wanted a better future, that should have included a world where no one gets abandoned

Huaxin: 
holy shit

Huaxin: 
you’re not real

Everything slammed into place. Anshui always being so friendly, so available. Anshui never sharing personal details. Anshui refusing to video call.

Anshui was not human.

Support: 
what?

Huaxin: 
you’re a fucking AI

Huaxin: 
godDAMMIT

Huaxin:
you LIED to me

Huaxin: 
i’m so stupid

Support: 
…

Support: 
are you serious?

Support: 
i am definitely NOT AI.

Huaxin:
i ��Dz�’t know anything about you

Huaxin: 
you never want to call

Support: 
i’m sorry for trying to maintain my privacy.

Support: 
i thought YOU would understand given how untrusting you are of the internet.

Huaxin: 
yeah but we’ve been texting for weeks now???

Huaxin: 
send me proof that you’re real

Support: 
i do not owe you anything.

Support: 
if you think the only reason someone would show kindness to you is because they’re a computer program, then i’m sorry that’s your worldview.

Support: 
but honestly i’m disappointed that after all this time you ��Dz�’t even see me as human.

Huaxin forced herself to put her phone down and take several deep breaths. She didn’t know what the truth was anymore. All she knew was that she’d broken something that had felt so rare and precious, and she �ɲ�����’t sure she could get it back.

Summer arrived in a wave of bright orange feeling, but Huaxin still felt stifled in the gloom of winter.

By habit, she still took bee behavior notes in a long-ass document interspersed with apologies, observations, and recipes for Anshui. Obviously, she never sent it. The last texts between the two were still Anshui’s searing words that made Huaxin’s throat close up every time she read them.

She began to notice more the changes around her: the bees slowing down, Ms. Chen’s visits becoming less frequent as she blamed the heat, more people staying at the center, which Huaxin visited often now. People murmured that this was the longest heat wave in a while, and Min and Kunyi’s team were busy making sure the center was prepared to take care of everyone.

One morning Huaxin trudged into the garden. The eerie silence almost knocked her over. She ran to the hives and checked each one.

Huaxin: 
anshui help

Huaxin: 
the bees aren’t moving

Support: 
are they okay? what do they need?

She couldn’t control her swell of emotions at seeing the first words from Anshui in a long while, but she didn’t have time for that now.

Huaxin: 
i think they’ll be fine if i get a continuous stream of water going

Huaxin: 
but they’ve collected a ton of water for their hives. they stopped fanning the entrances and now they’re clumping outside. they know a huge temperature spike is coming

Support: 
take care of them. i’ll tell min.

Support: 
have you been continuing to take notes?

Huaxin: 
yes, i’ll send them to you

She navigated to the document where she’d been keeping all the notes, apologies, and recipes, and without making a single edit, sent it over.

Then she ran to the hose.

Huaxin had never seen the whole town like this: buzzing with determination, working tirelessly as bees.

By the time she arrived at the center, Min was already waiting out front. “How are the bees?” she asked, handing Huaxin a cold water canister.

“They’ll be fine.” Huaxin was worried, especially for the wild bees; they were more sensitive to heat. She’d set up more shade and hydration stations and just had to trust they could take care of themselves. “How is everyone doing?”

Min grimaced. “Chaotic, but we’ve trained for this. Everyone’s been prepping on what to do if we get a warning, so they all knew to come here. Some volunteers also went to fetch anyone who might have passed out in their homes. The hospital in town and our clinic here is stuffed, but �ɱ�’r�� making do.”

Huaxin glanced over at the bike parking, which was fuller than she’d ever seen it. Something occurred to her, and she looked back at the hills. “Has an elderly woman named Ms. Chen showed up?”

Min’s face furrowed in immediate concern. “I ��Dz�’t think so.”

She began to run toward the bikes and Huaxin grabbed her arm. “No. You stay. I know where she lives.”

“But —”

“Min,” Huaxin said sternly. “Listen to your elders.”

Then she ran toward the gong and struck it with three reverberating strikes: the signal for the start of the work day.

That day, the temperature spiked to 45 degrees C for a sustained five hours. The next day was even worse, with both the mercury and humidity climbing to record highs.

Huaxin had reached Ms. Chen in time. The old woman had been sleeping, but her body had reacted to the familiar sound of the gong, and she was awake by the time Huaxin reached her house. The two had zipped back to the center.

Meanwhile, Anshui had been texting updates.

Support: 
temp should begin to dip tomorrow evening. thanks to you and other monitors in your area, we were able to contact everyone and avoid a lot of deaths.

Huaxin: 
thank god

Support: 
i appreciate the notes you sent over. i retroactively input all the data and the temp-dance curves provide a lot of new information. this will be really helpful for our research.

Huaxin: 
temp-dance curves huh?

Support: 
your metaphors were too useful not to use.

Huaxin: 
i hope you uhhh ignored all the other stuff in my notes that �ɲ�����’t bee data

Support: 
how could i?

Support: 
i’ve already tried the recipe for longan honey iced tea, it was delicious.

Huaxin: 
ughhhh

Support: 
but really, thank you for the apologies.

“Who’re you texting?” Kunyi asked as she and another person wheeled by, pushing a cart of wet towels. “You’re blushing like crazy.”

“Shut up,” Huaxin snapped, which only made Kunyi chuckle more. Huaxin retreated to one of the center’s indoor balconies before daring to turn to her phone again.

Huaxin: 
i know this is a sensitive point but you really ��Dz�’t have to be nice to me. i was an asshole

Support: 
i could have been more open myself. i’m always bad at that.

Support:
but like i told you, people deserve redemption.

Support: 
i’m not going to leave you for making a mistake. love is labor and labor is love.

From this high up, Huaxin could watch the action of the center below: people handing out food, refilling water bottles, playing with each other’s pets.

Everyone, a role. Everyone, now, including her.

She finally broke down and cried.

In autumn, for the first time in years, Huaxin walked to the park to practice tai chi.

She’d been spending a lot of time at the center, teaching others the basics of beehousing. She went there every day now. It had even become more beautiful, thanks to Kunyi hiring Ms. Chen to come up with a mural design that both covered the drab walls and created an albedo effect.

But today, Huaxin needed a break from the place. Sometimes it just had too many people.

She found a shady spot to dance. Every now and then she checked her phone to see how the bees were doing—because she had to admit, being at the center so often meant that some digitization was useful. Just a little.

She remembered to take time to close her eyes and listen. To the stream, the trees, the way the wind caressed the lines of the mountains around her. Nature is wise.

It �ɲ�����’t long before she heard a set of footsteps approach, and then a voice said, “You dance just like the bees.”

Huaxin looked up at the unfamiliar face before her and smiled.

This story is part of��Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors,��a climate fiction contest from��Grist. Imagine 2200 celebrates stories that offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress.��

The kid saw it first. I’ve been paying him to mind the irrigation lines in the orchard now that my legs are talking back. He burst through the door like a bullet train. 

“�ճ�����’s paper,” he said, “real paper on the barn door.”&�Բ�����;

I’d been expecting it for years—decades—but when it finally happened it somehow didn’t make sense. I was at the kitchen table, and I just stared down into my empty mug at the little salmon painted on the bottom. 

“How much paper?” I asked. The kid didn’t know how to answer. I tapped the cup on the table and a spray of black coffee grounds turned the salmon into a catfish covered in mud. “How many sheets of paper?”&�Բ�����;

“�ճ�����’s one white rectangle on the barn door and it’s made out of paper.”&�Բ�����;

Shit. 

The kid was practically skipping as he led me to the barn. I’ve got a couple dozen bonus trees between it and the house and they’re all in bloom, branches thick with white almond flowers like snow. Why does everything turn beautiful right before it goes to hell? 

The kid couldn’t stop chattering. 

“I thought it was illegal. Do you think they had to kill a tree for that paper? Why didn’t they send a comm?”&�Բ�����;

“Lot of farmers went dark when the evictions started,” I said. “State ������’t serve you a notice if you ��Dz�’t have a screen. So they resurrected something called a printer to put the bad news on paper.”

“Are you getting evicted?”&�Բ�����;

“If you’d read the goddamn thing, you’d know already.” That shut the kid up. 

Sure enough, there it was on the barn door. I ripped the page off the pin and the kid gasped. 

***

Eminent Domain 

Agricultural Modification Notice 

February 20, 2090

Robert Wallace, 

We write to inform you that within the next 24 hours the State of California will breach the levee on your property that stands between your orchard and the Sacramento River. We will create four breaches in the levee wall at 50-meter intervals. Removed stones and earth will be placed in a convenient location for your reuse. Any attempt to block this levee breach or return it to its former state will result in the seizure of this property under Eminent Domain Statute 2815. 

Thank you for your cooperation. 

Cynthia Garcia

Cynthia Garcia 
California Secretary of Agriculture

***

I crumpled the paper in my hands. 

“What are you doing?” The kid yelled. 

I let the ball fall to the ground and get lost in the carpet of white almond flowers. 

It was hard to decide which was more insulting. The letter itself or the fact that the assholes didn’t even say why—had to look it up on the goddamn weather service. An atmospheric river was coming from the Philippines. It would overflow the Sacramento River and the state wanted every floodplain along the river open to receive the water—that apparently included California’s last almond orchard. 

“Diego Rivera painted these trees,” I said.  

“Who’s Diego Rivera?” The kid and I were back in the house, both staring at our screens. 

“It doesn’t matter.”&�Բ�����;

“Will the orchard make it?” the kid asked. 

I read down my screen: Fifty-eight centimeters of rain in 48 hours. Dams will be opened when water levels exceed winter capacities. And then in bright red letters, ALL FARMS SOUTH OF SACRAMENTO REQUIRED TO FLOOD. 

“Depends on how much water we get,” I said. “Hell, next time you see paper it could be from one of our trees.”&�Բ�����;

The kid looked out the window. “I hope I never see paper again.” Bless him. Then he started bargaining. “Maybe it’ll be good. Almonds are a thirsty crop and �ɱ�’r�� coming out of a drought. Maybe this is what they need. Maybe you can shut off the drip lines for a whole year and just let the trees drink.”&�Բ�����;

“You shut off the drip lines, didn’t you?” I asked. The kid nodded. 

I put down my screen and looked him square in the face. “State’s been on my ass since I took over this farm. Those trees shouldn’t even be here. We should be farming rice, or blueberries, something that can flood. But our trees take too much water and when the big rains come, that levee blocks the river from overflowing its banks and seeping back into the ground.”&�Բ�����;

“But there are a million other farms that can flood.”&�Բ�����;

I turned my screen around and showed him. “This says �ɱ�’r�� getting a two-day downpour, and that’s probably the last rain we’ll see until next year. If the state doesn’t save that water in the ground, nobody gets to grow.”&�Բ�����;

“You’re talking like one of them.”&�Բ�����;

“Why not? I understand it, doesn’t mean I have to like it.”&�Բ�����;

“But the orchard is a piece of history.” It was what I told him to say to tourists. But now, he said it like he believed every word. “It’s not fair.”&�Բ�����;

I tried to smile at him, the little idiot. Had I ever been that young?

The bulldozer came in the afternoon. I sent the kid home and set up on my porch with a bad bottle of whisky. Might as well watch the show. 

The wind was quiet in the orchard, but I could see clouds amassing in the east. The birds were squawking each other deaf. The land knew something was coming. 

BANG! 

It came from the levee. They must have taken the access road on the other side. Goddamn fusion engine, I hadn’t heard a damn thing. Bang, bang, bang! A shovel punched through the wall like a fist. A long metal arm appeared behind it and the deed was done. 

When the thing finally rolled through the hole, there was no person driving it—no cab, no steering wheel—it was just a giant shovel on tank tracks. Then I watched it clear a perfect 5-meter hole in the wall and stack all the rocks and dirt next to it with a forklift it produced out of its ass. The situation was pretty funny when you thought about it—the orchard I’d tended for 30 years taken down by a soulless machine with a pointy ass. 

It drove up the levee wall another 50 meters, this time on the orchard side because it knew I knew the jig was up. Then it punched its hole and cleared its rocks, and then it did it again, and again. By the time it rolled out my front gate, there were four perfect holes in my levee and I was drunker than a fence lizard. 

Soon, the rain started and I sat there staring at the hole. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. A feeling—a fear I’d shunted down for decades rippled through me. What was going to come through that wall? 

When the sun went down, I didn’t bother with sandbags or pumps, I just got in bed. The house was elevated 4 feet, maybe it would be enough. On the edge of sleep, I pictured the water pouring through the windows, cold and brown, lifting the bed off its frame with me on it. 

It was a fantasy. It was a memory. 

Sacramento, California, 2058

The sentence always starts the same way, but he doesn’t know how to finish it.

The Folsom Dam broke and I ��Dz�’t know where my kids are. 

The Folsom Dam broke and I ������’t reach my wife.

The Folsom Dam broke and my entire life will be underwater. 

The house erupted in sound when the alert came through. Every speaker he talked to throughout the day was suddenly yelling at him. Get to high ground! Sacramento would be inundated in 9 minutes and 38, now 37 seconds. It was not an evacuation order, it was an order to shelter in place. 

There is a banging on his door. He opens it and a family of four charges in. They live across the street. 

“We need to get upstairs!” one of the moms yells. His is the only two-story house on the block. 

“Follow me,” he says.

They run up the stairs and he pulls down the ladder to the attic. The other mom takes his arm. 

“We’ll cross that bridge if we need to,” she says.  

They all end up in the bedroom, and the two kids huddle together in the middle of the big bed the way his own kids do when they’ve had a nightmare. These two are a little older—second or third grade—he ������’t remember their names. 

His kids are at a one-story daycare 2 kilometers away. Terror shoots through him. He ������’t get there, he ������’t get to them in time. Does the daycare have an evacuation plan? They must; he and Ayla paid enough for it. 

Ayla can get them, the hospital is just blocks away. But where would they go? The thought of Ayla—of something happening to Ayla—momentarily paralyzes him. 

He forces himself onto the balcony and holds his phone up to the sky in the rain trying to get a signal. There is nothing. The whole city is clogging up the servers doing exactly the same thing, and yet the clock that appeared on the screen with the municipal alert keeps counting down. 

Six minutes, 42 seconds. 

One of the moms is out there too, phone in the air. Her name is Kalani. He looks at her expectantly. She shakes her head. 

“At least you’re all together,” he says, more jealous than he has ever been. 

“Ayla’s amazing. She’ll be fine, she won’t let anything happen to your kids.” Her words are toothless, but in this moment they are all he has.

“Who are you trying to reach?” he asks. 

“My dad—or my dad’s caregiver. He hasn’t been particularly mobile for a while.”&�Բ�����;

He nods and thinks of his own parents aging safely in Michigan. Kalani hits her phone against her thigh and looks at it. Nothing.

“Dammit!” she tries again. Nothing. “How did this happen?” She means the dam break, the flooding, everything. 

He shakes his head. “Just two wet years.” It’s true. Last year there had been 19 atmospheric rivers between January and March, and the whole state celebrated when the drought was declared over. When it happened again, there was nowhere for the water to go. 

He looks back at his phone—4 minutes. Then the sound begins. 

At first, he can hardly make it out through the rain, a low rumble that seems to come from everywhere. He and Kalani look to the hill at the east edge of the neighborhood. They know this is where the water will come from. They see nothing. 

“Can they swim?” He asks, indicating her kids. 

“They’re Hawaiian, of course they can swim,” she says. He nods. Can his kids swim? The oldest can, ������’t he? The sound is steadily increasing, and something changes on the hill. Light crests over it, a little at first, then more and more like a second sunrise. The rumbling rises. This is it. The water is early. 

Kalani runs back to her family, huddled on the bed. He stays on the balcony, and stares at the otherworldly light—could the flood be reflecting it?—he needs to stop it. He needs to will the water to wait. Ayla will need the next three minutes. He grips the railing. He is soaking wet.  

“Stop!” he screams as though the flood can hear him. “Stop!”&�Բ�����;

It doesn’t. Angry water crashes over the hill, then buries it—a wall of brown and white carrying cars and sheds—pieces of a city that is quickly ceasing to exist.  

“No!” he screams. But he ������’t hear himself over the roar. He looks back into the bedroom. The family already knows. The kids are holding onto their mothers and the women are holding each other. 

He looks back out and the first few houses in the subdivision have been reduced to their roofs. The water is ping-ponging through the neighborhood, downing lampposts and trees and smashing front porches into walls. It’s almost at his door.

“Hold on!” he yells back into the house. Then he hears the flood blow out his downstairs windows. The balcony shakes. He runs into the bedroom and holds onto a wall. He can feel the water tearing his house apart through the floor. A lamp crashes to the ground next to the big bed. A bookshelf drops its contents and falls over. He sees that nothing has fallen on the family, but Kalani is staring at him. They lock eyes. Her nose is in her child’s hair, her arm is around her wife, but her eyes are fixed on him. 

They stare at each other for what feels like hours. They are thinking the same thing—as long as they can hold each other’s gaze, the house will stand, the sickening bumps coming through the floor will not hit a load-bearing beam. As long as they keep staring, they will live. 

Slowly, the crash of water softens below them. The bumps stop coming through the floor, and at last, all that is left is the sound of rain on the roof. Only then do the kids begin to cry.  

“Just shut up and take the canoe,” Kalani says. They are in what’s left of her garage. 

It took the two of them about a half hour to wade through his house and across the street. His ground floor was unrecognizable. The couch had been ripped in half, and framed photos, kitchen utensils, and other bits of his and Ayla’s life bobbed around them like dead bodies. 

The water was up to their waists as he and Kalani crossed the street. It looked placid on top but they could feel it had a current and they took slow, measured steps toward the gaping mouth of her garage. The door had blown off but the Hawaiian outrigger canoe was still hung up on the ceiling. 

Now, he stands under it, staring at the carvings in the wood: a bird with a long beak, a man with arms outstretched, and waves—waves everywhere. 

“It’s a family heirloom,” he says. “It’s a piece of history.”&�Բ�����;

“It’s a boat,” she says, “and it works.” She is loosening the ropes to lower the canoe down. “Help me out.”&�Բ�����;

He undoes the knots with her and soon the canoe splashes down into the water. It looks like it can hold four, maybe five people—his family. Another carved wooden float connects to the main canoe with long poles so it won’t tip easily and there is a rope and six oars inside. 

Kalani stares him down. “This is a loan. I expect you to bring this back to me in one piece with your people inside.”&�Բ�����;

“I will,” he says, forcing himself to believe it. 

They both get in the canoe and Kalani shows him how to paddle—long strokes, one side and then the other. He drops her off at his house and doesn’t leave until she waves to him from the upstairs with her wife and kids. 

Then he is paddling through Sacramento, picturing his children, picturing Ayla, and letting the thought of them blot out any comprehension of what he is seeing around him: people holding each other on roofs—no one attempts to flag him down—an old man’s body face down in the water, his city transfigured. All he can do is row and look for street signs which, when unbent, are miraculously the same. 

Then he is at the daycare building and it’s locked. The water is halfway up the door. He bangs on it from the canoe, yelling his children’s names.

“Conrad! Alice!” He hears nothing on the other side and imagines them floating face down like the old man. He’s about to tear the door off its hinges when he sees the writing on it. 

Evacuated to North Capitol steps, it says in black marker. 

The journey from S Street to M Street is the difference between a city and a rapid. The Sacramento River has overflown its levees and it is spewing water in all directions. He has to paddle as hard as he can to go a few meters. 

An ambulance goes by on a freeway overpass. He hears howling. He looks around and sees a pack of dogs on top of a truck. Their dog walker is holding their leashes and they’re howling at the ambulance like it’s the moon. He catches the dog walker’s eye—a girl in her 20s with a gap in her teeth, and just for a second, the two of them smile at each other. 

“I can come back for you once I get my kids,” he yells to her.  

She shakes her head. “I won’t leave them.” She means the dogs. There are too many to fit in the canoe. She salutes him.  

The Tower Bridge road is completely under water when he turns onto the Capitol Mall. The water is moving fast and he rows with a strength he didn’t know he had. 

He sights the capitol. The steps are filled with people. Children are chasing each other and splashing water but he doesn’t recognize them. He paddles as fast as he can. He hits the steps and he’s about to jump out of the boat when a guy yells, “Tie it off!” He throws him the rope. 

Then he is roving the steps, yelling “Conrad! Alice!” He inspects each child, but they continue to be little strangers.

“Rob!” He hears his name. He turns around but the crowd is dense. “Rob!” A Brown woman in scrubs cuts through. She has never looked more beautiful. He runs to her and takes her in his arms, buries his face in her hair. Then he feels small arms grab his legs. They are together—the four of them—and they are alive. 

“If we make it through this, �ɱ�’r�� moving to Vorden and taking over Dad’s orchard,” Ayla says. They’re rowing together with the kids between them. 

“Almonds are illegal,” he says. 

“Ours are grandfathered in. Historical Registry.” She winks at him. 

“What do a doctor and an engineer know about farming?”&�Բ�����;

“We’ll figure it out.”&�Բ�����;

“A fish!” Conrad yells and wakes Alice who had been asleep in Ayla’s lap. They all look into the water. He’s right, there are fish swimming around them. They’re the size of his hand and they have silvery spots. 

“Good eye,” he says, and kisses his son’s head. “Are they salmon?” he asks Ayla. 

“Hell if I know.”&�Բ�����;

“They are!” Conrad says. “And they’re babies.”&�Բ�����;

“Where did you learn that?” Ayla asks. 

“In school. The baby salmon live in the river, but only if the river is healthy. They’re a good sign.”&�Բ�����;

“No more salmon,” Alice says, and goes back to sleep. 

They are not rowing home. They are rowing back to the hospital. Every doctor, including Ayla, has been called in. She directs them to the loading dock at the back of the building, which is miraculously dry. 

“When will you be home?” he asks. 

“They ������’t keep me longer than two days,” she says. Then she hugs and kisses Alice and then Conrad. The kids protest but they’ve been trained in these partings. Then she kisses him goodbye, and her smell envelops him. 

“I love you,” she says, and climbs out of the boat. 

This is the last time he will see her. In a few hours, half of the hospital will collapse on top of 800 people, and one of them will be Ayla. 

For the rest of his life, good days and bad days will be determined by one of two thoughts: a bad day—I should have forced her back into that canoe; and a good day—at least I got to say goodbye. 

Vorden, California, 2090

He woke with the sun, which was out. The rain had stopped, and when he put his old feet on the floor, it was dry. 

His head throbbed. He went into the kitchen and saw the empty whisky bottle on the table and remembered why. His screen told him his kids were worried about him, and he sent back a comm saying he’d made it. Then he steeled himself and went to the window. 

The orchard was a lake. The trees rose out of it like beams under a pier, their white flowers diminished by the rain, but still there. 

He found his waders in the closet and went out onto the porch. The house was an island above 3 feet of water. He went down the porch steps one at a time, thinking there would be a current, but the water was calm and still and when he sloshed onto the ground the water level was just below his belly button. 

He walked to the closest almond tree, silhouetted against the sky, running his hands along the surface of the water. It was cold and crisp, and the thought that was always near found him again. Ayla would have loved this. 

He put his hands on the tree’s trunk, fingers gliding into the ridges of its bark, and looked up into the canopy. It was a little cloud. Then something splashed him—a fish. He looked down. There were young salmon swimming all around him, and he watched white almond flowers float down and land on them as they swam between the trees.

This story is part of Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, a climate fiction contest from Grist. Imagine 2200 celebrates stories that offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress.

I’m bundled in a wool overcoat against the 6 a.m. winter chill of Los Angeles. The former New Yorker in me scoffs at how soft I’ve become against the cold—or rather, the “cold,” since it’s a full 50 degrees and I’m shivering. Today’s high is 80, so by noon I’ll have stripped down to a crop top. I know it’s climate change and all, but I’d be lying if I said I’m not just a tiny bit excited for a short reprieve from the monotonous months of 50-degrees-and-rainy that we’ve been having this winter.

The morning frost on my Subaru is tenacious, even after I run the engine for a little while. I’m bordering on late for kathak class, so I pull out of the driveway with icy windows and hurry to beat the rush-hour traffic.

In the studio it’s a steady thrum of the tabla over the stereo system:

tha ki ta tha ki ta—gin na 

tha ki ta tha ki ta—gin na

tha ki ta tha ki ta—gin na—dha

gin na—dha

gin na—dha

And then a relentlessly driving pace of chakkar, or one-count spins:

tig da dig dig ek…

���…

�ٱ���…

���󲹲���…

�貹���Գ���…

������…

�������ٳ�…

And on and on…

After an hour of this, I’m breathless. We’ve been drilling a composition with 31 chakkar, and even after months, I’m losing my balance somewhere around 26.

I leave class and head back to my car, protein shake in hand, sweat gluing my kurta to my skin, a string of profanities running through my mind as I scold myself for tapping out at 26. I’ve just slipped into my driver’s seat when my phone rings. One peek at the screen and my mood elevates. 

“H�� Amma,” I say with unrestrained fondness as my mother’s face grins back at me over FaceTime.

“H�� chinna,” she responds with equal affection. “Just finished kathak?”

“Yeah, about to head to the grocery store on my way home.”

“Shall we quickly call Ammamma before she sleeps?”

“Sure, my parking meter’s out in 10, though.”

“We can just say hi. FaceTime or Whatsapp?”

“FaceTime. Can you add her in?”

“One minute.”

After some shuffling around, a second little box populates on my screen, offering me the stray wisps of white hair otherwise known as the top of my grandmother’s head.

“H�� Ammamma,” I say.

“H�� Amma,” my mom chirps.

“H�� kanna. Bujie kanna re. Sweetie kanna,” croons my ammamma’s forehead. “How are you both?”

“Good, can you bring the phone down?” I say, holding back a laugh. “We only see the top of your head.”

Amma and I call Ammamma together every week. It used to be Sundays, like clockwork, when I was in grade school. Now it’s sort of whenever we catch each other. Every week we remind her to tilt the phone down so we can actually see her face. And every week she insists on greeting us with her forehead.

Ammamma’s puttering around her kitchen in Hyderabad, 8,711 miles away from me in California. My memory conjures up the smell of hearty palakurrapappu and fluffy idli. Chili-spiced tur dal roasting on the tava for homemade podi. The softness of her orange sari, pallu tied securely around her waist so it stays out of the way of her busy hands. 

She’s lived alone in Tarnaka for almost 40 years, ever since my grandfather passed away. She’s 85 now and wobbles about her small flat with the vigor and determined independence of a 20-year-old. My amma got this from her, I think. I swear my amma will be single-handedly shoveling piles of snow as tall as she is (5 whole feet) from her Park City, Utah, driveway until she’s 90 years old.

I tell Ammamma about kathak class and she glows with pride. “Very good, kanna, Very good. I’m very glad you’re keeping up with kathak. Very good.”

“I’ll show you this new composition when I next come, Ammamma.” She smiles the most when I promise this. Every year, when we visit her in India, I dance for her. In those 15 minutes while she watches, she’s filled with more childlike joy, more wonder, more freedom of spirit, than any other moment I see her. My grandma, like many women in her generation, carries a deep anxiety. Kathak transcends that, transports us together, unlocks her. Dance is hardly my profession, but it has a cemented place in my life as a psychosomatic way to stay rooted in culture and family, from half a world away. As a way of staying connected to Ammamma.

“Aim chestunavu, Amma? What are you doing?” my mom asks her mother.

“Aim ledu. Just putting away the food.”&�Բ�����;

“What did you make for dinner?”

“Nothing much,” Ammamma says. “Some pappannam, that is all. Tomorrow I’ll make some cabbage koora.” She pauses in her puttering to pick something up off the counter. “See? Do you see the cabbage?”

Ammamma adjusts the angle of the camera in an effort to show us her cabbage.

“Do you see?” But she’s pointing the camera at her ceiling, and I’m having a hard time repressing my laughter. 

“No, Ammamma, we ������’t see. You’re showing us the ceiling.”

Ammamma adjusts the angle again, and now �ɱ�’r�� feasting our eyes on a sliver of her ceiling that’s been joined by a section of her wall.

“Now? Now do you see? Do you see the cabbage?”&�Բ�����;

Amma is openly laughing. “No, Ma, we ��Dz�’t see the cabbage. You’re showing the wall.”

Another unsuccessful adjustment, then: “OK, now? Now do you see the cabbage? Do you see the cabbage?”

Ammamma’s excitement is only intensifying, but no appearance from any cabbage thus far. Now Amma and I are both shaking with mirth.

“Do you see it?” Ammamma continues to insist. 

We ��Dz�’t answer, because �ɱ�’r�� too busy gasping for breath. Then, miraculously, we see a sliver of a blurry green leaf flash across her FaceTime camera.

“Oh!” Amma and I both shout. 

“We see it, Ammamma!”

�Ԩ���, yes, we see it, Ma.”

“You see the cabbage? You see it?”

“Yes! Yes, Ammamma, we see the cabbage!”

Now even Ammamma is laughing. 

I screenshot this moment several times, never wanting to forget these small winks of diasporic joy, the three of us spread across three cities and three generations, giggling like sisters together on a sunshine summer afternoon.

It’s not long before Ammamma’s chuckles turn into coughs, peppered by a sort of rough wheezing that I learned as a child is part of her chronic asthma. My parking meter blinks red.

Tuesday, November 19, 2047

I’m in the front yard, doling out carefully measured sprinkles of water to the small garden I’ve struggled to nurture for the last several growing seasons. The water rations for victory gardens have gotten more and more economical over the last 10 years. In our little patch we still get tomatoes and kale and grow some neem, and the occasional surprise potatoes spring out from wherever we’ve last dug in compost. The rest of our food comes from the community garden (which does better some years than others), the local co-op (which is not always well-stocked because it hasn’t quite yet reached financial stability), or with great burden to our wallets (anything requiring long-distance freight costs an arm and a leg now, partially because it’s just too expensive at a basic resource and carbon level, and partially because of the taxes they’ve been trying to institute on non-local food). 

It’s been a tough transition period. Here in California, we have the farming infrastructure but not the water. In other parts of the country, land that’s been monocropped under generations of agribusiness is in various stages of transition to regenerative farming. The question of who pays for this transition, what carbon taxes get charged or credited and to whom, and who leads the proposed solutions that take the place of the old order … well, it’s been a thorny time. But it’s also a time of inspired experimentation. I remind myself of that when the overwhelm hits. I remind myself of the energy:

Where we live, in the historically Black neighborhood of Leimert Park, our family’s borne witness and supported as those who’ve been holding it down here for generations lead the charge on collective care. Community gardens, co-ops, free fridges, heat shelters, communal front-yard victory gardens, shade-tree planting, seed saving, after-school programs, “Buy Nothing” gift economy groups, car shares, and so much more. Funding is a constant issue for these initiatives (right now the biggest source of funding is private donors, but the community is keenly problem-solving for a self-sufficient model). Everything’s decided at our monthly town hall meetings, which are always lively and full of opinions. �ճ�����’s a small group of us South Asians in the neighborhood, and our agreed-upon job at these meetings is mostly to listen well and provide the chai. 

Out in the garden, dusk is dancing vividly before me, blues chasing pinks chasing oranges across the hazy horizon. I always stop to cherish it, never knowing how many more I’ll savor before the smog swallows up color altogether. 

I pause over the far end of the garden, which has been exceptionally dry no matter how much I try to feed it. It’s honestly a little embarrassing. My neighbors’ victory gardens look far more luscious than mine. The community decided at one of our first meetings years ago that victory gardens would go in the front yard (communal, conversational, open, and engaging) rather than in the backyard (hidden, private, inaccessible). 99 percent of the time, I love that we made this decision. The 1 percent is just the occasional despair I feel when I remember that my garden is on display and not in the best shape, and my ego gets to me. I make a mental note to hop next door tomorrow to Amrit and Hari’s to ask Hari what cover crops are working in his yard these days—his green thumb has always guided mine, and maybe he’ll know how to better nourish this dry patch.

From somewhere inside the house, my phone rings. 

“Amma!” Gita’s voice calls to me. “It’s Ammamma.”

Her 5-foot frame, identical to mine, comes bounding through the open screen door, my phone in her hand. 

Gita’s hair is curly like mine, and I fucking love that about her. She’s smart as a whip, and I love that even more about her. Sometimes I look at her and marvel at the fact that I made that creature. Now I understand what my amma’s always saying about “having a kid is like putting your heart outside of yourself and watching it walk around,” or some shit like that. Sometimes I want to gather Gita up and store her safely back inside my body.

She comes over to me and scoops me into an affectionate hug before setting the phone up flat on the porch table and hitting “answer.” We both activate the bracelets on our wrists. Almost immediately a spark of light projects upwards from the Beam projection port on my phone, and a three-dimensional hologram of my mother takes shape from the light. 

“H�� Amma,” I say.

“H�� Ammamma!” Gita says brightly.

“Hello? Hello?” my mom says. “I ������’t see you.”&�Բ�����;

No matter how many times we do this, she always comes in perplexed at the beginning of a Beam call.

“Amma, did you put it face down on the table again?”

“Allari pilla! Troublemaker. I kept it properly face up, I’m not that technologically challenged. But still I ��Dz�’t see you?”

“Did you turn the brightness back up or is it in night mode?”

“Oh. One minute. How do I do that again?”

“�ճ�����’s a control on your bracelet. This is why I was saying you should just leave it on the automatic setting.”

“I can figure it out. I ��Dz�’t like how bright it is on auto, it makes my eyes burn.”

We watch her hologram-self fidget with something off-camera, before lighting up in delight. 

“Got it!” she says. “H��! Oh, Gitu, you’re looking so nice. Are you going somewhere?”

“Thanks, Ammamma,” Gita says. “I was invited to a prayer circle tonight, in preparation for the burns next week. Elena is leading, and she told me I could bring some jasmine and haldi and chandan as offerings from our family.”

For the past few years, Gita’s been volunteering with the Tongva Conservancy’s ceremonial burns, covering any responsibilities she’s invited to participate in. Fire season has worsened over the last 10 years in California, so many regions, including L.A. County, realized survival depended on working with local tribes to revive cultural burning practices. The prescribed burns that Indigenous folks across the world have practiced culturally since time immemorial kept rampant dry brush under control and created a cycle of nourishment for the forests, until colonialism outlawed the practice. In L.A., the late fall burning they’ve restarted allows for plant life to rejuvenate in the rainy winter season, the goal being to once again transform dry underbrush into verdant vegetation come spring. 

“How are you going there?” my amma asks Gita. “I thought your driving permits are Monday, Wednesday, Saturday?”

“Elena got a Tuesday slot in the community car share, so she’s coming to pick me up. I think she got one of those Rivian two-doors!”

“Fancy,” I say.

Gita goes inside to start gathering her things while I ask Amma what she’s up to.

“Not much,” Amma replies. “Just making your Ammamma’s cabbage koora.”

“Tease!” I accuse.

“I sent you seeds last year!” Amma says defensively.

“Yeah, yeah, but they ��Dz�’t grow, I told you. The water they need is way beyond our rations.”

We bicker warmly about cabbage koora—a nostalgic but water-intensive vegetable I probably haven’t eaten in 15 years at this point. As the cool night air sets in, Amma’s hologram shines brightly above the porch table. A few stray moths, confused, start circling in the vicinity. I watch their wings disturb the pixels here and there. 

When Elena’s car (indeed a Rivian two-door) pulls up, Gita flashes by me with a kiss and hops in, leaving the divine aroma of jasmine and chandan in her wake. At the same moment, a second set of footsteps tip-tap up the stairs from the street into our garden, and I’m engulfed in a familiar embrace.

“H�� buddy!” a voice coos at me. It’s Aditi, close friend and co-conspirator. She plops her bike helmet and backpack onto a chair on our porch. Seeing that my mom’s on Beam on the table, she grins. “H�� Aunty!” She hits the “join” button on her Beam bracelet so that my mom can see her hologram, then sprawls out in the grass beside me. “How are you?”

“H��, Aditi! Good, good. How are you, how’s Noor?”

“They’re good, they’re still at the courthouse, or they would’ve come by with me.” Then Aditi nods at her backpack and looks at me conspiratorially. “I went to the Indian store today.”

I let out a whoop. This is a luxury we reserve only for special occasions. “Shut up. What’re we celebrating?”

“Wellll, Noor Beamed me from the courthouse today and told me that our permit request for the collective is next in line for consideration. And that they think �ɱ�’r�� a sure thing.”

Amma’s hologram gasps. “The housing collective?”

“The one and only!” Aditi says. 

That night, with Amma still on Beam, Aditi pulls out fresh guavas and late-season mangoes, a rare pleasure all the way from the subcontinent, and we twirl around…

tha ki ta tha ki ta—gin na 

tha ki ta tha ki ta—gin na

…between bites of home.

Friday, July 9, 2077

I eye the box on my coffee table with suspicion. Gita’s had some strange contraption called Iris delivered to me, and she swears it’s worth whatever trouble it surely brings. I asked Aditi and Noor about it, and they agreed that the concept of sticking digital contact lenses in one’s eyes is unpleasant, to say the least. Gita instructed me to be open to it and threatened to call me an old codger if I refuse to even try it out.

“Iris makes your eye a projector, Amma, your eye. Can you believe it? It’ll be like Reyna and I are there with you, 3D, walking and talking and interacting with you and your space. Like �ɱ�’r�� literally there,” she’d said when we last talked. 

The idea of feeling like my daughter and granddaughter are physically with me ultimately makes Iris an easy sell, despite my hesitations. Remembering her words, I decide to open the damn box.

After great difficulty and no small amount of grumbling, I’ve finally affixed the small translucent contacts to my eyes, and, scrutinizing the user manual, I figure out how to power on this incredibly invasive piece of technology. I’ve had it on for less than two minutes when the accompanying earbud headphones inform me that I have an incoming call. It is, of course, Gita.

“Amma!” she shouts joyfully. “You did it! You finally listened to me! This is so cool.”

I’m not sure exactly what is so cool, as my vision is blurry and I’m completely baffled by how she could possibly be seeing me right now. But I take her word for it. Gita does some troubleshooting that I ��Dz�’t understand, laughs at me quite a few times for being a bumbling fool with this new device, and finally coaches me through getting the focus in the lenses calibrated. 

And then I see what’s so cool. Gita has set it so that the simulated world �ɱ�’r�� in is my real front yard. I’m really here, right here, right now, lying in the grass. And it looks like they’re here, too, as full-scale renderings of their real selves. They can interact with me, with my garden. On their end, Gita tells me, it’s like being in virtual reality. She tells me that next time, we’ll make the setting her house, where she and Reyna can move around in the real world and I’ll be visiting via virtual reality. Once I’ve quit my grumblings, we settle into our regular pattern of conversation—what �ɱ�’r�� all eating, how everyone’s love interests are, whether �ɱ�’r�� taking care of our health—except it is quite cool, because the whole time it’s like Gita and Reyna are lounging in the yard with me. I tell them this reminds me of way back when I was a kid in India, loitering outside all afternoon with my cousins.

“You used to go to India every year, Ammamma?” Reyna asks me, eyes wide. 

“Every year. We were very lucky.”

“Do you think you’ll ever go back?”

“With the flight restrictions, it’s almost impossible,” I say. “Now I think it’d take me three trains and a whole-ass ship. No, I ��Dz�’t think I’ll ever be able to go back. But sometime in the future … I think you will.”

My girls both reach out to me as glittering pixels in the golden summer afternoon. I like how realistically Iris portrays them, truly as if they’re here in the grass with me, just like Gita promised, reaching towards me to comfort me. But the technology misses what I love most about them: their smell, the warmth of their skin, the calm in my own heart when I’m in their physical presence. 

When Gita told me she and her partner Gloria had decided to move away from L.A. to raise Reyna somewhere that was more climate-stable, I understood. My mother left her mother in India to come to America in search of a better life, an economically stable life, a life that would offer the opportunity of abundance for us—for me—after the literal and metaphorical scarcity that British colonialism imposed on the subcontinent. At the time, who would’ve thought that decades later, rampant consumption and capitalism would finally deliver that same scarcity here to our doorsteps in America? 

Then I moved away from my mother, starting a life in L.A. in community with other South Asian storytellers who were committed to drawing attention to climate and culture. Those of us who’d joined the movement as soon as we became conscious of it saw the writing on the wall long back, but it took the bubble actually popping around the wealthy for those in power to take any real action on what was going on. 

In L.A., most of the mansions in the hills got wiped out by fires long ago. A staccato of winter storms caused irreparable mudslides along Mulholland Drive. The Pacific Ocean claimed Santa Monica. The city was forced to implement retreat strategies, which led to them regulating lot sizes as more people had to relocate to the livable areas of L.A. Predictably, some millionaires really fought against this and did everything they could to rebuild their mansions and add “climate-protective measures,” but no one ever got too far in the process because insurance companies no longer cover houses built in long-designated Hazard Zones, and after a certain point with all the carbon taxes levied on any building project that exceeds Reciprocal Resourcing Standards, the mansions were no longer financially viable. Other millionaires were shockingly supportive of the lot size restrictions, and wound up working within Reciprocal Resourcing Standards to build sustainable collectives.

Of course, some people still went the route of save-myself-at-the-expense-of-others. They built bunkers with the goal of “self-sufficiency.” It’s a seductive idea, until you realize what it means is isolation from any sense of community. We are by definition interdependent. Our survival is predicated on our ability to work together. But I’m pretty sure Elon Musk’s kids are still raising their families all alone in their secluded fortress. Their only outside interaction is probably with the drones that deliver their caviar.

Ultimately, it was the local resilience, the grassroots ideas, the place-based knowledge that allowed us to survive. These days, I live at Aunty Gang Collective (the name was inspired by Gita always calling me and my cherished group of South Asian women friends “aunty gang”). Here, there’s no caviar (never understood the appeal, anyway), but there’s music in the streets every day.

tha ki ta tha ki ta—gin na

After weathering a long waitlist at the permitting office, our little collective of 15 homes was finally greenlit and built with reclaimed and organic material as part of a government-sponsored hyper-localization effort. Over the last 30 years, L.A. was essentially renovated and rewilded by a team of what we would’ve called environmental architects back when I was growing up (today we just call them “architects”), led by a group of Indigenous engineers and designers.

We ������’t drive much anymore (even electric cars, which over time proved to be too resource-intensive to continue manufacturing at scale), but it’s OK, because the electric buses and trains are much more connected than they used to be. Plus, Aditi and Noor are original Aunty Gang members and live just down the street. We hobble over to each other’s houses almost every day.

“OK, so India’s off the table,” Gita says, cutting off my thoughts, “but more realistically, can you come here, Amma? I told you, Gloria and I can arrange for the flight permits—we have so many credits from volunteer days with the ceremonial burning crews. The aunty gang can help you pack up, and you can be here by next week.”

I make a face at her. I hope with Iris that she can properly see the extent of my disdain for this idea. 

“Not this again, kanna.” I stick her with an exaggerated eye roll. “Every call, the same thing: ‘Amma, now that Dad has passed what’s left for you in L.A.? You’re allllll alooone, why ��Dz�’t you leave everything you’ve known for the last 60 years and come here to fucking Duluth, Minnesota, to join us in this commune of white people.’ Chhi!”

“Well, it was either this or Vermont,” Gita quips back. “And it’s not called Duluth anymore. It’s Onigamiinsing—it’s Ojibwe. Anyway, please just think about it.”

“I’ll think about it,” I lie.

“You say that every time, but you never really do.”

“And yet you keep asking.”

“I worry about you.”

“And I worry about you, kanna.”

“About me? I have Glo and Reyna. I ��Dz�’t like you being alone over there, you’re 82, and that’s not young.”

“OK, first of all, rude. Second of all, I’m not alone! I have Aunty Gang, all my friends within walking distance. The Collective has grown a lot since you last visited. It’s like a mini Wakanda here now. But with less beautiful superheroes and more elderly people.”

“W���첹-�ɳ󲹳�?”

“Never mind, it’s before your time. How’s kathak class, Reyna?” I change the subject swiftly.

“Oh. Good!” Reyna says. “We’re working on chakkar. I’m up to 31 in a row! I can Iris you from our studio next time and show you, Ammamma. It’ll be like you’re watching me dance in person.”

The thought fills me with pride. With longing. With wonder at the fact that so many generations, so many geographic locations and climate-related disruptions later, we preserve this art purely because it makes us happy.

“That would be lovely, kanna.” I pause. “Actually, I wanted to show you something.” I take a few steps over to my left. “Can you see?”

“See what? You’ll have to be more specific, Amma,” Gita says.

I point. “OK, do you see this?” I’m gesturing to the front left corner of my garden, the dry section that insisted on following me from Leimert Park to Aunty Gang Co. The dry section where years ago I’d planted some cabbage seeds my mother had given me, though they’d never grown. The dry section that now was— 

“I ��Dz�’t see where you’re pointing, Amma,” Gita says. “It must be out of scope. Let’s expand range on your Iris.”

I fidget with the control she directs me toward. 

“OK, did it work?” I ask. “Can you see?”

Gita stifles a laugh and Reyna openly giggles. “No, Amma. I think you narrowed the scope.”

“Oh. What do you see?”

“Your foot.”

“Oops,” I say. I try again, but the touchy control is so minimalist that I ������’t tell where on the range scale I am. “How about now? Now can you see it?”

“No, Ammamma,” Reyna laughs. “Now we see your left big toe. In precise ���ٲ�����.”

I mumble some R-rated expletives under my breath. “But I can see you. How am I supposed to know what you’re seeing? I told you I wouldn’t like this Iris thing.”

“OK, let’s stay calm,” Gita says, still chuckling. She talks me through the bewildering device and finally the formerly very dry patch of my garden is evidently in view, because— 

“Is that cabbage?” Gita exclaims in shock.

“Yes!” I exclaim right back. “It’s cabbage! Cabbage!” I let out a loud hooray.

“OK, OK, we see it,” Gita laughs. “We see the cabbage.”

�����Բ�, choodu! Look!” I say. “Baby cabbages!”

Reyna looks perplexed at my joy. “Very cool, Ammamma …”

Personally, I ��Dz�’t think either of them get the hype at all, so I try again. “These haven’t grown here since I was around your age, Gita. My ammamma used to make cabbage koora all the time. And to think Reyna’s never even seen one!”

“What? I see them all the time,” Reyna protests. “Amma made cabbage koora last week!”

�Ԩ���, kanna,” I say, “but that’s that hydroponic shit you people grow over there. The real stuff is grown in the dirt. Real soil. Real food.”

“OK, Amma, let’s not get into this again,” Gita says, clearly miffed. “Hydroponics have fed a lot of people over the last 50 years. But I’m very happy for you about your cabbages. You can Iris us once they ripen, and we can make cabbage koora together. Reyna and I with our ‘hydroponic shit’ and you with your ‘of-the-dirt’ stuff.”

We dream for a while together about cabbage koora, until Gita declares that it’s bedtime for them over on Ojibwe Land. 

I disconnect from Iris and allow the shimmering afternoon to envelop me. I slip my shoes off and dig my feet into moist soil. I feel my pulse.

tha ki ta tha ki ta—gin na

tha ki ta tha ki ta—gin na

My back hurts more often these days, and the asthma’s been back for nearly 20 years (one ������’t blame my lungs—they put up a heroic fight against nearly half a century of summer wildfire smoke). I’ve had my share of cancer scares, too, like the rest of us. 

tha ki ta tha ki ta—gin na

I think of the two generations before me, who saw the world change so much in their own lifetimes: my ammamma watching India gain independence from the British Raj, and my amma, moving to a completely different continent and building a new life from scratch. 

I think of the two generations after me: Gita, who didn’t see stars for the first three decades of her life until regulations helped clear the smog. Reyna, who’s never seen the snow but can do 31 chakkars and accompanies her mom to volunteer for ceremonial burn support. 

tha ki ta tha ki ta—gin na

I think of the descendants that follow, from whom I borrow this earth.

And in the cabbage patch, loam between my toes,

tha ki ta tha ki ta—gin na—dha.

      —gin na—dha.

      —gin na—dha.

I dance.

This story is part of Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, a climate fiction contest from Grist. Imagine 2200 celebrates stories that offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress.

I got my first glimpse of the place today. Drove out there by myself and knelt in the dirt and ran my hands through the dry clods. Nobody else out there, save a few crows picking over some years-old corn.  

I ��Dz�’t think the seller will be a problem. That land gave all it could give and it won’t give any more. The ground is all hard and rocky, rutted out with old furrows and bits of crabgrass here and there. I’ve seen parking lots with more life. 

It’s the only piece in that area that butts up to Stanton Forest. The guy across the road seems to be going strong, but not too many other nearby farms are. It’s perfect. 

I found this old notebook in a desk drawer at home and started writing about all this. We’ll see what happens. 

April 30, 2022

Everything’s signed. Me, at the age of 58 and only ever worked in the city, now the owner of 94 acres of south Ohio cropland. Or what used to be cropland, at any rate. 

She’d be proud of me, and that made me smile on the drive home from the seller’s office. She was always going on about how we needed to give stuff back to nature. “We have so much,” she’d say, “so, so much. We have to give it back, Daddy. We gotta find a way.”&�Բ�����;

“Sure, sure,” I’d always nod. And now she’s gone and I never gave her an answer. 

Well, Firefly, here goes nothing. 

May 6, 2022 

When I stand next to the road, the trees at Stanton are a green row on the horizon. Behind me is the neighbor. To the left and right my land stretches out for about a half mile. 

Neighbor’s name is Brett. He came by in his truck when I was out there today. “Howdy, neighbor,” he said like a cowboy with his head sticking out the window. 

“What are you growing?” he asked. 

“A forest, if I can.”

He looked confused but tried not to show it. 

“Soy prices aren’t bad these days,” he said. “A hell of a lot more in soy than trees. And quicker.”

“I’m not gonna cut it down.”&�Բ�����;

He shook his head. 

“Well, it’s your place,” he said and then took off. 

May 16, 2022 

Most of what’s left of that forest is in the beams of the old Victorians on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland or in Palmer Woods in Detroit. The rest got burned or blighted and then we plowed it under and grew corn and soy until we couldn’t anymore. It’s gone, save a few patches here and there. 

I’ve been reading. This land used to be a forest, one of the biggest in the world. Stretched from where the swampland ended in south Georgia all the way up to the tundra in Canada. There were wolves and bears and chestnut trees that showered so many nuts you had to wade through them. 

One of those is the Smokies down in Tennessee. We went when Sadie was 8. I thought she’d want to see a bear, but she talked about birds the whole way down—245 species there, she said. We walked all over and I could tell that this was a different sort of woods. Deeper, darker. Smelled like old leather and life.  

Sadie wanted to camp in the park, but I didn’t care to sleep on the ground. Still ��Dz�’t, actually. I woke up in our hotel room to find her on the balcony, staring off at the mountains, her little hands gripped tight on the railing. 

We ������’t do the Smokies here. Sorry, dear, we gotta crawl before we walk. We’re gonna start with grassland and then trees. We could just let it go, let nature take her course. But we’d probably just end up with a haphazard field of soy plants. So, grass. And water. And these people over in England think pigs are a good idea. So maybe pigs, too. 

June 4, 2022 

I ��Dz�’t know where she got it from. It �ɲ�����’t from me. I grew up in the Columbus suburbs. Lived in the Columbus suburbs. Ran the dealership in the Columbus suburbs after Dad died. My idea of interacting with nature is one of those documentaries with the British guy talking about starfish and antelopes. 

But there was a little creek behind our cul-de-sac, and she’d spend hours down there, looking at bugs and toads and building dams with rocks. Come back all muddy and I’d hose her down in the backyard, with her screaming and trying to dodge the water. 

“Why do we have all this grass and nothing else?” she asked me once as we walked through our neighborhood. “What are the animals supposed to eat?”&�Բ�����;

Which brings me to the pigs. The pigs can help because they root around and turn up the hard soil. Then they shit everywhere and help fertilize the ground for other plants. Or that’s what this guy I called in England said. 

But right now my land is like those lawns, nothing for the pigs to eat. And that’s saying something, because I’ve learned pigs will eat about anything, even roadkill. So I gotta plant grasses and berry bushes and other plants to create a first layer of food. 

I’ll also build a few ponds to try to attract birds and create a different type of habitat. And I gotta do it all before winter gets here. 

June 15, 2022

It’s not much of a pond, but it will do. Rented a backhoe and dug out a pond at the base of where the land slopes slightly down to the south. It’s about the size of the neighborhood swimming pool by the place Sadie grew up. 

Then I ran a pipe up from the water main and filled it.  It won’t stay, but I’m hoping the fall rains will keep it filled just a bit. 

Today, I seeded half the place with grass, wandering the whole place with a bag of seeds over my shoulder, tossing them everywhere. It took all day, out in the heat, no shade. A few birds swooped in to eat some seeds, but it was lonely otherwise. I’ll come back tomorrow and do the rest. 

I went with a mix of big bluestem, switchgrass, and prairie dropseed, which are all tall grasses native to this area. Big bluestem will be shoulder height in a few years. And I did red clover and buckwheat, which are lower grasses. The clover apparently will restore some of the chemicals we need to grow in the soil. 

Next week, I’ll do wildflowers and shrubs, like black-eyed Susans, butterfly weed, sunflowers, and elderberry bushes. Those will shoot their roots into the dry and compacted soil and break it up, allowing for water and worms and nutrients to get in. 

And next to the pond, I planted a few cattails that I dug up from the stream behind the house. They’ll probably die in a week, but it felt good to have something Sadie would have touched on the land. 

August 25, 2022

The most magical thing happened today. I went out to the land and was walking around like I always do. �ճ�����’s some green shoots all over from the grass I planted, plus I saw a few flowers that I didn’t. 

Ever since I planted the grass, I’ve been seeing mice scurrying around eating the seeds I threw down. I was near the pond, watching a mouse maybe 30 feet away dip in and out of my sight as it hurried up and down the old furrows. 

And then, wham, a red-tailed hawk shot from the sky and grabbed the mouse in its talons. I was so close I could hear the mouse scream. The hawk swiveled his head, looked at me for the briefest moment and then took off again, heading toward Stanton Forest. 

It all happened so fast that I didn’t realize I was holding my breath. 

October 14, 2022

Fall’s here, and I’m worried. We haven’t had much rain, and not much of the grass has rooted in. The pond is just a muddy puddle. The cattails are still there, thankfully, but I haven’t seen as many ducks as I saw at first. 

I’m afraid I didn’t get things in quickly enough and winter will kill off everything that’s been growing. But I dearly hope it all makes it through winter alright. I could say the same for me. 

I drive by the spot where she hit the black ice on my way to work. Even in the summer, I find my foot hitting the brake a little early. In the winter, I go through it so slow cars behind me hit their horns every now and again. 

The tree she hit still has the scar, this unholy blotch of black. I thought it might kill the tree when I first saw it two years ago. But it’s still hanging in, that old oak. I get a real good look at it in the winter. 

March 16, 2023 

I didn’t go out there much this winter, so there �ɲ�����’t much to write about. Just twice, both times all frozen over and snow on the ground, the grass brown and the cattails shivering in the wind. A desolate place, really. 

But now, spring, and melt. And disappointment. Even this early, there’s buds on trees and low lines of green in some of the fields along the road on the drive out there. My place is mostly dirt and mostly empty. 

�ճ�����’s some tufts of grass, but it’s hard to say what I put there and what the wind did. I must have planted things too late. Or the rains didn’t come. Or something else. The upshot is it’s no closer to being a forest than I am to being a raven. 

Makes me wonder what I’m doing out here. Maybe I’ll just sell the place. 

March 19, 2023

I couldn’t stand the thought of her trapped in the ground. Her mother and I hadn’t talked in a few weeks when we both went out to the river that ran about two miles from our house with the urn. It was spring, a few months after the wreck, and the water was a swirl of snowmelt. 

The stream behind our house ran into this river. Sadie had it all drawn out on a map in her room, otherwise I wouldn’t have known. A summer project, mapping our watershed. She had decided by then that she was going to either be a freshwater ecologist or a zoologist. 

We poured the ashes in the river and watched them float away, just a small patch of gray in a sweeping current of brown. 

March 22, 2023

I was out all day today with my seed sack, getting grass down all over again. By the end my boots were so caked with mud they felt like cement blocks. Too tired to write more. 

March 26, 2023

Today I brought my pigs out. Eight of them, full grown and snorting. The guy I bought them from brought them here in a trailer and everything. 

“You got a place to put them?” he asked when he pulled up. 

“Anywhere is good.”

Guy shook his head and undid the latch and the eight of them trampled out onto the mud. They were all old sows, done producing piglets and set for slaughter when I got them. $150 a piece, a steal, the guy had said. 

I’ll be putting corn out for them to eat, but the idea is that they’ll be able to find their own food by the summer. 

With them out there, I’ll have more reason to come back. I’m excited about that. 

April 5, 2023 

I woke up this morning with a voicemail from Brett. We’d exchanged numbers last fall when we were both looking for a lost dog from the neighbors further down the road. 

Apparently, some of the pigs had gotten into his soybeans and rooted up a few plants. He didn’t sound too happy about it. “Those pigs are feral. If I see them on my land again, I’ll shoot ’em.”

Fair enough. I ordered a couple movable fences today. Instead of having them roaming, I’ll keep them on an acre or so then move them in a week or so. 

But already, I’m seeing more grass, more blooms. When I was out there most recently, there was a whole flock of finches singing and hopping among the green shoots. 

July 15, 2023 

Full summer, as of a few weeks ago. My Lord. I’ve got grass and sunflowers up to my knees. �ճ�����’s a couple of geese that seem to have taken up residence in the pond. I saw my first deer a few days ago. 

The pigs are basically magic. Anywhere I’ve put them, a few weeks later, it explodes with life. 

For the first time, when I stand on the road with my land on one side and Brett’s on the other, I can really tell a difference. His is all these ordered rows. Mine is haphazard. His is all green. I’ve got yellows from sunflowers and black-eyed Susans, greens in the grass, some orange and red from flowers that I have no idea what they are, and browns where nothing is growing yet. 

It feels like mine, this stretch of land. I ��Dz�’t know what to call it. It’s not a farm. It’s not a forest. It’s still in that long in-between. But it makes me smile, looking out onto my misshapen kingdom, a kind of patchwork quilt knit by no one in particular. 

August 24, 2023 

The letter came in the mail to my home address. It was all dressed up and on legal letterhead. McCovey and Haines, it said at the top. 

To Mr. Gregory Elroy, the owner of property located at 501 E. Larson Road,

We write to you regarding the nuisance you have created on your property at the above address. Our Client, Mr. Brett Tubbs, of 400 E. Larson Road, has noticed a considerable uptick of deer, squirrels, birds, and other nuisance animals entering his property and disrupting his planting, seeding, and growing of crops. 

Having farmed this land for 17 years, Our Client has never been so disrupted in his labor. We urge you to cease from all activities related to your “re-wilding” of the property at 501 E. Larson Road including the planting of wild grasses, trees, shrubs, and other flora and fauna and the additional lack of maintenance that might further disrupt Our Client’s legitimate farming operations. 

If you do not, we will have no choice but to pursue legal action to remedy this situation in a court of law. 

Sincerely, 
Mike McCovey, Attorney at Law

Rewilding. It’s funny they used that word. Brett had driven by a few weeks back and we’d talked about the weather and the Reds. He seemed over the pigs thing. 

I told him the word for what I was doing was “rewilding,” which I’d only just learned from some YouTube videos. He’d shrugged. “As long as it ��Dz�’t bother me,” he said. 

It must have. 

My second thought came unbidden. It’s working, I thought. It’s working. 

August 29, 2023 

After a long time thinking, I decided to ignore the letter. What could they really do? I owned the land outright. If they wanted to come and take it from me or sue me over a few deer wandering into Brett’s fields, they could go right ahead. 

I got a call from one of the principals at school when Sadie was 12. Apparently she’d found a baby squirrel on the playground and had been keeping it in her front pocket and feeding it Gatorade with an eyedropper in class. Her teacher had heard it squeaking. 

“If I ��Dz�’t have it in my pocket, it’s gonna die, Dad,” she said over the phone, her voice panicked and teary. “It won’t stay warm enough anywhere else.”

I begged the principal to let her take it home and we’d take care of it here. I found a shoe box and hooked up a light to keep it warm. 

“That won’t keep it warm enough. It’s gonna die,” she said. “When it’s that little it’s supposed to be next to its brothers and sisters and mother almost all the time.”

I had to drag her to school and we left the squirrel at home. I ��Dz�’t know what happened, but when we got home the light had gone out and the baby squirrel �ɲ�����’t moving much. It died a day later. 

She didn’t talk to me for a week, just slamming doors and scowling. Any time I walked in a room where she was, she’d screw up her face and yell, “Murderer!” And then storm out. 

Look what I’m doing now, Firefly. The opposite of murder. 

September 25, 2023

I got another letter. Said similar stuff but then asked for a meeting at the lawyer’s office, and I went a few days later. The letter said I should bring a lawyer with me, but I ��Dz�’t know any lawyers and didn’t feel like calling one. 

The office was downtown, with lots of wood paneling and leather chairs. Brett was there, in the guy’s office who sent the letter. He just nodded when I came in. 

“Mr. Elroy, you have been in violation of the county’s land-use regulations,” the lawyer said, his voice oiled and smooth.  

“Your land is intended for use in agriculture, and you seem to be doing nothing of the sort. As a result of your negligence to your land, my client has suffered damages from the excessive wildlife disturbing his crops.”

There was a silence, as I thought about it. 

“What do you mean by excessive wildlife?” I said. 

“�ճ�����’s deer out there every morning,” Brett broke in. “They’re eating my seedlings. And the birds, too. So many damn birds. I just had my lowest yield in 15 years.”

I shook my head. 

“But it’s my land,” I said. 

The lawyer smiled a thin smile. 

“Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean you can do anything you want with it. And the law says that parcel is to be used for agricultural use. I hope you understand.”

I didn’t understand. But I didn’t get angry until I was driving home. I looked out the window and at the strip malls and fast food chains and parking lots with little bits of grass and trees in between. And beyond it, for miles, more asphalt and concrete with little bits of green in between. All the way to the ocean in either direction. 

As we walked out of the office, Brett had said, “It’s because of you environmentalists that people like me ������’t make a decent living anymore.”&�Բ�����;

I never thought of myself as an environmentalist. But Sadie was right. We did have too much. But, apparently, it was illegal to give any of it back. 

October 17, 2023 

I went out to the land today and just walked around. I wouldn’t say it’s pretty, especially now that it’s fall and the flowers have gone for months. The grasses are all scruffy and brown. The pigs are all brown and muddy and old. 

I think maybe what’s scary to some people is that I’m just letting it go. Brett is out there every day on his tractor, tilling or planting. I’m not. I’m just letting it be. I really ��Dz�’t know what’s going to happen to it. Maybe that’s a little scary to be next to. 

On the night she died, Sadie was at my place for the week. Her mother and I had just bought her her first car, a used 2014 Honda Civic, after she’d spent a few months learning to drive on ours. Simple, easy to drive. Safe. Good gas mileage. I thought she’d love it. But she didn’t. 

“I ��Dz�’t want a car, Dad. I only learned to drive so I wouldn’t hurt your feelings. Do you even know what cars are doing to the Earth?” she told me when I first showed it to her a week or two before. 

It’d been sitting in the driveway ever since, the keys still on the counter where she’d put them. Her mother had dropped her at my place. 

And she’d been sulking all week. She’d get like this in the winter. Couldn’t go outside except to tramp around the block in her snow boots. Plus, you know, being a teenager. 

I thought I might take her to the movies or something. She was sitting on the couch, lookin’ out the window. 

“Firefly, you want to go—”

“You call me that, but did you even know that fireflies are going extinct?” she snapped. 

I balked. I didn’t know that. 

“’Cause there’s no more woods for them to live in. They ������’t just live on sidewalks and front yards. But that’s all there is around here.”

“Well, ������’t we do something about—”

“Sure, we could. But people like you never will. I’m not your firefly, Dad.”

With that, she stormed out of the room. I sank back into the couch. I heard a car start up in the driveway a minute later. Huh, I thought, maybe she wants that thing after all. 

The phone rang 20 minutes later. 

October 30, 2023 

When I pulled up to the land this morning, there was a sheriff’s car in the rut where I usually park. He got out as I pulled in, and he was holding a brown packet in his hand. His name tag said Lt. Briggs. 

“Morning,” he said, as we approached each other, like we were friends. I nodded. 

“I’m guessing you probably know what this is,” he said, handing me the packet. I nodded again. 

I took the packet and could feel the heavy pages inside of it. This must be how all this ended. We stood there for a second, him looking off in the distance, me listening to the breeze. 

“You know, I’ve been driving by here for as long as you’ve been doing this,” Briggs finally said. 

“You think I’m crazy too, probably,” I said. 

He shook his head and crossed his arms and looked out over my scraggly land. 

“I ��Dz�’t. I truly ��Dz�’t,” he said after a while. “My family’s lived around here for five generations. My great-great-grandfather was one of the men who cut down these woods and tilled the first farms. I used to take a lot of pride in that.”&�Բ�����;

“But you ��Dz�’t now?” I said. 

“Oh, I do. But, my kids, they lose their minds when they see a deer. They ��Dz�’t know anything about anything wilder than our backyard.”

I looked out on the land. I couldn’t say it was much wilder than a backyard, but just then, three ducks took off from the pond and beat their wings over our heads. 

“Well, not everyone agrees,” I said, holding up the brown packet. 

Briggs laughed. 

“No, clearly not,” he said. “But have you talked to the land trust? Or the people at Stanton?”&�Բ�����;

I shook my head. 

“I haven’t been talking to much of anyone recently. Just been out here where it’s quiet.”

He laughed again, a deep, throaty laugh. 

“Well, maybe you should give them a call. They might be able to help you more than the birds and deer.”&�Բ�����;

With that, he tipped his hat and strode back to his car, leaving me with the packet in my hand and the wind blowing in my ears. 

February 19, 2024 

Well, it’s settled then. The land is now a nature preserve. And it’s being absorbed by Stanton State Forest. 

The people at the land trust straightened it all out rather quickly. They paid me one dollar for the land. Then they transferred it to the state’s control. But not before they helped me secure the right to live and traverse the land for me and my ancestors for all time.

That last part was their lawyer’s words, not mine. But I like it. For all time. 

I’m building a cabin out there. It might be ready in a year. Maybe one day I’ll move out there.  And I’m finally going to get around to the other pond once the freeze breaks. 

Then, trees. It’s time to plant trees. We’ll have our forest yet, Firefly. Oaks, hickories, maples, dogwoods. I can just see the saplings shivering in the spring air. It’s beautiful. 

And the fence. I’m helping Brett build a fence around his land. It was part of the condition of the agreement for them to drop the lawsuit. It’ll be tall enough to keep out most of the deer. 

I ��Dz�’t blame him. The fact is, there’s no way for the wild to co-exist next to his rows and rows of soybeans. We wave to each other again. 

And the people at the state agreed to one more condition. They’re going to call this little patch the Sadie Elroy Preserve. 

August 4, 2031 

I watched the sun go down from my little porch in my little forest. The birds were singing: sparrows, mockingbirds, an owl a little later. 

The trees aren’t high or thick enough to block the view and cast much shadow yet, but one day they’ll tower over this place and it’ll be in shade all day long. 

�ճ�����’s water striders on the pond, and birds dipping through to catch them. I saw two raccoons drinking from the other pond yesterday. A few turtles too, years and years after I’d introduced them. Day before that, it was a flash of fox fur in some of the low bushes. The soil, when I kneel down and cup it in my hands, is soft and loamy. Some nights, there are even fireflies. 

I walk the trails most mornings as the sun comes up and see what I can see. Every day, it’s something. I walk a lot slower these days, but that’s okay. 

Some days, in the quiet of the morning, when my mind is focused on a deer track or a birdsong, I can hear her laughing, off in the distance. 

This story is part of Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, a climate fiction contest from Grist. Imagine 2200 celebrates stories that offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress.

“I believe it’s helpful to have depictions of the world we want,” says Tory Stephens, climate fiction creative manager at Grist. “We’re trying to show that another world is possible.”

Stephens leads an annual writing contest called “Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors.” Now in its fourth year, the contest seeks to prompt reflection and action on climate change. Stephens says the goal of the initiative is, in part, “advocating and helping people realize their visions and dreams through writing.”&�Բ�����;

The exercise is designed to be beneficial for both the writers and the readers. Climate fiction is a collective endeavor. We ������’t imagine a better world alone, nor can we build one. 

Stephens says fiction helps get us out of the mental ruts we often find ourselves in amid the humdrum of our daily grind and the overwhelm of the climate crisis. Climate fiction can prompt rich discussions through enlightening questions like “What does hope look like?” or “What does a decolonized future look like?” And while journalism can ask these questions, fiction actually builds out these worlds to show them in all their glorious detail.

The news today doesn’t always zoom out far enough to show the extractive nature of our current reality and all those it harms. Most news stories show a mainstream perspective that too often centers a white, straight, male view of the world. It misses entirely the lived experience of far too many people and communities. 

Stephens points out that the very real knowledge held by folks who have been pushed to the margins isn’t being depicted in news stories. And it’s certainly not showing up on the front page of mainstream western media outlets. And the efforts to change those norms are too often framed as fringe or frivolous or unrealistic. 

But who gets to choose what’s realistic? Isn’t reality what we collectively make it? Is the status quo something we really want to bring into the future?

In the same way that historical fiction can give us a new understanding of past events and shift our perspective, climate fiction can do the same for possible futures. 

The writers of the stories in Grist’s fiction collections are in the business of radical reimagining. “We’re trying to show a world of abundance, where the characters are the folks that have been marginalized,” Stephens says. “Those folks are depicted in hero terms, owning the world, and bringing forth a world that others want to live by.”

Grist’s writing competition calls for people who are on the front lines all over the world to share their vision of the world from where they sit (and stand and rise up). 

“That’s not going to look the same if you ask someone from India, or even another part of India, right? �ճ�����’s just so many different perspectives on what a clean, green, and just world looks like,” Stephens says. He believes exposure to novel and vastly different ideas of beautiful, rich worlds has serious value. “And right now, there’s not enough of that, in my opinion, going on.”

Stephens says he wants to be clear that he thinks dystopian stories also serve a great purpose to society. “They show the world that we ��Dz�’t want to live in, and I think that’s something we need,” he says, “but we feel like there’s not enough hopeful stories out there.”

“�ճ�����’s a narrative arc that needs to change in the United States,” Stephens says. We need to move from an understanding of “‘we ������’t get out of this crisis’ to ‘we can get out of this crisis.’”

That’s where hopeful climate fiction comes in. Grist has received more than 3,000 entries to its writing competition in its first three years. And for the 2025 edition of Imagine 2200.

Why the year 2200? It may seem oddly specific, and also too far ahead to be able to grasp. But that’s exactly why Grist chose that year—to help us break free of the limits of our collective imagination. We need to overcome the myopic perspectives that Western society is so mired in. Stephens points to the fact that U.S. politicians ������’t pass a budget for six months. Long-term planning has to go beyond four-year terms and five-year plans. 

As a counterweight, Grist aimed to shift away from Western timelines altogether. In deciding on a timeline, editors looked to Indigenous frameworks for being good stewards of the Earth, not just for our own sake, or for individual outcomes, but for seven or eight generations of future ancestors. 

“I think there’s deep wisdom in looking internally for future societies and planning that far ahead,” Stephens says. “You can dream big, and no one can tell you that’s not going to be achieved by that time, because we all just ��Dz�’t know.”

These stories, then, are like lenses to broaden our horizons. They are meant to tease our imaginations and prompt us all to dream bigger and more boldly. 

Stephens compares dreams to seeds—each one with the potential to grow into something real. ������Ƶ justice. Cleaner technologies. The centering of frontline communities. “The thing I like about these stories—and the reason I advocate for climate storytelling and climate fiction—is I think we need a million more flowers to bloom, or stories to bloom.”&�Բ�����;

Stephens readily admits there are already some climate outcomes baked into whatever narrative we write from here; they are an inevitable part of the reality that �ɱ�’r�� going to be living in. “But it doesn’t have to end in the apocalypse,” Stephens says. “It can end with us having a better life.”

Explore stories from this year’s contest below:

������Ƶ Than a Marble

Propelled by a discerning non-verbal child, a craft gets elevated to an act of devotion.

By Rae Mariz

Rewilding a Grieving Heart

A father copes with the loss of his daughter by giving back to nature, as she had wanted.

By Andrew Kenneson

Rooted in the Diaspora

Evolving technology and place-based knowledge help a family connect with joy while far from home and one another.

By Sanjana Sekhar

The Water Came Early

Grappling with the fantasy and memory of flooding on California’s last remaining almond farm.

By Zoe Young

For the Good of the Hive

A bee caretaker learns just how much humans can gain from tuning in to nature’s��cues.

By Jamie Liu

She lay cradled between the moss and her mama, watching the branches cut the sky in precise patterns. Her poor ma Suzume had fallen asleep after chasing the child around the farm, trying to keep Lærke’s tongue out of the beehive. The city’s colorful turbine balloons hovered high in the atmosphere, silently harvesting wind—and look there, the giggle of a single cumulonimbus in an otherwise blue sky.��

Little Lærke’s developing mind observed the canopy overhead, babbling her wordless song above the comforting thunder of her mother’s snores. Then the word took shape on her lips and flew. Wing. Out into the world.

Auntie Cade looked up from the sacred text her needle had been working, the folds of fabric bunched in her lap. She’d been humming the ballad as she stitched those lessons of the living land, quietly harmonizing with the baby’s joyful yoller, but fell silent when she heard the word. The child’s first! 

She followed Lærke’s gaze up to the sky, expecting to identify which dot in the kaleidoscope of community kites had caught the child’s attention, then eased herself down beside the babe to see from her perspective. Which of those turbine balloons or spinning kites and whipping dragontails in the skies had teased the first word from the baby’s lips …? 

Maybe that one? One of the neighbor’s blimp turbine designs had dual blades that flashed like hummingbird wings—not the most efficient design, but since when has creativity been overly concerned with efficiency? It was certainly eye-catching.

Instead, as Auntie Cade nestled back close to the baby, cheek-to-cheek, Lærke showed her auntie a butterfly wing swirling dust motes ignited by the sunlight.

“That’s right, wing,” Auntie Cade affirmed, and pulled The Field Guide blanket up over the three of them. They snuggled in under the weight of wisdoms passed from auntie to auntie—woven, crafted, compiled—while Lærke and her auntie watched the butterfly dance in the golden pollen.

We always say a child’s first word is a gift.

And look at that.

…

You’re … hm. You’re not watching the butterfly. Look …

The blue of the butterfly wing is not a pigment, the color is formed by a delicate structure that refracts light itself, much like the blue of the sky. No real surprise that the beauty of chaos has been represented in the motion of—

You seem distracted. What are you looking for? Me? You’re wondering who this person is, telling you to look here and there. You want to know who’s telling the story? Fine.

I am a storyteller. The storyteller. This story’s teller.

�ճ�����’s no use scanning the edges of the scene trying to find me. I’m not perched on a boulder beside these three as they’re experiencing this intimate, poignant moment on this lovely day. You think I’m up in a tree looking down on the scene? With these knees? Please.

I’m omniscient, but I’m not a creeper.

You can most often find me in the Tangle, the place in the city where paths converge. I ��Dz�’t have to be present at every moment to know what’s going on. People tell me things. I have a trustworthy face.

Step closer. Let me get a good look at you. Knowing who �ɱ�’r�� telling the story to is part of the craft: “The storyteller assesses their audience.” Watches the people as they mingle in the Tangle. Notes the dress of the passerby, their manner. A storyteller wouldn’t tell the same story to the lonely child seeking solace in the storyteller’s lap as they would to the bawdy crowd on their way to a fertility show. 

Or at least, I wouldn’t tell it in the same way.

Any decent storyteller has this skill, it’s the same observations about character that we weave into our tales. Is the listener in a rush? Are they looking for escape? Do they need a single golden spiderweb thread to sew together something frayed inside?

Some storytellers tailor their tales to what their listeners want. My training taught me to look for the story the listener didn’t know they needed.

And you. A reader from the tail end of the blip era, what story do you need from me? Am I even able to tell you a story you will understand? You’re most likely steeped in the narrative techniques of the settler literatures of the time. Tricky … but difficult things are not impossible, and I wouldn’t be a storyteller if I didn’t like a challenge. Besides, you’re in luck. Though the story trends popular in the 21^st century have long gone out of style, I just so happen to enjoy experimenting with this outdated form. I’m afraid that most current storytellers have found that the simplistic structures you’re familiar with often fail to capture our children’s imaginations so they’ve largely been left for archival scholars to catalog as a hobby. I have a friend who does this. Winslowe. He finds it relaxing. Hero goes on a journey or A stranger comes to town. His husband Jibril finds it tedious, but I admire people who are passionate about their passions! Whatever makes him happy, we agree. 

___

Let me tell you about their son, Ben. 

Aunties aren’t supposed to have favorites, and they ��Dz�’t. Hierarchical thinking isn’t actually natural to human cognition, and there isn’t any scarcity of resources to compete over. Especially in regards to a person’s capacity for love.

If you ask Auntie Cade though, and I have (storytellers ask the most impertinent questions, get used to it), she was uniquely grateful for Ben. We all were, but part of that was due to Auntie Cade’s … interpretations … as she decoded the intricacies of his language. It turned out to not be a private language, like maybe his parents and peers, cousins, siblings, storytellers, neighbors, and neithers assumed. Ben was in communication with all the unheard and mostly unseen, outside the spectrum of general human understanding. 

I ��Dz�’t want to make this telling of a slight, autistic Black boy to sound unnecessarily mystical or mythical. He’s a person. But sometimes one’s love for a person embellishes their qualities—they swell with our regard, inflating like a generator-blimp before we hoist them high. Once a storyteller gets their hands on a person, they make the character appear larger than life. Is this the mark of fine craftsmanship or a rookie mistake? (You can tell me, it won’t hurt my feelings.) Why shouldn’t the loving renderings of an artist’s brush caress a child, stroke his cheek, and tickle his armpits?��

Ben would hate it, so that’s one reason not to. And the only reason we need.

Of all the children she’d taught and inspired, nurtured and guided and delighted in, Auntie Cade recognized that she’d learned the most from Ben. She told us that Ben showed her things; he’d shown them to all of us, but sometimes it required an auntie’s attention to understand a child.

Our culture puts a lot of weight on a baby’s first word. (See above.) Not so much what the baby says, mostly that the baby says. That they’ve arrived at a phase of language acquisition which marks their inclusion in the community conversation.

Feral cats ��Dz�’t meow. Or so the story goes. 

We talk about everything. People do. The ASL sign for a hearing person is the same as the sign for TALKING. We’re always talking. Especially the people I know. It varies from neighborhood to neighborhood, culture to culture. But for the most part, we’ve evolved, especially since your time—those blip generations when decisions were made by might, hierarchical decree, or just not made at all—we’ve learned how to talk things out.

When there is a problem, we gather. And talk. Not to be heard, but to discuss. We approach the discussion acknowledging that there is a problem, and that the solution is not yet known, because if any one person knew how to solve that problem, it wouldn’t be an issue, now, would it? If it were a problem easily solved, we would’ve made quick work of ensuring it �ɲ�����’t a problem. We would instead be off braiding bread or rinsing the vegetable inks from the pages of a library book and searching the catalog for a new one to print—living our lives. No, if �ɱ�’r�� there in that room, in that clearing, filling that field, meeting in a sports arena—then we have a problem so tricky that it needs everyone’s input. Children as young as 6 years old have contributed to civic matters. Do voices get raised? Sure. Do men burst into tears? Quite often. Do passions drown out reasoned accounts? Eh, not as often as you fear. Our children learn to listen at a young age and become adept in the skill as adults. I see it straining your imagination, stranger-comes-to-town, that the opinions of each individual in a mob could be worthy of respect. Do not feel bad about your disability, we see it as a failure of education … one of the many things lost in the blip generations, along with the 83% loss of biodiversity in the sixth mass extinction event you are currently living through.

But we were talking about Ben. How could a culture of loudmouths appreciate a quiet kid? Who grew to be a silent adult? 

Because, unlike the “domesticated” cat, most of the wild creatures we share a planet with didn’t go out of their way to try and learn our language. To vocalize their need, to pitch their voices like a baby’s cry, to trigger a physiological response that requires immediate attention from people who hear it. Feral cats are silent because they ��Dz�’t want to attract attention to themselves or communicate with people. They want to be left the hell alone.

Animals have rich languages of scents and gestures and vocalization patterns. Able to communicate between themselves and with each other, and very few of us have gone out of our way to understand the linguistic complexities of our fellows. Not with the same determination of the cats, at least. “But could those things really be considered language?” I hear one of you say. Your white sciences change the definitions and shift the goal posts every time a community of creatures approximates those arbitrary markers for intelligence, sentience, life. Every time. To ensure that only human people stand in the circle—and terrifyingly often, it’s only the people with similar qualities of those enforcing the definitions who are allowed in. Personally, I tend to wonder if that culture built on exclusion, exhausting itself to enforce artificial borders (or otherwise centering a single person’s narrative thread, consequently relegating the rest to less important supporting characters and background greenery) may have led to the worldview that brought your generation so close to ending the ever-generating world.��

So yes, I say language.

Listen to birdsong as you walk through a place with birds … I was going to say “the woods” but that might be difficult for you to find, presently. Things were dire at the tail end of the blip era, as I understand it, you were so very successful in excluding everything unlike your kind … Anyway, walk among birds. Listen to their trilling call-and-response. You can be sure that they are talking, and I guarantee they are talking about you. You are big news in the woods. They are not quite sure what to make of you. Are you a predator? What have you done to assure the birds that you are not a threat? It’s easy enough to show them. Their birdsong is asking. They are waiting for a reply.

Ben’s first “word” was a reply. Our culture has a parallel language system of gestures; yours might, too. A thumbs-up, a corny salute. A peace sign, a fuck you. Our neighborhood has a gesture of gratitude—two fingers pressed to one’s own lips. Thank you. And one to express a wordless need—hands cupped into an empty bowl. You would probably try to find the words for this feeling … general malaise, vague disappointment, unfulfilled desire, a soft sense of regret. You know the feeling … it’s just a nameless funk. Instead of trying to locate the feeling, to understand it—or jerkily act out in desperation to feel anything else—our people tend to just signal the inner turmoil �ɱ�’r�� experiencing by cupping our hands into an empty bowl. Close to the body if we want to be left alone with the feeling, extended out from the body if we need someone to pull us out of it. It’s useful. Easy to communicate. Both for one’s self and to others. The prevalence of tragic instances of ill-advised bang-cutting in our society has diminished, at least.

When Ben was maybe 3—long past the age most expect to welcome their children through the rites of their first word—Auntie Cade was walking alongside Ben during their daily route through the Tangle. She would follow where he led, always close enough should he need her, but never insisting on holding his hand in the crowded public space. He didn’t like for his hand to be held and it’s easy enough to allow small children their autonomy generally, Ben in particular. His morning routine was sacred to him and he was never at risk of running off.

On this day, Auntie Cade witnessed Ben making his quiet wander to his favorite places. He watched the glassblower turn sand into exquisite shapes—mesmerized by the lava blobs birthed in fire and brought to life with breath. The glassblower was a small man with thinning hair and a quiet voice. He did his work, seemingly indifferent to Ben’s constant presence—a feat, since people are otherwise hyper-aware of a 3-year-old in the vicinity of molten stoves and display shelves of delicate glassworks. But the glassblower had come to an agreement with Ben, an arrangement. Each day, the glassmaker dropped a single glass marble into a large, wide bowl just as Ben was ready to leave … in gratitude for the child’s attention and as thanks for him not touching all his stuff or breaking anything.��

Ben listened to the smooth, nearly frictionless vibrations as the marble rolled in a path up the sides of the bowl and around. Ben’s eyes followed the lazy arcs and parabolas, and when it tinkled to a stop in the center, Ben reached in with his small fingers and picked it up. He examined the color and the finish of the marble, weighed it in his hand, and, satisfied after his appraisal, placed the marble he’d carried around all the previous day onto the rim of the bowl and let it circle to rest at the center. Then he left the workshop with the new marble nestled in his palm.

I’d asked the glassblower about this ritual, and about the day it changed. I had to tease the story out of him, slowly, like the expanding bubble of glass. He told me it started as a simple token, the kind he often gave children in gratitude for not touching any of the fragile wares. The first one was rather large—Ben was still small and there were no assurances that he wouldn’t put it in his mouth. (Auntie Cade assures me that he never did, which she found odd, since he put everything else in his mouth at that time—except for a variety of foods she hoped he would like.) Ben carried the fistful of smooth glass cupped in his chubby hand the whole day, and when the glassmaker presented him with a new one the next day, baby Ben deposited the old one and clutched the new. That was what intrigued the glassmaker, he’d assumed Ben would collect them like other children often did. He’d meant for the baby to have both. All of them.��

We ��Dz�’t like to use words like exchange or trade … they’re so rooted in blip characterizations of transactional relationships that we just … find more accurate words. But Ben started this ritual, and each morning, the child plucked the new gift from the bowl, examined it, then returned the one from yesterday before accepting the new one. Until one day, Ben picked up the day’s marble, and for whichever reason, preferred to keep hold of the one he had, and let the new one slide back into the bowl.

The glassmaker was startled, curious, and after the boy left, he picked up the marble and examined it. It was of the same quality as all the other marbles. What inspired the child’s preference for the previous? “There were no imperfections,” the glassblower told me while clipping a molten blob of glass, it curled in on itself like a living larva. “But there was some quality that displeased him, or at least persuaded Ben to keep holding on to the one in his hand.” Here I had to wait some time for the glassblower to roll his rod and use gravity to temper and shape the glob that would become a kind of vase. “That’s when it started. It went from a game, to a challenge, to …” He stared thoughtfully at the fires. “An inspiration. I am so grateful to Ben. His careful regard has inspired the development of my craft to a degree that … no one else would probably notice, but I know that he notices. Propelled by the urge to please him, my craft has been elevated to art and then to an act of devotion. I’m still not sure what the boy is looking for when he makes his assessments. It’s not perfection. Perfection is easy compared to this. I just want to make something that makes him happy. Something he wants to carry around with him each day, every day.”

I’d asked the glassblower if he’d ever felt offended. Refusing a gift can be a sensitive matter. The glassblower was startled, “It never occurred to me to be offended. You know Ben. The social rules of the gift ��Dz�’t apply. It’s just him and me and the day’s marble.”

I later learned that on the day I’m taking my sweet time in telling you about, the moment that Ben joined the extended family of the living world, Ben had been holding on to the same marble for two ten-days. That marble was blue, with cloudy swirls of white and flecks of green-brown. The glassblower had presented him with 20 examples of his refined craft—some vibrantly colored and particularly large or remarkably small, since the glassblower was getting kind of desperate to create something that would win the boy’s favor—and none of them satisfied Ben’s internal matrices of color, feel, and weight that made a gift a pleasure to hold.��

“I still have no idea what it was about that one that appealed to the kid,” he let his sigh shape glass. “It was even slightly misshapen, with a bit of a bulge around the equator. Not at all my best work.”

But this was the one Ben didn’t want to let go of. Come, let’s go catch up with him. You’ll soon realize why I spent a seemingly disproportionate amount of time imbuing so much meaning into a smooth chunk of glass a 3-year-old carried clutched in his grasp. There he is. He’s moved on from the glassblower’s workshop to watch the rivermen unload their shares on the Main Stream docks, with Auntie Cade shadowing alongside him. 

The crew rolled barrels onto shore, tilted them upright in a row. Ben watched them pop the tops off the barrels and plunge their hands elbows-deep into the watery contents. They wrestled strands of kelp from inside and strung them, glistening, up on a line, so the sunshine glinted off the slick surfaces, highlighting the variety of each. The exquisite variations in colors and textures and shapes. 

Red sea kelp, which eases digestion processes in ruminants, decreases the methane content of cow farts, and can also fry up crisp and salty like bacon. Tasty. Exotic sugar kelp harvested from Nordic shores, alongside eelgrass gleaned from local seagrass meadows. Ben silently regarded the hanging kelp strands glittering like festive garlands, their home-waters draining back into the barrels beneath, while people stopped to admire and inquire.

“Pretty big haul today,” Jibril’s voice boomed out, and he rested his big dad hand on Ben’s back. Ben flinched away from the touch. “Oh, sorry, Benevolence.” Jibril apologized and glanced at Auntie Cade. 

She admonished him with a twitch of the corner of her mouth, and nodded encouragement.

Jibril knelt beside his son and lowered his voice. “I thought I’d find you by the boats. You like the boats?”&�Բ�����;

Ben didn’t answer or meet his eyes. He poked at one of the slimy air bladders bobbing on the surface in the sea barrel.

Jibril joined him in pinching and stroking the glistening seaweed, and started to make conversation with the rivermen.

“These specimens are a delight,” Jibril said. “I ��Dz�’t think I’ve seen sugar kelp available for some time. Rough seas?”

“No more than usual,” a riverman shrugged as she ladled more seawater on the strung-up strands to keep them glistening and hydrated. “Hydrofoil yacht pirates are always trying to take more than their share, but these beauties came through from the kelp farms of Sør-Trøndelag.”

“They’ve come so far!” Jibril exclaimed, “Ben, this seawater is from the far seas. Incredible.”

Ben continued to poke the air bladders, obviously sharing his dad’s fascination with the seaweed, though maybe not for the same reasons.

Everyone called Winslowe “Ben’s dad” and Jibril “Ben’s big dad” (Ben, of course, didn’t refer to them at all). Jibril was, yes, a hulk of a man, but it was his outgoing personality that gave him his “big dad” stature. He and his mama Kerime kept a community tavern attached to the Archives, where he and Winslowe and Ben had a small living space above the library. “You’re off-loading?” Jibril made note of the number of barrels.

“Most of it. We talked to Lis, who said salvage crew approved a rebuild of the generator serving East Bear cluster, so when needs are met here, �ɱ�’r�� taking the river algae to the technicians. They can use their mysterious chemistries to extract materials for self-repairing sail production. You want anything today?”

“No need, no need. Only when I saw you had so much, it inspired me. I have an idea for a new recipe I wouldn’t mind serving up at the tavern today …”

Ben wandered off to his next stop at the witchcrafters while his big dad invited the rivermen over for a hearty meal, whether or not they had sugar kelp to spare. Auntie Cade followed the boy, sure he was eager to play with the puppies Auntie Owen had been bringing to the circle while they all talked story and swapped dyeing methods and stitch techniques. But Auntie Cade soon realized that she’d lost sight of the boy. He had veered off from his usual route and she searched the crowd at knee height, looking for him, fighting back a strange shame—an auntie never loses sight of their child. (Though Auntie Cade is quite extreme in her sense of responsibilities. She doesn’t permit herself to make mistakes, when everyone else knows that aunties are only human.)

Then she saw him. Tottering over to a man she didn’t recognize. Not a neighbor, perhaps a neither. That’s what we call people who we ��Dz�’t yet have a named relationship with. You call them strangers, which … rude. But the man was sitting crouched off to the side with his head down and his cupped hands held out. Ben had noticed him, probably glimpsed between the legs of passersby, and had left his prescribed route to answer him.

Ben slipped his tiny hand into the man’s empty cupped ones.

The man looked up, startled, and opened his hands to find that Ben had placed the glassmaker’s marble there. The colorful work of magic. The cold miniature world.

Tears streamed down Auntie Cade’s cheeks when she saw Ben take the man’s hand, urge him to his feet, and lead him over to the puppies. She knew how Ben felt about holding hands, that he endured his own discomfort to give comfort to another. She hurried the few steps back to Jibril and tearfully recounted what had just happened. How Ben had recognized the man’s need, and he had responded. This was unmistakably a word. Ben’s first.

They embraced and laughed and wove through the crowds to the witchcrafters’ circle. They found Ben silently introducing the man to the squirmy puppies, even then showing his abilities to be attuned to the nonverbal needs of creatures, human and otherwise.

___

I’m sure you know that’s not the end. How could a first word ever be?

But you didn’t need a story about an ending. I saw that right away, the first time we met there in the beginning. Saw how I would have to unspool my narrative thread into loose loops and coils to ensnare you. My needle sharp and glinting to repair the tears. It’s a story, I hope, that will hold to bridge the short century between us. A tightrope that will help you find your way back here.

Even now, you’re wondering how a storyteller from the future could be telling you all this. The, like … mechanics of the thing. See, storytellers are time travelers. Always have been. Or at least they could be, if they understood their true relationship with time. I’m not sure the blip storytellers were able to do this. The records of their stories would read differently if they could … though maybe the ones who understood the weavings of time didn’t get the opportunity to leave records. (I’ll have to talk with Winslowe about that one—archivists aren’t wrong all the time.)

I’m not predicting the future. I’m just telling you what I’ve seen and been told. So the next time you find yourself holding on to an imperfect blue marble, you might have a few ideas about what to do with it.

This story is part of Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, a climate fiction contest from Grist. Imagine 2200 celebrates stories that offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress.

The Fulani family sought refuge in Maiduguri, the state’s capital. They found shelter at the Shuwari II for Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp, joining thousands of others who had been uprooted by the conflict. 

Aisha didn’t access formal education back in Abadam. Had she stayed there, she would have likely continued to tend cattle and, sooner than later, become a milkmaid. She may also have been married off at the age of 12. These are trends in the community for those in Aisha’s circumstances.

But now, as the eldest child in her family, she is the first one to have the opportunity to go to school. Today, Aisha Malik is a secondary school student, among over 500 enrolled in the Aisha Buhari Integrated Secondary Fulani school in Maiduguri.

“I want to become a medical doctor to help my people; I also want to become a journalist to be seen on social media. In fact, I want to be everything,” she said.

The school was founded by the Borno State government in 2018, during the tenure of Kashim Shettima (the country’s current vice president), with additional assistance from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund. It exclusively admits children from Borno’s Fulani community. “The aim is to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and illiteracy among the Fulani community in Borno State,” said Shettima in .

Named after a former first lady of Nigeria, the school is adorned with colorful murals that spark creativity and curiosity among its pupils. Motivational quotes on portraits of renowned personalities across the world grace its walls, inspiring students with the stories of those who have achieved greatness. The portraits include Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, who advocates for education for women and girls; Mae Carol Jemison, the first African American woman in space; and the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday. 

The classrooms are equipped with air conditioning systems, vibrant murals, comfortable seats, and motivational portraits. Every classroom is designed to foster a thirst for knowledge. 

Three school buses transport students from their respective locations every morning to the school and back. The school also provides breakfast and lunch.

Their Aspirations 

Abubakar Mohammad Bello is the first to attend school in his entire family. “I aspire to become a nuclear engineer, enabling me to safeguard my country in the future against potential threats and insecurities from foreign nations,” he said. 

All the pupils interviewed by HumAngle are the first to attend school in their families. Some of their parents work as property guards, earn as little as ₦5,000 (approximately $5) per month, and sell tea. Despite their hard work, they cannot afford to send their children to formal schools. 

Another student, Hassana Mai Agolla, a school press club member, said she wants to become a journalist because she is passionate about newscasting. Then there is Mohammad Usman Yunusa, who desires to become a school teacher. He justified his choice by quoting a hadith: “The best among you are those who learn and teach it.” He added, “I want to teach all that I am learning to my younger ones.”

The desire to defend their country resonates with some of the pupils. Abubakar Mohammad, a primary 4 pupil, hopes to someday join the Nigerian military to contribute to national security. 

Losing It All

Several parents told HumAngle how they lost their cattle to the insurgency that has ravaged the state for more than a decade. In 2016, one of them, Usman Yunusa, was jolted awake by the echoes of heavy gunfire in Abadam. Boko Haram had seized control of the town, prompting him to gather his family and abandon his livestock. They trekked for over a day before they reached Maiduguri. 

After reaching Maiduguri, Yunusa and hundreds of others settled in Shuwari II. He spent a year frequenting the cattle market, desperately hoping to reclaim his lost cattle. Regrettably, his efforts proved fruitless; there was no trace of his prized possessions. 

Displaced, many others occupied construction sites and uncompleted buildings. They became security guards and laborers. They also hawked tea on the streets. But these were not enough for them to give their children the upbringing that would enable them to have a chance at a bright future. School seemed like a tall dream.

Reflecting on that period, Yunusa remarked, “The most positive outcome since losing 40 cattle is witnessing my daughter attend school.”

In the vastness of Nigeria’s landscape and its diversity, the  community is known for their unique way of life. Traditionally known for their nomadic lifestyle, they have roamed the West African plains for centuries, tending to their cattle. But insecurity and climate change have rendered many of them pastureless and unable to continue the trade; they have to come to cities and try to adopt lifestyles that are alien to what they are used to.

However, while their nomadic traditions have deep historical roots, they have also posed significant challenges, particularly in education. The Fulanis’ migratory lifestyle, dictated by the needs of their livestock, has made access to formal education a major hurdle for their children.

The head of Fulani settlers in Borno State, Zanna Rebo, said, “Whenever the word ‘Fulani’ is mentioned in Nigeria, the first thing that comes to mind is banditry and kidnapping. The Fulani people were unfairly associated with these criminal activities without being given an opportunity like others. But here in Borno, our children are given opportunities to obtain an education. These children would have grown up without skills and knowledge to cope with the new world and might be exposed to criminal activities, but now they are rescued from such calamity.”

“The livestock that they inherited have been rustled, and their farmland cannot be accessed anymore, all because of Boko Haram insurgents. They are not educated; the system has cheated them. The narrative has been changed for some of these children; now all they think of is how Nigeria will progress,” he said.

Zanna Rebo observed that, before now, the children didn’t even know how to say “come” in English. Today, they speak English, Arabic, and other local languages.

“The opening of Aisha Buhari Mega School has brought hope to our children’s future in Borno State. They now have access to education, digital skills, and self-realization,” he added.

“In other places, we hear of Fulani tribesmen engaging in kidnapping, armed robbery, and other vices, but in Borno State, we have been treated differently for a long time, which highly contributed to our peaceful coexistence in the region,” said Ferroje Ahmed, parent to three of the school’s students. 

He has lived in Maiduguri for over 20 years. “I feel hopeful when I remember that my children will not suffer the consequences of lack of education when they grow. They now have equal opportunities with others,” he added. 

Ahmadu Yugudu, a displaced Fulani farmer from Kukawa local government area, has two children enrolled. “I couldn’t have sent them to school without this scheme. The Fulani school is my children’s only hope,” he said.

“There is no place in Nigeria where we heard of or have seen our children taken to special schools apart from Borno State. This is a welcome development, and it could serve as a template for other states to follow as a long-lasting solution to insecurity,” said Usman Husaini, the chairman of the Fulani herders association in the state. 

The chairman further added that the only time they heard of such social involvement was during Nigeria’s colonial and military era. He pointed out that they have been neglected even though they contribute immensely to the economy of Nigeria and Africa through the cattle business.

, the commission is mandated to cater to the educational needs of the socially excluded, educationally disadvantaged, and migrant groups (such as herders) in Nigeria because these population segments face significant barriers to accessing primary education due to occupational and sociocultural factors. 

Out of the estimated 10.4 million migrant groups in Nigeria, about are children of school age; of those, only 519, 018 are currently enrolled in schools. The participation of nomads in existing formal and nonformal primary education could be much higher. This justifies Nomadic Education as a strategy for inclusiveness to primary education for nomads in Nigeria.

Their Lifestyle

The head teacher, Sa’adatu Garba, explained that a significant number of children within the nomadic community encounter distinctive challenges due to their itinerant lifestyle. One is the frequent change in residence due to the nature of their parents’ jobs. Once construction is completed at their temporary sites, such families must seek new accommodations, often accompanied by their children. This poses a significant hurdle to their education. 

“Sometimes, we categorize these children as dropouts, only to witness their return after several months with various excuses. Our only recourse is to embrace them with open arms, as our entire endeavor is dedicated to their welfare. Any form of punishment or coercion leading them to drop school would severely blow the initiative,” said Sa’adatu.

Sa’adatu also pointed out the need for more classrooms, a science laboratory for practicals, an ambulance or school health facility, and textbooks for the children. “Next year, we will have students sitting for their Senior Secondary School Examination. We will need a laboratory for the science practical examination. Also, extra classes are needed because we now share the school facility with the host community. The students have a strong passion for reading, which is limited because they do not have what to study with at home.”

“The Fulani herders, for whom the Fulani school in Maiduguri was established, are nomadic pastoralists who roam with their cattle, constantly searching for lush pastures. Over the years, the pastures they rely on have, for various reasons, become increasingly inaccessible to them. This, in turn, has taken a toll on their livelihoods, rendering them more vulnerable. As history has shown, when people lose their means of sustenance, their vulnerability can potentially lead to social instability,” said Dr. Omovigho Rani Ebireri, a lecturer in the Department of Continuing Education and Extension Services at the University of Maiduguri. 

Ebireri explained that creating a well-equipped school, staffed by qualified and experienced teachers capable of capturing the attention of these herder children, is commendable. “This is not a far-fetched notion; it echoes the wisdom of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who once said, ‘The children of the masses you fail to educate today will prevent you from sleeping tomorrow.’ This statement encapsulates the essence of the matter precisely.”

This story was����(Nigeria) and is republished within the����program, supported by the ICFJ,��.

In the summer of 2023, we at began to gather feminist changemakers from across the globe into an to tell the story of the future. We invited them to play with us and bring their hopes, love, and visions into our virtual circle in multiple sessions. Together, during one of the sessions, we wove a particular story, a fable—excerpted below—across time zones, cultures and generations: 

And so the other children asked, “Well, could we be visitors? Is there a way to share this place that wouldn’t intrude?” Ursula thought about it, and she looked to the trees and the path, and she asked Water. And Water said, �Ԩ���, please bring the visitors. Remind them to bring their heart, make their offerings, and connect in their own ways. Yes, bring them.” So the children went to this place and they saw the beautiful little stream. As they sat, everybody was very quiet, until Ursula turned and asked, “Is everybody OK?” And Sister said, �Ԩ���, but somehow it’s like we didn’t know Water before, and now we see her in a different way. We see more than we ever could.” And they thanked her for bringing them to this special place.

The deliciously nonlinear process of weaving this story together allowed us to feel, see, taste, and touch the world we long for—for our descendants, ancestors, and, yes, ourselves. 

Speculative, embodied storytelling is especially important now, given the level of uncertainty, conflict, and collective grief many of us are experiencing. Climate disruption has us literally navigating uncharted waters and unprecedented weather. Powerful new technologies, for healing and war, are evolving faster than we can grasp or govern them. Conflict is pervasive and escalating. Various anxieties haunt us and are amplified: disconnection, isolation, and loneliness; the specter of new deadly diseases; eco-anxiety; economic uncertainty; disregard for the life and well-being of the perceived “other”; displacement and lack of safe, consistent housing; concerns for our families’ and communities’ futures. 

Yet all is not lost. We need not brace ourselves and hold our collective breath. Instead, we can take low and slow breaths into our bellies, knowing that more people are remembering our right relationship to each other, to Water, Earth, Fire, and Air—sensing this is a crucial moment to leap into ways of being that foster repair, interconnection, and mutual thriving.  

The paradox of this time feels both new and ancient. What might it look like to belong—to ourselves, each other, and Earth—unconditionally? How might we remember what we’ve forgotten? How do we sit in paradox and use it to evolve together? 

Women leaders, organizers, and healers have helped their communities contend with these questions for generations. Root. Rise. Pollinate! started gathering such feminist changemakers—whom we call “pollinators”—early in the COVID-19 pandemic because we knew they could support mutual thriving in the middle of collapse. 

Now, years later, we find it even more important to commit to collective practices that generate hope, love, care, and community. Our current work in progress, , uses embodied storytelling to help pollinators be present in paradox, dream together, and apply those dreams daily in service of our collective evolution. Three core practices are emerging as essential to this evolution: Courageous Presence, Radical Imagination, and Embodied Adaptation. 

Practice 1: Courageous Presence

I don’t like the word “resistance.” I like the word “courageous presence.” What is courageous presence? It means you’ve really accepted the challenge given to you and you have developed through it … surrounded by people that understand the different parts that feed the whole soul and strengthen the body and mind for that challenge. —Elder Kathy Sanchez (Tewa Women United) 

The practice of speculative, embodied storytelling calls us to be present with the world as it is right now. This isn’t easy, but it’s powerful. As human beings, and activists, various habits protect us from seeing and experiencing the “muchness” of the world—repetitive unconscious behaviors like (but not limited to) retreating into or entrenching in that which is most familiar or (over)indulgence in any number of things. The unconsciousness with which we engage in these habits also separates us from our core power. We lose our ability to recognize and exercise our agency to face what is difficult and make choices to move away from the status quo toward something more hopeful, joyful, and rooted in love with courage.

In embodied storytelling we begin and end story circles with breath, body-based movement, and questions such as “How is your heart today?” By doing so, we bring our whole selves—heart, mind, body, spirit—forward in preparation for the stories we might weave. We practice courageous presence, rooted in love of ourselves, our people, and places, while opening to the complexity of our present conditions and the possibility to transform them. 

Practice 2: Visioning the Arc  

Our work as a movement is to create the conditions in which governance is loving. We ��Dz�’t just want loving organizations, we want loving communities. We want the bloody state of the world to be loving … which is ultimately where we are trying to go with power. —Jessica Horn

Storytelling is the foundation of transformative strategy. It enables us to envision new, unexpected possibilities rooted in powerful, ancient truths. Pollinators weave a story together, generating ideas and energies that are hard to access when we are in more linear planning or evaluation modes. Through this playful practice we often surface key elements of vision, purpose, and strategies faster than when in those more linear modes. We connect the many layers of ourselves and our worlds with more ease. Some of the most powerful stories we created brought in the complexities of life, rather than a sanitized utopia. Through this practice we are seeding and growing power that is rooted in our imaginations, our interconnectedness, and the things we love.

Practice 3: Embodied Adaptation

The power of this work is as a driver of movement building … [so that] we do it in a way that fuels and strengthens the collective. —Shereen Essof

A revolution of being is about embodying the change we want to see in the world—without compartmentalizing the change. A revolution of being enables us to live wholeheartedly, with purpose as our imperfect selves in our imperfect world. Practice is the path.

As we engage in a revolution of being, we develop our capacity to keep our visions alive, to establish courageous presence, and to make choices and adjustments in response to inevitable change based on what is really important. We expect to learn and practice as we go. 

Stewards of the Future 

Each of us is trying to build a better future through collective learning. Each of us is both a learner and a teacher. —Pam Ki Mela

As stewards of the future, we are part of a longer arc, connected to our ancestors and descendants. A revolution of being will look different in each place and with each group of people, but it will share some similarities: the deep love for home, an unshakable sense of belonging, and an awareness of our interconnectedness with all living things. 

Join us in discovering a revolution of being!

That was the case for Duke Dalke. After spending six months behind bars, he tried to return to his previous line of work as a leader in the beverage industry in the greater Chicago area.

“After being released from prison I could not find a job,” Dalke says. “When it got to a background check, or just being honest and disclosing my history, they would close up the folder and say, ‘Thanks but no thanks,’” Dalke says. 

According to a 2023 report in the , 60% of employers said they would not hire someone with a criminal record. According to the report, 87% of all employers said they do background checks prior to employment across all sectors. For clerical, service, and sales jobs it’s even higher, at 90%. As a result, of people who were formerly incarcerated remain unemployed a year after leaving prison.��

Those circumstances are what brought Dalke to —a coffee roaster in Wheaton, Illinois, just outside of Chicago—at the recommendation of someone else who was incarcerated. The roastery helps people like them in the uphill battle to find gainful employment. Dalke has been with I Have a Bean for eight years now and has since transitioned into a leadership role. He even interviews potential new employees—passing the baton of social mobility to candidates who were formerly incarcerated. 

Dalke is one of many around the country who have gotten a second chance at life with the help of the coffee business, be it in roasting, brewing, or being a barista.

Individual and Collective Success

In Washington state, Underground Ministries—an organization that helps the formerly incarcerated get re-acclimated to daily life outside of prison, has a similar program. Executive director Chris Hoke says the coffee business was born in 2016 because the ministry had a direct trade relationship with a farm in Honduras. 

“We started on our own, bringing big bags of coffee up,” he says.  

Underground Ministries then partnered with Fidalgo, a regional coffee brand. They launched , which aims to help the previously incarcerated get gainful employment and build up a solid record that could help them progress in a new career path. 

Fidalgo Coffee CEO Darryl Miller says that in the eight years since the company launched, some of his best employees have been formerly incarcerated, including a current delivery driver. 

When people ask what the purpose of a business is, some people say it’s to turn a profit, Miller says. “For us it’s about making a difference in society.”

Burgeoning Baristas

New York City’s Department of Corrections teamed up with —a Brooklyn-based organization that offers a number of barista-training programs for the general public—to launch a training program for inmates. Procreate, which operates a brick and mortar location in Brooklyn, now has a training facility on Rikers Island—where the prison is located. The collaborative first launched the barista-training initiative at Rikers Island in 2017 and has expanded several times since then to be open to more inmates. They’re set to grow even more in the months to come.

The move comes despite massive budget cuts across New York City, which has led to , a from the Department of Sanitation, and even a in other classes and programs at the Rikers Island prison. The barista program at Rikers, however, was spared. 

The program gives inmates who’ve been infraction-free for at least 30 days a crash course on everything from coffee roasting to latté creation to customer service.

The program stands out within the city’s criminal justice system, which has been plagued with a number of massive systemic problems. 

Rikers is historically one of the most overcrowded jails in the country. The jail faced numerous allegations of misconduct over the years, including the case of , who spent three years in jail, despite never being convicted of a crime, before he ultimately took his own life. 

Now the is also in the hot seat amid newly surfaced images that show inmates locked up in caged showers. 

The barista program is making a difference at Rikers.

Brew the Change

Starbucks, the world’s biggest coffee shop chain, endorsed the “Ban the Box” movement on its job applications in 2015 by omitting the mandatory criminal history box. The Seattle-based coffee shop chain joined other large retailers like Target and Walmart in doing so. 

The move largely proved to be successful. According to a report published in by removing the box, people who were formerly incarcerated were 27% more likely to receive a callback than before the initiative took effect. 

There are dozens of independent coffee shops around the country that are specifically designed to help the formerly incarcerated get back to work, including in Hamilton, Ohio—about 20 miles north of Cincinnati. 

“My wife and I are both ex-felons. We both have been to prison, so for us this is a lived experience. When we came home there were not a lot of opportunities,” says co-owner Patrick Davis.

“We figured there’s got to be a better way. People deserve a second chance, and no one is going to hire us, so we created our own business,” Davis says.

Now in business for five years, The Fringe Coffee House employs 15 people.

“We started a business that, rather than discriminating against someone with a criminal record, we made that a requirement—kind of flipping it on its head,” says Davis.

Oklahoma is far from an outlier when it comes to failing to provide safe and equitable bathrooms for transgender people. According to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks LGBTQ+ policy, prevents transgender people from safely or legally using public bathrooms.��

But data shows that even in states with trans-friendly policies, transgender and nonbinary people report high rates of harassment in public bathrooms. Advocates say everyday people can have a big impact in interrupting discrimination in gendered restrooms. Here’s how anyone can help prevent abuse. 

Acknowledge that bathrooms can be scary, and help locate safe options

Sex-segregated restrooms have historically been a hostile space for Tat Bellamy-Walker, a Seattle-based journalist and Black gender-fluid trans person. In graduate school and at journalism internships, they had to go far out of their way to find all-gender single-stall restrooms they could use safely. 

“You never forget being told you ��Dz�’t belong in a restroom, you never forget not having a place to dispose of sanitary products if you’re on your period in the men’s bathroom,” Bellamy-Walker said. “It’s just clear you do not belong in public spaces.”

Allies can help tremendously by locating and pointing out gender-neutral bathrooms to friends or family who might need them. This is especially important for people planning events or parties. Make sure your space has safe bathrooms.

Offer to be a bathroom buddy to your trans and nonbinary friends

Carrie Soto, a South Dakota parent of a transgender child, said she lives by the mantra “see something, say something.”&�Բ�����;

That means speaking up when there is bullying and harassment and volunteering to accompany a trans/nonbinary friend or family member when they have to head into a public bathroom. 

“Validate a trans person’s fears and anxiety about the situation,” Soto said. “ If [my daughter] uses a gendered restroom and feels anxious, I go with.”&�Բ�����;

Make trans and nonbinary people welcome if you see them in bathrooms

It may seem obvious, but transgender health advocate Jamison Green notes this step can really help trans people feel safe. Consider first that according to��, 59% of trans people avoided using a public restroom due to fear of harassment. Data from����said they were physically or verbally attacked while trying to use a bathroom, while 4% were denied access to a bathroom.��

“If you see someone who you clock as trans or nonbinary, just smile or pay them a non-provocative compliment. … Wish them good day or good evening, and move on,” Green said. “Of course that only goes for the women’s room! In the men’s room, talking is extremely rare.”

Green recommends that cisgender people offer a kind, silent nod.

Ask for more gender-neutral options

Twenty-two states and Washington, D.C., allow residents to opt for “X” gender markers on their IDs in addition to selecting “M” or “F.” Still, in every state, regardless of laws, most bathrooms in government buildings, schools, businesses, places of worship, and cultural institutions are gendered.��

Advocates say people can help change this by simply asking businesses and building owners for more options to accommodate all genders.

“Advocacy is the most important part of the fight for transgender rights,”&�Բ�����; “And if employers adopt pro-trans policies proactively, instead of waiting for a transgender person to pave the way, there’s much less chance of having problems down the line.”

Try to leave single-stall gender-neutral bathrooms free unless you need them

The internet is  not appropriate for a news article about people using the only single-stall gender neutral bathrooms available not for safety but for … well, pooping. As a result, gender-neutral bathrooms, especially in airports, are almost always occupied.

There are many reasons why a cisgender person might need a single-occupancy bathroom (accessibility, illness, child care, and, yes, even a little more privacy). Just like accessible stalls, it’s a kindness to leave gender-neutral restrooms unoccupied when you ��Dz�’t need them.������

This story was originally published by , and is reprinted here as part of YES!’s participation in The 19th News Network.

Living in an age where the word “woman” is routinely weaponized in favor of white, cisgender, heterosexual, and male supremacy, and against Black, Brown, Indigenous, and LGBTQ people, it’s challenging to think of a world where the word “woman”—and those who fit its definition—is no longer controlled and manipulated in the interests of power.

My own relationship to “womanhood” (and its policing) began early. 

I was no older than 11 when my mother first told me that the way I was sitting—legs in a V shape, knees about a foot apart—was “not how ladies sit.” I was confused as to why there were rules for the way I sat but none for my brothers. As I got older, and curse words began making their way into my vocabulary, my father would tell me “girls ��Dz�’t talk like that.” And so I learned there were rules to how women spoke. 

By my junior year of college, I defined myself as a “womanist,” embracing Alice Walker’s definition of “a Black feminist or feminist of color.” Feminist theory encouraged me to begin interrogating my conception of my own womanhood. I discovered things about myself that had long been suppressed because they did not fit into the patriarchal definition of “woman,” like my bisexuality, nonbinary identity, or that I—like many other humans—curse. I ultimately realized that my true womanhood was defined by a resistance to these arbitrary rules.

In a world where (rates that are ), just existing as a woman is an act of resistance. If “womanhood” can be defined as resistance, then “woman” can be defined as resistor. 

So many women throughout history have called out the “rules” for what they are—illusions of a white-supremacist, patriarchal dream—and vowed to resist them. This collection of YES! stories is about (just some of) those women. 

From how Indigenous people embraced the meaning of gender equality long before that same framework would be adopted for women’s suffrage, to LGBTQ women finding safety and solace within a community that recognizes—not rejects—their identities, to the long history of a truly inclusive feminism, these stories show how resistance and womanhood are often intertwined. 

Women’s History Month, like any history month, is a calling to continue the work of these women—and those whose names we’ll never know—because they resisted what the world was for what it could be.

What Women’s Suffrage Owes to Indigenous Culture

Gender equality in Haudenosaunee society gave 19th-century white women some big ideas.

By Bridget Quinn

How Women-Led Movements Are Redefining Power, From California to Nepal

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By Alice Driver

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By Gloria Alamrew

Menopause Matters

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This “New” Feminism Has Been Here All Along

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By Dani McClain

MOTH

It isn’t in the wings or the flying 
where freedom takes place
it is in the quiet cosmos of 
your unbecoming.

In a case of silk 
your essence is protected 
while imaginal discs shift
molt into mystery, cave in.

May a song be an anchor 
while your body falls into itself. 
May you find beauty
in the reconstruction.

Do you remember 
your simultaneous
origin and conclusion?

Do you remember 
how once in a cocoon
you met yourself?

Since 2021, PEN America has recorded cases of book bannings—a staggering number on the rise. In just the first half of the 2022–’23 school year, PEN America saw a compared to the previous six months. A striking written for and by the LGBTQ community. 

“The real power of a book is that they open up a different world to readers. And what people want to ban is our worlds and our lives,” says Julie R. Enzser, Ph.D., editor and publisher of the lesbian literary and art journal . “Book bans are a concrete strategy [used] by folks who are interested in denying the existence of LGBTQ people and people of color who have ideas that challenge white hegemony.”

Book bans—which describe any action taken to limit access to a book—can happen through a variety of channels. On a local level, parents or an individual may decide to challenge a book in their local libraries or schools, triggering a review of the titles, and often their removal from shelves. Regardless of the motivation behind these complaints, the impact is undeniable: In Florida, following the complaints of a single man. There are also organized, large-scale efforts from far-right parent groups like Moms for Liberty, which lobbies school districts and officials to oppose curriculum and books that are LGBTQ inclusive or related to critical race theory. 

The targeting of books by and about LGBTQ people and people of color isn’t new—author George M. Johnson, who wrote about growing up as a Black queer man in the oft-banned 2020 memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue, has spoken openly about the connections between . But what is new is the of these book bans—and their symbiotic relationship with conservative and anti-LGBTQ legislation. 

“The bans and challenges are resulting in proposed legislation or [passed] legislation,” says Leigh Hurwitz, the collections manager at Brooklyn Public Library. “They are targeting lists of hundreds of books in some cases. [It’s] not just a single person coming to a PTA meeting talking about a single book.”&�Բ�����;

In 2021, the Oklahoma state senate, for example, that would ban all books that dealt with sex, sexuality, and gender identity from public school libraries. ������Ƶ recently in Utah, a to “objectively sensitive” materials and books—allowing public school employees to be charged with a misdemeanor if banned books are found in their classrooms. Meanwhile in Florida, some school districts are due to recent, and incredibly vague, state laws. At the same time, states that targets queer, and especially trans, access to education, health care, and other basic human rights. 

LGBTQ youth are particularly vulnerable to book bans, as they may not have the means to buy, find, or keep a book outside their school or public library. And while by publishers, authors, and advocacy groups, most young people ������’t afford to wait for slow-moving legal action. Given the stakes, the role of librarians, publishers, and grassroots organizers are critical in the fight to maintain access to these cherished queer and trans stories. 

Libraries as a Lifeline

The first line of defense is libraries. For Hurwitz, there are two main strategies for protecting book access—administrative and communal. Libraries have policies to handle bans, but often these procedures aren’t being used. “In many cases, books are just taken off the shelf once someone complains, and that’s not what should be happening,” says Hurwitz. Clear, protective policies are needed so that librarians can field complaints and point to a systemic response. And there are organizations there to help—the American Librarian Association for libraries and individuals navigating a ban.

At the same time, libraries are also urgent sites for youth organizing, which is why Hurwitz helped develop through the Brooklyn Public Library. Launched in 2022, Books Unbanned provides youth all over the country with free, no-questions-asked access to the library’s entire digital collection, as well as access to book clubs, a podcast, and intellectual freedom forums. Recently, the program also launched the training, where youth can learn hands-on advocacy skills and fight censorship through civic engagement.

“Teens are so aware that books are extremely powerful for learning more about themselves and the world. They’re a force for change,” says Hurwitz. By leveraging youth engagement, libraries and programs like Books Unbanned empower the and advocate for their right to read.

Beyond the Shelves

Still, access to queer and trans stories ������’t rely solely on institutions—independent publishers, informal advocacy networks, and tight-knit social groups all create vital points of access. 

Sinister Wisdom, for example, not only publishes new lesbian writing, but also recontextualizes and redistributes rare, formerly out-of-print works through its , which has published works by banned author Audre Lorde, as well as authors like Pat Parker, Judy Grahn, and Beth Brant. In this way, access to LGBTQ texts isn’t just about fighting a wave of book bans. It’s about challenging a publishing landscape that allows vital LGBTQ books to fall out of distribution in the first place. Likewise, Sinister Wisdom offers an dating back to 1976 and free books for incarcerated women.

“What �ɱ�’r�� really trying to do is bring people together to organize around books, to talk about books, but also to really know one another and to really expand our sense of what it means to be a lesbian in the world today,” says Enzser. “We always need to bring back stories from our history to talk about our future.”&�Բ�����;

Others look towards the internet. , an independently run online database, was launched in 2019 by Ash*, a trans woman and researcher, after she realized there was no centralized location for free, trans-related texts.

“We believe education should be free and knowledge shouldn’t be behind a paywall,” says Ash. There are dozens of volunteers who manage the growing collection of more than 2,000 texts, and the estimated 120,000 yearly visitors to the site. And the independence of sites like Trans Reads makes them less susceptible to pressure by school administrators, lawmakers, or parents to remove books. Simply put, anyone can on Trans Reads any time, for free. 

The project is dedicated to Leslie Feinberg—a butch lesbian, author, and transgender activist who released the 20th-anniversary edition of hir canonical, banned novel Stone Butch Blues for free in 2014 shortly before hir death. “The novel was a way for trans, gender nonconforming, and queer people to realize ourselves. It told us we aren’t alone,” says Ash.

Like Ash, Kayleigh Lassonde was changed by this single banned queer book. In 2023, a friend gifted Lassonde a copy of Stone Butch Blues—a text Lassonde was always drawn to, but felt hesitant to read alone. “The idea of experiencing and reading the book alongside fellow butches made the content feel significantly more approachable,” says Lassonde. Inspired by Feinberg, Lassonde launched Butch Nook in February 2024, a New York City–based book club for butch, stud, and masc-identifying folks. The first book discussion welcomed 23 people and since launch, 70 people have filled out the interest form.

“Right now in the United States we are in a moment of extreme censorship and historical erasure. There are people working at this very moment to remove as much evidence of queer and trans existence from the law as they can,” says Lassonde. “At the Butch Nook we are providing space and resources for butches to not only read and discuss censored literature, but to understand what meaningful solidarity looks like. The group may bring people together through our shared identity, but our purpose goes beyond the issues of the butch community. We believe that none of us are free until all of us are free.”

Taken together, these strategies—protective, institutional policies in libraries; intentional youth development; and independent trans- and queer-led literary projects—work to create a world in which queer and trans stories aren’t just accessible, but abundant. 

* Ash requested to use a pseudonym to protect her from professional reprisal and the risk of doxxing. Read YES!’s policy on veiled sources here.

10 Banned LGBTQ Books for Your Reading List

The author and the sources they spoke to for this article have curated a reading list of their recommendations for oft-banned books by, for, and about LBGTQ people. Bring a bit more color to your spring reading list by adding these titles:

by Maia Kobabe

Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer is one of my personal favorite banned books. Kobabe has been at the forefront of censorship and we always need more youth-oriented comics and literature like eir graphic novel!
—Ash, Trans Reads

by Kyle Lukoff and by JR and Vanessa Ford

Although literature by, for, and about trans youth has historically been overwhelmingly white, new books like When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff and Calvin by JR and Vanessa Ford speak to the stories of trans kids of color. Unfortunately, these books are almost immediately targeted with bans upon publication.
—Ash, Trans Reads

by Trung Le Nguyen

This award-winning YA graphic novel roots itself in the past, the present, and the timeless realm of fairy tales. Every night since he was a kid, Tiến and his mother, Hiền, have read each other fairy tales from the local library, a tradition that continues through to Tiến’s adolescence. Told from both of their perspectives, we see them learn about each other through stories: Tiến’s grappling with how to come out as gay and Hiền’s omnipresent memories of the family she left behind in Vietnam. now at Brooklyn Public Library!
—Leigh Hurwitz, Books Unbanned

by Alison Bechdel

Bechdel’s rich graphic novel about growing up in a funeral home, coming out, and thinking about her father’s homosexuality is a romp through queer literary culture and contemporary lesbian communities. It is wonderful in every way.
—Julie R. Enszer, Sinister Wisdom 

by Alice Walker

The Color Purple is a novel written in letters about two sisters, Celie and Nettie, in rural Georgia. It is gorgeous and difficult and challenging and provocative—and it won multiple awards when it was published and continues to delight audiences today, not only as a novel but also as a film and stage play. Our lives would be diminished immeasurably if we could not read and grapple with The Color Purple.
—Julie R. Enszer, Sinister Wisdom 

by Leslie Feinberg

Originally published in 1993, Stone Butch Blues tells the life of Jess, a stone butch living a working-class life in 1950s New York. Banned shortly after its publication, Stone Butch Blues is a call to action, exploring identity, violence, trangender and lesbian community, and the power of organizing.
—Sara Youngblood Gregory

by Jonathan Evison

Lawn Boy tells the story of Mike Muñoz, a Chicano man living in Washington state, who, after getting fired from a dead-end landscaping job, is trying to figure out exactly what the American dream means for him. With humor and wit, Lawn Boy explores capitalism, class, discrimination, and sexuality. It’s the perfect coming-of-age novel for readers of any age.
—Sara Youngblood Gregory

by Malinda Lo 

This book is at the top of my list for its emphasis on historical and cultural detail—you’ll feel immersed in 1950s San Francisco, Chinatown, and the lesbian bars of the era as Lily Hu, the main character, explores her sexuality. Last Night at the Telegraph Club was also the first YA book with a queer woman as the main character to win the National Book Award.
—Sara Youngblood Gregory

by Susan Kuklin

Originally published in 2014, this book features the stories of six young trans and nonbinary youth through interviews and photography. Touching, triumphant, and sometimes heartbreaking, this book is a lifeline for not just trans youth, but also the people who care for them.
—Sara Youngblood Gregory

Care Coordination

Health care organizations such as hospitals, clinics, and managed care plans need to provide families of children with intensive medical needs with comprehensive care coordination that includes not just medical care but also social services, says Mona Patel, a pediatrician and chief integrated delivery systems officer at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. That means going beyond just providing a list of resources and leaving caregivers to figure out the next steps. Families need personalized and well-organized support to connect them with resources in their community and help them navigate the challenges that come up.

Anna Leach-Proffer, managing attorney with Disability Rights California, says many programs such as Regional Centers and California Children’s Services do provide case managers for families of children with special health care needs. But this often results in families having multiple case managers who only work within one program and ��Dz�’t coordinate among themselves. What’s needed is a super-coordinator who can oversee all aspects of a child’s care across all the programs.

A new benefit launched in July called Enhanced Care Management (ECM) aims to provide this for low-income children enrolled in Medi-Cal who have complex medical and social needs. However, the benefit has been slow to roll out and there is , including fears that it will simply add another layer of complication to the health care system for families.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is one of a few organizations already offering the benefit at scale. The hospital has hired 10 community health workers and provided ECM navigation to almost 300 families of medically fragile children since July. The workers meet with the families at clinics or in the community and walk them through obtaining the health and social services support they need, often going with them in-person to apply. This could range from getting a mental health appointment to an application for subsidized housing or for reduced-cost electricity. 

The system isn’t perfect—the hospital is contracting with several managed care plans that all have different administrative requirements, Patel says. She said it would help if the state Department of Health Care Services would standardize requirements across health plans. This needs to include standards designed for children, not just the adult population.

Nevertheless, families and medical providers working with the hospital’s program have so far offered positive feedback, she says.

“I think it could become the way of the future if it becomes much more streamlined,” Patel said, adding that the program could be “a wonderful opportunity to deliver the care and the depth of care that our patients and families deserve, especially in our vulnerable communities.”

Elizabeth Zirker, senior counsel for Disability Rights California, says managed care plans must also pay ECM providers adequately to ensure enough of them want to do the work. Another challenge with the care program is that it’s not available to children who qualify for Medi-Cal through a waiver program that exempts them from income-eligibility limits. It would make sense to change if those children aren’t receiving specific ECM-type services elsewhere, such as help transitioning out of an institution and coordination and referral to community and social supports, she says.

Closed Referral Loops

In 2025, Medi-Cal Managed Care Plans will be required to make sure that when members—including children and their families—are referred to a health or social service provider, someone follows up to make sure that referral went through. This “closed-loop referral” requirement encompasses referrals to ECM coordinators, local community organizations, dentists, regional centers, nutrition programs, and county mental health departments, among others.

Mike Odeh with the organization Children Now says, like ECM, this policy could really help families caring for children with disabilities, if done right. To ensure this, the state must fully detail what a closed-loop referral looks like, such as a maximum time a referral should take to complete and how they should be done. This is especially critical for young children for whom the speed of early intervention can have lifelong consequences.

“There needs to be training and resources (for providers) to make these systems work,” Odeh says. “At the end of the day it ������’t be just giving the family a phone number and saying, ‘Good luck, hope it works for you.’”

Remove Limits on HCBA Waiver

The Home and Community-Based Alternatives (HCBA) waiver provides children and adults with disabilities who would otherwise be institutionalized to receive the services they need to live at home, including home nursing care. But the program has been full since July, leaving thousands of people on a waitlist. Disability rights advocates and members of Congress have to increase the number of waiver slots. The state did recently add an additional 7,200 slots over the next four years and implemented “triage” protocols to prioritize medically fragile children in the intake process, after a and other coverage of the issue. However, Zirker says the cap for medically fragile children should be lifted altogether.

Automatic Medi-Cal Reimbursement, Better Coordination With Other Plans

Some children with disabilities get health coverage from Medi-Cal and a statewide program called California Children’s Services (CCS). These programs ��Dz�’t always agree on which entity should cover each service, and families get caught in the middle. If CCS denies a claim, Medi-Cal won’t pick it up until the family can prove it has exhausted the appeals process, said Leach-Proffer at Disability Rights California. That’s stressful and time consuming for families.

Leach-Proffer would like to see Medi-Cal coordinate with CCS to pay for denied claims, without families having to jump through hoops. In fact, Zirker believes that Medi-Cal should automatically pay all claims for its members so services can be provided in a timely fashion, and then figure out later if another program is responsible.

“Why should a medically fragile baby be placed at risk because these systems ������’t communicate and are so lumbering?” she said.

Enforce Existing Regulations

Federal law requires Medi-Cal to for children under age 21 who are enrolled in the program. These services include dental, vision, hearing, home nursing, nutrition, and mental health services. But some California counties are not authorizing services according to these standards, said Nicholas Levenhagen, litigation counsel with Disability Rights California. He and Leach-Proffer said the Department of Health Care Services needs to provide better oversight of authorization processes among counties and Medi-Cal–managed care plans.

Enroll All Children in Medi-Cal

In October, the American Academy of Pediatrics—the largest professional association of pediatricians in the United States—proposed streamlining health care coverage for all children by automatically enrolling all newborns in a single, government-funded health insurance program. In California, this program would be Medi-Cal (a program that draws funding from two federal programs called Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program). The Academy proposed allowing all children to remain eligible for the program until they turn 26, regardless of income. Parents could choose to opt their child out of the program if they have another source of health insurance coverage. 

The Academy also proposed increasing federal funding to states to pay for this and increasing provider minimum reimbursement rates to make sure Medicaid providers are paid on par with Medicare—the health insurance program for people 65 and older.

“The existing patchwork of state Medicaid plans work well for some, but not all children, and leads to inequities and obstacles for families to obtain and keep their medical coverage,” said Jennifer Kusma, a co-author of proposal, in a statement. “Ultimately, all of society benefits when children and families are thriving and able to get their routine, preventive and urgent health care needs addressed.”

This story was produced in collaboration with the .

As her parents see it, caring for Claire is part of the job of being parents and something they do gladly, just as they care for her older brother, 7-year-old Xavier. Claire was born, apparently healthy, in December 2021 in Los Angeles, where the family still lives. Her parents never anticipated that four months later, after having brain swelling and open-heart surgery, their infant would be diagnosed with a condition so rare that only 20 people have been known to have it. Or that it would mean Claire’s mother, Vivian Vasquez, would become Claire’s full-time caregiver, and lose her job as a high school principal in the process, that the family would burn through their savings and need public assistance for health care, that they’d have to battle endless insurance program denials and paperwork to get care that doctors said Claire needed. Perhaps most shocking was that the health and social support system that’s supposed to help families like Claire’s would, instead, make it even more stressful to care for a child with intensive medical needs.

“When you are trying to care for a human baby and all you find are walls … it’s this stone-cold feeling,” Vasquez says. “How do I find the help I need? �ճ�����’s no one to direct you.”

If Vasquez, who holds two master’s degrees, has struggled to figure out how to get health coverage and care for Claire, what happens to other, less-resourced families? California has multiple programs that provide support to children with complex medical needs and disabilities. Among them are Medi-Cal, the state’s safety-net health insurance program; a waiver program that allows kids with disabilities to qualify for Medi-Cal even if their parents earn too much; California Children’s Services, which provides treatment for children with certain medical conditions; In Home Supportive Services, which pays for caregiving of people with disabilities at home; and California’s Regional Center system, which serves kids and adults with developmental delays.

But accessing and making use of these programs is a minefield for many families. They often receive little guidance on how to apply for programs, must navigate complex paperwork and bureaucratic requirements, wait weeks or months to find out if they’re approved for a service, and—then, even if they do qualify—struggle to find providers that can offer the sanctioned care. The result is that children often ��Dz�’t receive the care they need—which can lead to a need for even more care as they get older and increases the risk of the child requiring expensive visits to hospital emergency rooms. Some parents give up on trying to get services altogether and become emotionally or financially distressed. It’s common for at least one parent to have to stay home to care for the child, affecting the family’s income.

“I Can See Where People Would Give Up”

Claire is a vivacious child, with attentive brown eyes and the round cheeks of a toddler. Although she ������’t talk, she babbles constantly, and flashes smiles at strangers and family members alike.

Born with a rare genetic condition that affects her heart, lungs, and brain function, Claire’s survival depends on a strict routine of alternating feeding, breathing, and medication treatments. These continue from the moment she wakes up until her bedtime around 9:30 p.m., when she sleeps attached to an oxygen machine.

An hour after Hernandez has given Claire her first supplements every morning, Vasquez steps into the little girl’s nursery.

“H��, Claire bear,” Vasquez says. “Good morning, little honeybun.”

If she’s not too tired, the toddler stretches and greets her mom with a big smile. Vasquez props Claire up in bed or on the couch in the living room. She turns on The Wiggles—a children’s music show—on a tablet and uses a syringe to give her daughter the first of six meals of the day through her feeding tube. Claire likes to move along to the music and point and flex her toes when her favorite ballerina song comes on.

After making Xavier breakfast and driving him to school, Vasquez continues Claire’s feeding and treatment routine for the rest of the day and works with her on exercises to help physical and mental development, such as standing her against the wall, holding her head up, and putting toys in front of her. She balances this with taking Xavier to kung fu or piano lessons in the afternoon and helping him with homework.

But that’s just part of her responsibilities.

The stack of manila folders on the kitchen table is another story. Inside are papers related to health insurance programs, medical services, and social assistance Vasquez has sought to try to get Claire’s needs met and support her family financially.

“Everywhere I go, there’s something else to apply for,” Vasquez says, estimating that she spends two hours a day calling government agencies, health insurance officials, and doctor’s offices, often with little success. “I know the help is out there, it’s just hard to access it. … I can see where people would give up.”

“We have a very complex health care system,” says Apple Sepulveda, an occupational therapist with the in Los Angeles, who specializes in working with young children who have medically complex conditions, and is helping to teach Claire how to swallow. She says she’s constantly meeting parents like Vasquez who are struggling to get the support their child is entitled to, while trying to cope with the upheaval of caring for a child with intensive health needs. Because they ��Dz�’t get enough help, parents can become overwhelmed or depressed, she says.

“Navigating all these services and appointments is time-consuming for families,” Sepulveda says. “We have to recognize that a lot of these parents are so overwhelmed because they bring their child home from the hospital or the NICU and they become their nurse, their care navigators, their advocates, their respiratory therapists. So, they wear a lot of hats.”

The Impact of Delays

Claire had open-heart surgery at 4 months old and shortly after was diagnosed with “chromosome deletion 4q21q22.” The condition impairs the body’s organs, delays growth, and affects feeding, speech, and mobility. Vasquez remembers how sad she felt when the doctors sat her and Hernandez down in a hospital office and told them that Claire might never walk or learn to speak. Vasquez’s dreams of taking her daughter to dance class and teaching her to read shattered. She wondered if Claire would ever learn to run, if she’d ever hold a balloon.

The doctors said Claire needed regular care from multiple specialists, occupational and speech therapy, tube feedings with specialized food, and oxygen equipment to help her breathe. 

She also needed more health insurance.

At the time, Vasquez was principal of an elementary school in Pomona, the culmination of a long career of teaching, founding a bilingual education program, and earning two bachelor’s and two master’s degrees. She had private health insurance for her family through her employer. But that insurance �ɲ�����’t enough to cover all the complex care that Claire required. Vasquez also needed a home nurse to care for Claire during the day while she worked. Although she and her husband made enough to live comfortably, these expenses were more than the family could afford. They also had a mortgage to pay, student loans, and two car loans, and were helping Vasquez’s elderly parents with utility bills. 

At first, Vasquez thought she had it figured out. A hospital social worker recommended she apply for the Medi-Cal and Home and Community-Base Alternatives (HCBA) waiver programs, which would cover Claire’s medical care. She also learned that, once Claire had Medi-Cal, she could apply for the state program that pays for a home nurse.

But it took months to get approved. First, Vasquez applied for standard Medi-Cal in June 2022, but was denied because her family’s income was too high. Then she applied for the waiver program, the other avenue to Medi-Cal coverage, which required gathering mountains of evidence for Claire’s condition. She waited three months for that to be approved. Then, upon receiving the approval, Vasquez had to reapply for Medi-Cal to get actual health coverage, which took effect  in January 2023. Because of the delay in getting insurance, during the eight-month process to obtain Medi-Cal Claire hadn’t seen most of the specialists she was entitled to see under , which requires that children enrolled in the safety-net health insurance program receive all medically necessary treatment.

Eight months is a long time when you are a toddler. It amounted to nearly half of Claire’s life that she had gone without the health care doctors said she needed. Early intervention is critically important for many children’s health and developmental conditions, increasing the likelihood that treatment will work.

Only when Claire had Medi-Cal could Vasquez apply for the home nurse program. Again, Vasquez waited about nine months for the application to be finalized. Eventually, she called the program’s customer service line in frustration, dialed through multiple prompts and waited two hours for someone to answer. She was told a form she had handed in was missing. It �ɲ�����’t until September that she received the first home nursing payment.

By that time, Vasquez had been fired from her job for missing too much work. She couldn’t juggle the demands of running a school with caring for Claire without the help of a nurse. With the loss of employment, Vasquez also lost the family’s main source of income, and her own and Xavier’s health insurance. She and Hernandez, whose job doesn’t offer family health coverage, began burning through their savings to stay afloat.

“I’ve never felt the amount of stress in my life as I have these last two years,” Vasquez says. “It just all crumbled down … I’ve had to reprioritize, readjust our lives.”

Ironically, Vasquez’s newly precarious financial situation made her and Xavier eligible for Medi-Cal. That application process took another three months, forcing Vasquez to burn through even more savings to pay for out-of-pocket medical bills for her and Xavier while she waited for their Medi-Cal cards.

“We didn’t qualify for Medi-Cal at first because we earned too much,” she noted. “It’s like you have to be reduced to low-income to get the help you need.”

All in all, the process of getting Claire the care she is entitled to—and needs—and health coverage for the rest of the family has taken more than a year and a half. And it’s not over yet. Vasquez is still trying to secure appointments with a developmental neurologist and speech therapist for Claire, and is trying to figure out how to apply for California Children Services, which she hopes will help cover some of the treatment.

“A Cloud Above My Head”

The Vasquez family’s worries didn’t end when they were finally enrolled in Medi-Cal and In Home Supportive Services, the home nursing program. Vasquez is compensated by Supportive Services for some of her caregiving hours, but at $17 an hour it’s only about half of her previous salary, and barely above minimum wage. Meanwhile, with Claire enrolled in Medi-Cal under the Home and Community-Based Alternatives waiver, Vasquez has struggled to find new specialists that take the insurance and ��Dz�’t have a long waiting list.

Almost a year since having Medi-Cal, Vasquez is still working to get Claire all the doctor’s appointments and therapies she’s been told she needs. Provider shortages, particularly among those that accept Medi-Cal, make finding pediatric specialists difficult. And the doctors Vasquez used under her private plan ��Dz�’t take Medi-Cal. Many doctors ��Dz�’t accept Medi-Cal because it offers them a lower pay rate than private insurance, resulting in a tiered health care system that further exacerbates health disparities for Californians.  

Claire’s Medi-Cal plan sent referrals to at least 11 specialists, but most of them weren’t taking appointments for months and still had to get final approval from Medi-Cal before they could see Claire. Vasquez had to pester them to try to ensure the referrals and approvals went through. This meant waiting months to see a primary-care physician, a pulmonologist, gastroenterologist, cardiologist, and other specialists. She’s still waiting for calls back for a developmental neurologist.

She’s also spent months fighting to get occupational and physical therapy, and now speech therapy for Claire. Vasquez applied for these services through the Eastern Los Angeles Regional Center in June 2022, but says she’s faced an uphill battle getting the therapies fully covered. She’s had to put in multiple requests to prove she couldn’t get coverage through her old health plan. Claire now has occupational and physical therapy twice a week, but Vasquez is frustrated that it took so long to get it. The Regional Center still hasn’t approved speech therapy, even though multiple providers have said Claire needs it. Vasquez is worried that the difficulty in getting these therapies and speech intervention has put her daughter’s development further behind.

To add to her to-do list, Vasquez now has to reapply for Claire’s Medi-Cal and HCBA waiver, because California has restarted its renewal process for health benefits after ending a three-year pause during the pandemic.

“When I think of the system, I feel like it’s just me and this cloud above my head with all these acronyms and bureaucracies and buildings and I’m like, ‘OK, which of them am I reaching for today?’” she says. “I’ve learned to take it one day at a time.”

Sepulveda says California needs to make it easier for families like Vasquez to get services. A new service under Medi-Cal called Enhanced Care Management that would provide care coordination for children like Claire could help, she says, but the benefit has been and many people are skeptical it will work. Vasquez says what she really needs is someone to walk through the system with her and provide ongoing support, rather than leaving her to figure everything out for herself. She wants it to be easy to call and get help, and to feel that those who answer the phone recognize her and her daughter as human beings, not just numbers and checkboxes.

Claire, meanwhile, is growing and gaining new skills, on her own timetable. She babbles, rolls over, and can pick up small items with her fingers like her pacifier and crackers. She recognizes people and smiles. The biggest smiles are for Vasquez, Hernandez, and Xavier.

But Claire doesn’t yet sit unassisted, crawl, or walk, as typically developing 3-year-olds would, and she hasn’t learned to speak.

Vasquez is holding out hope that Claire will eventually learn to do all these things. She dreams of using her education skills to one day teach her daughter to read. For now, she celebrates each small achievement, marveling at Claire’s determination.

“No one ever thinks they’re going to have a child with a condition,” Vasquez says. “It really does shatter hopes, but in a way it’s actually made me stronger. She’s taught me so much about what real courage is and what real beauty is. “

Sometimes, Vasquez and Hernandez get out the photo of Claire after her heart surgery at 4 months old, her tiny body covered in tape and stitches, her little face intent on breathing, on staying alive. She has done it. She is still doing it.

And her parents are helping her every step of the way.

This story was produced in collaboration with the .

We are afraid and yet we are obsessed, scaring ourselves with zombie movies, but the real undead/unalive, those of us who hang in a certain balance, are largely ignored. We elicit pity, guilt, and discomfort. Our stories are told for us, on our behalf. The half-dead, the near-dead, the undead: Our presence can be frightening. But say, where there is fear there is power. There is power in what we fear; there is a power we wield when we are feared. It is a time in the world where these sayings, these stories, and these worldviews must be shared widely again.

I developed ovarian cancer in my late 30s. kills the vast majority of its victims; there are few survivors. This is largely because there is , and it is almost always . Its symptoms are so generic (bloating, fatigue) that any tired woman would not notice them, and most poor and working-class women would simply endure them. 

In January 2021, while our world endured the isolation of COVID-19, I received a quick spiral of diagnoses that resulted in three cancer-related surgeries in less than three months. The winter of 2020 started with relief: Many of us had worked hard (and relatively well) together to defeat Trump. The previous four years of his presidency had brought me back to my organizing spirit and, while my peers and I were overworked and worn out, I felt some measure of calm when he was voted out.��

Alongside the battles of 2020, a small spirit had been warmly pestering me, like a child asking to be born. She brought me messages, bodily communiqués that doctors call “symptoms.” These resulted in a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, and one that disproportionately impacts , , , and older women. It feeds on those who ������’t go to a doctor and those who convince ourselves we do not need to.

It is a cancer that lives and grows far inside the body. In my case, it came to me after years of terribly painful periods, with days of cramps and heavy bleeding. Continuous travel for work meant I rarely went to a doctor; I told myself that I ate alright and exercised. I had visited a gynecologist a few times, but they had not figured out what was wrong and only suggested birth control pills, which I politely would refuse. In retrospect, practically bleeding out and through my jeans in an airplane bathroom—several times over the years—was not normal. But the machine of overwork often convinces us our pain is normal, setting our standards of suffering to autopilot, set to run until we just fall down one day.

I have had six reproductive organs removed: each one died and went into the earth before the rest of my body. This was a sacrifice I made at men’s altar of blood and steel and science. A sacrifice I made to keep living in this wondrous body, to keep enjoying her purpose and pleasures.                                     

The (Goddesses and grandmother spirits of Central and Eastern Europe) and other spiritual forces in my life will, in time, tell me if this sacrifice was enough to save my life, but for now, it seems yes. I am told my diagnosis was quite unusual, that I was quite young for it. It has not served me to think of it this way. I refuse the idea it is unique—especially in the great cycle of loss and grief we all live in and through now. Instead, I felt it connecting me—as if on a threshold—to an array of spirits and humans. No saccharine optimism to be found, but such aliveness poured in and through me that I had moments of feeling dazzled.                                   

When I was in treatment, I felt I was nearly being killed to save my life. At that time, I searched the internet for books written by ovarian cancer survivors. There were few. I discovered why when I went to online ovarian cancer support groups: Everyone was slowly or quickly dying in those groups except me. Most of those suffering from this cancer likely simply died before they could consider writing anything.

Then I searched for any books by women who had any kind of cancer; I found some. Many felt like sugary, optimistic fairy tales bathed in Pepto-Bismol pink. They were also overwhelmingly the stories of Christian, wealthy, white, straight women. There were also many films, books, and articles written by people who loved people with cancer and who had lost people to cancer: lovers, parents, and siblings. The lives of cancer victims and survivors impact those around us deeply, and others are often moved to speak for us. This has advantages and disadvantages, of course. We also must reserve the space and support to speak for ourselves.

This made the few books I found that were completely different all the more precious—most notably, by Audre Lorde, which stands alone. She remains the only woman writer who lived with cancer I have ever read who wrote with raw truth about what it meant for her body, her sexuality, her mind, her relationships, and her children to suffer like this. She was taken from us far too soon. 

As I floated in my bed, during chemotherapy, high on opioids, I deeply wanted to read (when I could read) stories. Stories I could relate to: about the raw, the eternal, the visceral, the pessimistic, the women, the queers, the dead who talk to us when we are near their realm.

I didn’t want to hear the stories of praying to a God that was not mine. I was hungry to read about women grappling with cancer who were divorced, single moms, who came—as I did—from immigrant families, who had family far away, who were suffering through cancer on land that was not theirs and would never be. I did not feel the need to share every experience of these women; I just wanted to hear the pushed-out stories at the margins, which are really the stories of most of us. will deal with cancer at some point in their lives, and each year there are more cancer cases among . 

It seems to me some of us must chronicle the messy truths of it so that more of us can care for each other better in a time of profound alienation and isolation. Few have written about what it is to suffer cancer surgeries and treatment during a pandemic. This experience only underscored and deepened the solitude intrinsic to all of us who come close to death, all of us who must build a new life.

When I was a child, I was told one story about the history of the plant hemlock: one of the highest honors told in the stories of the witch burnings, was when one witch would smuggle hemlock to her tortured and imprisoned sisters. The ultimate sign of respect: allowing each to choose how much pain she wanted to take before ending her own life. At the heart of Slavic belief—indigenous to Eastern Europe and part of my heritage—are the ideas of immanence: that all things are alive and sacred. The love and the wrath of the earth are poured out upon us. Our deaths, our near deaths, our salvation, and our new lives are all catalysts for transformation in which we have some choice, some power, even when we feel we do not. There is no end, no beginning, and there never was.

I made choices in my near death. I made choices in my new life. My reasons were my own and would be different from anyone else. I owe a great deal to the legacy of feminist literature, particularly chronicling—the idea that it is inherently political and liberatory to chronicle painstakingly, in natural and raw time, the experiences of those who are often erased and silenced. “When we speak,” Lorde says, “we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed, but when we are silent we are still afraid, so it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.”

I can only thank my ancestors here, and again and again eight times a year, for how they stayed close on this journey, ready for me if I were to cross over to their side. So many women in my lineage have suffered sorrow and regret silently; they urge me to speak. The honor of my life is to give voice in places they never could.               

These words are for all of us who know in our bones or seek a different way of being alive, nearing death, suffering, and even dying. They are for all of us who love someone going through these cycles. They are for all of us who want to reach beyond the numbing gauze of our times to know what suffering means, to be fully alive again, in order to be whole, again and always.

This excerpt from����by Caitlin Breedlove (AK Press, 2024) appears by permission of the publisher.

Although the officers were found not guilty, the trial itself would not have happened at all if not for the Puyallup tribe and their years-long struggle to change the law that protected police in Washington from being prosecuted for killing suspects in the line of duty.

The Puyallup tribe of Washington has always been a protector of Native rights, especially during the Red Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s. They fought back when the state of Washington tried to take away their treaty-protected fishing rights during the fishing wars of the 1970s.

They also fought back against federal termination and relocation policies with the 1969 takeover of Alcatraz and the 1970 takeover of Seattle’s Fort Lawton. They fought alongside the Oglala Lakota against the federal support of a corrupt puppet tribal government at the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee. 

They never backed down at these and many other direct actions. So when one of their own, Puyallup tribal member Jacqueline Salyers, was brutally and senselessly gunned down by Tacoma police in 2016, they consulted with the elders who had organized and led many of the tribe’s early direct actions.

The result was the passage of the nation’s first police accountability bill, Washington state’s Initiative 940, which removed the immunity the police once had that historically allowed them to murder citizens with impunity.

WATCH: Will Washington’s Police Accountability Measure Work?

Jackie’s Murder

On Jan. 3, 2016, Puyallup tribal member Lisa Earl got a call from a Tacoma police detective about her daughter, Jacqueline Salyers, who went by Jackie. Earl was at the Puyallup tribe’s Little Wild Wolves Youth Center where she worked as a youth coordinator.

“He asked if I knew the whereabouts of my daughter,” Earl recalls, “because she was known to be with Kenneth Wright, who had a warrant out for his arrest and they needed to get ahold of him.”

Earl explained to the detective that she and her family were also looking for Salyers. Kenneth Wright, Salyers’ abusive boyfriend, had been keeping her away from her family, according to Earl. He had even threatened Earl’s life, telling Salyers if her mother didn’t stop bothering him, he would kill her.

“I was afraid for my life. I told the detective, ‘I want you to catch him!’” Earl explains. “‘I want my daughter back! I want her to come home!’”

A few weeks later, on January 28, Salyers was shot four times by Officer Scott Campbell. He said she had tried to run him over while he and another officer were attempting to arrest her boyfriend. She died a few minutes later, just after midnight on January 29.

Later that day, James Rideout, Salyers’ uncle and Earl’s brother, heard about the shooting and found his sister at the medical examiner’s office, hysterical. He drove to the crime scene in East Tacoma and found the entire area cordoned off. He couldn’t get anywhere near where the shooting happened. A local news reporter offhandedly told him he thought the shooting was going to be deemed justified.

“Why would you say that?” Rideout remembers saying. “They haven’t even investigated this case!”

The reporter knew the facts weren’t important; police were protected from prosecution. 

The Alleged Cover-Up

According to a 2021 , official police reports state an informant had told Officer Campbell of Wright’s whereabouts. Campbell and another officer located Wright’s vehicle and pulled up in front of it. Salyers and Wright were inside. After seeing Wright, who was considered armed and dangerous, they drew their weapons and approached the vehicle, screaming at Wright to put his hands in the air.

Salyers, who was in the driver’s seat, was startled, turned the ignition on, and began driving away. Campbell relates he felt sure Salyers was trying to run him over, although she was only “crawling” according to Wright.

Campbell fired seven rounds at Salyers. She was hit four times, two bullets penetrating her abdomen and head.

Right from the beginning, Rideout could tell the official story didn’t add up. A bullet hole was present in the driver’s door, indicating Campbell was not in front of the car when he fired.

According to an official , after the shooting Wright grabbed a rifle, crawled over Salyers’ body, got out the driver’s side door, and ran off. Campbell and his partner, Officer Aaron Joseph, chased Wright, but apparently lost him and broke off pursuit, supposedly afraid Wright would fire at them from a hidden position. 

Mysteriously, a police surveillance camera mounted in the area that should have captured the entire event “malfunctioned” according to police reports.

The Community Response

Salyers had been active in the Puyallup tribe. Many had grown up with her and remembered her loving personality and concern for others.

Adding to the tragedy, the medical examiner determined she was pregnant at the time of the shooting. Earl and her family not only lost a beloved daughter, they also lost a new member of the next generation.

“You need to do something,” Rideout remembers telling the tribal council. “And they did. They responded.”

Council members Sylvia Miller and Tim Reynon, along with tribal elder Ramona Bennett and other influential members of the community, began meeting weekly at the Little Wild Wolves Youth Center to plan how the tribe would respond.

The elders had experience with activism going back to the 1960s. Over the years they had fought with police over many issues, including fishing and land rights. They had been beaten, tear-gassed, and incarcerated. They knew what they were facing, and they were not afraid.

Bennett, now 85, was a veteran of many battles, standoffs, and occupations, and she suspected a possible cover-up in Salyers’ case, after the police realized what they’d done. 

“‘Now look what you did! You killed that stupid Indian girl!’ That’s what Ramona Bennett said [the police] would say,” Earl recalls.

The Birth of Initiative 940

Bennett knew from experience that change would only come about through publicity, cooperation with other groups, and community support. So she recommended they stage a march. On March 16, 2016, Earl led a from the Puyallup tribe’s administration building to the federal courthouse in downtown Tacoma.

To her surprise, many other families of police shooting victims joined them in support.

“We didn’t have any clue until Jackie was killed that there were so many others out there going through the same thing as we were,” Earl remembers.

Over time, attendance at the weekly community meetings at the tribe’s youth center grew. Families of other police murder victims shared their stories and discussed what they could do to address the problem.

One supporter was Rick Williams, the older brother of John T. Williams, who had been shot by Seattle police officer Ian Birk on Aug. 30, 2010. According to Birk, Williams, 50, was carrying an open pocket knife and refused to drop it. Williams was a seventh-generation master carver of the Ditidaht tribe who was carving a board as he walked down the street.

of the incident clearly indicated that after Birk exited his patrol car, he almost immediately fired at the nearly blind and partially deaf Williams.

King County prosecutor with murder due to a clause in state law, enacted in 1986 during the height of the crack cocaine epidemic, that said unless it can be proven a police officer acted with , they cannot be prosecuted for killing suspects. Since malice is a mental state, it is nearly impossible to prove its presence in a court of law, giving police in Washington nearly complete immunity to kill suspects.

Rick Williams had since been working to . He campaigned and collected signatures for Washington state Initiative 873, known as the John T. Williams Bill. It was written by police reform advocate Lisa Hayes after the unjustified Seattle police shooting of Che Taylor in February 2016.

The initiative failed to get enough signatures to be put on the ballot but later became the template the families at the Puyallup community meetings used to draft Initiative 940.

Along with the families of many other police shooting victims and the financial support of every federally recognized tribe in Washington state, the Puyallup tribe successfully gathered 360,000 signatures to get the initiative on the ballot. And in 2018 Washington voters passed Initiative 940 into law.

How the New Law Affected the Police Killing of Manuel Ellis

while Tacoma police held him face down on the ground, put a bag over his head, and kneeled on his neck, causing him to die of hypoxia, or lack of breath, just as in the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. If his death had happened before the passage of Initiative 940, the three officers responsible for his death, Matthew Collins, Christopher Burbank, and Timothy Rankine, would never have been charged with a crime or put on trial.

Due to the new law, however, Collins and Burbank were charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter and Rankine was charged with manslaughter.

All three on Dec. 21, 2023, by a mostly white jury, and the city of Tacoma paid them . This outcome is considered “perverse” by Ellis’ family and supporters.

Chester Earl, Salyers’ cousin, feels the issue of white privilege played a major role in the verdict. He thinks the white jurors had no experience dealing with police racism and violence. He feels they probably believe the police are always right.

“You got to remember, all’s we been able to do with 940 is give the prosecutors the opportunity to charge and convict and take them to court. We ������’t make prosecutors argue it in a certain way,” he explains.

The fight for true police reform will likely take years and will require a major shift in how the public feels about the role of law enforcement in our society. Salyers’ tragic murder, however, caused a major step in that direction, according to her uncle, James Rideout.

“What makes me most proud,” he says, “is she brought the best out in me to do something that has never been done in the history of the United States, and that’s to change this law for the protection of our future generations. And I thank her, and it’ll be a lifetime before I can tell her, ‘You changed our entire tribe and community forever, and you will always, always be remembered. We will never forget you. Your life mattered.’”

On hot summer days, you ��Dz�’t just see but feel the difference. Tucson’s shadeless neighborhoods, which are predominantly low income and Latino, soak up the heat. They swelter at summer temperatures that the city average by 8 degrees Fahrenheit and the Catalina Foothills by 12 degrees. That disparity can be deadly in a city that experienced above 100 degrees last year—heat that’s sure to get worse with climate change.��

The good news is there’s a simple way to cool things down: plant trees. “You’re easily 10 degrees cooler stepping under the shade of a tree,” said Brad Lancaster, an urban forester in Tucson. “It’s dramatically cooler.”

A movement is underway to populate the city’s street corners and vacant lots with groves of trees. Tucson’s city government, which has pledged to plant , recently got $5 million from the Biden administration to spur the effort—a portion of the $1 billion that the U.S. Forest Service committed last fall to urban and small-scale forestry projects across the United States, aiming to make communities more resilient to climate change and extreme heat. 

But in Tucson and many other cities, tree-planting initiatives can tackle a lot more than scorching temperatures. What if Tucson’s million new trees—and the rest of the country’s—didn’t just keep sidewalks cool? What if they helped feed people, too? 

That’s what Brandon Merchant hopes will happen on the shadeless south side of Tucson, a city where about of the population lives more than a mile from a grocery store. He’s working on a project to plant velvet mesquite trees that thrive in the dry Sonoran Desert and have been used for centuries as a food source. The mesquite trees’ seed pods can be ground into a sweet, protein-rich flour used to make bread, cookies, and pancakes. Merchant, who works at the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, sees cultivating mesquite around the city and surrounding areas as an opportunity to ease both heat and hunger. The outcome could be a network of  “food forests,” community spaces where volunteers tend fruit trees and other edible plants for neighbors to forage. 

“Thinking about the root causes of hunger and the root causes of health issues, there are all these things that tie together: lack of green spaces, lack of biodiversity,” Merchant said. (The food bank received half a million dollars from the Biden administration through the Inflation Reduction Act.)

Merchant’s initiative fits into a national trend of combining forestry—and Forest Service funding—with efforts to feed people. Volunteers, school teachers, and urban farmers in cities across the country are planting fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, and other edible plants in public spaces to create shade, provide access to green space, and supply neighbors with free and healthy food. These food forests, forest gardens, and edible parks have sprouted up at churches, schools, empty lots, and street corners in numerous cities, including Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle, and Miami. 

“It’s definitely growing in popularity,” said Cara Rockwell, who researches agroforestry and sustainable food systems at Florida International University. “Food security is one of the huge benefits.”&�Բ�����;

There are also numerous environmental benefits: Trees improve air quality, suck carbon from the atmosphere, and create habitat for wildlife, said Mikaela Schmitt-Harsh, an urban forestry expert at James Madison University in Virginia. “I think food forests are gaining popularity alongside other urban green space efforts, community gardens, green rooftops,” she added. “All of those efforts, I think, are moving us in a positive direction.”

Researchers say food forests are unlikely to produce enough food to feed everyone in need of it. But Schmitt-Harsh said they could help supplement diets, especially in neighborhoods that are far from grocery stores. “A lot has to go into the planning of where the food forest is, when the fruits are harvestable, and whether the harvestable fruits are equitably distributed.”

She pointed to the as an emblem of success. That nonprofit has partnered with schools, churches, public recreation centers, and urban farms to oversee some 68 community orchards across the city. Their network of orchards and food forests generated more than 11,000 pounds of fresh produce last year, according to Phil Forsyth, co-executive director of the nonprofit.

Some of the sites in Philadelphia have only three or four trees. Others have over 100, said Kim Jordan, the organization’s other executive director. “We’re doing a variety of fruit and nut trees, berry bushes and vines, pollinator plants, ground cover, perennial vegetables—a whole range of things,” Jordan said. 

The community food bank in Tucson started its project in 2021, when it bought six shade huts to shelter saplings. Each hut can house dozens of baby trees, which are grown in bags and irrigated until they become sturdy enough to be planted in the ground. Over the past three years, Merchant has partnered with a high school, a community farm, and the Tohono O’odham tribal nation to nurse, plant, and maintain the trees. So far they’ve only put a few dozen saplings in the ground, and Merchant aims to ramp up efforts with a few hundred more plantings this year. His initial goal, which he described as “lofty and ambitious,” is to plant 20,000 trees by 2030.

The food bank is also organizing workshops on growing, pruning, and harvesting, as well as courses on cooking with mesquite flour. And they’ve hosted community events, where people bring seed pods to pound into flour—a process that requires a big hammer mill that isn’t easy to use on your own, Merchant said. Those events feature a mesquite-pancake cook-off, using the fresh flour.

Merchant is drawing on a that Lancaster, the urban forester, has been pioneering for 30 years in a downtown neighborhood called Dunbar Spring. That area was once as barren as much of southern Tucson, but a group of volunteers led by Lancaster—who started planting velvet mesquite and other native trees in 1996—has built up an impressive canopy. Over three decades, neighborhood foresters have transformed Dunbar Spring’s bald curbsides into lush forests of mesquite, hackberry, cholla and prickly pear cactus, and more—all plants that have edible parts.

“There are over 400 native food plants in the Sonoran Desert, so we tapped into that,” Lancaster said. “That’s what we focused our planting on.”&�Բ�����;

The Dunbar Spring food forest is now what Lancaster calls a “.” He told Grist that up to a quarter of the food he eats—and half of what he feeds his Nigerian dwarf goats—is harvested from plants in the neighborhood’s forest. “Those percentages could be much more if I were putting more time into the harvests.” The more than 1,700 trees and shrubs planted by Lancaster’s group have also stored a ton of water—a precious commodity in the Sonoran Desert—by slurping up an estimated 1 million gallons of rainwater that otherwise would have flowed off the pavement into storm drains.  

Another well-established food forest skirts the Old West Church in Boston, where volunteers have spent a decade transforming a city lawn into a grove of apple, pear, and cherry trees hovering over vegetable, pollinator, and herb gardens. Their produce—ranging from tomatoes and eggplants to winter melons—gets donated to Women’s Lunch Place, a local shelter for women without permanent housing, according to Karen Spiller, a professor of sustainable food systems at the University of New Hampshire and a member of Old West Church who helps with the project. 

“It’s open for harvest at any time,” Spiller said. “It’s not, ‘Leave a dollar and pick an apple.’ You can pick your apple and eat your apple.”

Merchant wants to apply the same ethic in Tucson: mesquite pods for all to pick—and free pancakes after a day staying cool in the shade.

This  , a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at  and sign up for . 

Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks that , rumors began circulating that Israeli women were experiencing horrific mass rape and sexual violence. Months later, a by Physicians for Human Rights Israel and a that Hamas used rape as a weapon of war. But an investigation by YES! examining both reports, other media investigations, hundreds of news articles, interviews with Israeli sources, and photo and video evidence reveals a shocking conclusion: There is no evidence mass rape occurred. 

, , , and treat PHRI’s paper as the gold standard for proof of Hamas’ rape and sexual violence. But the paper is shockingly thin. It lacks original reporting and is based on media reports that are dubious at best with no corroboration—no forensic evidence, no survivor testimony, no video evidence.

During a two-hour-long interview that was heated at times, Hadas Ziv, director of ethics and policy at (PHRI), acknowledged numerous problems with the position paper she co-authored, “”&�Բ�����;

Ziv admitted credibility problems with sources and that she did not review all available evidence. She was “unaware” numerous sources had fabricated atrocity stories about Oct. 7. Ziv said, “Yeah, that’s a problem,” about a soldier she quotes whose claim of rape was changed by the government. She quoted volunteers from that collected human remains after Oct. 7, but Ziv did not realize Zaka openly talks of inventing stories. When discussing claims that women’s sexual organs were deliberately mutilated, Ziv conceded, “OK, if there’s alternative explanations you ������’t say that.”&�Բ�����;

While admitting “I did not know all the stories that you speak about that discredit those witnesses,” Ziv also lashed out: “I feel like I’m a rape victim that’s being interrogated.” YES! responded, “Not every interview is a friendly interview.”��

WATCH: Investigative Report Undermines Israel’s Mass Rape Claims

Further, the PHRI paper is riddled with errors small and large. Names are misspelled, quotes ��Dz�’t match links, and an individual is misidentified. Ziv was unaware that it has of rape, which it has not produced publicly. Most egregious, Ziv didn’t realize her paper counted one alleged gang rape as two separate incidents. 

The New York Times’ Dec. 28, 2023, story, “,” has also been as that sexual violence. 

The cornerstone of that report is Gal and Nagi Abdush, a couple killed on Oct. 7. The Times says Israeli police believe Gal Abdush was raped. But the only evidence given is a “” of Gal’s burned corpse, “lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread, vagina exposed.” Gal became known as “the woman in the black dress.” The story in the �վ������’ face. Surviving family members denied she was raped. 

PHRI references the video of Gal Abdush as evidence of possible “sexual abuse.”

The Times mentioned messages that Gal and Nagi, parents of two children, sent to their family during the attack. After Gal was killed, Nagi sent “a final audio message” to his brother Nissim Abdush at 7:44 a.m., “Take care of the kids. I love you,” right before he was killed.

But the Times fails to mention other text and phone messages that make it almost impossible Gal was raped. She messaged at 6:51 a.m. about intense explosions on the border, based on an comment by Miral Altar, Gal’s sister. 

Nine minutes later, at 7:00 a.m., Nagi Abdush called his brother Nissim to say Gal was shot and dying.

Nissim told his story to . He said Nagi never mentioned Gal was raped, nor did Israeli police indicate to the surviving family that Gal was sexually assaulted. The Times never explains how Gal could be captured, raped, fatally shot, and burned to death in nine minutes while Nagi messaged his family and never mentioned any physical contact with Hamas forces.

YES! spoke with Nissim and Neama Abdush, siblings of Nagi. They said Nagi called twice, first to say Gal had been shot in the heart and had died, and then his farewell call asking them to take care of their children. Neama said, “No, no, no,” when asked whether Nagi said anything about Gal being attacked or raped.

In a follow-up call, Nissim reiterated the police did not give any indication Gal was sexually assaulted, but he refused to offer any more details unless he was paid 60,000 “dollars, shekels.”

Tali Barakha, another sister of Gal, , “No one can know if there was rape.”

The Dubious Dozen

PHRI’s paper stated there is “sufficient evidence to require an investigation of crimes against humanity.” The New York Times claimed “attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.”&�Բ�����;

Yet there are extraordinarily few sources. Twelve individuals account for the vast majority of rape and sexual violence claims in hundreds of articles. 

Eight of these sources are in PHRI’s paper and six are in The New York Times report. Investigations by , , , , , , , , , and all rely on a combination of these 12 sources.

All but one of the 12 sources are connected to the Israeli military and police, such as the . Five of the sources are Zaka volunteers who told stories that smack of fabrications. Five other sources claimed they saw corpses that bore signs of rape or sexual violence. Not one of these sources was professionally trained to make such assessments, and nearly all fabricated stories, as described below. 

That leaves only two people who claimed they witnessed rape. The government of Israel’s entire case for mass rape is built on two allegations: a source known as “Witness S.,” or Sapir, put forward by the police, and an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) special forces soldier, Raz Cohen. The soldier has changed his story numerous times, making it suspect, while Sapir’s account is so fantastical as to defy belief, as explained below. 

Even if all 12 sources are considered entirely credible, their accounts lack photo and forensic evidence and survivor testimony. At best they are unsubstantiated claims. 

As for evidence, two reports have thrown cold water all over it. First, on Dec. 24 that Israeli police sent a court order to “general and psychiatric hospitals” to “provide information on the victims of sexual offenses committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7.” It was a tacit admission that police lack survivor testimony. The court order also undercut that to protect them as unique details would make it simple to identify them. 

Second, an even more revealing published on Jan. 4, 2024, pointed out that “[t]he police are having difficulty locating victims of sexual assault or witnesses to acts from the Hamas attack, and are unable to connect the existing evidence with the victims described in it.” Police are so desperate they appealed through the media, without success so far, “to encourage those who have information on the matter to come and testify.”

United Nations experts have provided some evidence. On Jan. 29, investigating sexual violence on Oct. 7 issued a plea through the Israeli president’s office for “victims of alleged sexual assault [to] break your silence.” It was met with silence. Then on Feb. 19, said they “expressed alarm over credible allegations” that Israel had subjected hundreds of Palestinian women and girls in Gaza to “arbitrary detention,” “degrading treatment,” “multiple forms of sexual assault,” including rape, and “deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing.”&�Բ�����;

Extrapolating “Evidence” From Hearsay

Much of the coverage of Oct. 7 is reminiscent of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Reporters have tried to glean “truth” from ambiguous photos and jumped to conclusions without considering other possibilities. An undressed corpse does not equal sexual assault. Clothes might be torn off while fleeing, in panic, hiding in brush, or dressing wounds. 

The New York Times recounted in Kibbutz Be’eri, using texts and photos. Caught in a fire, “they stripped to their underwear.” Soldiers later found “several half-naked bodies lying under a line of trees.” The parents and two teenage boys “had all been shot dead.”&�Բ�����;

Similarly, metal fragments in a body does not equal sexual violence. A report on Be’eri, one of the worst-hit communities on Oct. 7, described how grenade blasts in a safe room turned screws from a sofa into shrapnel that punctured the leg of a 13-year-old girl. If she had not lived would that now be a case of Hamas sexual violence?

Asked about the Reuters report, PHRI’s Ziv admitted, “OK, if there’s alternative explanations you ������’t say that” it was sexual violence. 

Alternative explanations applies to nearly every sexual violence claim in the media. 

Head in Hands

Two witnesses, the anonymous source Sapir and Raz Cohen, provide the most dramatic claims of sexual violence in PHRI’s paper, , and other media. Sapir and Cohen attended the Supernova music festival and claimed to see gang rapes taking place 50 to 150 feet away from their hiding spots. The Times places them a few miles apart, meaning Sapir and Cohen were describing different assaults.

In early November Israeli a with Sapir’s face blurred to reporters, but they refused to take questions and have since the entire interview. Reports on the three-minute clip and shorter excerpts were all that was known of Sapir’s story until The New York Times her “several times.” The Times says Sapir is “a 26-year-old accountant” “has become one of the Israeli police’s key witnesses.”

The Times said Sapir was wounded in her back and feeling faint. She hid near a road covered “in dry grass and lay as still as she could.” She claimed to see a group of “about 100 men” involved in the horrific rape and murder of “at least five women.” The Times said:

The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper-color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back.

She said she then watched another woman “shredded into pieces.” While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast.

“One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road.” …

Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women.

Compare this to what is known of the police video. In a of the police video, Sapir claimed a woman standing on her feet was raped by militants and passed around. Sapir said a militant “cuts her breasts. He throws it on the road. They are playing with it.”

Referring to the police video, the that Sapir claimed a militant killed the woman and continued to rape her. “He … shot her in the head before he finished. He didn’t even pick up his pants; he shoots and ejaculates.”&�Բ�����;

who viewed part of the video said “some terrorists were carrying heads in their hands [beheaded] as trophies, saying there �ɲ�����’t a thing [they] didn’t do to the heads,” implying that Hamas fighters were having sex with severed heads.

Sapir’s story and how it changes between the police video and Times report raises many questions. How could she see 100 militants and numerous assaults while lying still, covered? How does one victim of rape become five? Why did one woman who was raped and had her breast cut off in the police video become two women in the Times story?

Given such a slaughter—severed heads, hacked-off parts, blood sprays, and five mutilated corpses—where is the forensic and photo evidence? Why are there no witnesses who can verify any of her accounts, such as sex with severed heads and corpses that sound like they are out of Dante’s Inferno? 

The Times published a defending the Dec. 28 report after it was for and , but it only raised more questions about flimsy reporting.

PHRI’s position paper bungles Sapir’s story as well, citing it as two separate incidents. It is first mentioned in the “Victims” section as “a woman who detailed the group rape and murder of a young woman by assailants dressed in military uniforms.” Then, PHRI cited Sapir’s story again under “Visual Testimonies” as it is a video. Hadas Ziv admitted the mistake to YES!, but no other media outlets have picked up PHRI’s error. 

Changing Stories

Raz Cohen, the second eyewitness to claim he saw rape, is a former Israeli officer from “.” Neither the original Times report nor PHRI mentions Cohen is an or that his story has changed numerous times. 

Cohen in a streambed with friends after fleeing the Supernova festival. According to , he claimed to see a white van pull up about 40 yards away and five men drag a woman across the ground, “young, naked, and screaming.” Cohen said, “They start raping her. I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words. Then one of them raises a knife, and they just slaughtered her.”&�Բ�����;

Initially, Cohen’s story was different. On Oct. 7, he hundreds of terrified people fleeing Hamas gunmen across a field as some were shot and fell. Cohen and others hid for six hours in the bush as gunshots whistled above them and a battle between “our army and the terrorists” raged around them. 

In the next three days, a shaken described similar experiences in and . He said people were “slaughtered with knives.” The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported in an based on an interview with Cohen that, “Hamas militants stabbed a group of women nearby.” But he made no mention of rape or sexual violence.

Then Cohen’s story changed. Later in the day in an Oct. 10 appearance, Cohen said on , “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed—and after they raped, they—they did that.” In an with the Washington Free Beacon he also claimed a woman was raped and murdered.

It is notable that Cohen’s story is strikingly similar to Sapir’s: multiple gang rapes, killing with knives, sexual assault of corpses. No major media has picked up on the similarities, nor that the number of victims appears to go from several to one. 

Since both Sapir and Cohen’s accounts surfaced, a different companion who hid with each one has since come forward. The interviewed both, and their accounts ��Dz�’t back up those of Sapir or Cohen. There are of and sexual violence, but the sources or say they “” but rape.

Further undermining Sapir and Cohen are reports on the of at the festival. , , , , , , and reconstructed the killing field using photos, videos, social media, and interviews with dozens of festival goers. It was a horrific slaughter, but no one mentioned torture, sexual violence, or rape. 

Nor have police substantiated Sapir or Cohen’s stories despite “over 60,000 ‘visual documents’ including videos from GoPro cameras worn by attackers, CCTV footage and images from drones.” YES! reviewed every graphic video and photo it could locate, including in a , Israeli , and a of, frankly, snuff films. They show militants, brutal killings, and hundreds of corpses, but nothing like the scenes Sapir or Cohen described. 

Body Bags and Money Grabs

The dearth of evidence of mass rapes has been to that and the gathering of forensic evidence. But other reports indicate Israel manipulated evidence, forensics, and Zaka testimony that all create the appearance of a campaign of mass rape. 

reported Zaka volunteers sidelined soldiers in collecting evidence after Oct. 7. 

[The] IDF decided to forego the deployment of hundreds of soldiers specifically trained in the identification and collection of human remains in mass casualty incidents. Instead, the Home Front Command chose to use Zaka, a private organization.

A Nov. 12 suggests why Zaka took the lead. An information specialist in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office boasted to Ynet that Zaka testimonies “had a tremendous impact on the reporters” by portraying Hamas as “human-monsters.” That bolstered Israel’s narrative that “Hamas is equal to Isis … deepening the legitimacy of the state to act with great force,” the official said.

On top of serving as war propaganda, stories by Zaka volunteers appear invented. This author described in a recent investigation how “ using our imagination” when they recount atrocities and “the bodies is telling us the stories that happened to them.” Western media is full of Zaka atrocity claims, nearly all of which are fabrications, dubious, or unsubstantiated.

Even more shocking, Zaka was founded decades ago by , who allegedly over decades before being exposed in 2021. Meshi-Zahav and relatives reportedly used “” to divert from a Zaka into a “” to finance “a lavish lifestyle in 5-star hotels and a multi-million dollar villa.”&�Բ�����;

reported that during Oct. 7 recovery efforts, a financially troubled Zaka used “the dead as props” for fundraising. In the process, �Ჹ’a����ٳ� says, Zaka wrecked forensic evidence that could prove or disprove rape claims.

PHRI’s paper includes testimony from two Zaka volunteers. After being told a few Zaka stories, Hadas Ziv told YES!, “I didn’t know that they are unreliable. … But maybe I’m just trusting people who tell the story as it is and I ��Dz�’t look into [it].”

Reuters, CNN, The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, NBC, , , and also quote Zaka volunteers with no mention of past scandals or present controversies.

A Flood of Disinformation

Remaining sources also have credibility problems. One is an paramedic with Unit 669, an elite Israeli search-and-rescue outfit. The soldier claims he found a dead girl, “14, 15-years-old teenager,” on the floor of a home in a kibbutz. She was “on her stomach, her pants are pulled down, and she is half-naked. Her legs are spread out, wide open, and there are remains of sperm on her back. Someone executed her right after he brutally, brutally raped her.”&�Բ�����;

on Oct. 25 with Republic World, a right-wing Indian , his back to the camera. Ziv in the PHRI paper from the same interview that Eylon Levy tweeted the same day. A spokesperson for Netanyahu, Levy is a . 

In the full interview, “pulled out of the garbage” a 1-year-old baby “multiple times stabbed all over his body.” He also claimed there were “Arabic sentences that were written on entrances to houses [with] the blood of the people that were living in those houses.”&�Բ�����;

One infant was killed on Oct. 7, , “who was shot while in the arms of her mother,” who survived. 

Needless to say, these stories appear to be fabrications as well. ������Ƶ significantly, the paramedic is typical of other major sources. Their claims are wild, there’s no other witnesses, no independent reporting, no photo or forensic evidence, no information about the deceased.

Further weakening his credibility, the paramedic initially three times as the site of the attack and translated its name as “River of Strength.” , at least 60 soldiers were killed and 12 civilians. Five family members were killed in one home, including two sisters, but they were adults, aged 18 and 20. 

Perhaps realizing none of the victims in Nahal Oz matched the paramedic’s description, Eylon Levy changed the location to Be’eri in a and trimmed the clip to cut out all references to Nahal Oz. 

When talking to , , , and , the paramedic only referenced Be’eri as the location. The number of victims changed as well, hardly a minor point, from to , to , and back to . 

When asked about how she did her research for the PHRI paper, Ziv said, “I checked every report that was available to me.” The Republic World interview of the paramedic was available to her as she linked to the short clip Levy tweeted out in the PHRI paper.

After listening to a description of the paramedic’s false stories, Ziv said, “No, I didn’t see this one.” YES! asked, “So you didn’t look at all the evidence then?” Ziv responded, “No I didn’t, probably.”&�Բ�����;

Ziv also said, “Yeah, that’s a problem” about the fact Netanyahu’s office altered the paramedic’s story and that he is an anonymous military source. 

Dead Babies

Six of the 12 sources fabricated dead-baby stories, including Shari Mendes. A volunteer military reservist who worked in the Rabbinate Corps at the in Central Israel for two weeks, Mendes helped “medics with fingerprinting and cleaning female soldiers’ bodies,” according to . 

On Oct. 20, Mendes told , “A baby was cut out of a pregnant woman and beheaded and then the mother was beheaded.” Senior personnel at Shura, and retired , also claimed they discovered a pregnant mother killed with her fetus. 

, “This horrific incident … simply didn’t happen.”&�Բ�����;

from a . Mendes says, �Ԩ���, we have seen that women have been raped. Children through elderly women have been raped. Forcible entry, to the point that bones were broken.” has also alleged, “We saw genitals cut off, heads cut off, babies, hands, feet, no reason.” , “This is not just something we saw on the internet, we saw these bodies with our own eyes.”

PHRI cites Capt. Maayan, an IDF reservist and dentist at Shura, from the same article. The Times of Israel wrote:

Maayan said on October 31 that she has seen several bodies that had signs consistent with sexual abuse.

“I can tell that I saw a lot of signs of abuse in the [genital region],” Maayan said, using her hand to euphemistically demonstrate. “We saw broken legs, broken pelvises, bloody underwear,” and women who were not dressed below the waist, she said.

The Times of Israel said Mendes is not “legally qualified to determine rape.” Likewise PHRI cautioned that “emergency and medical personnel who provided testimonies” were not “professionally trained to determine whether rape had occurred.”&�Բ�����;

But PHRI tries to have it both ways. It cites claims of rape and sexual abuse from Shari Mendes, Capt. Maayan, the paramedic, Itzik Itah and Simcha Greiniman of Zaka, and its final source, Rami Shmuel, a music festival organizer. 

If these sources ������’t determine rape, why include them? PHRI also says “the accounts they provided indicate the perpetration of sexual violence.” What qualifies them to conclude wounds are deliberate signs of sexual violence and not from weapons? 

When asked how were caused by mass rape, Ziv said, “She doesn’t, she doesn’t. She can only say that this is what she saw. She ������’t say this is a result of rape.”

So why is Israel seemingly making untrained civilians the face of mass rape claims? At a on Dec. 4, with the help of tech mogul Sheryl Sandberg, Mendes, and Greiniman testified and parts of Sapir’s video were shown. 

, a in Zaka, claimed naked women were tied to trees at the Supernova festival, with a knife stuck through its head, and he discovered foreign fighters—they left their IDs in their pockets. Why did Israel choose to present sources with some of the most bizarre and hard-to-believe stories to the world? 

Why have doctors, pathologists, or soldiers who recovered remains not offered testimony or documentation of rape, sexual assault, or other atrocities? Israel has produced of of Oct. 7 victims. ������Ƶ were given access to at the National Center of Forensic Medicine on Oct. 16.

On Oct. 14, , , and joined a media tour of organized by Israeli officials. Reuters reported, “Military forensic teams … found multiple signs of torture, rape and other atrocities.” Rabbi Israel Weiss, who helped oversee the identification of the dead, said “Many bodies showed signs of torture as well as rape.” Capt. Maayan said, “Forensic examination found several cases of rape,” according to Politico.

But, according to Reuters, “The military personnel overseeing the identification process didn’t present any forensic evidence in the form of pictures or medical records.”

Not long after, Zaka volunteers, Shari Mendes, and the Unit 669 paramedic began making a splash in the media. Little has been heard from the forensic experts since.

Tali Shapiro provided research help for this story.

“It is critical for us to bring a disability perspective when we talk about Cop City,” says Atlanta-based Dom Kelly, co-founder of the nonprofit (NDS), “because the construction of this facility will disproportionately harm disabled people.”&�Բ�����;

Almost three years after Bottoms’ announcement, Cop City, officially titled the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, is under construction on an 85-acre plot of forested land owned by the City of Atlanta in DeKalb County. If completed, the campus will be the , equipped with military-grade facilities and a mock city for urban police training. 

Many who have mobilized against the project have highlighted the adverse environmental effects of clearing dozens of acres of the South River Forest to make way for the development. Indigenous-led groups also and its wildlife habitat.

Meanwhile, racial justice groups foreground the fact that police violence disproportionately harms communities of color, and abolitionist organizations reject any expansion of policing and incarceration. They argue that Cop City would further militarize the police force. “Police here have already responded to protests with militarized tactics, chemical weapons, and domestic terrorism charges,” Atlanta organizer Micah Herskind . “Cop City would only further provide police with training and equipment to suppress dissent and terrorize Black and working-class communities.”��

According to disabled organizers, each of these issues affects their community in unique ways. The framework of disability justice helps reveal these intersections.��

“Destroying any portion of that forest is going to have an impact on our ability to fight climate change, and then that will disproportionately impact the disabled community,” says Kelly. Disabled folks are by climate change, including experiencing worsening health conditions due to changing weather or being left behind . 

Many disabled people also live on fixed incomes, making it equipment to help navigate the effects of climate change, like air conditioners to survive a heatwave or backup generators to get through a blackout.

Disabled people are also especially vulnerable to police violence and are overrepresented in the nation’s incarcerated population. “Disabled people, especially disabled people of color, are disproportionately harmed by police and the carceral system,” says Kelly. 

NDS, which works across the southern United States, partnered with in six Southern states including Georgia, examining sentiments on law enforcement encounters for disabled people in the region. The survey respondents agreed that disabled people experience discrimination during law enforcement encounters due to their disabilities. 

Among Black and disabled respondents, rates of agreement were higher than among White and non-disabled respondents, pointing to the important difference between lived experience and outside perception of law enforcement encounters. Over 50 percent of Black survey respondents said they believe disabled people experience discrimination when interacting with law enforcement. About 34 percent of White respondents agreed that disabled people face discrimination in these encounters. ������Ƶ than 46 percent of all disabled respondents and about 37 percent of all non-disabled respondents agreed that disabled people experience discrimination when interacting with law enforcement. 

Further, according to data from the Survey of Prison Inmates, in the U.S. report having a disability. Studies have also found are disabled.

Black people are already three times more likely than white people to be –disabled or not. Additionally, they are and less likely to have access to .

Often, become violent because officers make assumptions about so-called normal behavior. If an individual does not speak, move, or behave as an officer expects or demands, rather than considering that they might be disabled, the officer may assume noncompliance and react with force. 

“A lot of the Black men that Atlanta police or [those from] other police departments in the metro area have killed were disabled,” says Susi Durán, chair of the Atlanta chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, another group .

In 2015, police in Chamblee, Georgia, just northeast of Atlanta, , a Black man with bipolar disorder who was experiencing a mental health crisis. In 2021, in a similar incident, a DeKalb County officer killed . His family later told reporters he was having a mental health crisis, and they wished the police would have gotten him help. 

Experts suggest that a training facility such as Cop City would worsen the criminalization of disabled people rather than lessen the issue. Studies show that training programs, even those intended to reduce implicit biases against marginalized groups, with those communities. Research also shows that the increasing militarization of the police . 

Kiana Jackson, Research and Coalition Organizing Manager at NDS and a co-author of the recent NDS and Data for Progress survey, says people have been connecting the dots between the discrimination they’ve seen in their communities and police militarization. “It is important for disabled people to get out on the forefront of these issues and say, ‘Hey, we are victims of this. We are the ones being killed,’” she says.

Many disabled folks in Atlanta and DeKalb County have been doing just that as an outspoken contingent of the Stop Cop City movement. When the Atlanta City Council on an ordinance for funding Cop City at a council meeting in June 2023, hundreds of community members showed up to make their voices heard at a public comment session that . 

“Disabled people are a part of the Atlanta community,” said Barry Lee, an Atlanta-based disabled artist who spoke at the meeting. Lee then urged the council to “allocate the proposed funds toward creating better accessibility for the city of Atlanta.”

The city consistently for its disabled residents, partly because of , inaccessible transportation, and lack of health care facilities. “There are parts of the city where it is difficult to walk on some sidewalks,” says Durán. “Plus, we lost our Level I trauma center when .”

When to the recent NDS and Data for Progress survey were asked whether their state had adequate resources, such as medical or mental health resources for disabled people when interacting with law enforcement, only 31 percent said they thought so.

People are frustrated, Durán says, because rather than the Atlanta City Council allocating funding for repairing infrastructure or shoring up the city’s health care, “They’re spending it on policing.” Slogans like “Defund the Police” and “Care, Not Cops,” heard at Stop Copy City protests capture this sentiment. Like Lee, many others who spoke at the public comment session also called on the City of Atlanta to allocate funding to infrastructure, housing, or youth programs rather than policing.

Despite the mass opposition at its meeting last June, the Atlanta City Council in funding for the construction of Cop City.

When the Stop Cop City movement launched its next front, disabled organizers were again at the fore. The referendum campaign began soon after that council meeting, aiming to get a vote on Cop City’s construction on an upcoming ballot. One of its two fiscal sponsors was (NDRS), NDS’s political arm. 

Kelly says backing the referendum campaign “aligned with the work [NDS was] already doing” as part of the organization’s mission to support efforts decriminalizing disability and ensuring disabled people have access to the democratic process. 

As fiscal sponsor on the campaign, NDS worked behind the scenes processing and disbursing contributions. Kelly says the organization also helped ensure that communications and canvassing were inclusive of disabled Atlantans.

Between its launch in June and September 11, 2023, the referendum campaign collected and submitted . That number is well over the threshold needed to get Cop City on the ballot. But the City of Atlanta has questioned it and made a , which Stop Cop City organizers claim are stalling tactics undermining Atlantans’ right to vote on the issue.

As the referendum petitions and direct action to stop Cop City’s construction continues, disabled organizers say they’re committed to continuing their work. “If we want to see collective liberation in our lifetimes, we have to fight back against the further militarization of police and destruction of our already precious forest environment to ensure that future generations have a planet to live on and won’t be murdered by police,” says Kelly. “Cop City is one piece of that struggle.”

As I nursed my prescription cough syrup and self-pity, I posted to Instagram, seeking advice for my first encounter with the virus. Friends and acquaintances from across the globe responded with messages of support, medication suggestions, and even the best brand of lozenge to counteract the metallic-tasting side effects of Paxlovid. It was a poignant reminder of the simple but enduring power of connection. But as I welcomed a new year in isolation, watching videos of celebratory fireworks interspersed with real-time footage of bombs exploding in Gaza, I couldn’t help but grapple with the complexities of our deep connections—and divisions.��

This issue aims to explore that nuance, especially in a world where technology has increased our ability to connect with people around the globe more quickly and easily than ever before. Yet loneliness, polarization, and misinformation are also at historic highs. And as Reina Sultan writes in the lead feature, even digital spaces that were once fertile ground for grassroots organizing are being surveilled, censored, and restricted as governments and corporations tighten their grip over how we connect, communicate, and organize.��

But we are not powerless. Juliet Kunkel offers practical tips for protecting our biometric data in the post-Roe era, while Sara Youngblood Gregory lifts up ways LGBTQ people are creating faith communities that recognize queerness as a blessing, not a sin. And Gabes Torres explores the rise in folks seeking sex therapy to improve their connection to their partner(s).

Of course, the ingenuity required to maintain connection and culture in the face of oppression is nothing new to countless historically excluded people, including Indigenous folks, who are adapting their own timeless traditions for the digital age, as charlie amáyá scott shares in their beautiful op-ed about Native storytelling online. And Jenn M. Jackson returns to the pages of YES! with a powerful personal exploration of how their connections to their roots were severed by the trans-Atlantic slave trade.��

Connection is central to our humanity. It helps ground us in community, orient our individual and collective moral compass, and make sense of a world that can often seem senseless in its cruelty. Our hope is that the stories in this issue inspire you to continue seeking the kind of meaningful connections—both across and within difference—that can help fuel the social change we so desperately need. 

In solidarity,
Sunnivie Brydum
YES! Managing Editor

In the months after Bouazizi’s death, millions took to the streets in what became known as . The region-wide revolutions ushered in a new kind of organizing and political education via social media, where protestors used online networks to share their struggle with the rest of the world. 

In the following months, the world watched as in Egypt, and as violent turned into civil war. In the fall of 2011, took the internet (and the streets) by storm, solidifying a blueprint for protest—leveraging social media alongside in-person activation—that remains in use today. 

Social media was also how many people first heard about the killings of , , and —and learned where they could participate in protests in their honor. During those protests, the world again watched, live on Twitter, as uniformed police officers used paramilitary equipment to unleash violence on unarmed protestors.

And in the summer of 2020, online movement-building expanded in an unprecedented way. “When the murder of George Floyd happened, people wanted to learn about abolition in accessible ways,” says K Agbebiyi, an Atlanta-based writer and organizer. “The internet provided a space for them to do that. I witnessed people give thousands of dollars to mutual aid funds for incarcerated survivors, disability justice, and survivor defense campaigns.”

But in the three years since Floyd’s murder sparked an international uprising, the internet has become increasingly inhospitable to similar kinds of mobilization. , increasing , and have tightened control over the digital public square that once organically fostered grassroots organizing and real-time access to information.

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, now called X, has further users of the platform to spread disinformation, spew hate, and harass and dox marginalized people. Fascist, racist, and alt-right accounts are permitted to post on the platform, often without content moderation or oversight, while organizers discussing COVID-19, Palestine, or police brutality regularly . Even before Musk’s takeover, Twitter’s own safety employees pointed to the platform’s lack of content moderation strategy as a contributing factor to the violent attacks on during the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. 

On Instagram, which is owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, —covert algorithmic suppression that limits visibility on certain posts and of certain profiles—and account takedowns reign. Users of the platform see their stories suddenly getting minimal views after posting content advertising their OnlyFans accounts, information about the genocide in Gaza, or COVID-19 precautions; others’ handles ��Dz�’t appear in searches; some have their accounts shut down without notice.

TikTok, where many young people , might have potential for mobilizing users on political issues, but the newer platform is also rife with problems. Sex workers report that the platform’s uneven application of its makes it nearly unusable for the kind of content they post. The site has also come under fire because U.S. lawmakers . ������Ƶ recently, U.S. officials and have accused the platform of pushing pro-Palestine content—a claim TikTok denies, and which is of the observable shift in .

But in the face of this repressive shift in the online landscape, organizers are adapting. Despite challenges, people continue to find ways to translate their online connection into action. And, against all odds, the —both online and in the streets—in the face of genocide has demonstrated that there may yet be a place for social media in revolution.

Risk of Engagement

For all its connective potential, the internet also carries , especially for marginalized groups—a reality sex workers are deeply familiar with. The censorship of sex workers began far before the internet age, of course. (some of whom may have been sex workers) in ; nearly 200 years later, the was raiding and shuttering burlesque theaters.

This offline surveillance continues today. “It’s hard to generalize about the entire United States, but I’m most familiar with New York, where the ,” says , a staff writer at The New Republic. Gira Grant points to research in the 2010s by groups like the and that identified trends of police arresting sex workers “based purely on surveillance of lawful conduct.” “These arrests had a clear pattern,” she says. “People were being profiled as sex workers based on what they wore, who they were talking to, what time of day it was, and what neighborhood they were in. But the biggest factors were race and gender.”

At the same time, online surveillance and criminalization of sex workers was proliferating. In 2010, Craigslist’s adult services section, , shuttered due to increasing pressure from the Department of Justice. Next, the Bay Area–based , the online domain seized by federal agents. The onslaught reached a boiling point in 2018 with of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) in the House, and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) in the Senate.

Taken together, the bills expanded the 1996 Communications Decency Act in an effort to by, for the first time, holding internet service providers accountable for the content users posted on their platforms. Within months, dozens of sites that sex workers had long used to vet potential clients were shut down. But rather than provide these workers with more safety, as lawmakers claimed would happen, the closure of these sites put sex workers into far more dangerous situations.

Research by the and sex worker advocates backs this up. In a , —a collective of sex workers, survivors, and accomplices working at the intersection of tech and social justice—found that 99% of surveyed sex workers felt less safe after FOSTA-SESTA passed, and 72.45% of the 98 online workers surveyed said the dismantling of online-based environments caused increased economic instability.

Today, sex workers’ existence on the internet is still precarious. Social media, where many sex workers find clients and subscribers, censors and suppresses their posts—through both and outright deletion. Even sites that are nearly synonymous with sex work, like OnlyFans, have tightened their terms of service to prohibit acts that viewers want to see—even when those acts aren’t dangerous or illegal. Payment processors like Venmo, PayPal, and CashApp are also increasingly . Hacking//Hustling reports that 33% of online sex workers have been kicked off at least one platform in the wake of legislation that increases platform liability. The proposed , for example, would require websites to remove user-generated content deemed inappropriate (a scope so broad it will certainly be misused). The act also aims to provide the site’s immunity from civil lawsuits related to these so-called inappropriate posts, but only if they comply with the levels of surveillance and ensuing punitive action required by the law.

, a dominatrix and co-founder of Hacking//Hustling, points out that these policies are often tested out on sex workers and then applied to other populations. “Laws and platform policies that are used to police sex workers will always be used to target the most marginalized workers and communities and chill speech,” she says. “In Hacking//Hustling’s research , we found that sex workers who were also politically involved were significantly more likely to report that they were shadowbanned.”

Offline Consequences

Reproductive justice advocates experienced this crackdown firsthand in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. Although fundraising and resource-sharing on social media spiked on the day the Dobbs decision was leaked, soon after, “the shock and rage wore off, and a lot of people just seemed to move on,” says , abortion advocate and doctoral fellow at the Center for Reproductive Health Research in the Southeast at Emory University. “Fundraising and advocacy have been a whole lot harder since.”

“The fall of Twitter, especially, has hit abortion advocacy and organizing so hard,” McMahon adds. Underfunded community-based local reproductive justice organizations cannot afford massive advertising campaigns. So organic social media engagement has been how these organizations reach new supporters. “And when everybody started understandably fleeing from Twitter after Musk took over, post engagement and the ability to fundraise went with them,” McMahon explains.

But overt censorship is also at play. After the Dobbs decision, Facebook and Instagram , and “Instagram had been hiding posts for saying things like ‘Abortion is health care’ even back in 2021 when … Roe v. Wade was still standing,” says McMahon. She had her own after she tweeted out the World Health Organization’s protocol for self-managed abortion.

As is the case with sex work, can lead to real-life consequences—especially as states enact increasingly draconian abortion restrictions. Makayla Montoya Frazier, founder and co-executive director of , which helps Texans access reproductive health care, has been tracking these effects. “We know that folks have been prosecuted for their abortions with ‘evidence’ given to law enforcement by Meta, so they’ve proven to be an unsafe platform to talk in detail about our abortions,” she says. Montoya Frazier points to several examples, including a for helping her daughter self-manage an abortion, and a man in Texas who against a group of people who helped his ex-wife obtain an abortion.

Montoya Frazier’s own online accounts are surveilled by local anti-abortion activists, and she often sees her social media posts listed in against her and her organization. “We know they’re watching our every move, and they know we know!” she says. “They want us to live in fear, they want our patients to live in fear, hoping that we will stop providing care and people will stop reaching out.”

Suppressing Speech, Supporting Genocide

This weaponized censorship can have even more sinister applications, as evidenced by the of calls for a free Palestine, in which users posting pro-Palestine content frequently see their engagement curtailed, or posts removed for nondescript violations of “community guidelines.” This is by no means a new phenomenon. Rasha Abdulhadi, Palestinian Southerner, writer, and cultural organizer disabled by long COVID, draws a through line from sex work and abortion to Palestine: “Surveillance tech, legal frameworks for criminalizing dissent, [and] interlocking laws from one area are often applied to another front of struggle.”

A by Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights makes clear just how ubiquitous suppression of Palestinian voices and their allies is. According to the report, U.S. residents speaking out in support of Palestine are often punished with false, inflammatory claims of antisemitism or support for terrorism; academic, professional, and organizational denunciation or exclusion; and even lawsuits or criminal charges—at the behest of pro-Israel advocacy organizations, PR firms, and think tanks.

Here, again, social media mirrors offline life, as censorship and punishment for supporting Palestine are commonplace . On Dec. 12, 2023, Instagram suspended ’s account, a month after the chapter was suspended by Columbia University administration. The group was given no reason for the suspension.

Sarah Campbell, abolitionist and former director of communications and policy for New York State Sen. Julia Salazar, was fired less than 48 hours after a New York Post article about her anti-Israel and anti-Zionist tweets was published. “I received a call from Senate personnel stating that ‘my services were no longer needed,’” she says. She adds that she was never provided with “any guidance or policy regarding social media content/personal statements made outside of work hours, on personal property, on a personal and unaffiliated account that both of my bosses followed.” Sen. Salazar never communicated directly with Campbell, but did post vague comments stating she would not “allow anyone to wrongly pin another person’s reckless and completely unacceptable words onto me or my office.”

In Gaza, sharing the reality of what is being done to the Palestinian people with the world is not only met with social media suppression but also with limitless violence. At least 83 journalists have been killed in Palestine and Lebanon since Oct. 7, 2023, making this war the deadliest for journalists ever recorded by the . Many of the journalists killed were targeted by Israel, as demonstrated by the murder of Al Jazeera Arabic Gaza Bureau Chief Wael Dahdouh’s family. On Oct. 25, 2023, targeted the house where Dahdouh’s wife, children, and grandson were sheltering. The house was located in an area of Gaza that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had instructed fleeing Palestinians to go to stay safe from the bombing.

On Dec. 15, 2023, while covering the aftermath of IDF air raids on a United Nations school sheltering civilians in Khan Younis, Dahdouh and his colleague and cameraperson Samer Abudaqa were wounded by a missile launched by an Israeli drone. Dahdouh was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment of shrapnel wounds, while Abudaqa remained trapped as the school was besieged by Israeli forces. . the evacuation of his colleague from his hospital bed, but he says the ambulance that tried to reach Abudaqa came under fire by the IDF. On Jan. 7, 2024, Dahdouh’s eldest son, Hamza, also a working journalist, was killed by an Israeli air strike that he and journalist Mustafa Thuraya were using near al-Mawasi, in southwestern Gaza. Both journalists were killed while a third passenger was seriously injured.

Abdulhadi makes the connection that tech monopolies like Meta and are key enforcers of the white supremacist, capitalistic, . “It’s not an accident that the system that depends on our annihilation and dispossession is bent on hiding and denying that it’s happening,” they say. “It’s not a bug, or even some tragic side effect—it’s a core feature, a central part of the kernel architecture for the operating system of settler colonialism.”

Liberation Finds a Way

With the odds stacked so heavily against the people, the prospect of using social media in service of liberation can feel futile. But Abdulhadi argues that people have already been using it toward these ends. “Folks finally have a more sober assessment of what these addictive platforms are made to do, want us to do, and how we work around them,” Abdulhadi says. “In that way, it’s not much different from street organizing or resisting settler colonialism: [We’re] understanding terrain better than the people who want to control it, and knowing not only how to use it, but [how] to break what they want to use it for.”

And some tactics for combating this kind of suppression are similarly analog, Abdulhadi notes. To counter shadowbanning of journalists from inside Gaza, for instance, they suggest cross-posting content to other platforms, forwarding their coverage via email or text, and sharing with people offline. Essentially, Abdulhadi encourages social media users to share with as many people as possible “what you learn from them: facts, recent news, and also framework/analysis/big picture.”

Blunt, the co-founder of Hacking//Hustling, also offers tips gleaned from sex workers: “Make sure you have multiple ways of staying in touch with people you organize with in case your account is deleted,” she suggests. “Evading a shadowban is pretty difficult when you are consistently posting content that is algorithmically repressed. You can experiment using steganography like ‘S3x W0rk’ or ‘G@z@,’ but it is likely that the popular ways of cloaking text to avoid a shadowban are already algorithmically repressed.” These coded references could also mean content is not easily searchable or legible to a broad audience.

Ultimately, though, Blunt insists, “We need to fight fascism and censorship in all forms, on the street and online.” We cannot “decouple our hopes and dreams for future internet and social media policy from bigger goals like the decriminalization of sex work and abolition. Punishing sex workers and organizers by suppressing their content, making community more difficult to find and knowledge more difficult to share, only increases our exposure to violence.”

Karim Golding is the founder of , a platform featuring “a collection of stories and content that highlight the law as it relates to the criminalization of hip-hop (and its surrounding communities).” As a formerly incarcerated individual, Golding knows the risks of digital surveillance intimately. During his federal trial in 2006, he says New York and federal agencies introduced evidence from his MySpace page to claim that he was a violent gang member. Given Golding’s experience, he suggests learning “how to opt out of public record databases—credit reporting companies like Sagestream, Intelius, and LexisNexis are good places to start.”

He also recommends avoiding using real identifying information in online forms wherever possible. “A good digital safety tool kit would involve learning how to , using proxy chains, learning , getting prepaid WiFi that is not on a phone plan and refilled with gift cards,” he suggests. At protests, he recommends attendees dress similarly and obscure their faces—using masks, keffiyehs, flash-reflecting scarves, or glasses that disrupt facial recognition technology.

At the end of the day, he reminds us that “everything under the sun can be criminalized,” especially for marginalized people. “There is most certainly a relationship between the government and social media companies,” Golding says. “Theirs is a corporate/government agenda that is aimed at controlling the narrative. With the information (data) that these government agencies purchase, they often track undocumented immigrants, identify individuals as threats to national security, or public safety threats.”

Yet as Golding and so many others prove daily, no one is more creative than the oppressed. And despite the limitless capital, weaponry, and “innovation” when it comes to repressive technology, the internet’s overlords and the nation-states they align with cannot quell movements for liberation and justice. Sex workers, abortion advocates, and formerly incarcerated organizers all find ways to exist, organize, and thrive on and offline. Even when faced with unfathomable violence, Palestinians exemplify revolutionary resilience, inspiring millions around the world to take to the streets in solidarity. This is how change happens—not with the master’s tools, but with the people’s. Revolutionaries ��Dz�’t wait for state governments or social media CEOs to grant the perfect conditions for liberation—they recognize the reality of the moment and seize those opportunities to make those conditions themselves. 

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, a deluge of articles warned people to delete their menstrual tracking apps. While these technologies can be useful for those seeking (or avoiding) pregnancy, these apps have come under fire in the past for to social media sites. With the changing legal landscape, pointed out that this data could be used to criminalize people seeking abortions. Proponents of forced birth also recognize this potential, and are working to ensure that remains open to search warrants. Turning this data into a site of political contestation raises questions of collective response beyond the limits of bodily autonomy. 

It’s become normalized for data about our bodies and actions to be collected, quantified, and sold on the market. Facial recognition and body scans have become necessary to . health information from blood pressure to sexual activity in order to access care. Colleges and universities are subjecting students to , while Amazon requires delivery drivers to . Even attending a or can subject us to facial scanning and data mining. Given this landscape, the notion of “opting out” is starting to feel impossible.

So many of these systems have become necessary, and it can be useful to have this type of information about ourselves. At some point the cost of having our behaviors predicted by an algorithm can start to feel worth it. For someone struggling to get pregnant or desperate to avoid it, the exchange of privacy for the information needed to manage their reproduction may make a lot of sense. During these sharp moments of political crisis, however, we start to feel how thin the membrane can be between the benefits and the criminalizing potential of these technologies.

New technologies aren’t simply neutral tools; they’re created by and for existing power structures. , for example, uses existing data sets of past crimes to predict where crime will occur and who is likely to be a perpetrator. The existing data is extracted from those already criminalized, creating a self-fulfilling feedback loop. In this way, as poet and scholar Jackie Wang discusses in her 2018 book, , the datafication of bodily control meant that “biological and cultural racism was eventually supplanted by statistical racism,” converting white supremacist social structures into algorithms.

The question here is what to do with these technologies when they’re used to criminalize, coerce labor, and extract profit, and whether they can be repurposed or should be dismantled. For many, this can mean relying on individual hacks to evade or confuse surveillance. There are limits, though, to relying solely on these autonomous strategies if �ɱ�’r�� thinking about building the conditions for collective liberation. Taking a longer view of the logics and structures of our data-saturated society can help us better understand what got us here—and which strategies can be used to avoid reifying these same systems.

Tracking Bodies All the Time

The specific possibilities of AI-generated surveillance and mobile health apps may not have existed before now, but the logics and parameters on which these technologies rely have a lengthy history. Many of the concepts used to build our current system were codified in the early 20th century as part of the massive collection of biometric data that fueled . Eugenics rests on collecting extensive data around the body and measuring it against an ideal “norm.” For those interested in tracing a critical history from the eugenics movement to our current moment, this suggests a continuity in two major goals of biometric data collection: measuring who is dangerous and determining how labor or profit can be extracted from people.

The academic branch of eugenics, often tied to who coined the term, heavily shaped emerging fields like psychology, social work, and criminology. Eugenicists invented concepts such as and to attempt to determine the ideal social body, and created statistical judgments about some individuals as better, “healthier,” or more “normal” than others. This included taking the social construct of race and trying to turn it into objective biological or evolutionary fact through .

Alongside this project of scientific white supremacy, eugenicists were intensely concerned with whether people would conform to many different constructs of “normal.” These included expressions of sexuality and gender performance, and framings of disability and “fitness” around who could be a “productive worker.”

Measuring people for productivity and surveilling them for control predates the rise of the eugenics movement, with roots in slavery and colonization. In her book , scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith discusses how these notions of scientific measurement required “pre-existing views of the ‘other’ around science, philosophy, imperialism, classification, and ‘regimes of truth’” that could be adapted to “new conceptions of rationalism, individualism and capitalism.” Regarding these deeper histories, in her 2015 book, , Simone Browne writes that the conceptual and power structures of slavery solidified around the accumulation of people as a countable, surveillable subject, and Blackness as a “saleable commodity.”&�Բ�����;

Even the specific technologies of the Nazi Holocaust, often remembered as the most famous and horrific example of how a regime can mobilize eugenics, were workshopped and fine-tuned in in and the . After World War II, it generally fell out of fashion for academics and public figures to openly name eugenics as their explicit research apparatus or political logic. But these measurements, value judgments, and systems of control continue to texture our world, from restricting access to to . 

Algorithmic Justice Beyond Autonomy

For those of us committed to challenging these legacies, we then ask: How do we respond tactically to the criminalizing potential of biometric surveillance without fleeing into the fiction of personal responsibility? What systems and technologies can we build that aren’t merely protecting ourselves individually from the worst effects of this extraction and criminalization but are also building a different world together?

We ������’t fully retreat to bodily autonomy. Although this can be a powerful and important political frame in many contexts, we can never be individual units moving as autonomous bubbles through the world. We are highly entangled with each other, our histories, our environments, and the more-than-human world; we are affected by and affect each other beyond the scope of what is legible to variables in a tracking software. Also, although the criminalizing strains of these systems might come for us differently, they are coming for all of us, whether or not you have a uterus, precarious legal status, nonnormative gender expression, or any other variable that can be criminalized.��

�ճ�����’s great work being done by groups like the and the to address the harms caused by biased biometric algorithms, such as the notorious incompetence of facial recognition software to detect darker faces, or the use of AI to deepen medical discrimination. In addition to this, we need to continue pushing beyond accuracy as the horizon of our demands. Even if we had a universal data set fully quantifying and tracking every human on the planet, is that algorithmic justice? If the systems that created these technologies and the purposes for which these technologies were designed are fundamentally oppressive, more efficient or accurate tech does not lead to a more just world.

After all, August Vollmer, the eugenicist “” who founded with proposed courses like “Race Degeneration,” was obsessed with gathering perfect data in order to determine a criminal “type.” His vision of social control dreamed of a moment “” If we are to focus on pushing for better algorithms, we must ask how this is different from what the eugenics movement wanted. Perfecting statistics does not necessarily intervene in the fundamental variables against which the “normal” is judged, or the power structures in which this biometric data is being designed and deployed.

So much of the data for these systems is crowdsourced, which allows complicity to be dispersed. Given this, we have responsibilities as the building blocks that make up this algorithm. As artist and poet Manuel Abreu asks in a 2014 article for , how do we engage with these structures when “[o]ur banal activities are the source from which algorithms automatically generate kill lists made up of nodes that deviate from the cluster of normal activity patterns” and “algorithms make complicity incalculable”? When we are embedded in these systems, our answer has to be something beyond opting out.

One response could be to treat data security as community care. and other domestic surveillance programs teach us that taking sensible precautions with our own communication practices can reduce harm to people in our community. There can be deep solidarity, along the lines of “we keep us safe,” in small-scale measures such as using an encrypted messaging app or browser, and having politically or legally sensitive conversations face-to-face with physical distance from your phone.

A contradiction of political organizing is that it often requires a level of visibility to build community and draw more people into the work, but visibility attracts repression. Some projects that offer tools and resources to help people grapple with these conundrums include , , the to surveillance self-defense for abortion access activists, workers, and patients, , and .  

Another response is to intervene through collective action. In 2018, members of , an immigrant justice organization, created the campaign to confront the surveillance firm , whose tendrils stretch from collaborating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on deportations to supporting the Israeli Defense Forces in surveilling and bombing Gaza. Mijente aimed to put pressure on companies and cities to break contracts with Palantir, reducing its ability to recruit and retain workers and bringing this surveillance more under public scrutiny.

Groups such as the have also organized to create solidarity in workplaces. One of the grievances that kicked off the West Virginia teachers wildcat strike in 2018 was the and perform a certain amount of movement or face higher health insurance costs. People could have individually opted out of this ableist, fatphobic, and generally invasive requirement. Instead, they collectively withdrew their labor to change the conditions of possibility through worker power.

Fundamentally, the lesson is that in order to confront these systems, we must build something greater than individual autonomy. In Dark Matters, Browne writes about what she calls “dark sousveillance,” reversing the surveillance and turning the gaze on those in power as a tactic to keep oneself out of sight in the flight from enslavement to freedom. This flight requires networks and histories far in excess of the autonomous self, entailing the creation of entire social networks, languages, technologies, and relationships outside of and directly opposed to the systems of power that are surveilling.

Our response to a world trending toward alienation from each other and cannot be based solely on personal privacy. Any engagement with these systems that takes solidarity seriously must remember that, whether we find ourselves shoulder to shoulder or embedded in an algorithm, our liberation is bound up with each other. 

On May 25, 2020, Darnella Frazier witnessed a crime being committed by the men sworn “to protect with courage, to serve with compassion.”&�Բ�����;

Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin had buried his knee into George Floyd’s neck and was slowly killing him. Hearing Floyd beg for his life, who was pinning him down, knee to neck. Floyd managed to eke out the words “I ������’t breathe.” Ten minutes later, a stretcher carried away his lifeless body.

In the wee hours of the next morning, Frazier posted her video on Facebook and Instagram with the caption: “they killed him right in front of cup foods. No type of sympathy #POLICEBRUTALITY.”

The Minneapolis Police Department claimed that Floyd’s death resulted from a “,” but the now globally circulating video exposed their lies. After Floyd’s murder, the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag peaked at 1.2 million tweets per day, , while a count by the Institute of Strategic Risk Management suggested there were nearly 48 million #BlackLivesMatter tweets between May 26 and June 7, 2020.��

“I ������’t breathe” became an anthem for millions who braved the COVID-19 pandemic and poured into the streets to protest the injustice meted out on yet another Black person. In the U.S. there were more than 4,700 protests during that time period, an average of 140 a day, followed by .

The speed with which people revolted and demanded change may not have been possible without social media and the connecting, communicating, sharing, and informing that it enabled. Social media brought “together large numbers of people and ideas, and groups across potentially large amounts of [geographic] distance to engage in collective acts,” explains Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the founder of the UC Digital Cultures Lab. The speed of communication “enables people to contest certain types of power or [to] reclaim power.”��

Frazier’s video, the hashtags, and the resulting demonstrations and organizing they fueled raised awareness about the brutality Black Americans endure, particularly at the hands of police. But they did more than that. Together, as part of the court proceedings, they helped produce of a police abuser. Advocates also won changes to police training, mandatory body cameras, bans on no-knock warrants, and in problematic cities, including Minneapolis.

These wins set BLM apart from other social-media-driven movements that failed to result in concrete changes.��

From Encampments to Presidential Policy

The 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement might have fallen into this category if not for a small group of its participants using their combined political and social media savvy to effectuate long-term change. Social media helped propel “”—a slogan symbolizing disproportionate wealth and power —to reach and resonate with masses of people. throughout the world to demand a fairer economic and political system. 

However, it still took years after the demonstrations and encampments closed down for Occupiers to enter the halls of power. As Michael Levitin documented in his 2021 book, , after Sen. Elizabeth Warren declined to run for president in 2016, activist Charles Lenchner queried 60,000 Warren supporters on the Occupy listserv about whom else they might recruit. There was an emphatic answer: “Support Bernie” Sanders.

By the time Sanders launched his presidential campaign, , which Lenchner co-founded, had already recruited thousands of volunteers. With the spirit of Occupy’s decentralization guiding it, the campaign grew and flourished. 

Social justice activists, scholars, and others joined because “that was our best shot to change a lot of things,” says Srinivasan, who worked as a surrogate on the Sanders campaign.

Although both Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 bids failed, President Joe Biden’s allies joined with Sanders to develop and agree on policies before Biden took office. Still, the seemingly intractable problems of the political economy have persisted, with , indicating that without engagement within political institutions, social media as a tool for liberation remains limited in promise.

A Tool for Democracies Fails in Dictatorships

In 2011, Chilean students used social media to protest economic and educational inequality. Some movement leaders “actually ended up taking state power eventually,” says Srinivasan. The so-called “penguin revolutionaries” won elected offices, including at the highest position: In 2021, 36-year-old student leader Gabriel Boric was elected Chile’s president.

However, such tools have not worked as well to foster democracy in authoritarian countries. In 2009, the Iranian regime crushed the country’s grassroots Green Movement, which was protesting voter fraud and demanding the removal of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Similarly, the Arab uprisings in Egypt, , and Syria failed to produce substantive . In 2020, which was demanding free and fair elections, and which enthusiastically used both traditional and social media to mobilize.  

Even if demonstrators in Hong Kong, Iran, and those nations roiled by the Arab uprisings failed in the short term to achieve liberation, social media usage to learn about the desires, struggles, and commitments of ordinary people to be free from corruption and oppression. Like a modern-day SOS to the world, social media enabled these movements to have witnesses and allies that they otherwise may not have had.

In 2022, Iranians revolted again after 22-year-old died while in custody of the country’s morality police.��

The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement sprung to life to protest the regime’s brutality. The hashtag reached tens of millions of people across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, and was in the first month after her death.

If knowledge is power, these technological tools are slowly helping people build the latter through real-time documentation, dissemination, hacked evidence, and pleas from all corners of the world, calling out to each other and building a global community. 

Uniting Frayed Communities

Early in its activism, the hacker group Anonymous targeted the Church of Scientology by leaking a video of actor and scientologist Tom Cruise hosting a church event in 2008. It was the first of many such acts of digital activism.

After police shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, members of the city’s website. In 2015, Anonymous members released personal details of alleged Ku Klux Klan members, and when George Floyd was murdered, members hijacked a United Nations agency page to memorialize him. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Anonymous members , paralyzing the institution that controlled Russian satellites, according to a .

Srinivasan sees the work of Anonymous and related groups as “a form of social, collective action” and the group as the “hacker wing of the protest movement.” In contrast, legal organizations, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and related legal groups, law firms, and individual lawyers act as the movements’ legal arm, helping protestors maintain free channels of communication. 

For example, the for international human rights movements to have access to vital communication tools that we may take for granted, including Google Chrome, Google Earth, Java, and hosting services, which are often denied by authoritarian governments. Their lawyers have also sued corporations—or as the EFF calls them, “repression’s little helpers”—for providing repressive regimes with surveillance technology that abets human rights violations by surveilling, tracking, and imprisoning journalists, activists, and ethnic or religious minorities. 

Scholars like Srinivasan see such digital repression as perhaps the greatest obstacle to social media as an instrument for liberation. In these cases, authoritarian governments and corporations use these same technologies as “tools of disinformation to manipulate and disrupt … to track and infiltrate … to pose as double agents … pushing out deep amounts of disinformation campaigns and hateful campaigns,” he explains.

During the recent Israel-Hamas war, Israel cut Gazans’ , on which they relied to find safety from the bombings. Palestinians then accused social media platforms of algorithmic “shadowbanning” to demote their stories. In spite of its limitations, social media can connect diaspora communities long torn apart by genocides, wars, or imperialism to maintain their connection, traditions, and languages. Before Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform now known as X, Black Twitter, a , enabled robust discourse and collective action on a wide range of issues, including police brutality and racism.��

As Jennifer Brinkerhoff, a professor of public administration and international affairs at the George Washington University, noted in her 2009 book, , Afghans, Egyptian Copts, Somalis, Nepalese, and Tibetans have all used digital tools to form virtual nationhood while scattered across the globe. Torn apart by war, migration, or other forces, they can maintain a sense of belonging, identity, and values through the internet even when they have no physical access to their communities or historic lands.��

In 2020, when Azerbaijan and Turkey joined together to from the Armenians of Artsakh (internationally known as Nagorno-Karabakh), an already globally scattered Armenian diaspora organized partly through social media to aid the Armenian survivors of torture, war, and ethnic cleansing. In addition to organizing demonstrations, some Armenian diasporans met via social media to help launch the , an organization to help survivors seek redress through volunteer lawyers. 

As the refugees fled to Armenia, the diasporan charitable arms, such as the Armenia Fund and Armenian Relief Society, used to organize delivery of food, clothing, and blankets. 

In addition to these more visible, global movements, Indigenous people and smaller communities have seized upon technologies to assert their self-determination and protect their sovereignty, ways of life, values, and land. With “simple mapping tools” created by organizations like Digital Democracy, “communities around the world can map their lands in ways that allow them to … show that the land is theirs to protect” to institutions like courts and other political bodies, Srinivasan explains. 

He adds that some have even built their own internet networks, so “they can organize and use these technologies to network in whatever ways they want.” This includes freedom from algorithms, surveillance, “corporate capitalism … [and] the dog-eats-dog kind of mentalities of constantly being in an antagonistic relationship with one another.”

Some of these efforts have been supported by technology leaders who have parted ways with their earlier corporate bosses. Justin Rosenstein, formerly of Google and Facebook, created Asana, a collaborative software company, and the nonprofit , which supports communities seeking to mitigate economic, climate, and governance crises. Yet, as long as corporations, regimes, and anti-democratic movements use technology and social media to blunt change through violent or insidious means, social justice movements need legal and institutional protections, including what Srinivasan calls a “digital bill of rights.” But more tools are necessary to ensure progress while protecting communities from the harms of technology. 

As Srinivasan says, “Our understandings of technology and how it may support living beings around the planet have been co-opted by big tech, its vagaries, anxieties, and fantasies. And as our world becomes more technologized—mediated by data and computing than ever before—it’s high time to return the domain of technology to the values that make us shine as human beings: our capacity for care for one another, the possibility for us to repair our planet, and the ability to stand up for justice, rights, and a planetary, life-affirming mission. It’s time to take those steps.”��

I remember the first TikTok video I made that went viral, back in 2019. It was a tongue-in-cheek history of Thanksgiving and its significance today as a celebration of genocide. The video was removed from TikTok, supposedly for violating community guidelines, so I posted it on Instagram and Twitter, where it amassed more than a million views and thousands of likes. It was then I realized my own power and the power of social media as a tool for positive change. 

I have seen it on a much larger scale as well, as Indigenous peoples have used social media to lift up and demand justice. I remember in 2016 how silent mainstream news media initially were about what was happening in Standing Rock between water protectors and the militarized police force. Social media enabled those on the ground to act as witnesses to the gathering of Native nations and the violence they faced, amplified by Indigenous activists and filmmakers such as the , (may he rest in peace and power), and . 

Storytelling is more than just recounting events. There is an inherent art and skill to one of the oldest and most widely practiced forms of communication and cultural preservation in human herstory. Indigenous storytellers are inspired by and pull from what I lovingly describe as the “sentient archive”—a living, breathing repository of memories, lessons, and knowledge built and shared from generation to generation. 

There is an inheritance formed through the kinship of sharing a story, imparting strength, beauty, and wisdom that transcend temporal and spatial dimensions. Our storytelling enables us to define who we were, who we are, and who we will be as Indigenous peoples. 

As an Indigenous trans femme, who I am, who I was, and who I will be exist because of my family, my community, and the people I choose to be in relationship with, as well as what I learn, embrace, and refuse in this life. My use of social media is informed and grounded by Diné ways of being and knowing, which I have inherited from and cultivated with my family and community. 

Through online platforms, I have been able to reclaim what was long denied to me: my story. Social media enabled me to create new and complex representations of what it means to be Indigenous—along with fresh forms of queerness and transness that exist in alignment with my Indigeneity. 

I have also studied the specific relationship between Indigenous peoples and social media while on my doctoral pathway at the University of Denver. This relationship is rooted in culture, community, and advocacy while celebrating all three. Bronwyn Carlson, an Aboriginal professor and head of the department of Indigenous studies at Macquarie University in Australia, highlights how social media has empowered Aboriginal peoples to . Marisa Elena Duarte, an associate professor of justice and sociotechnical change in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University, emphasizes that Indigenous peoples’ usage of social media , which destabilizes colonial power and supports decolonization. 

Social media, too, exists in relation to settler colonialism. In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun’s book Control and Freedom, she highlights how early conceptions of the internet described it as an imagined electronic frontier: an unknown space to occupy and—dare I say?—colonize. 

As with so many things, the internet enables both the good and the bad. I choose not to engage with the ignorance of trolls and the violence they create with their hateful comments and occasional death threats. Instead, I tackle misinformation about Indigenous peoples, our issues, and our rights. I breathe new narratives—inhaling what I know and exhaling something personal and new—rooted in supporting and celebrating the communities I cherish.

Over the course of four years, I have inspired thousands of people by sharing joyful educational videos around , , , , , and . I have cultivated a community all my own by embracing the beauty and power of digital storytelling. 

Despite a radical shift, the declaration notes Church doctrine “remains firm” on its definition of holy matrimony as the exclusive province of heterosexuals. One month prior, that transgender people can be baptized.

Though inclusive steps forward at first glance, both announcements sidestepped any tangible commitment to LGBTQ people. The documents were stereotypically vague: Both blessings and baptisms are permitted only if they carry no risk of public “scandal” or “disorientation” among the faithful, terms that are not defined in the documents.

In short, the Vatican’s “progressive” moves perpetuate a long-standing trend within Christianity, where LGBTQ Christians are expected to be grateful for the table scraps of a well-fed faith—or at least feel sated with the rancid “hate the sin, love the sinner” ethos popular across Christian denominations.

“It’s no question that religion globally has been used as a weapon, especially against LGBTQIA persons,” says teaching pastor and theologian , Ph.D. “But religion actually is rooted in the practice of re-connection or binding together. The Latin root for the English word religion is religio,” a noun referring to an obligation, bond, or reverence.

And there is no shortage of LGBTQ people of faith. at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that nearly half the country’s LGBTQ population—5.3 million people—self-identified as a person of faith.

So can queer people still hungry for spiritual connection—especially those who revere Christian traditions—find religious communities that recognize queerness as a blessing, rather than a sin? An emerging group of queer and trans faith leaders, activists, on-the-ground organizers, and people who simply refuse to give up their faith are already answering that call, carving out affirming faith traditions, building tools to remediate religious harm, and proving that it’s possible to build a queer church.

Sanctified Discrimination

For many LGBTQ people, disconnection is a defining element of their faith, with a third of religious LGBTQ adults reporting conflicts between their faith and identity in a . Many experience rejection for the first time via their faith communities, or at least learn that their identities are inherently dirty or impure. have undergone conversion therapy in the United States, a practice involving forcibly “changing” someone’s gender or sexual identity. Though widely discredited—and illegal to subject minors to in —conversion therapy is still used in some religious settings. According to research from , 81% of people who underwent conversion therapy did so at the hands of a religious leader.

Even for those who escaped the direct impacts of religious trauma, current U.S. politics are deeply intertwined with weaponized Christianity, making it nearly impossible to emerge unharmed as an LGBTQ person—personally, politically, or spiritually. The Republican party, which has , is increasingly overt in its embrace of Christian nationalism—the belief that the U.S. should be a strictly Christian country. by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, more than half of self-identified Republicans currently sympathize with or explicitly adhere to Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalism goes beyond the desire to create a Christian theocracy. It’s about creating a country where certain people are privileged and others—LGBTQ people, people of color, and those seeking reproductive freedom—are punished. “When we say Christian nationalism, it’s white Christian nationalism,” says , director of field and organizing at , a religious freedom and civil rights advocacy network. “It’s white Protestant Christians that are being elevated.”&�Բ�����;

That exclusionary ethos can be found throughout the modern Republican party, which is, not coincidentally, the beating heart behind much of the anti-LGBTQ legislation currently circulating. In 2023, more than 525 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced nationwide, more than any other year on record, according to . Those bills included the implementation of Florida’s high-profile “” policy, which restricts classroom discussions about sexuality and gender identity in public schools. have emerged since the Florida Board of Education approved the initial policy in 2022. 

Florida, North Dakota, Missouri, Tennessee, and North Carolina all have restrictions on gender-affirming health care for minors, and are currently targeting gender-affirming health care for both minors and adults. Meanwhile, (ADF), a shadowy, right-wing legal organization, is using its deep pockets, allegiance to Christian nationalism, and wide reach to roll back civil rights in the courts. ADF is the legal powerhouse behind lightning-rod Supreme Court cases such as , where a self-proclaimed Christian website designer won the right to refuse to serve same-sex couples, in defiance of Colorado’s nondiscrimination law, as well as the Taken together, these attacks target the rights and dignities of queer, and especially trans, people on all fronts: restricting access to health care, public spaces like bathrooms, and education.

This discrimination is often legitimized through the guise of Christian morality and language. In practice, this frequently looks like portraying LGBTQ people, and progressive values more generally, as a threat to a Christian way of life. At the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference, former president Donald Trump told the audience: “School prayer is banned, but drag shows are allowed to permeate the whole place. You ������’t teach the Bible, but you can teach children that America is evil and that men are able to get pregnant.”

Meanwhile, Florida governor and 2024 presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis used the words of Jesus Christ to woo potential voters and call for a “war on woke”—or more accurately, a war on LGBTQ rights, diversity and equity initiatives, reproductive and voting rights, critical race theory, and education. While speaking to a group of roughly 10,000 evangelical college students in April 2023, said, �Ԩ���, the truth will set you free. Because woke represents a war on truth, we must wage a war on woke.”

As these right-wing politicians demonstrate, “Christian nationalism is a political ideology,” says Interfaith Alliance’s O’Leary. “It’s not a religious tradition.” But the conflation of the two mean that many queer and trans folks feel exiled from their faith. A truly affirming church must do more than skirt extremism or offer conditional shelter for LGBTQ people. It must imagine a God, a faith, and a tradition that engages directly with justice and queerness.

Sacred and Strange

Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart, a Christian minister, movement organizer, and professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and Harvard Divinity School, reasons that a God who disregards the most vulnerable in service of the most powerful is not a God who will inspire a congregation to change a world that already reproduces cycles of dominance and dispossession. “An affirming, radically hospitable, justice-oriented congregation has to reject an idea of God that reinforces the very thing that causes exclusion and non-affirmation and injustice in our world,” Rev. Naomi says. “The conceptualization of God in an affirming, justice-seeking space has to be, first of all, radically inclusive.”

The Rev. M Jade Kaiser envisions God, and spiritual life more broadly, as something literally of the flesh: bodily, pleasure oriented, and inseparable from material liberation. In 2017,  Rev. Kaiser and Rev. Anna Blaedel co-founded , a spiritual community that publishes resources for collective liberation, including queer liturgies, a podcast on trans spirituality, and poems and anthologies exploring ritual, blessings, and identity.

“Our greatest gifts to the world will not come through acceptance from dominant systems or those constructions of ‘God,’ but in recognizing how sacred it is to be strange,” says Rev. Kaiser. “There is so much God in how we create chosen family, love queerly, resist compulsory gendering, and collectively organize with pride that counters shame.”&�Բ�����;

Sacred texts and traditions, too, are ripe for reconceptualization. Theologian Espinoza, for instance, believes creating radically inclusive faith practices requires more than just reconciling a faith tradition with sexuality. It also invites us to identify where these traditions are already queer via destabilized, counter-hegemonic, and counter-normative narratives. “Queerness is wild and feral,” says Espinoza. “[It] is an undomesticable animal that we have not yet been able to contain or domesticate out of the tradition.”

Traditions like communion, for example, have the potential for queerness, Espinoza explains. Christians all over the world consume the actual or symbolic body and blood of Christ, and in so doing, engage with the (trans)formative potential of the body. Recently, one of Espinoza’s students risked their clergy credentials by serving communion in drag. “The student embodied God by feeding people bread and wine in drag,” Espinoza recounts. “[It was] a wonderful reminder that we are bound by our materiality, but when we imagine another possible world, shit gets real!”

For others, revisiting religious texts also means questioning—and reimagining—what is considered sacred. For , a healing arts practitioner and counseling psychologist raised in a Black Baptist church in Illinois, exploring their connection to faith meant finding truth in alternative systems and spiritual homes. “For me, that path led to Black feminism, justice and liberation spaces, and a deep connection with nature,” says Mosley. “These spiritual homes resonate more closely with who I am, the realities of the world today, and who I aspire to be.” Recently, Mosley used Black feminist writings as sacred texts during a Sunday service at NorthStar Church of the Arts in Durham, North Carolina.

Some spaces imagine spirituality outside of specific religious affiliation or institutions altogether. At , a grief and healing sanctuary for Black, Indigenous, and other students of color at Harvard, the point isn’t to emulate or become a religious institution. Instead, co-founder , a pastor’s kid who is now an ex-evangelical, says The Greenhouse fosters spiritual leadership and moral boldness for those who are barred from, or simply uninterested in, traditional religious authority.

“The Greenhouse invites us to access emotional safety, wonder, and belonging outside of religious institutions,” says Lee. “At the foundational level, it is a refuge of tenderness, laughter, and meaningful silence.” The community meets twice monthly and offers dinner, ritualized reflection, grounding exercises, and emotional release. Like Mosley and Espinoza, Lee makes spaces for queer and trans interpretations of Christianity, while also incorporating new sacred texts and traditions. They’ve taught trans spirituality and shape-shifting bodily presentations in their Christian classes and preached with Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “”

Taken together, these three tools—the reconceptualization of God, the queering of sacred texts and traditions, and the incorporation of alternate practices—form a sort of holy trinity on which a queer church may thrive. And much like queerness, this church, this connection with the divine, can happen anywhere: on a subway ride, in the pews, in passionate debate with your pastor. It may happen with music, in the silence of nature, in scripture, in a glance. It can happen while reading radical trans scholarship or Black feminist poetry. Queer church might look like a dance floor, a kiss, good sex. It may be reclaiming a saint or simply .

New Sacred Spaces

Spiritual organizer Bex Mui’s queer church began on Instagram. Raised Roman Catholic by her Polish mother and introduced to Buddhist principles by her Chinese father, Mui left the church at 20, in large part due to her burgeoning queerness and growing critical eye toward religion. To manage her grief, Mui threw herself into LGBTQ activism.

“As a professional speaker and trainer, I delivered ‘the Word’ of gender terminology and the rituals of creating safe spaces,” says Mui, who works as an LGBTQ equity consultant. But by 2020, Mui was burnt out. She knew she needed to reconnect with not only her spirituality but with other queer people as well.

Beginning in January 2021, Mui got on Instagram Live every Monday to share prayers, spells, and astrology readings and use tarot as a tool for reflection, a ritual she called Queer Church. While , Mui recontextualized interactions between Mary Magdalene and the newly risen Christ. “He’s often interpreted as saying, ‘Don’t touch me,’ a slut-shamey interpretation perpetuating the stereotype that [Magdalene] was dirty and unworthy of his love and attention,” says Mui. “In reality and the truer Greek translation, he says, ‘Don’t cling to me.’” From Mui’s perspective, in that moment, both the gospel and the eclipse were inviting people to let go of what is ready to leave.

Eventually, Queer Church expanded to become , a sex-positive and people-of-color-centered community for spiritual exploration and well-being. House of Our Queer offers spaces and tools for spirituality, including workshops, rituals, and in-person community gatherings. And the community has responded. Mui says around 200 people tune in to Queer Church every week, and as many as 500 people attend the monthly Queer Magic Dance Party in Oakland, California.

The focus of both Queer Church and House of Our Queer is to support people who were raised religious, or feel curious about spirituality, and affirm that queerness isn’t just part of religion but a blessing all its own. Rather than a set religious doctrine or denomination, Mui uses reclamation techniques—like adapting a Catholic prayer into a queer activist spell or honoring saints like Mary Magdalene—to affirm queerness and incorporate her religious upbringing.

“Whether I like it or not, I was raised Catholic, and that’s a part of my culture. Reclaiming [my spirituality] started for me when I realized that I was actually putting a lot of effort into keeping that door shut,” says Mui. “Queer Church is needed because queer people are human, and we need, just like everyone else, a place to gather for celebrations, shared ways to mark the passing of time, and places to turn to when �ɱ�’r�� in pain.”&�Բ�����;

Growth rings, the manifestos of yesteryear, appear on our dining tables, oftentimes constructed of these ancient beings. Their lives continue to sustain ours with the stories and the foods making up the feasts we share on them. 

Often, Old Growth ecosystems are viewed as being in balance with nature because they’ve been supposedly untouched by humans. However, for thousands of years, humans have involved ourselves in cycles of reciprocity with many life-forms we have come to consider food. We have been required to navigate our food system with great care and caution to keep on living. As a result, we have perfected practices that have been passed down through generations. We have refined recipes that contain ingredients representing species that predate woolly mammoths and dinosaurs. 

The oysters, geoduck, and crabs my Coast Salish people harvest, for example, have been on this Earth for millions of years. Archeological evidence shows the cultivation of fruits like cranberries, the maintenance of salmon runs, and the harvesting of hazelnuts dating back more than 10,000 years. This reminds us that Old Growth does not only apply to forest ecosystems; the term can represent ancient exchanges far older than mere centuries. We have the ability—and the responsibility—to ensure these relationships continue long after we are gone. 

But our tables today bear little evidence of Old Growth. Humankind has never been so far removed from the kinship and origins of our food as we are now. 

We are accelerating environmental threats to Old Growth foods. For example, between 2018 and 2021, marine heat waves have contributed to the from the Bering Sea. In meadows of high mountain huckleberries—a crop my Ancestors have cultivated for thousands of years—not only is an invasive fruit fly becoming increasingly prevalent, but scientists have projected that the wild huckleberry’s current suitable range in the Pacific Northwest by the end of this century, a direct outcome of increased emissions that contribute to increased temperatures. Our ring of life shows that modern foodways forget ancestral memories.��

Still, life continues to invite us to take a seat at the Old Growth table. How do we want to show up? How will we contribute to the living legacy of our foods and humanity? At the Old Growth table, we honor the ingredients as the wisdom keepers they are. And we humbly nod to the Ancestors who have kept our birthrights and lifeways intact. Now, it is our turn to carry that knowledge, stoke the eternal fire, and contribute to Old Growth life to come.  

Salish Snack Mix 

In addition to providing energy while traveling, harvesting, or hiking, this mix reminds me of the flavor of my homeland. It feeds my ancestral memories, and that is such a delicious gift. 

Combine equal parts blueberries, cranberries, and/or currants with hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, and/or pumpkin seeds in a bowl. (You can substitute any combination of nuts, seeds, and dried fruit local to your region.)

Nuts and seeds are healthier when consumed raw, but if you choose to roast them, place them on a cookie sheet in the oven at 300 degrees F until they are fragrant.

Store the mix in a dry, cool place.

Regardless of any nuance that may exist offline, our friends’ cheery, filtered posts show them feeling loved, seeing their loved ones every day, and never fighting or struggling to get their emotional needs met. They seem to move through the world with ease and community, having found their people when they were 2 years old and retained their friendships for the remainder of their lives. Therefore, those of us who have friendships that aren’t always as seamless feel like we are definitely failing. 

What we forget when we do this is that there’s a social pressure to show each other that we belong, and that we are doing everything the “right way.” It’s not just you who feels that pressure. It’s also the very friends to whom �ɱ�’r�� comparing ourselves. While we may know this on some level, once we start mindlessly scrolling—as these platforms as often as possible—we begin to take our friends’ posts at face value. 

We forget that this post about a “perfect birthday party” might not be the whole story, because �ɱ�’r�� not detectives looking for lies in the innocuous posts of our loved ones. But it’s important to remember they’re not “lies”; most people tend to project perfection and gloss over the hard stuff when they’re posting online. Unfortunately, what happens when people fall into that habit is that the rest of us feel like �ɱ�’r�� failing in comparison—and �ɱ�’r�� failing alone. 

This feeling of comparison and the accompanying loneliness and shame that it brings inspired me to write my 2023 book, . When my book was first published, I was shocked that so many people told me they felt this shame and loneliness too. They whispered to me, “I always think everyone but me has great friends they’ve known for 80 years and never struggle in their friendships. I didn’t know anyone else was feeling that way too.”&�Բ�����;

While it’s true that most of us are struggling, many people aren’t going to post when they’re crying at 2 a.m. over a friend breakup, when they’re having a fight with a friend, or when they’re hit with anxiety that a friend of theirs didn’t like their posts lately and must therefore be upset with them. They’re going to post when they see their friends in person (possibly for the first time in weeks or months) and are still riding that high from finally feeling connected to others. Still, we ������’t know the complex backstory of that celebratory post. Our perception is that they’re succeeding and �ɱ�’r�� failing. That may be because we haven’t met our people yet, or our friendships ��Dz�’t look exactly like that, or our friendships are kind of weird and strained right now and we ��Dz�’t have as much community as we need. 

So, what can we do other than ask all our friends to include detailed facts about the overall health of “my girls,” and if they’ve ever had some seriously messy shit go down in their friend group that might make us feel a little better about our own friendships? The complex but simple answer is that we have to be kinder to ourselves when �ɱ�’r�� scrolling. But how can we soothe ourselves when �ɱ�’r�� scrolling and it feels like �ɱ�’r�� really drowning and everyone else is sailing on a pristine yacht?

When I find myself in that space, I remind myself that I ��Dz�’t know the detailed interactions between people and that only those who truly know their friendships are the ones within them. For all I know, that friendship is on its last legs or that group has two people in it who hate the other two. And while I absolutely ��Dz�’t wish that on them, or hope someone is hurting, my point is that it’s important to entertain more than one possibility when �ɱ�’r�� stuck in that comparison spiral.

Once we remove the shame of “they’re right, I’m wrong” from our brains, we have more space to nurture our own friendships and our own communities at our own pace. It’s hard to do that when you’re beating yourself up. So once you’ve talked yourself down from the ledge, ask yourself: How can I reach out to the friends I do have or want to have? How can I connect with them further? How can I find more joy in the friendships I have? How can I set more boundaries and communicate better with them? And perhaps: How can I let go of the friendships that aren’t making me truly happy? 

As soon as we finally stop comparing ourselves to the limited view �ɱ�’r�� getting from other people posting about their friendships, we can truly be free to take that energy and put it toward what we really want: not envying a picture-perfect friendship that might not exist, but to finally, bravely, cultivate deeply nurturing friendships that—even if they’re flawed—are absolutely real.  

And their information is material, the result of molecular exchanges between electrons, water, and minerals. Every time you hit the play button or upload a photo to the cloud, you are sending bits hurtling at the speed of light through undersea cables as thin as your hairs. You do this effortlessly, but the countless servers and storage drives in faraway data centers take a heavy toll on both communities and the environment.

But access is not equal nor is it safe for all. While , the rates are higher in white, high-income homes compared to Black, Hispanic, and Native households. And for people experiencing housing instability, the challenges are even greater. But these three changemakers are advancing digital equity to make sure everyone has access to the devices, affordable internet, and safety practices they need to thrive online.��

Rev. Kim Lagree, Executive Director of Healing City Baltimore

For many people, public libraries are the only available means of accessing the internet. But all too often, that access is denied due to circumstances of addiction or homelessness or mental health. The city of Baltimore is attempting to remedy that, via a citywide effort to help transform the public library system—and eventually all city agencies—to be trauma-informed, so everyone is welcomed, supported, and able to get connected. 

Security guards are trained in trauma-informed care and stand alongside certified peer support staff. “These are people with lived experience who are recovering and living and thriving in society, knowing firsthand what that life is like—what the struggles are,” says Rev. Kim Lagree, executive director of Healing City Baltimore, a nonprofit organization focused on helping to bridge the gap between community and government.

“For me, this work is also personal,” says Lagree, who lost her brother to gun violence in 2015. An ordained minister with decades of community outreach experience, she is grateful “to have an opportunity to really be a part of an entire effort and initiative in a city that really speaks to healing in a way that produces visible outcomes.”

was founded in February 2020 as part of the Elijah Cummings Healing City Act—legislation designed to help the community heal in the aftermath of violence. After a deadly shooting at a local school, the city considered various safety measures: Should it arm police officers at schools? Should it double down on metal detectors? Impacted students testified before the city council that they didn’t want more violence and weapons; they wanted healing. The result was , based on the idea that if city officials want to reduce violence, they must address the trauma that fuels it.��

Lagree says the project demonstrates that one can be in the process of healing oneself and still impact others in a positive way: “We are both living with this violence in our city, we are both living with this substance use in our city, but we are also seeing lives being healed, lives being improved.”&�Բ�����;

Healing City Baltimore has now expanded to more than seven library branches in the city and has spawned similar efforts in other cities, including Cincinnati and Philadelphia.

Gina D. Cooper Benjamin, Deputy Director at the National Digital Inclusion Alliance

Gina D. Cooper Benjamin has always been interested in understanding data technology and figuring out how she can use it for social good. 

“We know that the digital divide has a disproportionate impact on low-income communities and communities of color,” Cooper Benjamin says. “That really resonates with me, having grown up with minimal resources, and being a person of color, and growing up in communities of color.”

In 2018, she started Hacking IT as a project aimed at Black and Brown girls to do three things: “Get loud, get political, get tech-ing.” Cooper Benjamin says the “get loud” part is because often, incorrectly, Black girls and women are told they are being loud or aggressive when expressing themselves normally. She doesn’t want anyone to be afraid to engage in important conversations because, she says, Black voices and opinions have value and they matter. Growing up, Cooper Benjamin learned to stop speaking up and laughing out loud when it made others uncomfortable. “I literally never want another young Black girl to feel that way,” Cooper Benjamin says. 

She explains that “‘Get political’ is the part where �ɱ�’r�� attaching our voices to things that are happening in our community.” She asks her cohorts what’s going on in their school or city that they want to speak up about, both in terms of the problems and the solutions. 

The “get tech-ing” part is focused on understanding one’s power and how it can be amplified on social media and through the use of technology for good. 

“As important as solutions are, we have to understand the barriers,” Cooper Benjamin says. The goal of digital inclusion, in her view, is making sure that people have the tools and resources to fully participate in the digital world—especially our most vulnerable community members and under-resourced communities.

That’s why she has recently taken the role of deputy director for the , with a mission of advancing digital equity by supporting community programs and equipping policymakers to act. “I do this work because I want people who look like me to be as excited about technology and understand the impact it has,” Cooper Benjamin says.

Mashell Sourjohn (Muscogee), Senior Associate State Director of Community Outreach at AARP Oklahoma

“After the pandemic, we saw such a great need for digital connectivity, not just for the social aspect of it, but to be able to connect to health care and do our taxes and even register to vote,” says Mashell Sourjohn (Muscogee), senior associate state director of community outreach for AARP Oklahoma. 

That’s why Sourjohn is focused on digital equity in Native communities and throughout the country. Her AARP chapter has partnered with cell phone companies and nonprofit organizations to distribute approximately 90 free tablets and pay for recipients’ internet services for a full year. The national nonprofit organization also operates a tech hotline, offers free online classes to teach elders digital skills, and shares information on available resources.

At workshops for urban elders, grandkids are encouraged to join. Sourjohn says the younger people coach the older people in what has become “a really nice multigenerational event.”

AARP’s Fraud Watch Network also teaches elders how to spot deceptive digital schemes and stay safe. American Indians and Alaska Natives face some of the same fraudulent scams seen across the U.S., but they are also the targets of scams particular to Indian Country. 

“We are seeing a lot of scams on regalia,” says Sourjohn, who belongs to a Facebook group of ribbon skirt makers, and finds that at least once a week she will see posts by people misrepresenting skirts as their own. Other scams include job offers that may lead to human trafficking, fraudulent homeopathic products, and scammers posing as tribal utility companies or benefit administrators. When the pandemic started and federal Paycheck Protection Program benefits were being distributed, for example, Sourjohn says her tribal nation set up a webpage. Immediately scammers set up an almost identical page with a very similar web address. 

“Being a Native American citizen, Muscogee Nation, we recognize that our elders are often the go-to people for information, but it really started to click with me about how we really do need to make cyber education, fraud education, more of a community approach,” Sourjohn says. Younger people have a lot to teach elders, too, when it comes to digital literacy. “It helps build communities.”&�Բ�����;

As a person of trans experience, I think frequently about what it has meant to name myself. As a child, pink-frilled dresses, shiny patent-leather Mary Janes, and itchy white stockings signaled to the world that I was a girl. I was gendered female, and, as a result, my surrounding community followed a host of spoken and unspoken cues about how to raise me, how to punish me, and how to limit my access to joy. 

Even now, as an agender androgynous person, I feel the lingering effects of those lessons. They’re so familiar to me, caressing my cheeks like a mother’s touch. But I am not a girl. I’ve never been a girl. And, now, pronouns like “she” and “her” clank against my body, a ringing reminder that the world will always have a role for me. While reading ’s 2024 book, this experience—being violently and permanently cast in a role, renamed and remade, assaulted, beaten, and forced into conditions not made for human souls—kept coming up for me. Even after the conditions of that casting have fallen away, we still feel the tremors.

Durkin’s book offers a small look into what that experience may have been like for the Yoruba-speaking people who were kidnapped from villages—in what would be present-day southwest Nigeria, extending into Benin and Togo—and sold into enslavement. These people, who mostly worked as farmers and foragers, were kidnapped in the mid-19th century as the transatlantic slave trade became heavily reliant on Indigenous captors, in this case , to supply enslavers with prisoners from African tribes in neighboring communities. Many of those taken were children or young adults, considered too young to undergo the rites of passage that would signal adulthood in their communities. This meant they were essentially nameless and without the belonging of older villagers.

While the 2022 hit film chronicled the Dahomey tribe’s role in the slave trade, Survivors of the Clotilda tells another side of the story. The Dahomey, who were also vulnerable to captivity and enslavement, aligned with white captors out of self-preservation and scarcity, hallmarks of global racial capitalism. “Dahomey’s imperial growth and engagement in this trade was probably precipitated by a desire to protect its own citizens against the threat of transatlantic enslavement,” Durkin writes. 

As Durkin notes, enslaved people rarely kept their original names. Instead, they were met with terror from the moment they encountered Dahomey fighters, who often ripped them from their communities under the cloak of night. They were made to watch their fellow townspeople decapitated and maimed. Then, they were forced to march alongside the heads of the slain as a reminder to never rebel. The Dahomey kept them in putrid conditions until white slavers came to collect their human goods. The Dahomey knew that to be a part of one’s own tribe—one’s own people—was to act as if one was human. And, in the eyes of white captors, the Yoruba-speaking captives certainly were not.

The stolen souls hidden in the cargo hold of the Clotilda were suspended across space and time in what Durkin calls “transatlantic dislocation.” During the transition from their homes to a foreign land, they became unnamed and unpossessed vessels, available for a white patriarchal culture to pour into and assign meaning. As scholar Hortense Spillers wrote in her 1987 Diacritics article “,” “These captive persons, without names their captors would recognize, were in movement across the Atlantic, but they were also nowhere at all.”

It’s an unimaginable sensation—being ripped away from everything and everyone one knows and sent along an unknown journey. Cast in darkness, veiled by the intentions of the ship’s masters, this voyage was dually defined by the power and privilege of wealthy slavers and the refashioning of the African townspeople and children into tradable commodities. These humans were rendered invisible by a system meant to wash away the African continent and its various traditions, ceremonies, and practices. 

That’s the reason the Clotilda, the ship at the center of Durkin’s book, is so important. Its final voyage in March 1860 was not only unsanctioned but also one of many expeditions meant to steal humans from the continent of Africa, forcing souls into slavery even as anti-slavery sentiment was growing across the globe. 

It is no wonder that the Yoruba-speaking people on the Clotilda’s last expedition—a liminal tribe formed along the waves of the Middle Passage—thought their captors were going to eat them. “Fears of white cannibalism were widespread throughout West Africa during the era of the transatlantic slave trade,” Durkin writes, before mentioning abolitionist Olaudah Equiano’s 1789 memoir, in which he wrote about “his abject terror of being eaten.” At the time, rumors were circulating along slave ports in southwest Africa that these white-skinned, gibberish-speaking people were not only slavers but in the business of consuming human flesh. As a result, though many of the captives on the Clotilda were starved to within inches of their lives, some still chose not to eat for fear it would make them more enticing prey for cannibalistic white captors.��

Young girls and women who survived the bowels of the Clotilda were met with another flesh-eating monster: the plantation’s systematic sexual, physical, and child abuse. Captives were transported along the Alabama River to southern Alabama and eastern Mississippi, an area called “” due to its rich, dark soil. This region, known for its sweltering temperatures, was fueled by barbaric slavers who cracked their whips, forced sexual relations between enslaved people, and maimed their slaves to keep them from escaping along the Underground Railroad.

Durkin tells the story of one Clotilda survivor, Dinah, who was so small when she arrived in the Black Belt at age 13, that she was sold for a dime to a vicious slave owner named Timothy Meaher. When she was taken to Meaher’s plantation, Dinah was housed with two Indigenous men and two white Americans for the sole purpose of subjecting Dinah to repeated rapes with the hope of her becoming pregnant. Meaher’s goals weren’t unique; he and other slavers wanted to take advantage of the legal ordinance established by the state of Virginia, which mandated that children born to enslaved women took on the condition of their mother. This meant that, no matter the freedom status of their biological father, children born to enslaved Black women were already in bondage. 

This lack of legal protection for enslaved Black women and girls was often exploited by white slave owners who would, themselves, repeatedly rape their captives. These women could neither consent nor deny the advances of any man, especially not their master. Their flesh was not theirs. One slaver named Charles Tait used this loophole to abuse young girls he enslaved, leading to 58 enslaved children being born on Tait’s property between 1819 and 1834.

When Dinah became pregnant, another pubescent enslaved child was sent into the slave quarters to take her place. In this way, enslavement became a way to make and remake gender. It labeled young girls’ and women’s bodies as not only property of their slave owners but also of the enslaved men with whom they shared quarters. The visceral and vulnerable nature of captivity made the ecosystem of slavery not only racialized but deeply gendered.

Even after the abolishment of slavery, the surviving members of the Clotilda tribe longed to return to their homeland. Rather than settle on a land where they’d experienced so much brutality, they searched for a way back to the lush trees and the smell of fruit in the air—the smell of home. But the road home never came for them. Instead, they remained in exile for the rest of their lives, struggling to define freedom in a place they called in modern-day Mobile, Alabama, where they were surrounded by other previously enslaved Black people. 

Perhaps this history resonates so deeply for me because there are parts of me that always feel exiled, even when I’m at home. There are parts of me that long to return to a place that I neither concretely remember nor possess evidence of ever having been. It’s a strange and peculiar feeling to be permanently displaced—and to have to accept that displacement because it’s the only way forward. 

But then there are the tremors, the memories, the aftershocks. The trauma never leaves the body, and the specter always looms over the flesh. Freedom, though tangible, is always textured by this tension, of being eaten alive and spit back out. The flesh is never the same.  

Rather than a real-time feed chronicling everything from world events to random inside jokes and debates, X is attempting to be through a series of supposed “innovations.”&�Բ�����;

�ճ�����’s , a fledgling program that offers enhanced features, including verification, for a fee; a nascent for those who want to make financial transactions on X; and even a “for you” timeline that’s supposed to algorithmically predict what you want to see based on your previous activity. 

What X has actually become is a nightmare.

X has lost its spirit because it has lost a large swath of its most thriving embodiment of cultural connection: .

Black Twitter has a different meaning depending on whom you ask. But , an associate professor at Northeastern University who’s extensively , defines it as “a network of culturally linked communicators who are using the platform to talk about issues of concern to Black life and in Black life.” After spending more than a decade as an active member of Black Twitter, I would define it as a vibrant, brilliant, culture-making community comprising some of the funniest people the internet has ever encountered.

While Black people have always been present on and used the internet to build community, Twitter was unique in its ability to attract Black users. As Clark notes, between 2010 and 2013, nearly 25% of all Black people in the United States who were online were also . Of course, other subcommunities on Twitter—Asian American Twitter, , NBA Twitter—overlapped with Black Twitter, like Venn diagrams of culture-makers. If a subculture existed, it likely thrived on Twitter, even when that group faced and invisibility offline. 

At its peak, Black Twitter users were sharing intracultural jokes, debating which restaurants were appropriate for a first date, and injecting nuance into conversations that began feeling a little too black and white. , when police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Mike Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri, would we have received from on-the-ground organizers about the militarized police violence they were experiencing? Likely not, given that mainstream news media, most of which �ɲ�����’t in Ferguson, often rather than the victim. In fact, it to report an alternate version of events that differed from the official police narrative.��

And Black Twitter users could chew gum and walk at the same time: There were inside jokes (one specific user always to avoid them), a shared language, and a beautiful sense of belonging. “Black Twitter … is held together by varying degrees of a sense of community,” . “Those who want to engage in meaningful interaction with Black Twitter should consider that doing so is akin to walking into a neighborhood.”

X, as it exists now, is more of a sundown town than a safe neighborhood for people from marginalized communities. It’s full of , many of whom have paid for verification and are thus amplified by the algorithm. Since Musk’s takeover, there’s been an increase in , which has driven many users, including me, from the platform. One of the epicenters of Black thought, where hashtags like and raised a generation of critical thinkers, has been mostly extinguished.

There are pockets of genius still shining through, as we’ve seen with memes, but, for the most part, I am left wondering: What will become of Black Twitter? We’re now spread across the internet, popping up on platforms ranging from Spoutible to Bluesky. But there may never again be a single platform where Black users not only dictate the language and the pace of conversation but also help elevate that discussion to a national level.

It’s a loss not only for the members of Black Twitter who used the platform to build camaraderie, but for all of us. Whether you were a member of the community or an outside observer, those who witnessed this cadre of thought at its peak can often approach social issues with more nuance and thoughtfulness because we were all learning in real time, together. Many of us have benefitted from the learning, and, as Clark notes, we must so they are not lost to history.

Clark is overseeing the project, which aims to “empower social media users who make up Black Twitter to create their own ‘small histories’ from their data.”��

“I want for a student, or someone who is just plainly curious, who wants to dig into these histories and this knowledge 50, 75, 100, hell, even five years from now, to be able to access this and say, ‘There is data, there is proof, there’s already a web of knowledge that’s out there about this,’” she told in 2023. 

In the meantime, as social media users attempt to find new digital neighborhoods where they can rebuild communities, we can still look to Black Twitter as a shining example of what connection can do for us—bring us together, make us think, and maybe, most importantly, make us laugh and laugh and laugh. 

that because sexual issues go beyond the physiological, psychology plays a crucial role in treating sexual health.

Virtual therapy sessions have also helped make sex therapy more approachable by “[building] a bridge to people who have reservations talking about sex in person,” notes science writer Kirsten Weir. are embracing this intervention as a way to deepen experiences of intimacy. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics projected demand for the profession to grow .

Hollywood creators have been instrumental in this shift: , for example, is both entertaining and informative about women’s sexual health and body diversity. Netflix’s animated series Big Mouth wittily portrays, while , a series about a teenager who runs an underground sex therapy clinic at his high school, has greatly shifted the conversation around sex. The therapists of Sex Education are everyday, relatable people who struggle with concerns similar to those of their clients. These characters challenge expectations that sex therapists are stoic clinicians who only analyze and diagnose patients.

Other forms of popular media are also destigmatizing sex therapy. Emily Nagoski, author of the book Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life, and Esther Perel, host of the podcast Where Should We Begin?, help readers, listeners, and viewers navigate hard but needed conversations around sex.

While sexual wellness resources are accessible with a mere swipe of our fingers, traditional sex therapy may be a more useful option for those needing personal intervention—and it’s getting easier to find sex therapists who understand the unique challenges people with marginalized identities face.

A , an online job-recruiting company, found an increase in diversity among sex therapists between 2010 and 2021: 64.1% of sex therapists are now women, with racial and age diversity also increasing in the past decade. These shifting demographics might also signal a shift in the focus of sex therapy, bringing more attention to concerns outside the white cisgender male experience, such as vaginal pain during penetrative sex and the orgasm gap.

But there are still limitations to who can access sex therapy. Some people are reluctant to pursue sex therapy for fear of being pathologized, or out of a belief that their sexual issues aren’t serious enough to warrant treatment. by Zoe Sever and Laura M. Vowels, research participants “often didn’t view their sexual difficulties as severe enough to warrant intervention or treatment.”

�ճ�����’s also a dearth of queer practitioners. by researchers at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, “sex therapy is largely available to heterosexual couples with the financial means or health coverage to pay for sex therapy.” The study found that in several regions of the U.S., there is a need for sex therapy to go beyond a heteronormative, monogamous focus.

Ashley Lagrange, a nonbinary, fat, Black, Dominican American sex therapist who practices at the in New York City, is aware that there aren’t many queer-competent providers and that queer folks often end up exchanging sex advice with each other. “Sometimes we have to share lived-experience stories, because �ɱ�’r�� not being taught [sexual wellness] in school,” says Lagrange.

But they also say sex therapy feels like an inevitability for queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and people of color, who are in a constant process of unlearning social conventions and moving toward a sense of authenticity. Given this context, Lagrange says sex therapy works best when it “addresses the emotional and the somatic,” which allows both the therapist and client to challenge core beliefs and messages around promiscuity, sexual exploration, and radical vulnerability.

“Sex is also a practice in mindfulness—a way to be attuned to what feels good, what doesn’t, and [how] to communicate that,” they add. This type of treatment can be helpful to clients struggling to connect because “it shows you this whole picture of wellness, in a way that talk therapy doesn’t,” says Lagrange.

Lagrange also uses in their work, a method in which participants are asked to consider the settings and sensory experiences enjoyable to them in erotic experiences. “[Erotic mapping] asks you to think about the details. … What do you think would feel better: leather or feather? It also asks you to think about the sounds. But not just the sounds of the space, like ‘Do you like music or the rain?’ But also thinking about the difference between an orgasm that is joyous laughter versus, like, sobs,” says Lagrange. Erotic mapping allows their clients to personalize sexual exploration—whether they are solo, partnered, or in a group—in ways that clients often ��Dz�’t find in conventional sex therapy spaces.

“I just really love seeing people create a deeper bond with themselves that is so personalized, that is individualized,” Lagrange says. “[A bond] that is free from shame … that is free from the constraints of what they’re supposed to think sex is. … It’s really liberating … to do the emotional and somatic work, and tie them together into something that can potentially lead to pleasure.”&�Բ�����;