The preferred dictionary is��. In M-W, the first spelling of a word should generally be used. The alternate style manual is the��. Generally, AP Style trumps M-W, but any style point mentioned in this guide overrules those publications.

abbreviations and acronyms

An acronym is a word formed from the first letter or letters of a series of words: laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). An abbreviation is not an acronym.

If using an abbreviation or acronym of an organization’s full name later in the piece, you can place it in parentheses, or include it using another method, after the first reference. If an abbreviation or acronym does not appear later in the piece, no need to use it on first reference. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulates civil aviation. The debate over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, is by no means limited to the United States. The AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) is made up of 56 national and international unions.

Names not commonly before the public should not be reduced to acronyms solely to save a few words.

Do not use abbreviations or acronyms that the reader would not quickly recognize. Avoid confusion by using abbreviations or acronyms that are unique. Do not use abbreviations or acronyms with multiple referents. For example: the VRA stands for the Voting Rights Act,��Veterans’ Recruitment Appointment, or Voluntary Repayment Agreement. Spell out names in those cases. (AP style)

See LGBT, LGBTQ.

adverbial phrases

Do not hyphenate adverbial phrases like��face to face,��step by step,��inch by inch: they met face to face,��she likes to take her projects step by step. However, hyphenate compound modifiers:��face-to-face meeting,��step-by-step approach.

ages

Always use figures: The girl is 15 years old; the law is 8 years old; the 101-year-old house. When the context does not require years or years old, the figure is presumed to be years. Do not use young woman, young man, or other subjective terms that diminish age and experience. Avoid elderly. If the intent is to show that an individual’s faculties have deteriorated, cite a graphic example and give attribution for it. Where possible, be precise.

Use hyphens for ages expressed as adjectives before a noun or as substitutes for a noun. Examples: A 5-year-old boy, but the boy is 5 years old. The boy, 7, has a sister, 10. The woman, 26, has a daughter 2 months old. The race is for 3-year-olds. The woman is in her 30s (no apostrophe). (AP style)

See stereotypes.

all

When used as a pronoun or adjective, all should be adjacent to the noun ����’s modifying: We all are scientists now. Not: We are all scientists now.

Awkward: The cars all sold. Preferred: All the cars sold.

al Qaeda

American dream

antifa

An abbreviated term for activists in the antifascist movement.

anti-war

BCE, CE

Use BCE (“before the Common Era”) and CE (“of the Common Era”) instead of A.D. (anno Domini, “in the year of the Lord”) and B.C. (“before Christ”). Place them after the year, and ��Dz�’t use periods.

big business

Lowercase, but capitalize when referring to specific industries: Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Ag. Do not use names a reader would not quickly recognize.

brand names

When they are used, capitalize them. Brand names normally should be used only if they are essential to a story.

In general, use a generic equivalent: Heavily armed law enforcement officers attacked unarmed civilians with rubber bullets, pepper spray, and tear gas. She scrolled through photos on her smartphone.

Brands like Mace, Styrofoam,��AstroTurf, Coke, Windex, and Frisbee are usually unnecessary and often inaccurate.

BIPOC

If BIPOC appears in original content, ask author for specificity. If author prefers BIPOC, spell out on first reference. If BIPOC appears in quotations, republished content, or content with an inaccessible author, stet, spelling out on first reference.

board of directors

If title is functioning as a proper name, capitalize (YES! Board of Directors), but ��Dz�’t capitalize as an adjective or noun (the board of directors for YES! ������Ƶ).

breastfeed

cell phone

Two words; an exception to AP.��

cities

Capitalize city if part of a proper name, an integral part of an official name, or a regularly used nickname: Kansas City,��New York City, Windy City, City of Light, Fun City.

Lowercase elsewhere: a Texas city; the city government;��the city Board of Education; and all city of phrases: the city of Boston.

Capitalize when part of a formal title before a name: City Manager Francis McGrath. Lowercase when not part of the formal title: city Health Commissioner Frank Smith.

The following domestic cities stand alone: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C.

All other U.S. cities should include state names.

See state names.

clearinghouse

One word.

company names

Follow AP except: Do not capitalize “the” before a company name. Do not include “the” if it is not part of the name.��

compose, comprise, constitute

Compose�����𲹲Բ���to create or put together. It commonly is used in both the active and passive voices:��She composed a song. The United States is composed of 50 states. The zoo is composed of many animals.

Comprise�����𲹲Բ���to contain,��to include all��or��embrace. It is best used only in the active voice, followed by a direct object:��The United States comprises 50 states. The jury comprises five men and seven women. The zoo comprises many animals.

Constitute, in the sense of��form or make up, may be the best word if neither��compose��nor��comprise��seems to fit:��Fifty states constitute the United States. Five men and seven women constitute the jury. A collection of animals can constitute a zoo.

Use��include��when what follows is only part of the total:��The price includes breakfast. The zoo includes lions and tigers.��(AP style)

composition titles

Apply the guidelines listed below to book titles, computer and video game titles, movie titles, opera titles, play titles, album titles, radio and television program titles, newspapers, magazines, journals, online periodical publications, podcasts, and works of fine art:

Italicize the names of all such works except the Bible, the Quran, and other holy books, websites and blogs, and books that are primarily catalogs of reference material. In addition to catalogs, this category includes almanacs, directories, dictionaries, encyclopedias, gazetteers, handbooks, and similar publications. Do not italicize publication titles when they appear in small text inside a caption or photo credit in a print product.

Capitalize the principal words, including adverbs, verbs, pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions of four or more letters. This includes As, Is, and It. Follow this rule for YES! headlines. Capitalize “to” as an adverb (To and Fro) but not as an infinitive (to Become).

Capitalize an article—the, a, an—or words of fewer than four letters if it is the first or last word in a title.

Include subtitles of books on first reference only.

Apply the same guidelines but the first to the following titles: lectures, speeches, TED Talks, essays, short stories, poems, chapters, songs, podcast episodes, television episodes, journal/magazine/newspaper articles. Place name in quotes.

In general, a title is italicized if the source is self-contained and independent. A title is placed in quotes if the source is part of a larger work. Italicize the names of newsletters, as a self-contained, independent source. Place issue names in quotation marks: the “Personal Journeys” issue.��

Use numerals for numbers in headlines that refer to steps, processes, or lists: 5 Ways Small Actions Have Huge Power.

Generally, do not include “.com” in publication titles, unless the publication uses “.com” as an official part of its name.

Use H2 for online subheads, not bolded text or H3.

constitution

Capitalize references to the U.S. Constitution, with or without the��U.S. modifier: The president said he supports the Constitution.

When referring to constitutions of other nations or of states, capitalize only with the name of a nation or a state: the French Constitution, the Massachusetts Constitution,��the nation’s constitution, the state constitution, the constitution.

Lowercase in other uses: the organization’s constitution.

Lowercase constitutional in all uses. (AP style)

court cases

Italicize court cases on all references, using “v.” (not “vs.”) to distinguish between plaintiff and defendant: Roe v. Wade; Brown v. Board of Education. Do not place court cases in quotes. For landmark rulings, first name is acceptable on second reference: Roe; Brown.

COVID-19

Follow AP guidance. Use COVID-19 on first reference; COVID OK on subsequent references and in headlines and decks.

Dakota Access pipeline

DAPL is acceptable on second reference.

dangling modifiers

Avoid modifiers that do not refer clearly and logically to some word in the sentence.

Dangling: Taking our seats, the game started. (Taking does not refer to the subject, game, nor to any other word in the sentence.)

Correct: Taking our seats, we watched the opening of the game. (Taking refers to we, the subject of the sentence.) (AP style)

deal breaker

(n.) deal-breaker (adj.)

directions and regions

In general, lowercase north, south, northeast, northern, etc., when they indicate compass direction; capitalize these words when they designate regions.

Some examples: He drove west. The cold front is moving east.

A storm system that developed in the Midwest is spreading eastward. It will bring showers to the East Coast by morning and to the entire Northeast by late in the day.��Wildfires in Northern California spread quickly.

She has a Southern accent. He is a Northerner. Asian nations are opening doors to Western businessmen.��(AP style)

disabled, handicapped

In general, do not describe an individual as disabled��or��handicapped��unless it is clearly pertinent to a story. If a description must be used, try to be specific about the type of disability or symptoms.��An ad featuring actor Michael J. Fox swaying noticeably from the effects of Parkinson’s disease drew nationwide attention.��Disabilities are not necessarily injuries, and vice versa, although both can be described as��mobility issues.

Avoid descriptions that connote pity or condescension, such as��afflicted with��or��suffers from multiple sclerosis.��Avoid descriptions that infantilize and condescend, such as��empowers��or��uplifts disabled people. Rather,��has multiple sclerosis.

Some terms include:

blind:��Describes a person with complete or nearly complete loss of sight. For others, use terms such as��visually impaired��or��person with low vision.

cripple:��Considered offensive when used to describe a person who is disabled.

deaf:��Describes a person with total or major hearing loss. For others, use��partial hearing loss��or��partially deaf. Avoid using��deaf-mute. Do not use��deaf and dumb. Some object to the term��hearing impaired.

disabled:��A general term used for a physical, mental, developmental or intellectual disability. Do not use��mentally retarded.

handicap:��It should be avoided in describing a disability.

mute:��Describes a person who cannot speak. Others with speaking difficulties are��speech impaired.

wheelchair user:��People use wheelchairs for independent mobility. Do not use��confined to a wheelchair��or��wheelchair-bound. If a wheelchair is needed, say why.

Dreamer

Those undocumented immigrants protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA. The term Dreamer is based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act, which would have provided similar protections for young immigrants. The DREAM Act—Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors—was a federal proposal that offered many of the same protections as DACA but was never approved in Congress. Do not describe DACA as an executive action; it is an administrative program. If necessary, provide some context on first reference.

Earth

Capitalize when referring to the planet. Lowercase when referring to soil: The crops emerged slowly from the earth.

excerpts

Italicize excerpt information text at the end of online excerpted content.

farmers market

front line

(n.) frontline (adj.)

gender

Not synonymous with��sex.��Gender��refers to a person’s social identity while��sex��refers to biological characteristics. Not all people fall under one of two categories for��sex��or��gender, so avoid references to��both,��either,��or��opposite��sexes or genders as a way to encompass all people. When needed for clarity or in certain stories about scientific studies, alternatives include��men and women,��boys and girls,��males and females.��Language around gender is evolving and subject to a person’s preferences.

Some frequently used terms and definitions:

cisgender:��May be used if necessary to refer to people who are not��transgender in stories about gender, as a means to distinguish people from one another. Use only with explanation, such as cisgender people are those whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth. Do not use terms like normal to describe people who are not transgender.��Cisgender��refers to gender and is not synonymous with��heterosexual, which refers to sexuality.

nonbinary:��Acceptable in broad references as a term for people who do not identify (exclusively or at all) as women or men.��Some nonbinary people identify as both women and men, while some identify as neither.��The group is providing scholarships for nonbinary students.��When talking about individuals, be specific about how a person describes or expresses gender identity and behavior.��Roberta identifies as both male and female.��Not synonymous with��transgender.

intersex:��Term for people born with genitalia, chromosomes, or reproductive organs that ��Dz�’t conform to typical definitions for males or females at birth.��Gonzalez is an intersex person. Zimmerman is intersex.��Do not use the outdated term��hermaphrodite.

gender confirmation or gender-affirming surgery: The treatments, surgeries, and other medical procedures used by transgender people to match their sex to their gender. The preferred terms over��gender reassignment or sex reassignment; do not use the outdated term��sex change.��Gender-affirming clinical treatment��or��gender confirmation surgery��is not necessary for people to transition their gender.��Balducci weighed whether to have gender-affirming surgery during his transition.

transgender: An adjective that describes people whose gender identity does not match the sex or gender they were assigned at birth. Does not require what are often known as gender confirmation procedures. Identify people as��transgender��only if pertinent, and use the name by which they live publicly. Generally, avoid references to a transgender person being��born a boy��or��girl, since describing someone as��transgender��speaks for itself and doesn’t take��intersex��babies into account.��Bernard is a transgender man. Christina is transgender.��The shorthand��trans��is acceptable on second reference and in headlines:��Grammys add first man and first trans woman as trophy handlers.

Do not use as a noun or refer to someone as a transgender, or use the term��transgendered. Not synonymous with terms like��cross-dresser��or��drag queen, which are not inherently related to gender identity. Do not use the outdated term transsexual. Do not use a derogatory term such as��tranny��except in extremely rare circumstances—only in a quote when it is crucial to the story or the understanding of a news event.

Use the name by which a transgender person now lives:��Caitlyn Jenner. Generally avoid publishing a person’s previous name, unless unavoidable and directly relevant to the story.

Preferred: Caitlyn Jenner, who won the 1976 Olympic gold medal in the men’s decathlon…

Unnecessary: Caitlyn Jenner, who won a 1976 Olympic gold medal in decathlon as [former name] Jenner…

transition, gender transition:��The process by which��transgender people��change the physical characteristics associated with the sex or gender they were assigned at birth to those matching their own gender identity. May include gender-affirming or��gender confirmation��procedures, but not necessarily.��Washington is transitioning while helping his daughter consider universities. Chamberlain’s family offered support during her transition.

gender-neutral language

In general, avoid terms with gender bias, unless in direct quotes. Some examples: to man, manmade,��actress, right-hand man,��waitress, workman, handyman, heiress,��craftsman, everyman, wingman, and��freshman. Never use sexist or pejorative language:��soccer mom, trophy wife, gold digger, mama’s boy. See this for equivalent words.

Wrong: Volunteers manned the donation table.

Right: Volunteers staffed the donation table.

Wrong: About 8,300 more freshmen enrolled this year.

Right: About 8,300 more first-year students enrolled this year.

See stereotypes.

GMO

Genetically modified organism. GMO is acceptable on second reference. Refers to food grown from seeds that are genetically engineered in a laboratory. (AP style)

grassroots

(n. and adj.) One word.

a handful of

Use this phrase to indicate a physical quantity that fills the hand. Acceptable sometimes for abstract concepts: He had a handful of reasons for why he had never voted. Never use to describe quantities exceeding that. Wrong: A handful of senators held Town Halls before the vote on Thursday. Right: About seven senators held Town Halls before the vote on Thursday. Where possible, be precise. Otherwise, few and several are acceptable.

hashtags

Capitalize each word in a hashtag for readability, except #metoo.��

�Ჹ�ɲ���‘i

But:��Hawaiian.

health care

Never use a hyphen: health care reform.

to hold on to

The phrasal verb is not to hold onto. Wrong:��The industry is trying to hold onto experienced staff. Right: My daughter held on to my sleeve until she relaxed.

human-made

Never: man-made.

See gender-neutral language.

infinitives

In general, avoid awkward constructions that split infinitive forms of a verb (to leave, to help, etc.) or compound forms (had left, are found out, etc.).

Awkward: She was ordered to immediately leave on an assignment.

Preferred: She was ordered to leave immediately on an assignment.

Awkward: There stood the wagon that we had early last autumn left by the barn.

Preferred: There stood the wagon that we had left by the barn early last autumn.

Occasionally, however, a split is not awkward and is necessary to convey the meaning: During the mayor’s campaign, he promised to fully fund the program. Rideshare apps are unlikely to drastically reduce urban congestion. How has your health been? The budget was tentatively approved. (AP style)

last

Avoid the use of last as a synonym for latest if it might imply finality. The last time it rained, I forgot my umbrella, is acceptable. But: The last announcement was made at noon may leave the reader wondering whether the announcement was the final announcement, or whether others are to follow.

The word last is not necessary to convey the notion of most recent when the name of a month or day is used. Preferred: It happened Wednesday. It happened in April. Correct, but redundant: It happened last Wednesday. But: It happened last week. It happened last month. (AP style)

Latino, Latina, Latinx

Use Latino (masculine), Latina (feminine), or Latinx (gender-neutral) for a person from—or whose ancestors were from—a Spanish-speaking land or culture or from Latin America (Latino is the preferred plural term).

Follow the person’s preference. Use a more specific identification when possible, such as Cuban, Puerto Rican, Brazilian, or Mexican American.

the left, the right

In general, avoid these terms in favor of more precise descriptions of political philosophy. Lowercase when used as a noun, adjective, or adverb: As he got older, he became more conservative and moved further right. Avoid terms like Left Coast, red state, and blue state.

See political parties and philosophies; stereotypes.

LGBT, LGBTQ

Acceptable in all references for lesbian, gay,��bisexual and transgender, or lesbian,��gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning and/or queer. In quotations and the formal names of organizations and events, other forms such as LGBTQIA and other variations are also acceptable with the other letters explained. (AP style)

See gender.

Los Angeles

Spell out on first reference. L.A. is acceptable on second reference.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Do not precede Jr. with a comma. Dr. King or King is acceptable on second reference. When referring to the federal holiday honoring him, MLK Day is acceptable.

#metoo

Do not capitalize either word unless it begins a sentence, per original styling used by the movement’s creator, Tarana Burke. Utilize hashtag when discussing social media conversation. The “me too” movement is also acceptable.

million, billion, trillion

Use figures with million, billion, or trillion in all except casual uses: I’d like to make a billion dollars. But: The nation has 1 million citizens. I need $7 billion. The government ran a deficit of more than $1��trillion. Avoid line breaks by inserting nonbreaking space between figures and million, billion, or trillion.

Do not go beyond two decimal places: 7.51 million people,��$256 billion. Not:��7,542,500 people,��$2,565,750,000. Decimals are preferred where practical: 1.5 million. Not: 1 1/2 million.

Do not mix million��and billion��in the same figure: 2.6 billion. Not: 2 billion 600 million.

Do not drop the word million or billion in the first figure of a range: He is worth from $2 million to $4 million. Not: $2 to $4 million, unless you really mean $2.

Note that a hyphen is not used to join the figures and the word��million or billion, even in this type of phrase: The president submitted a $300 billion budget. (AP style)

months

Capitalize the names of months in all uses. When a month is used with a specific date, abbreviate only Jan., Feb., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., and Dec. Spell out when using alone, or with a year alone.

When a phrase lists only a month and a year, do not separate the year with commas. When a phrase refers to a month, day and year, set off the year with commas.

Examples: January 2016 was a cold month. Jan. 2 was the coldest day of the month. His birthday is May 8. Feb. 14, 2013, was the target date. She testified that it was Friday, Dec. 3, when the accident occurred. (AP style)

Native American

Acceptable for those in the U.S. (Native is also acceptable). Follow the person’s preference. Where possible, be precise and use the name of the tribe: He is a Navajo commissioner. Such words or terms as��wampum, warpath, powwow, teepee, brave, squaw, etc., can be disparaging and offensive.

In Alaska, the indigenous groups include Aleuts, Eskimos, and Indians, collectively known as Alaska Natives (not Alaskan Natives).

First Nation is the preferred term for native tribes in Canada. (AP rule)

non-English words

If a word from another language becomes familiar through repeated use throughout a work, italicize it only on its first occurrence. If it appears only rarely, however, italics may be retained. This does not extend to proper nouns, which should be kept in Roman. Check Merriam-Webster for whether a word is “English” (or common usage) or not. We can consider terms on case-by-case basis as well.��

numerals

In general, spell out one through nine: The Yankees finished second. He had nine months to go. Also spell out any numeral at the start of a sentence.

Use figures for 10 or above and whenever preceding a unit of measure or referring to ages of people, animals, events, or things. Also in all tabular matter, and in statistical, and sequential forms. Never convert to figures when referring to general quantities: tens of thousands, hundreds of fans.

For ranges, use to, between/and, from/to, or an en dash: He ironed people’s clothing for the U.S. equivalent of 7 to 16 cents apiece. The act could save Medicare between $230 billion and $541 billion over the next decade. An estimated 200–300 metric tons of produce were rescued last year. I’ll bring five to 10 batches of cookies to the party. Never combine between or from with an en dash. About is redundant. Though an en dash is acceptable, our preference is to use to, between/and, and from/to��instead of an en dash.

To avoid confusion, do not use too many numerals in succession: In 1982, 231,700 rainbow-haired unicorns lived in 53 U.S. rainforests.

dates, years, and decades: Feb. 8, 2007, Class of ’66, the 1950s. For the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 9/11 is acceptable in all references. (Note comma to set off the year when the phrase refers to a month, date, and year.)

decimals, percentages, and fractions with numbers larger than 1: 7.2 magnitude quake, 3 1/2 laps, 3.7 percent interest, 4 percentage points. Decimalization should not exceed two places in most text material. Exceptions: blood alcohol content, expressed in three decimals: as in 0.056, and batting averages in baseball, as in .324. For amounts less than 1, precede the decimal with a zero: The cost of living rose 0.03 percent. Spell out fractions less than 1, using hyphens between the words: two-thirds,��four-fifths. In quotations, use figures for fractions: “He was 2 1/2 laps behind with four to go.”

distances: He walked 4 miles. He missed a 3-foot putt.

monetary units: 5 cents, $5 bill, 8 euros, 4 pounds.

odds, proportions, and ratios: 9-1 long shot;��3 parts cement to 1 part water; a 1-4 chance, but one chance in three.

school grades: Use figures for grades 10 and above: 10th grade. Spell out for first through ninth grades: fourth grade, fifth-grader (note hyphen).

political districts: Ward 9, 9th Precinct, 3rd Congressional District.

times: Use figures for time of day except for noon and midnight: 1 p.m., 10:30 a.m., 5 o’clock, a winning time of 2:17:3 (2 hours, 17 minutes, 3 seconds). Spell out numbers less than 10 standing alone and in modifiers: I’ll be there in five minutes. He scored with two seconds left. An eight-hour day. The two-minute warning.

votes: The bill was defeated by a vote of 6 to 4, but by a two-vote margin.

ROMAN NUMERALS

They may be used for wars and to establish personal sequence for people and animals: World War I, Native Dancer II,��King George V. Also for certain legislative acts ( Title IX). Otherwise, use sparingly.

ORDINALS

Numbers used to indicate order (first, second, 10th, 25th, etc.) are called ordinal numbers. Spell out first through ninth: fourth grade,��first base, the First Amendment, he was first in line. Use figures starting with 10th. Hyphenate compound modifiers to avoid confusion: 20th-anniversary issue, 19th-century law.

See ages; hyphen (Punctuation); million, billion, trillion; percent; temperatures.

Pacific coast

percent, percentage, percentage points

Use the % sign when paired with a numeral, with no space, in most cases (a change in 2019):��Average hourly pay rose 3.1% from a year ago; her mortgage rate is 4.75%; about 60% of Americans agreed; he won 56.2% of the vote.��Use figures:��1%, 4 percentage points.��For amounts less than 1%, precede the decimal with a zero:��The cost of living rose 0.6%.

In casual uses, use words rather than figures and numbers:��She said he has a zero percent chance of winning.

At the start of a sentence: Try to avoid this construction. If ����’s necessary to start a sentence with a percentage, spell out both:��Eighty-nine percent of sentences ��Dz�’t have to begin with a number.

Constructions with the % sign take a singular verb when standing alone or when a singular word follows an of construction:��The teacher said 60% was a failing grade. He said 50% of the membership was there.

It takes a plural verb when a plural word follows an of construction:��He said 50% of the members were there.

Use decimals, not fractions, in percentages:��Her mortgage rate is 4.5%.

For a range,��12% to 15%,��12%–15%,��and��between 12% and 15%��are all acceptable.

Use��percentage, rather than��percent, when not paired with a number:��The percentage of people agreeing is small.

Be careful not to confuse��percent��with��percentage point. A change from 10% to 13% is a rise of 3 percentage points. This is not equal to a 3% change; rather, ����’s a 30% increase.

Usage:��Republicans passed a 0.25 percentage point tax cut.��Not:��Republicans passed a 0.25 percentage points tax cut��or��Republicans passed a tax cut of 0.25 of a percentage point.��(AP style)

photo captions and credits

Don’t italicize. Use a period at the end of the photo caption, but not the photo credit.��

political campaigns

Capitalize proper names: Defund DAPL, Medicare for All, The Movement for Black Lives, Fight for $15.

political movements

Lowercase civil rights movement, women’s movement, etc., but capitalize any proper names: the United Farm Workers movement.

political parties and philosophies

Capitalize both the name of the party and the word party if it is customarily used as part of the organization’s proper name: the Democratic Party, the Republican Party.

Include the political affiliation of any elected officeholder.

Capitalize Communist, Conservative, Democrat, Liberal, Republican, Socialist, etc., when they refer to a specific party or its members. Lowercase these words when they refer to political philosophy (see examples below).

Lowercase the name of a philosophy in noun and adjective forms unless it is the derivative of a proper name: communism, communist;��fascism, fascist. But: Marxism, Marxist; Nazism, Nazi.

Generally, a description of specific political views is more informative than a generic label like liberal or conservative. (AP style)

protesters

pullquotes

In the online versions of articles, if the selected quote is not by the author, the person being quoted should be attributed after the pullquote, with an em dash (since it won’t be obvious upon reading that ����’s not the person with the byline saying it). Our preference is to use the author’s words and not others’ quotes.

races and ethnicities

Capitalize Black, African American, Brown, Native (American), Indigenous, Asian when referring to people’s racial identities (e.g. skin color).

Where possible, be precise: Sonia Sotomayor is the first Latina justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Jeremy Lin is the first American-born NBA player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent. The Caribbean American chef opened his third restaurant on Saturday.

All races (except white) are either capitalized or lowercased in a story; do not make exceptions for one race versus another, unless the author feels strongly.

When referring to race-based ideologies, follow the guidelines above: white supremacy; Black nationalism; Indigenous sovereignty.

As of November 2022, we’re reversing our previous rule to follow AP’s guidance on lowercasing white.

See Native American; stereotypes; hyphen (Punctuation).

recipes

Spell out measurement units (cups, quarts, ounces, etc.). Use numerals for all ingredients and throughout body copy to make the recipes easier to read: Juice of 1 lemon, 1 tablespoon flour.��

rural

People living in rural areas represent about 20% of the total U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The term is often used colloquially but inaccurately.

Use rural for areas with populations below 2,500. Use rural for those residents, counties, communities, or regions. Do not use rural for individuals, countries, or states, which comprise both rural and urban areas.

See stereotypes.

slang

In general, avoid slang, the highly informal language that is outside of conventional or standard usage. When used as a pejorative or ironic device, place between quotation marks:��A man who openly bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” was elected president.

See quotation marks (Punctuation).

smart technology

Two words when referring to smart home, smart car, smart meter, or other devices programmed to function semi-independently. Exceptions: smartphone, smartwatch.

social media handles

Keep all letters in social media handles lowercase. Use someone’s full name and not their Twitter handle when referencing a tweet. Reach out for their full name if you ��Dz�’t have it from context. Print layout kicker bio format: Twitter: @handlename��(no period after the handle in print).

staff

The plural noun takes a singular verb: The staff is attending the retreat.

state names

The names of the 50 U.S. states should be spelled out when used in the body of a story, whether standing alone or in conjunction with a city, town, village, or military base. Abbreviate in headlines and captions or where space is limited. Do not include state name if city stands alone.

Following are the state abbreviations (postal code abbreviations in parentheses): Ala. (AL), Ariz. (AZ), Ark. (AR), Calif. (CA), Colo. (CO), Conn. (CT), Del. (DE), Fla. (FL), Ga. (GA), Ill. (IL), Ind. (IN), Kan. (KS), Ky. (KY), La. (LA), Md. (MD), Mass. (MA), Mich. (MI), Minn. (MN), Miss. (MS), Mo. (MO), Mont. (MT), Neb. (NE), Nev. (NV), N.H. (NH), N.J. (NJ), N.M. (NM), N.Y. (NY), N.C. (NC), N.D. (ND), Okla. (OK), Ore. (OR), Pa. (PA), R.I. (RI), S.C. (SC), S.D. (SD), Tenn. (TN), Vt. (VT), Va. (VA), Wash. (WA), W.Va. (WV), Wis. (WI), Wyo. (WY)

The names of eight states are never abbreviated in datelines or text:��Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, Texas, and Utah.

Place one comma between the city and the state name, and another comma after the state name, unless ending a sentence or indicating a dateline: He was traveling from Nashville, Tennessee, to Austin, Texas, en route to his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She said Cook County, Illinois, was Mayor Daley’s stronghold.

Use New York state when necessary to distinguish the state from New York City.

Use state of Washington or Washington state within a story when ����’s necessary to differentiate the state name from the U.S. capital.

See cities.

stereotypes

Stereotypes deny the individuality and complexity of people or groups by conforming them to false assumptions. They can be positive or negative. Never use terms that perpetuate ageism, sexism, racism, classism, and ableism in both language and content. Be careful with euphemisms and metaphors. The following are some examples:

sexism: soccer mom, first lady, damsel in distress,��mama’s boy, housewife, househusband,��sensitive, career woman, manly, beauty, girl, petite.

racism: model minority, illegals, urban,��athletic, wise, chief, ghetto, thug, primal, articulate, buck, boy,��girl, Oriental, peon, pimp, powwow, refugee, soulful, token.

classism: Hillbilly, redneck, uneducated, Okie, mountain people, shiftless, white trash, backwoods, simple,��down and out, rural, scrappy, lazy, violent, ignorant.

suicide

Avoid using��committed suicide��except in direct quotations from authorities. Alternate phrases include��killed himself,��took her own life,��or��died by suicide. The verb��commit��with��suicide��can imply a criminal act. Laws against suicide have been repealed in the United States and many other places.

Do not refer to an��unsuccessful suicide attempt. Refer instead to an��attempted suicide.��(AP style)

superrich

temperatures

Use figures for all except zero. Use a word, not a minus sign, to indicate temperatures below zero. Temperatures get higher or lower, but they ��Dz�’t get warmer or cooler. (AP style)

they, them, their

In most cases, a plural pronoun should agree in number with the antecedent:��The children love the books their uncle gave them.

They/them/their is acceptable in limited cases as a singular and/or gender-neutral pronoun. Always confirm a source’s pronouns. Follow the person’s preference. (AP style)

thumbs-up, thumbs-down

tipi

Never: teepee.

titles

In general, capitalize formal titles (including professional roles) used directly before an individual’s name. Refer to subjects using last name (without title) on subsequent references. Lowercase and spell out titles in constructions that set them off from a name by commas, or in constructions where the title follows the individual’s name: The vice president, Mike Pence, was elected in 2016. Pope Francis, the current pope, was born in Argentina. YES! ������Ƶ Executive Director Christine Hanna joined the team in 2017, while Sunnivie Brydum joined as editorial director in 2019.

Capitalize formal and professional titles when they appear in a list format, on their own line below a name, such as in “People We Love.”

Capitalize formal titles when they are used immediately before one or more names: Pope Francis, President Donald Trump, Vice Presidents John Jones and William Smith.

A formal title generally is one that denotes a scope of authority, professional activity, or academic activity: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Dr. Benjamin Spock, retired Gen. Colin Powell. Use Dr. in first reference as a formal title before the name of an individual who holds a doctor of dental surgery, doctor of medicine, doctor of optometry, doctor of osteopathic medicine, doctor of podiatric medicine, or doctor of veterinary medicine. Dr. may also be used as an honorific for notable historical figures, if the honorific is commonplace in colloquial references to the individual: Dr. Martin Luther King. Other individuals with academic doctorates may be recognized by the inclusion of Ph.D., after their full name on first reference.

Other titles serve primarily as occupational descriptions: professor Marcus Green,��astronaut John Glenn, actor Mark Ruffalo, peanut farmer Jimmy Carter.

The following formal titles are capitalized and abbreviated as shown when used before a name both inside and outside quotations: Dr., Gov., Lt. Gov., Rep., Sen. and certain military rank. (AP style)

tribe, tribal

Lowercase, but capitalize only if an integral part of proper name:��Standing Rock Sioux tribe, but the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma. (AP style)

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Capitalize when referring to a formal body facilitating conflict resolution, often between law enforcement and marginalized communities. Lowercase when referring to a process. TRC is acceptable on second preference, although the commission is preferred.

URLs

Omit “www.” and “https://” when referencing URLs.��

U.S.

The abbreviation is acceptable as a noun or adjective for United States. Spell out on first reference. (AP style)

victims, survivors

These terms are not interchangeable. Survey statistics on rape and sexual assault typically use victims and offenders, but anti-rape networks often use survivors. Accuracy is key. Follow the user’s practice.

war on drugs

We the People

A phrase from the preamble to the Constitution, often used in commentary to emphasize political power of electorate. Do not italicize or place in quotes.

wild

Avoid using this term to describe natural or urban areas with plant life. This term usually implies that an area has not been directly controlled or influenced by human activity, therefore ����’s often inaccurate.

workers rights

YES! Magazine

Italicize and spell out��YES! Magazine��on all references to the print or digital publication, except in photo or illustration credits printed in small type. Use YES! or YES! ������Ƶ to refer to the nonprofit organization that publishes YES! Magazine,��as well as online content published solely on��.

Punctuation

apostrophe (‘ ’)

The following guidelines are for curly apostrophes. Render them by following the keyboard shortcuts on your device.

plural nouns not ending in s: Add ’s: the alumni’s contributions, women’s rights.

plural nouns ending in s: Add only an apostrophe: the churches’ needs,��the girls’ toys, the horses’ food,��the ships’ wake, states’ rights, the VIPs’ entrance.

nouns plural in form, singular in meaning: Add only an apostrophe: mathematics’ rules, measles’ effects. Apply the same principle when a plural word occurs in the formal name of a singular entity: General Motors’ profits, the United States’ wealth.

nouns the same in singular and plural: Treat them the same as plurals, even if the meaning is singular:��one corps’ location, the two deer’s tracks, the lone moose’s antlers.

singular nouns not ending in s: Add ’s: the church’s needs, the girl’s toys,��the horse’s food, the ship’s route, the VIP’s seat.

singular common nouns ending in s: Add ’s: the hostess’s invitation,��the hostess’s seat; the witness’s answer, the witness’s story.

singular proper names ending in s: Use only an apostrophe: Achilles’ heel, Agnes’ book,��Ceres’ rites, Descartes’ theories,��Dickens’ novels, Euripides’ dramas,��Hercules’ labors, Jesus’ life, Jules’ seat,��Kansas’ schools, Moses’ law, Socrates’ life, Tennessee Williams’ plays, Xerxes’ armies.

pronouns: Personal interrogative and relative pronouns have separate forms for the possessive. None involves an apostrophe: mine, ours,��your, yours, his, hers, its, theirs, whose.

If you are using an apostrophe with a pronoun, always double check to be sure that the meaning calls for a contraction: ��dz�’r��, ����’s, �ٳ�����’s, �ɳ��’s. Follow the rules listed above in forming the possessives of other pronouns: another’s idea, others’ plans, someone’s guess.

compound words: Applying the rules above, add an apostrophe or ’s to the word closest to the object possessed: the major general’s decision, the major generals’ decisions,��the attorney general’s request, the attorneys general’s request.

Also: anyone else’s attitude, John Adams Jr.’s father, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania’s motion. Whenever practical, however, recast the phrase to avoid ambiguity: the motion by Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania.

joint possession, individual possession: Use a possessive form after only the last word if ownership is joint: Fred and Sylvia’s apartment, Fred and Sylvia’s stocks.

Use a possessive form after both words if the objects are individually owned: Fred’s and Sylvia’s books.

descriptive phrases: Do not add an apostrophe to a word ending in s when it is used primarily in a descriptive sense: citizens band radio,��a Cincinnati Reds infielder, a teachers college, a Teamsters request, a writers guide.

Memory aid: The apostrophe usually is not used if for or by rather than of would be appropriate in the longer form: a radio band for citizens, a college for teachers, a guide for writers, a request by the Teamsters.

An ’s is required, however, when a term involves a plural word that does not end in s: a children’s hospital,��a people’s republic, the Young Men’s Christian Association.

descriptive names: Some governmental, corporate, and institutional organizations with a descriptive word in their names use an apostrophe; some do not. Follow the user’s practice: Actors’ Equity, Diners Club, the Ladies’ Home Journal, the National Governors Association .

quasi possessives: Follow the rules above in composing the possessive form of words that occur in such phrases as a day’s pay, two weeks’ vacation, three days’ work, your money’s worth.

Frequently, however, a hyphenated form is clearer: a two-week vacation, a three-day job.

double possessive: Two conditions must apply for a double possessive—a phrase such as a friend of John’s—to occur: 1. The word after of must refer to an animate object, and 2. The word before of must involve only a portion of the animate object’s possessions.

Otherwise, do not use the possessive form of the word after of: The friends of John Adams mourned his death. (All the friends were involved.) He is a friend of the college. (Not ���DZ����𲵱�’s, because college is inanimate).

Memory aid: This construction occurs most often, and quite naturally, with the possessive forms of personal pronouns: He is a friend of mine.

inanimate objects: There is no blanket rule against creating a possessive form for an inanimate object, particularly if the object is treated in a personified sense. See some of the earlier examples, and note these: death’s call, the wind’s murmur.

In general, however, avoid excessive personalization of inanimate objects, and give preference to an of construction when it fits the makeup of the sentence. For example, the earlier references to mathematics’ rules and measles’ effects would better be phrased: the rules of mathematics, the effects of measles.

omitted letters: ��’v��, ����’s, ��Dz�’t, rock ’n’ roll, ’tis the season to be jolly. He is a ne’er-do-well.

omitted figures: The class of ’62. The Spirit of ’76. The ’20s.

plurals of a single letter: Mind your p’s and q’s. He learned the three R’s and brought home a report card with four A’s and two B’s. The Oakland A’s won the pennant.

colon (:)

A colon should not separate a verb and its direct object in a sentence. To introduce a list, use either a complete sentence or a short phrase before the colon. Correct: Our partners: or These are our partners: Incorrect: Our partners are:

Capitalize the first word after a colon only if it is a proper noun or the start of a complete sentence:��He promised this: The company will make good all the losses. But: There were three considerations: expense, time, and feasibility.

comma (,)

Use commas to separate elements in a series and equal adjectives: The flag is red, white, and blue; a thoughtful, precise manner; a dark, dangerous street.

Use commas with introductory phrases and clauses: When he had tired of the mad pace of New York, he moved to Dubuque. And nonessential phrases and clauses:��David and his wife, Fran, worked to end global poverty; The yellow car in the driveway belongs to Jim (where two yellow cars are on the property).

When a conjunction such as and, but, or for links two clauses that could stand alone as separate sentences, use a comma before the conjunction in most cases: She was glad she had looked, for a man was approaching the house.

As a rule of thumb, use a comma if the subject of each clause is expressly stated: We are visiting Washington, and we also plan a side trip to Williamsburg. We visited Washington, and our senator greeted us personally. But no comma when the subject of the two clauses is the same and is not repeated in the second: We are visiting Washington and plan to see the White House.

ellipsis (…)

Use an ellipsis to indicate the deletion of one or more words in condensing quotes, texts and documents. Render an ellipsis by following the keyboard shortcut for your device. Be especially careful to avoid deletions that would distort the meaning. Avoid excessive ellipses by paraphrasing or using partial quotes.

An ellipsis also may be used to indicate a thought that the speaker or writer does not complete.

If the words that precede an ellipsis constitute a grammatically complete sentence, either in the original or in the condensation, place a period at the end of the last word before the ellipsis. Follow it with a regular space and an ellipsis: I no longer have a strong enough political base. …

If the words preceding an ellipsis constitute a fragment or an incomplete thought, end the sentence with an ellipsis, set off by a space. I wish you wouldn’t …��

If the ellipses is being used as a pause rather than to omit words, consider using end punctuation or an em dash instead. If using an ellipsis rhetorically, insert a space on either side: I like bananas … until I ��Dz�’t.

��em dashes (—)

Use em dashes to denote an abrupt change in thought in a sentence or an emphatic pause: Through her long reign, the queen and her family have adapted—usually skillfully—to the changing taste of the time. But avoid overuse of dashes to set off phrases when commas would suffice. Do not insert spaces on either side. Render em dashes by following the keyboard shortcut for your device.

When a phrase that otherwise would be set off by commas contains a series of words that must be separated by commas, use dashes to set off the full phrase: He listed the qualities—intelligence, humor, conservatism, independence—that he liked in an executive.

Use a dash before an author’s or composer’s name at the end of a quotation: “Who steals my purse steals trash.” —Shakespeare.

en dashes (–)

Use en dashes to denote numeric range, a partnership or pairing where both parts are equal, or as a stand-in for versus:��the Trump–Clinton debate; 40–50 people; the Spanish–American War. Do not insert spaces on either side. Render en dashes by following the keyboard shortcut for your device.

hyphen (-)

Use hyphens to avoid ambiguity or to form a single idea from two or more words.

avoid ambiguity: Use a hyphen whenever ambiguity would result if it were omitted: The president will speak to small-business owners. Others: He recovered his health. He re-covered the leaky roof. The story is a re-creation. The park is for recreation. Per AP, do not hyphenate double-vowel combinations with prefixes like pre-, re-, and co-, but retain the hyphen for these words: re-entry, re-examine, co-op, re-create.��

compound modifiers: When a compound modifier—two or more words that express a single concept—precedes a noun, use hyphens to link all the words in the compound except the adverb very and all adverbs that end in –ly:��a first-quarter touchdown, a bluish-green dress,��a full-time job, a well-known man,��a better-qualified woman,��a know-it-all attitude, a very good time, an easily remembered rule, the 19th-century law.

Exceptions: high school student, real estate market,��natural gas pipeline, fossil fuel infrastructure,��fast food chain, open source technology, climate change plan, human resources department. These compound modifiers are adequate without hyphens.

Many combinations that are hyphenated before a noun are not hyphenated when they occur after a noun: The team scored in the first quarter. The dress, a bluish green, was on sale. She works full time. His attitude suggested that he knew it all.

But when a modifier that would be hyphenated before a noun occurs instead after a form of the verb to be, the hyphen usually must be retained to avoid confusion: The man is well-known. The teacher is sharp-tongued. The children are soft-spoken. The play is second-rate.

The principle of using a hyphen to avoid confusion explains why no hyphen is required with very and –ly words. Readers can expect them to modify the word that follows. But if a combination such as little-known man were not hyphenated, the reader could logically be expecting little to be followed by a noun, as in��little man. Instead, the reader encountering little known would have to back up mentally and make the compound connection on his own.

Use an en dash between the last element in compound modifiers of three or more words that include a proper noun, leaving the space between the words in the proper noun open: East Lansing–bound bus, South Dakota–based organization.

suspensive hyphenation: Use these forms to shorten a compound modifier or a noun phrase that shares a common word:

When the elements are joined by and or or, expressing more than one element: 10-, 15- or 20-minute intervals; 5- and 6-year-olds. But: The intervals are 10, 15 or 20 minutes; the children are 5 to 6 years old.

When the elements are joined by to or by, expressing a single element: a 10-to-15-year prison term; an 8-by-12-inch pan. But: The prison term is 10 to 15 years; the pan is 8 by 12 inches.

quotation marks (“ ”)

Use curly open-quote marks (“) and close-quote (”) marks to surround the exact words of a speaker or writer when reported in a story. Render curly quotation marks by following the keyboard shortcuts for your device.

running quotations: If a full paragraph of quoted material is followed by a paragraph that continues the quotation, do not put close-quote marks at the end of the first paragraph. However, do put open-quote marks at the start of the second paragraph. Continue in this fashion for any succeeding paragraphs, using close-quote marks only at the end of the quoted material.

irony: Put quotation marks around a word or words used in an ironical sense: The “debate” turned into a free-for-all.

unfamiliar terms: A word or words being introduced to readers may be placed in quotation marks on first reference:

Broadcast frequencies are measured in “kilohertz.”

Do not put subsequent references to kilohertz in quotation marks.

avoid unnecessary fragments: Do not use quotation marks to report a few ordinary words that a speaker or writer has used:

Wrong: The senator said he would “go home to Michigan” if he lost the election.

Right: The senator said he would go home to Michigan if he lost the election.

partial quotes: When a partial quote is used, do not put quotation marks around words that the speaker could not have used. Do not capitalize the first word of a partial quote, unless ����’s the first-person singular pronoun or a proper noun.

Suppose the individual said, “I am horrified at your slovenly manners.”

Wrong: She said she “was horrified at their slovenly manners.”

Right: She said she was horrified at their “slovenly manners.”

Better when practical: Use the full quote.

On August 15, 2015, I climbed into a 12-year-old, four-cylinder pickup truck and began an 18-week journey.

I drove 12,000 miles, starting at home, in Suquamish, Washington, an Indian reservation just west of Seattle, and visited 18 states, five Indian reservations, five industrial cities, and a smattering of small towns.
 I camped on a mountaintop in the Kentucky coalfields and stopped in at the renowned Highlander Center in New Market, Tennessee, where Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. came to talk strategy, and where Pete Seeger co-wrote “We Shall Overcome.” I visited Native American pueblos of northern New Mexico; I camped on a ranch in Montana, by Lake Erie in Ohio, and in a canyon outside Amarillo, Texas. People invited me to sleep in their spare rooms, and when I got snowed in, I stayed in a cheap hotel on the Idaho border with Oregon.

People I met on the road, YES! Magazine readers and people who followed my blog, tipped me off to good stories, and introduced me to extraordinary people.

The reason for the trip? I wanted to find out what people are doing about poverty and inequality in their communities, the climate crisis, and racism. I especially wanted to find out if the places at the margins of society might have answers, and if those answers were early signs of a new society.

These are tough times. Fully half of Americans are poor, while virtually all the economic gains since the 2008 economic crash have gone to a tiny elite. Isolation is making people depressed, sick, and powerless. The climate crisis is jeopardizing our future, and opportunistic politicians are whipping up racism and hate to win over voters angry about being locked out of the prosperity that others seem to enjoy.

The media keep us distracted with celebrity gossip and trivia, but they ignore the really big stories that will determine the sort of future we have.

I co-founded YES! Magazine 20 years ago to explore underreported stories that matter, particularly the stories that show how people are taking on some of the big crises of our time. If our current systems are failing—and I believe they are—then I wanted to look for evidence that people are creating a different sort of world.

We found lots of evidence as we researched the stories and issue themes, from the spread of the local food movement to the national movement against mass incarceration. People around the United States and around the world are creating worker-owned cooperatives, urban farms, time banks, land trusts, and restorative justice circles. As they do that, they are also creating and finding more satisfying ways to live and leaving behind consumer values for things that matter more.

But is all this good work enough?

In spite of well-crafted critiques, social movements, public opinion, and lots of hard work, inequality continues to grow; racism remains embedded in American culture; and there seems to be no way to stop big corporations from outsourcing our jobs, contaminating our water, soil, and air, and flooding media channels with distraction and lies. Especially worrisome is that we are running out of time to slow the heating of the globe, which is happening even more rapidly than scientists feared.

I left on my road trip to find out if there is still hope. Are there solutions that are up to the challenges of our time, and if so, what forms do they take?

I traveled through Montana and North Dakota, where I found Native and ranching communities that have shut down fracking and mining—and are developing a restorative vision for their region. In the Rust Belt cities of the Midwest, I found people resisting home foreclosures and working to build a locally rooted economy with room for everyone. On the East Coast, I found people grappling with the nation’s legacy of racism and taking steps to heal and bring justice. Throughout the country, I found people creating worker-owned enterprises, building bridges across race lines, regenerating the soil, and developing their own place-based economies.

In difficult times, strongman leaders often arise who offer an outlet for anger and fear disguised as nationalism.

On the left, too, revolutions often have larger-than-life leaders who mobilize millions. Those who are hungry for change may be excited by these powerful movements, even though they tend to spawn authoritarian systems. And we have seen the disasters associated with patriarchal, top-down change.

The revolution I discovered is decentralized, far less flashy, and better able to include everyone, especially those now excluded from wealth and power. It doesn’t rely on self-important leaders. It undercuts the values that have driven our consumer-based culture, the isolation that sickens the soul, the racism, and the greed that fuels Wall Street and corrupts its collaborators in government. Instead, it is about reclaiming our rights to what really matters—community, life, the healing of each person, and the vitality and restoration of the natural world, including the threatened species with whom we share this Earth.

I came back from my travels believing that this sort of revolution is our only real hope in the face of ecological and social unraveling.

The only way such a big revolution can happen is, ironically, at a small scale.

Only where we live, in the neighborhoods and cities and towns where we encounter each other and know each other, can the transformation be deep enough. Only in community can we reconnect to each other, to the natural world, and to our own deepest values. That reconnection is our source of power and hope.

No charismatic leader or top-down revolution can bring about the needed change. Only by working together in the places we call home can we overcome isolation, embrace our differences, confront the extractive economy, and create the sort of world that will work for all of us.

But this is just the beginning for North Carolinians whose homes have been destroyed.

“This deadly storm has left a lasting impact on families, neighborhoods, and communities across a wide swath of our state,” . “Now is the time to pull together to help our fellow North Carolinians recover from Hurricane Florence and rebuild even stronger, and smarter, than before.”

Flooding is ongoing, but after floodwaters have cleared, contractors and volunteers will have to rebuild homes and clean up mold, spillage from septic systems, and other debris.

One group is already preparing its long-term recovery efforts in North Carolina. SBP, formerly known as the St. Bernard Project, was founded in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The organization has assisted with long-term recovery in at least eight cities affected by other hurricanes or disasters since then, including Houston; Rockaway, New York; and Joplin, Missouri. Now, ����’s setting up long-term assistance in North Carolina.

SBP began its efforts by sending a team of five AmeriCorps members and two full-time nonprofit staffers to New Bern, North Carolina, on September 18.

New Bern was . On Sept. 21, the  showed Hurricane Florence is responsible for $74.5 million in residential damage and $25.6 million in commercial damage.

“New Bern lost more than 4,200 homes during Hurricane Florence, and the area our team is working is a blue-collar community that needs a bunch of assistance,” said Reese May, chief strategy and innovation officer at SBP, noting that the organization likes to send its initial team to areas with the most need.

The communities that need the most assistance after a disaster are those that are low-income and made up of people of color.

SBP uses a number of interventions for long-term recovery. These include rebuilding homes quickly, training local organizations to clear debris and mold from buildings, and assisting homeowners with securing funds from their insurance company or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It also advises policymakers to get federal dollars out quickly and efficiently.

When a hurricane is looming, SPB staffers are assigned to track the storm and evaluate options for response. They watch for where it might make landfall, which resources the community already has, and which areas might be most affected. The organization seeks out existing partners in the area that can share resources related to preparedness to homeowners.

While SBP now operates in eight cities, where it will stay until disaster-related housing needs have been addressed in those communities, the organization doesn’t retain a force of volunteers and responders. When new disasters happen, they pull full-time staff and members from AmeriCorps, one of the organization’s partners.

Often the communities that need the most assistance—both immediate and long-term—after a disaster are those that are low-income and made up of people of color. The race breakdown in New Bern is 53.5 percent White, 31.4 percent Black, and 6.12 percent Latinx, . And the median household income is $41,970, more than $6,000 less than the statewide median of $48,256, according to Census data.

“It’s not surprising that disasters affect richer people less, that they affect communities of color more, said Dr. Jacob Remes, clinical assistant professor of history at New York University’s Gallatin School for Individualized Study. “[It’s] not because disasters are racist or classist but because people with less power are more likely to be in more hazardous locations.”

That was  the case in New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina did the most harm to the , who stayed in the Louisiana Superdome, where their health and safety was threatened, for days after the storm. Also, the city’s elderly and Black populations “were much more likely to die than would be expected given their presence in the population,” published two years after the storm.

Remes, who started studying disasters after Hurricane Katrina, said that until Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, he thought response and recovery efforts had improved since 2006.

In Puerto Rico, racism and imperialism impeded the trend of improved recovery response when a disaster occurs, he said. While Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, a 1901 Supreme Court ruling set a precedent for the island to  because of its “alien races, differing from us in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation, and modes of thought, the administration of government and justice.” The response and recovery efforts after Hurricane Maria were slow. An  from FEMA showed that the agency to help with recovery in Puerto Rico.

Now with Hurricane Florence, individuals, organizations, and governments have a chance to get things right.

Yet, under the , a law that sets guidelines for the federal response to major disasters, the U.S. government should have treated Puerto Rico like a state.

Now with Hurricane Florence, individuals, organizations, and governments have a chance to get things right, Remes added.

“If you think about who lives near hog farms and who lives near coal ash dumps, those are created through environmental racism and class inequality,” Remes said, referencing the and the that have been flooded by hurricane rains in North Carolina. “But I also think that we have the opportunity to say, ‘No, we’re going to try to do better this time.’”

In North Carolina’s census blocks with 80 or more percent people of color, the proportion of those living within 3 miles of an industrial hog operation is two times higher than in blocks with no people of color, according to a from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In North Carolina so far, the seven-person team with SBP has led and trained volunteers and organizations to clear out carpet, appliances, and other large debris as well as remove mold from homes that were damaged during the storm.

May said he knows this small team has a limited reach, but that immediate response is helpful as the organization prepares to set up its long-term operating site in the state.

“SBP’s not a disaster-response organization,” May said. “We’re a long-term recovery group. But over the years, we’ve learned that if you ��Dz�’t get in there quickly, many, many missteps can happen, so we’ve adopted the response phase as well.”

Once the long-term site is set up, SBP will accept applications for recovery assistance from hurricane survivors. The application will take into account both qualitative data about families’ needs and financial background, as well as, “qualitative considerations that get to the health and safety and sustainability of the family’s current condition after the storm,” May said.

Two of the main forms of long-term assistance SBP are to offer will be to rebuild homes and help homeowners obtain payouts from their insurance policies or government agencies, which typically take 12 to 18 months to process.

The nonprof����’s overall mission is to help shrink the amount of time it takes for communities to recover after disaster.

“Mississippi and Louisiana are still recovering [from Hurricane Katrina] and we ��Dz�’t want that to be the case for New York and New Jersey [after Hurricane Sandy]. We ��Dz�’t want it to be the case for Houston and South Carolina [after Hurricane Joaquin],” May said. “And we certainly ��Dz�’t want it to be the case for the folks on the coast of North Carolina right now.”

This article was funded in part by a grant from the Surdna Foundation. 

Correction: September 28, 2018.
An earlier version quoted the number of homes in New Bern, North Carolina, lost to Hurricane Florence as 42. The number is 4,200. 

There is still much we ��Dz�’t know about each other and the impact of race and racism in our homes, our schools, our workplaces, our local governments. Many of our families and communities are simply microcosms of the greater society that often miseducates us.

When we enter school, we learn about the fact of slavery but too often without context or judgment. We ��Dz�’t learn about the resistance movements. Or the full stories of Nat Turner or John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth.

This is changing slowly. Small groups of people of all racial backgrounds are discovering the centuries of literature that do tell these stories. Because of that, they are having important discussions. There are now more college courses than ever on African and African-American studies, Indigenous studies, Latin-American and Mexican studies, and Arab-American studies, as well as religious courses that focus on Islam and Eastern religions. Movements have sprung from these readings, and, particularly since the Black Lives Matter movement began, new works are making it onto mainstream reading lists.

Here’s a short list of recent, mostly 2017, books for those who want to know more about White supremacy and the impacts of racism that we deal with today. These authors are influential voices in their fields, speaking unapologetically their own truths and experiences. Their works are examples of how everyone can show up in their own spaces for conversations based on reasoning and research rather anger and frustration. Some of the books have humor, but most ��Dz�’t. Some are academic. But they all offer solutions, or at least enough perspective for readers to feel confident in having necessary conversations.

Invisible No ������Ƶ: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color by Andrea Ritchie

Police-misconduct attorney Andrea Ritchie calls out police violence against Black, indigenous, Latinx, Asian, Middle Eastern women who are cis, trans, lesbian, or gender non-conforming. She identifies broader patterns of racialized policing of girls in schools on the streets that include disability and mental illness, nonconforming gender lines, sex work, and even motherhood.

National data show more Black men are killed at higher rates than women, but Ritchie says those numbers ��Dz�’t tell the whole story. “The number counts are in kinds of police interaction, traffic stops, street stops, and police killing. But there are no numbers counting police rape or police sexual harassment or unlawful strip searches. These are also acts of police violence,” Ritchie says.

But while police violence against women of color is increasing—through broken windows policing, zero-tolerance policies, deportation, child protective services, the war on drugs, and the war on terrorism—public resistance is also increasing. In Invisible No ������Ƶ, Ritchie documents this violence but also acts of resistance and possibilities for reform.

Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives, and the Struggle for Justice by Rima Vesely-Flad

Professor Rima Vesely-Flad, director of peace and justice studies at Warren Wilson College writes, “Even when the actions of Black people appear nonthreatening, the bodies of Black people are deemed dangerous.” If you’ve ever wondered about the growing use of the term “Black bodies” in place of “Black people,” you should read this book. Vesely-Flad uses social pollution theory to explain the ways in which Black people are reduced to being seen as only the material conditions from which they suffer (poverty, poor health, incarceration, violent communities). This arises from the construct that Black people are “immoral, slothful, and dangerous”—socially polluted—and is associated with the dark skin and hair phenotype: Black bodies in Black communities.” Through this lens, she examines the criminalization of Black people throughout history. She outlines how policing has established racialized boundaries between Black and White “pure” communities but concludes the anti-Stop-and-Frisk and Black Lives Matter movements have begun to re-construct the image of Blackness.

Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came Apart, How We Come Together by Van Jones

CNN political commentator and longtime civil rights activist, Van Jones (who just received his own show for 2018) calls in people on all sides of the political spectrum—from the far left and elite liberals to the elite conservatives and the “dirty right.” For the sake of unity and progress, Jones asks that everyone acknowledge where there are shared concerns, burdens, and impacts on issues such as mass incarceration, drug epidemics, immigration, and inclusion in tech and green jobs. The book follows on the theme of Jones’ post-Trump “Love Army” project, which encourages people to connect and talk to each other, respecting disagreement and recognizing that our challenges are intertwined, that being united is our biggest strength, and that the process will be messy and complicated.

Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Journalist and former Black nationalist activist Mumia Abu-Jamal has written more than six books while incarcerated for murder since the 1980s. In Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? Abu-Jamal writes, “When a society reaches dead end, when it can no longer persist in its old ways, social movements arise to push it to its next stage development. If that social movement is able to project its ideas, and spread them widely enough, and these ideas find room in the hearts and minds of the People, such movements may make that next step, and define the era’s zeitgeist and what is and is not the common good.” The collection of essays captures decades of the police violence that led to the Black Lives Matter movement, giving voice to those victims and survivors and offering suggestions to not just address it but to move into action to end it.

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Taylor says How We Get Free is an effort to reconnect the radical roots of Black feminism to contemporary organizing. The book is composed of interviews with the three authors of the Combahee River Collective Statement, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, and Devita Frazier, along with Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza. Commentary by historian Barbara Ransby gives historical context for today’s oppression of trans women of color, the fight for reproductive rights, and the movement against police violence. It was in the Combahee River Statement that the terms intersectionality and identity politics were first defined. The women wrote, “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free, since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

In his third book, a collection of new and previously published essays, Coates examines the vestiges of Reconstruction in today’s socio-political climate. He reflects on the Obama administration years through his own “experiences, observations, and intellectual development.” He begins with “Notes From The First Year,” where he recounted his own failures while sitting in an unemployment office in Harlem, New York. It was 2007, the same year Barack Obama announced his run for the presidency. By “Notes From the Eighth Year,” Coates had become a notable essayist and journalist with award-winning and influential pieces, “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case For Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” all published in The Atlantic Magazine, where he is now a national correspondent. In 2016, Coates was sitting in the Oval, interviewing President Barack Obama. Coates also explores the movements that rose during the Obama era and their impact in today’s politics.

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown

Inspired by Octavia Butler’s explorations of the human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. It invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us to better understand and influence them as they happen.

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

In her debut novel, blogger and editor-at-large for The Establishment magazine Oluo responds to questions that she’s often asked about race and racism—and those “she wishes she were asked.” If ��dz�’r�� familiar with her essays, you’ll know Oluo is a straight-shooter in her commentary about racism, sexism, and feminism. With wit and candor, she generously shares her perspective as a Black, queer, middle-class, college-educated woman who was raised in mostly White Seattle by a White single mother.

The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6′ 4″, African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama’s Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian by W. Kamau Bell

Bell is a stand-up comic, so expect to laugh, even if ��dz�’r�� not sure you should. In his debut book, the Bay area comedian goes there in his commentary about race relations—including his own interracial marriage, fatherhood, and of course politics and police violence. You may know Bell from his Emmy-award-winning docu-series on CNN, United Shades of America.

Sixty miles south of my home is a small municipality in New Jersey called Bordentown Township. The population is 11,367, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Two very important things happened there in 2016. One alarmed me; the other gave me hope. The first was the arrest of the town’s former police chief, Frank Nucera Jr., who had just stepped down after years on the force. Nucera was charged by the FBI with committing a federal hate crime and violating a person’s civil rights while he was chief. Nucera, I would learn, is a confirmed racist. Once, when discussing a situation where he believed an African American had slashed the tires on a patrol cruiser, he told a fellow officer, “I wish that nigger would come back from Trenton and give me a reason to put my hands on him. I’m tired of ’em. These niggers are like ISIS. They have no value. They should line them all up and mow ’em down. I’d like to be on the firing squad. I could do it.”

According to taped conversations, Nucera routinely made such statements to his officers, referring to African Americans as “niggers,” “nigs,” and “moulinyans,” an Italian slang for nigger. He liked to intimidate local African Americans by positioning police dogs at the gymnasium entrance during high school basketball games or by having his officers walk the dogs through predominantly Black apartment units. If his officers weren’t tough enough, he’d lead by example. When a Black 18-year-old and his 16-year-old girlfriend were being arrested for allegedly failing to pay a hotel bill even as they swam in the hotel’s pool, Nucera approached the male teenager from behind, grabbed his head, and slammed it into a metal doorjamb. “I’m fucking tired of them, man,” he said after the incident. “I’ll tell you what, ����’s gonna get to the point where I could shoot one of these motherfuckers. And that nigger bitch lady [the 16-year-old’s aunt], she almost got it.”

I have known lots of New Jersey police chiefs. I was a member of the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police. I knew incompetent chiefs, corrupt chiefs in New Jersey and other states, as well. Still, I was stunned that someone as morally and intellectually bankrupt as Nucera could have headed a police department in New Jersey, or any state for that matter, in these times. It would be easy to say Nucera was a bad cop, an aberration that fortunately has been excised from the law enforcement body, but who he is and what he was speaks to the explicit or tacit approval of racism and bias by mayors, city officials, and other police officers who have worked with officers like him. Nucera had been a member of the Bordentown Police Department for years. He was promoted through the ranks to become chief. Consequently, in all those years, his racism was no secret to those who worked with him day to day. In the end, it was even rewarded. His rise to the position of chief is disheartening.

I was stunned that someone as morally and intellectually bankrupt as Nucera could have headed a police department in New Jersey, or any state for that matter, in these times.

Still, as sickened as I was by Nucera, there was a wrinkle of hope: his arrest. It made me think that maybe, just maybe, we are ready to rid our departments of noxious cops, dangerous police behaviors, and bad police policies that put people in danger and do a disservice to all Americans. Nucera, it turns out, was done in by one of his own men. A White police officer in his department was so offended by his racism that he went to the FBI and agreed to secretly record his conversations. Those recordings led to his arrest. The courageous officer’s actions hint at a relatively small but significant attitudinal shift among individual officers.

That shift communicates a new attitude in law enforcement: that we recognize the role police have historically played as oppressors and occupiers of African American communities, and we want to change that relationship. President Barack Obama began the dialogue when he convened law enforcement from across the country to develop a guide for policing in the 21st century. Terrence Cunningham, however, as head of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2016, signaled to law enforcement officers everywhere that its leadership decided it is time for a change.

“There have been times when law enforcement officers, because of the laws enacted by federal, state, and local governments, have been the face of oppression for far too many of our fellow citizens,” he told his 16,000 members in San Diego. “The laws adopted by our society have required police officers to perform many unpalatable tasks, such as ensuring legalized discrimination or even denying the basic rights of citizenship to many of our fellow Americans. While this is no longer the case, this dark side of our shared history has created a multigenerational—almost inherited—mistrust between many communities of color and their law enforcement agencies. We must forge a path that allows us to move beyond our history and identify common solutions to better protect our communities. For our part, the first step in this process is for law enforcement and the IACP to acknowledge and apologize for the actions of the past and the role that our profession has played in society’s historical mistreatment of communities of color.”

Despite Cunningham’s statement, cops like Nucera prove, unfortunately, the past is not always past. Nor does his statement soothe the pain of the families of victims of police shootings and abuse such as Walter Scott, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Sandra Bland, or of Fred Watson and his children. Still, ����’s refreshing to have law enforcement acknowledge past misdeeds regarding African American and Latino communities and point toward a new direction in police behavior. Additionally, some police departments, in most cases prodded by U.S. Justice Department consent decrees after an individual police officer’s action revealed systemic abuse, are moving toward a system of law enforcement, in which police officers are judged by how many people they positively serve, rather than solely by how many arrests they make and how many summonses they issue.

What departments are discovering is that while, yes, there are bad police officers, the real problem is bad systems—inadequate training, reward, and promotion issues; lack of community engagement; and mismatched expectations between what patrol officers see as their jobs and what the communities see as the police officers’ responsibility. Organizations and groups like Black Lives Matter have pushed the conversation forward by focusing all of us on the centuries-old problem of Black men and women, girls and boys being routinely disrespected, discounted, harassed, jailed, and shot down indiscriminately by police.

But if Black lives matter, all of them must matter, not only the ones whose lives are snuffed out by police. If Michael Brown’s life mattered, then so did Richard Jordan III, a 10-year-old who loved to play football and was slain in a drive-by shooting in Memphis, Tennessee, at 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 13, 2017, while in a car with his family; and 1-year-old Robin Keefer, who was fatally shot four days before Richard Jordan, also in Memphis, as she played in her family’s apartment; and Robin Keefer’s 2-year-old sister, Laylah Washington, shot and killed five months earlier, also in another drive-by.

What departments are discovering is that while, yes, there are bad police officers, the real problem is bad systems.

After years in law enforcement, cops become immune to most things. Still, I always knew that one day there would be something I encountered that would shake me—some case, some murder, some thing that would burrow into my psyche and stay with me for the rest of my life. That event would be my personal reckoning. It came on a hot summer evening in 2006, not long before I moved to Newark. Four friends—Terrance Aeriel, 18, Natasha Aeriel, his 19-year-old sister, Dashon Harvey, 20, and Iofemi Hightower, 20—had gathered on Saturday, Aug. 5, in the playground of Mount Vernon High School, located in a middle-class Newark suburb. At around 11:30 p.m., a group of men approached them as they played music. And then the horror began. Natasha Aeriel was shot first, collapsing from a bullet to the face near a set of bleachers. The other three were then marched behind a low wall for what would be the last seconds of lives that had hardly begun. They were forced to kneel and then were shot one by one, execution-style. Natasha survived.

The incident made national news. The suspects were ultimately caught. I was in charge of the ATF’s Denver Division when it happened. The news hit me harder than some, because the murders struck close to home. Three of the victims were students at Delaware State University, my alma mater, and the other one had applied to go there. Three of them were in the university’s marching band, the DSU Approaching Storm, the same school band that played during halftime at my football games while the other players and I were in the locker room preparing for the second half. One of them guided prospective students around Delaware State as an ambassador for the university. They were good kids; kids with hope and purpose. It was so senseless. A gang initiation.

Shortly after I arrived in my new post in New Jersey, I was conducting a special briefing for some of my supervisors just a year after the murders. As part of the briefing, we were shown the crime scene photos. Their dead faces peered back at me from the photographs flashed across the screen, and my heart broke. Those Black lives mattered, too. They mattered to me and their families and their friends and the teachers and advisers at their schools and their next-door neighbors. I couldn’t get those faces out of my head. They haunted me. In response, I set up the Horace Foundation Endowment for Criminal Justice Studies at Delaware State University, which gives scholarships to students from northern New Jersey to study criminal justice. I’m not rich, so people sometimes ask me why I started a scholarship fund. In response, I quote a song by one of my favorite artists:

Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something.

Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something.

Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something.

Everybody can do something.

Everybody can do something.

Everybody can do something.

Excerpted from the book The Black and the Blue by Matthew Horace and Ron Harris, published Aug. 7 by Hachette Books, a division of Hachette Book Group. Copyright 2018 Matthew Horace and Ron Harris.

I’m a professional melancholic, and for years my delight in the autumn color show quickly morphed into sadness as I watched the beauty die. Focused on the browning of summer’s green growth, I allowed the prospect of death to eclipse all that’s life-giving about fall and its sensuous delights.

Then I began to understand a simple fact: All the “falling” that’s going on out there is full of promise. Seeds are being planted and leaves are being composted as Earth prepares for yet another uprising of green.

Today, as I weather the late autumn of my own life, I find nature a trustworthy guide. It’s easy to fixate on everything that goes to ground as time goes by: the disintegration of a relationship, the disappearance of good work well-done, the diminishment of a sense of purpose and meaning. But as ��’v�� come to understand that life “composts” and “seeds” us as autumn does the Earth, ��’v�� seen how possibility gets planted in us even in the hardest of times.

Looking back, I see how the job I lost pushed me to find work that was mine to do, how the “Road Closed” sign turned me toward terrain I’m glad I traveled, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to find new sources of meaning. In each of these experiences, it felt as though something was dying, and so it was. Yet deep down, amid all the falling, the seeds of new life were always being silently and lavishly sown. The hopeful notion that new life is hidden in dying is surely reinforced by the visual glories of autumn. What artist would paint a deathbed scene with the vibrant and vital palette nature uses? Perhaps death possesses a grace that we who fear dying, who find it ugly and even obscene, cannot see. How shall we understand nature’s testimony that dying itself—as devastating as we know it can be—contains the hope of a certain beauty?

The hopeful notion that new life is hidden in dying is surely reinforced by the visual glories of autumn.

The closest ��’v�� ever come to answering that question begins with these words from Thomas Merton, quoted earlier in this book: “There is in all visible things … a hidden wholeness.” In the visible world of nature, a great truth is concealed in plain sight. Diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites: They are held together in the paradox of the “hidden wholeness.” In a paradox, opposites do not negate each other—they cohabit and cocreate in mysterious unity at the heart of reality. Deeper still, they need each other for health, just as our well-being depends on breathing in and breathing out. Because we live in a culture that prefers the ease of either—or to the complexities of both—and, we have a hard time holding opposites together. We want light without darkness, the glories of spring and summer without the demands of autumn and winter, the pleasures of life without the pangs of death. We make Faustian bargains hoping to get what we want, but they never truly enliven us and cannot possibly sustain us in hard times.

When we so fear the dark that we demand light around the clock, there can be only one result: artificial light that is glaring and graceless and, beyond its borders, a darkness that grows ever more terrifying as we try to hold it off. Split off from each other, neither darkness nor light is fit for human habitation. But the moment we say “yes” to both of them and join their paradoxical dance, the two conspire to make us healthy and whole. When I give myself over to organic reality—to the endless interplay of darkness and light, falling and rising—the life I am given is as real and colorful, fruitful and whole as this graced and graceful world and the seasonal cycles that make it so. Though I still grieve as beauty goes to ground, autumn reminds me to celebrate the primal power that is forever making all things new in me, in us, and in the natural world.

This excerpt from On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old by Parker J. Palmer is reprinted with permission from . This essay originally appeared on Three essays in this book are accompanied by songs written and performed by the gifted singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer. All three songs can be downloaded free of charge at

Maybe the Electoral College would go rogue and vote for Hillary Clinton? Maybe Chief Justice John Roberts would refuse to swear him in? Maybe the Supreme Court could nullify the election after evidence came to light of Russian interference?

We all saw how that went. But the frenzied search for ways to inaugurate the candidate who actually won the most votes does speak to the fact that we’ve now had two presidential elections in the past 20 years in which the candidate who won fewer votes was nonetheless elected president, thanks to the way the Electoral College operates in determining who takes office.

The Electoral College is embedded in the Constitution, specifically in Article Two, the same part that establishes that the executive branch of government is led by a president. The only way to eliminate the Electoral College and officially change to a system that ensures the president is popularly elected would be to amend the Constitution. That’s difficult enough during the best of times and nearly impossible in today’s highly partisan environment. (And Republicans would see such a move as an attempt to reduce their power—which it is, these days.)

But what if we just rendered the Electoral College moot?

That’s the gist of the National Popular Vote movement, an initiative that would essentially be an end run around the Electoral College without actually removing it from the Constitution.

There are several problems with the Electoral College, but the key one is in how states award their electoral votes after a presidential election. In 48 states and the District of Columbia, the states use a winner-take-all system, wherein whichever candidate who wins the popular majority in that state receives all the electoral votes from that state. The exceptions are Nebraska and Maine, which award electoral votes to the popular vote winner in each congressional district, then give the remaining two votes to the overall winner for that state.

That’s led to five instances since the nation’s founding in which a candidate lost the popular vote only to have the Electoral College propel them into the presidency. In 2016, . But he narrowly won the 46 electoral votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania by a combined total of 77,744 votes, propelling him to a 304-227 electoral victory.

The winner-take-all system in place also ensures that third-party candidates will never be seen as anything more than spoilers. Case in point: Green Party candidate Jill Stein received more votes in each of those three states than the difference between Trump and Clinton. (Although Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson’s margins were even bigger, he’s often not mentioned in the same breath as Stein because his votes were more likely to be seen as detracting from Trump than from Clinton.) And , when the final count had George W. Bush beating Al Gore by just 537 votes.

The National Popular Vote is designed to be a check against this kind of electoral numerology. It’s set up as an interstate compact, enacted into law at the state level, and takes effect when the electoral votes of the signatory states compose a majority of the 538 total votes, or 270. When the popular vote winner for the entire country is determined, those signatory states will assign their electors to that winner. Since the states in the compact represent a majority of electoral votes, the national popular vote winner would, by default, be elected president.

There are several problems with the Electoral College.

It’s an idea whose time has come. There have been several attempts over the years to abolish the Electoral College, but this movement, by a computer scientist and an attorney in California, has gained more traction than past attempts to amend the Constitution.

As of August, into law. Most of those are Democratic-leaning states, but ����’s also passed both legislative chambers in Nevada and one chamber in seven more states, some of which tend to be swing votes in national elections, such as Michigan, Minnesota, and North Carolina.

If those eight states were to sign on, the electoral tally would be 271, triggering the compact.

There’s some question as to whether Congress would need to be involved in approving the compact, or if it could stop it. Not all interstate compacts need congressional approval, according to the Supreme Court’s ruling in (1893), but given some of the forces arrayed against the movement, there will almost certainly be legal challenges along the way.

But this wouldn’t be the first time that systemic changes were enacted despite the limits of the Constitution. In addition to amending the document, there have been constitutional workarounds through legislation, evolving institutional processes, or Supreme Court decisions that have rendered parts of it moot, or reinterpreted it as something significantly different from what is implied by the words written on 18th-century parchment.

For example, we haven’t really had need to enforce the Third Amendment prohibition of involuntarily quartering soldiers in private homes since the Revolutionary War; our military includes barracks as an integral part of its base construction process. That provision only had one serious challenge in 1982 (), concerning National Guard strikebreakers displacing striking prison guards in employee housing, and it was determined there was no violation of the amendment.

But more contemporarily, it frequently is argued that the rights of gun owners would not be nearly as expansive as they are currently accepted to be if one were just to take the words in the Second Amendment into account, especially the opening clause: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State …” Yet court cases have ignored that provision, despite the fact that we have several modern-day equivalents of colonial militias in 54 state and territorial divisions of the National Guard, and State Defense Forces active in 21 states that report solely to those states’ governors. Even the millions of able-bodied adults eligible to be drafted are considered under federal law to be the nation’s “.”

Likewise, political action committees and anonymous unlimited campaign donations didn’t factor into the political conversation in the 18th century the way they do today, let alone the framers having the foresight to write corporate personhood into the Constitution. The framers were worried enough about corruption of the nation’s leaders to write the emoluments clause into Article I, but the Supreme Court’s decision in 2010 made the de facto buying of congressional votes an integral part of the First Amendment.

The National Popular Vote movement might be the best option available, rendering the Electoral College effectively moot.

As such, the National Popular Vote compact also would get around another problem with the Electoral College system, although a less prominent one: that of anomalous electoral votes to other candidates, or so-called “faithless electors.”

Right now, electors who refuse to cast their ballots for their party’s nominee usually have their votes nullified, and no race’s outcome has ever been affected by the defections. (There would have been more if other states, such as Colorado, didn’t nullify their votes.) In the 2016 election, there were seven of these anomalous votes cast for someone other than the party’s candidate, the most ever, and four of them were in Washington state, as part of a failed attempt to prevent the Electoral College from delivering votes for Trump. Five of the faithless electors were Clinton electors who sought to garner enough Republican electors to vote for a compromise candidate. In the end, just two Republican electors broke ranks.

A recent federal court case out of Colorado ruled that . The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit covers only that state, plus Kansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, none of whose outcomes would have changed on account of the ruling. But the ruling would, for example, possibly allow for a different result if the majority of electors in those states voted for someone other than the winner of the popular vote. A separate court case upheld the fines against the Washington state electors, although those votes were still validated.

States ultimately control how their elections are run, even for the highest office in the country. One fairer system that also preserves the Electoral College would have all states playing by the rules in effect in Nebraska and Maine. The electoral outcome would likely more closely match the popular vote, although some of those congressional districts also suffer from extreme partisan gerrymandering. We wouldn’t necessarily see 537 votes in Florida swinging a national election, but we might see, for example, a repeat of the , where Democrats won 48.3% of the votes statewide but only took three out of 13 seats in Congress.

At the end of the day, the National Popular Vote movement might be the best option available, rendering the Electoral College effectively moot and putting an end to results that gave us George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016. It isn’t perfect, and a state that joins the compact today might just abandon it later if its political leadership changes—and right now, the Republican Party has a lot vested in preserving a system that gives it an inordinate advantage.

But the common criticism that a National Popular Vote would mean that cities would be advantaged over rural areas doesn’t hold up. It does mean that while, say, a Republican candidate might lose California because the volume of votes in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego outweigh the rest of the state, all the votes the candidate might win in the conservative Central Valley or suburbs like Orange County would help boost the candidate’s national tally. It also means that voters in liberal cities in red states, such as Salt Lake City and Houston, would still matter in the grand scheme of things, even if Utah or Texas never joined the compact.

All that matters in the National Popular Vote compact is who gets the most votes across the United States. It means that we’d be a bit closer to realizing the dream of one person, one vote. It isn’t perfect, but it may be good enough.

“I figure everything is okay… I’ve already been patted down and plus there’s three officers on the scene,” Landau, who was cooperative, recalls thinking just before he was attacked. filed against the officers, who were not criminally charged, Landau was beaten with fists, flashlights, and a radio. He received 45 stitches. (Two of the officers have for using excessive force in other cases).

When Landau’s mother found him at the police station, she screamed.

Watch Landau and his mother discuss how that night changed their worldview, in the interview below. (Warning: This video contains disturbing images and quotes racist language).

Being on the front lines of climate science research, I have struggled with how to share my fears about climate change publicly. But when I think about the future of my 7-year-old granddaughter, Hazel, I am compelled to speak out, because frankly, I find the climate science predictions terrifying.

One of the things you have to know about scientists is that we’re not always the best educators or public speakers. Most of us joined the field because we like finding out how the world works, hunkering down and doing good science. We research, we publish, and we largely leave it to others to explain what it all means for society—but many of us who work in climate science feel as though we’ve been ringing the alarm bells on global warming for decades with nobody paying attention.

Well, we can’t afford to do that anymore. At this eleventh hour, we need to take bold action to staunch the unchecked flow of carbon emissions that are overheating our planet and rapidly destabilizing the environmental systems on which all life depends for survival.

As the planet has been heating up, massive ice sheets at both polar caps are melting faster, causing sea level rise to accelerate. With roughly a third to a half of the global population living close to sea level, there will be hundreds of millions of climate refugees over the next century and a half. The oceans have been absorbing about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted from our burning of coal, oil, and natural gas forming carbonic acid and becoming more acidic.

In Washington, my home state, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association has that “Puget Sound has some of the world’s most corrosive waters … so corrosive that they are eating away at larval oyster shells before they can form.” Animals that have evolved over millions of years are now going extinct at 100 to 1,000 times the natural rate. According to Audubon , more than half of North America’s bird species are at risk due to climate change. And, because climate change makes weather variations more extreme, we are seeing more frequent and severe wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and flooding across the globe.

Even if we were to somehow, miraculously, halt all of our carbon dioxide emissions this minute, we would still see dramatic climate changes for generations. The effects of climate change will be long-lasting and devastating both to society and the natural world.

So what can be done?

First of all, we must put a price on CO2, which would slow the warming more effectively than any other policy tool we have available. Putting CO2 into the atmosphere is not free, we just have not been paying the real cost.

Washington state has a proposal on the November ballot which would do just that. puts a stable, predictable, and rising price on carbon, and it uses the money raised to make our state tax system fairer and more progressive. I-732 will ensure that those most impacted will receive the most financial relief. It makes the money polluters pay to lower the state sales tax a full percentage point, which benefits everyone. It lowers some business taxes to keep jobs in the state, and it invests $1 billion over the first six years in direct checks of up to $1,500 annually to 460,000 low-income working families through a 25 percent match of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit.

Our neighbor to the north, Canada, has already made implementing a carbon tax a national priority. One early adopter, British Columbia, a carbon tax in 2008 and has seen decreases in its greenhouse gas emissions from 5 to 15 percent while its economy has grown at a faster pace that the rest of Canada. This demonstrates why economists say the “” of climate policy is to put a price on carbon.

The Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based sustainability think tank, I-732 and stated that it would “put wind in the sails of Washington’s clean energy economy as nothing else possible,” and called it “the biggest improvement in the progressivity of Washington’s state tax system in 40 years.” The New York Times it could set an example for other states to follow.

I recently joined more than 50 of my fellow scientists at the University of Washington who signed an endorsing this initiative. James Hansen, one of the most celebrated climate scientists in the world, endorsed I-732, saying it would make the price of fossil fuels more “,” by more accurately reflecting their costs to society. Until it is no longer free to dump CO2 into the atmosphere, the climate impacts will continue, with compounding, and long-lasting effects.

The hour is late, and we have an inescapable moral responsibility to leave our children and grandchildren a cleaner, healthier, safer world. 

Washington’s carbon tax plan has opponents and proponents within the environmental movement. Here’s an opposing view.

Over the smell of coffee and freshly baked tarts, she was going to advise a client on how best to host a special event at her home, helping coordinate everything from the logistics of the ceremony, to how to dress the guest of honor. People might cry, they might laugh, and all attention would be on the person of the hour—only that person would never see, hear, or enjoy the festivities, because they would be dead.

As 20th century consumerism took hold and people were more likely to die in a hospital than at home, death receded from public consciousness. 

“People looked at me like I had two heads when I said, ‘Keep the body at home after the person dies,’” says Barrett, a Seattle-based funeral director and certified “death midwife.” “For families who want it, they should have the right to do it.” 

Barrett has been practicing home funerals in the area since 2006 through her business, A Sacred Moment. In a home funeral service, the body is either brought back to the family from the place of death or stays at home if the person died there. The family then washes the body, in part to prepare it for viewing and in part as a ritual.

“It’s really the way we used to do it,” says Barrett. 

To Barrett and many other professionals who are offering alternatives to the more status-oriented, profit-driven funeral industry, it’s time to rethink how we handle death. From consumer cooperatives that combat price gouging, to putting the power of choice back in the hands of the family, the city of Seattle has become a hub for alternative death care in the last two years, according to Barrett. The subculture of “deathxperts” want not only to empower their clients, but also potentially phase out their jobs altogether—a sort of death of the funeral director as we know it.

A History of Death

For the majority of human history, families handled arrangements for the deceased, from the time immediately after death, to burial or cremation. Until the advent of modern hospitals and health care at the turn of the last century, it was the norm for the old and sick to die at home surrounded by loved ones.

During the Civil War, embalming as a form of preservation found a foothold when Union soldier casualties needed to be transported from the sweltering South to mourning families in the North. Today, its pragmatic purpose is to temporarily stop decomposition for viewing and final goodbyes. However, the overwhelming majority of contemporary consumers don’t realize that, in most cases, it’s not legally required to bury a body, although special circumstances vary from state to state. 

So why has probably every American funeral you’ve been to had an embalmed body in attendance?

As 20th century consumerism took hold and people were more likely to die in a hospital than at home, death receded from public consciousness. If a loved one were to die today, you would probably call and pay a funeral home to pick her up from wherever she took her last breath. They would wash her, embalm her, and dress her to your family’s liking. You would briefly visit her one last time at a mortuary or a chapel before she was either buried or burned. In all likelihood, her last bodily contact before disposition would be with a complete stranger.

In 1963, investigative journalist Jessica Mitford published “The American Way of Death,” an exposé of the country’s funeral-industrial complex, showing how it exploited the emotions of the living so it could up-sell unnecessary services and products, such as premium caskets and premier vaults. Federal Trade Commission regulations and consumer protections now prevent families from being swindled. 

“There’s no sales pressure, there’s no up-selling, and we make sure people get what they need.”

Today, the funeral industry has become managed in part by aggregate companies. Mortuary giant Service Corporation International owns a large network of individually operated funeral homes and cemeteries, some of which exist on the same property as combination locations. If you imagine a standard funeral parlor and graveyard, you’re probably picturing an SCI-owned operation. Of the approximately 19,400 funeral homes in America, the publicly traded company owns about 2,300 homes, according to the National Funeral Director’s Association. Families and individuals privately own most of the rest.

“The reality is that if you can’t adapt to compete with SCI, you probably shouldn’t be in the market,” says Jeff Jorgenson, owner of Elemental Cremation and Burial, which prides itself in being Seattle’s “only green funeral home.” “But SCI is one of the best competitors you could ever hope for because they’re slow to change and they’re exceptionally resistant to anything progressive.”

Jorgenson started his business in 2012 with a special focus on carbon-neutral cremations and “green” embalming using eco-friendly preservatives. In every aspect of his operation, he works to be as environmentally minded as possible, an objective he sees lacking in most business models.

As SCI spent the 1960s through 1990s acquiring independent funeral homes to maximize profits, another organization was doing the exact opposite by forming a collective to prioritize consumer rights. 

People’s Memorial Association is one of the nation’s only nonprofit organizations that pushes consumer freedom for end-of-life arrangements. Located in Seattle, the consumer membership-based group coordinates with 19 different death care providers across the state to offer fixed-price burial, cremation, and memorial services, as well as education and advocacy to encourage death care alternatives. Almost all of the funeral homes are privately owned and have a uniform price structure for PMA members, who contribute a one-time fee of $35. Barrett’s A Sacred Moment is one of PMA’s partners. 

“Too many people go to funeral homes and just want to be told what to do.”

“We negotiate contracts with the funeral homes so members walk in knowing exactly what they’re going to pay, and it’s usually a pretty significant discount from the usual prices,” says Nora Menkin, the managing funeral director of the Co-op Funeral Home. PMA founded it in 2007 when SCI decided to cancel arrangements with several of PMA’s partners. Now, PMA-contract homes offer full-service funerals for 65 percent less than the average local price, according to a 2014 price survey conducted by the PMA Education Fund. 

“There’s no sales pressure, there’s no up-selling, and we make sure people get what they need,” says Menkin. “It’s about the consumer telling us what they want.”

Jorgenson’s Elemental Cremation and Burial works outside the umbrella of PMA’s service providers, but he still finds allies in Menkin and the Co-op Funeral Home. 

“We’re in it to change an industry,” he says. “Just one of our voices out there is useless. There’s a kinder, gentler, less expensive way, and that’s what we’re all doing. It’s helping families in a new, more collaborative way.” 

In Jorgenson’s opinion, you don’t even really need a funeral director. 

“A funeral director is a wedding planner on a compressed time scale,” he says. “With the exception of the legality of filing a death certificate, a funeral director does the exact same things a wedding planner does: They make sure that the venue is available, that the flowers are ordered, the chaplain is there for the service, and that the guest of honor, be it the bride or the dead person, is there on time.” 

In Washington state, some of the only legal requirements are preservation of the body 24 hours after death by way of embalming or refrigeration, obtaining a signed death certificate, and securing a permit for disposition of the deceased. 

If the body will be kept at home for longer than 24 hours, preservation can be achieved by putting the body on dry ice for the duration of the viewing. Once the family has had enough time with the person, he or she will be removed for final disposition, which includes burial, cremation, or scientific donation. 

“A funeral director that is truly in earnest with the services they’re providing these families would have the courage to say that,” says Barrett. “A family can do this themselves. They don’t need a licensed funeral director, especially in the 41 states where legally a family is able to sign their own death certificate.” 

Even families who still want the guidance of a professional shouldn’t feel powerless.

“Too many people go to funeral homes and just want to be told what to do, because they haven’t been through it or they don’t want to think about it. That gives the funeral homes way more power than they really deserve,” says Menkin.

Ideally, a funeral home should educate consumers and encourage them to make informed decisions, she says, ultimately just acting as an agent to carry out their wishes.

The Process

For almost every modern funeral home preparation procedure, there is a more sustainable alternative. Dry ice can offset the need for embalming for brief viewing or shipping purposes. In instances where some form of embalming is necessary, such as a violently traumatic death, a mix of essential oils can replace the toxic mix of tinted formaldehyde. Even in the case of burial, biodegradable shrouds can eliminate the need for wood and metal caskets built, in theory, to last forever.

The distinctions apply to cemeteries too, which are divided into several camps as outlined by the Green Burial Council, the industry authority on sustainability. It assigns funeral homes, cemeteries, and suppliers a rating based on strict environmental impact standards, which scrutinize everything from embalming practices to casket material.

As consumers become more comfortable with taking charge of their dead, there will be more room to introduce new methods of body disposition.

There are traditional cemeteries with standard graves, monuments, mausoleums, and often water-intensive grass landscaping. The next step up are hybrid cemeteries, which still may have regular plots, but also offer burial options that don’t require concrete vaults, embalming, or standard caskets. Natural burial grounds, the middle rank, prohibit the use of vaults, traditional embalming techniques, and burial containers that aren’t made from natural or plant-derived materials; landscaping must incorporate native plants to harmonize with the local ecosystem, conserve energy, and minimize waste. Premier green burial occurs on conservation burial grounds, which in addition to meeting all of the above requirements, requires partnership with an established conservation organization and be dedicated to long-term environmental stewardship. 

Natural and conservation burial grounds must limit the use and visibility of memorials and headstones so as to preserve the native visual landscape as much as possible. Some properties have switched to GPS-based plot markers—visitors wouldn’t know they’re in the middle of a cemetery unless they were looking for it. 

As consumers become more comfortable with taking charge of their dead, there will be more room to introduce new methods of body disposition, such as alkaline hydrolodis, a type of liquid cremation, and body composting. Earlier this year, supporters successfully funded a Kickstarter campaign to start research on the Urban Death Project, which aims to turn decomposing bodies into nutrient-rich soil. According to Jorgenson, sustainable burial practices are still part of a boutique market, though that doesn’t change his bottom line. 

“Death is difficult. People don’t really want to experiment with mom,” he says. “But I count myself fortunate to be out there as one of the people that offers these alternatives, should someone want them.” 

“The co-op movement is bigger in other countries,” says Menkin, who attended the 2014 International Summit of Funeral Cooperatives in Quebec. “Canada has a large network of funeral cooperatives, but it’s a bit more like a traditional funeral industry, just with a different business model. They’re not about alternative forms of disposition or changing the norm. We’re kind of writing the book on this one.” 

Eventually, those conversations may become commonplace.

“Now when I mention home funerals to people, they don’t think anything of it,” says Barrett. To her, the time has come for people to think outside the box—literally.

Lost in that day, in the horrific stories of degradation, is a small story of victory.

Everyone by now has seen the videos of the assault last Thursday. Here at Standing Rock, the age-old story of government forces raising arms against Native people is being repeated in real time through social media. 

But lost in that day, in the horrific stories of degradation, is a small story of victory, of how 40 to 50 Native people stood against more than 250 police on a bridge on County Road 134 in rural North Dakota.

Word-of-mouth announcements went out to the Oceti Sakowin camp that there was going to be a police raid of the front-line camp that had been set up in the way of the pipeline. A raid means people are in imminent danger, and that is widely understood here. Over Labor Day, campers were attacked by dogs and pepper sprayed by Dakota Access security. And since then, we’ve seen increased militarization. It has been apparent that the government, specifically Morton County Sheriff’s office, is the security force protecting the pipeline, so no one doubted that this time the police would be the ones to desecrate bodies and lifeways.

My original plan was to take County Road 134 to photograph the pipeline being forced into the earth.

History rarely teaches us about when Natives win against the state.

Instead, I found a blockade of wood logs and hay bales set up in an area where water divided the back country road. No one there was armed with anything other than prayer. It was a strategic juncture because police vehicles couldn’t cross the narrow embankments on their way to the raid. If they were stopped at this bridge from the east, they could only come from the north.

In the morning, police did come, and from both sides. When I arrived, this blockade had already stopped an LRAD—a sonic weapon often called “sound cannon,” which can cause permanent hearing loss—from making it to the camp. Even as police numbers grew, eventually well beyond 200, the water protectors held their ground, fearless. 

Then the dancing began.

People began dancing to a hand drum, entranced by the power of prayer. A single elder, a veteran, repeatedly walked out and yelled: “Send one unarmed like I am out here to negotiate. Please. We are protecting the water for our children and yours. Send one out here to negotiate. Let’s talk! Please!” 

He was met with no negotiation.

But the water protectors held the bridge. For hours and hours, police advanced and retreated.

This was an unforgettable moment unfolding. With the dancing going on and the veteran trying to negotiate out front, a young woman stepped up and began moving her body to the beat of the drum. She was power incarnate. Her arms were wide open, her pink fingernail polish glistening. She was crying. Just waiting to be pepper sprayed, she wore a painter’s mask, one which would have done nothing much for protection.

That standoff’s foundation was ceremony and song, the truest essence of religious freedom.

This is what colonial violence looks like: 250 police—some of them snipers, some with guns drawn on the crowd—in a standoff with 40 to 50 unarmed indigenous people who just want to be allowed to live.

The untold story of this day was that those troops never made it from the east to join the others in raiding the camp, dehumanizing the friends and families of those on that bridge. There were 250 fewer officers able to show up to brutalize people and pervert prayer ceremonies on October 27. History rarely teaches us about when Natives win against the state. And that’s how injustice flourishes: in the shadows. 

So let me be clear. On October 27, when a colonial force armed with military weapons faced off on a bridge against veterans armed with only prayer, the Natives won.

Four years ago, before starting the eighth grade, she asked her parents to help her find a school where she could channel those curiosities.

“My daughters are getting a private school education in a public-school setting.”

With private-school tuition off the table, the Daniels family’s research led them to , a small, neighborhood school for 6th–12th grades, with a project-based learning curriculum focused on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

A unique partnership between the Seattle-based  and , the academy grew out of an initiative the foundation launched 20 years ago to expose underrepresented students of color to an education and careers in STEM, where national studies have shown them all but invisible.

The school’s 300 middle- and high school students, equipped with school-issued laptops, learn by working collaboratively with teachers and each other, applying analytical thinking to big-theme projects that seek to solve real-world problems. 

“It feels like my daughters are getting a private school education in a public-school setting,” said Robert Daniels, Artina’s father, whose youngest daughter also attends the school.

At a time when educators across the country are exploring ways to boost student achievement and address the needs of a 21st-century economy, TAF Academy is dispatching a diverse crop of students into college and careers in STEM.

Educators from elsewhere, including Canada and several districts in China, have come to the small campus spread among beige portables to see what students are doing. The school, which had its fifth high school graduation last month, boasts a 98-percent on-time graduation rate and a 100-percent college acceptance rate for graduating students.

And now the foundation is sharing its model with other schools in the state, with a goal of reaching 15,000 students by 2020.

“Yes, we are preparing the next generation for 21st-century employment, but we are also preparing them for society in ways that are just as important, like how they interact in a democracy and serve their communities,” said Paul Tytler, the school’s outgoing principal.

STEM learning

TAF Academy students exude self-confidence, and it’s easy to see why. Here, no one gets to hide.

With several exhibitions a year, they are constantly presenting projects—about clean-water systems for impoverished areas, neural prostheses to aid the disabled, and a “bee-vilion” to protect the vulnerable bee populataion—and explaining themselves. 

On a recent day near the end of the school year, one sixth-grader after another spoke enthusiastically about an elaborate carnival they orchestrated to raise money to repair roofs of schools damaged in the Fiji cyclone last February. 

Plus, every TAF student learns to code and design.

Ultimately, the aim is to not just create the next generation of STEM professionals and entrepreneurs by making these students college-ready, but to empower young people to be socially conscientious citizens.

“Our kids inspire us. As much as we are trying to make a difference in them, they make a difference in us,” said Tytler. “They force us to think beyond what we thought, to dig deeper. They constantly push us to get better.”

Twenty years ago, Trish Millines Dziko wasn’t thinking about creating a school at all.

A program manager at Microsoft who later recruited for the company’s internship program, she was struck by the absence of students of color—primarily Black and Latino students—and eventually left the software company to do something about it.

She co-founded TAF and assembled a team of educators, like-minded advocates, and tech-savvy folks to start an after-school program.

Five years into it, Dziko realized students weren’t taking the classes necessary to prepare them for STEM majors.

But efforts to partner with Seattle Public Schools to create a school where, as Dziko put it, “we would be responsible for all of their learning,” never materialized.

She was struck by the absence of students of color—primarily Black and Latino students.

Within weeks, the superintendent of Federal Way Public Schools—in an increasingly diverse district 30 minutes south of Seattle—reached out with a proposal for a school there.

At a time when school transformation was all the buzz—in the middle to later part of the last decade—such a public–private partnership was still uncharted territory. The Washington State Legislature had yet to define a K–12 STEM education, and voters were years away from authorizing charter schools.

The district gave TAF broad latitude in developing a STEM-focused curriculum around project-based learning, though it still has to comply with district and state standards. Education coaches train teachers to teach the TAF way.

On top of the district funding the school receives, the foundation raises $600,000 annually—about $2,300 per student—for educational enrichments, primarily around technology.

Tammy Campbell, who became Federal Way Public Schools superintendent last year, praises TAF Academy, which, she says, “provides real-world experiences and STEM-rich opportunities that get our scholars excited to learn and have a better vision for college and career readiness.”

Dziko, an African-American woman who spent years battling her way through the male-dominated high-tech industry, believes unequivocally that every child has the capacity to learn.

The academy’s demographic profile reflects one she long ago envisioned: ������Ƶ than two-thirds of its students are of color, and half come from households with incomes low enough that they qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. Many are poised to be the first in their families to go to college.

Students at TAF Academy aren’t grouped according to academic performance; those with academic and behavioral needs learn right alongside their classmates. The school provides tutors, when needed, primarily in math and science.

“We’re not the kind of school where our seniors come in at 8 o’clock and go home at 3.”

Students’ test scores often match or exceed district and state averages, and all seniors must apply to at least five colleges and for at least 10 scholarships.

Last year, the Martinez Foundation, formed in 2008 to provide scholarships and support to students of color pursuing teaching careers, merged with TAF, giving Martinez fellows access to TAF’s education and development programs.

Over the years, TAF has forged other key partnerships with local and national institutions and corporations, including Expedia, Comcast, and the (known locally as Fred Hutch), which designed a lab specifically for TAF Academy students and that other area high school students use as well. These connections open important doors for hands-on learning and mentorships.

“We’re not the kind of school where our seniors come in at 8 o’clock and go home at 3,” Tytler said. “We want them to help change something and make a difference.”

In eight years, a number of state and national groups have recognized TAF Academy for its innovation, and for four consecutive years it has been named a  by the Center for Educational Effectiveness for ongoing improvement.

“We are true partners in this,” Dziko says. “These are our kids. They look like us. They come from the same places we come from. We cannot fail at this.”

Beginning with the 2017-18 school year, Dziko and her foundation will be at a crossroads. The academy will merge with an existing 500-student middle school, becoming TAF Academy at Saghalie.

The plan will bring the TAF style to Saghalie and give TAF Academy students access to more science labs, courses, and collaboration with a wider student body.

But it is, without a doubt, a game-changer for everyone and the first big test of the partnership’s ability to deliver the TAF model on a grander scale.

Here’s the challenge, Dziko said: “Can you create an environment like this in a traditional school … with a strong academic focus and project-based learning?

“There’ll be some tradeoffs,” she said. “But I expect to see the same level of attention to kids. Out of everything, that cannot go away.”

From the in Akron, Ohio, and Boston’s to in Cleveland, public schools across the country are increasingly adding STEM to their curricula or creating STEM schools from the ground up.

������Ƶ often than not, the transformations are in partnerships with big STEM-industry employers who understand that today’s youth are the workforce of the future.

When the Washington State Legislature defined a STEM education for K–12 in 2010, it also established a model-school fund to allow schools to learn from each other.

“Right now, STEM careers are growing at three to five times the rate of non-STEM jobs,” said Clarence Dancer, STEM coordinator for the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. “We need to fill this void, and companies will fill it one way or another—either with our students or students from another country.”

Still, studies show the needle has barely budged for getting underrepresented minorities into the STEM pipeline. In fact, their absence is such a concern that the  held a rare public hearing on the industry’s hiring practices this spring.

In Washington state, not enough is being done to drive these students into the pipeline, Dancer said. “That’s where a place like TAF [Academy] comes in,” especially if it can produce results on a larger scale.

“We’re not just seeing the value; we are seeing a transformation.”

Boze Elementary School in Tacoma just wrapped up its first year using the TAF model. Principal Aaron Wilkins said his teachers, committed to finding more effective ways to reach students, had been building toward a similar approach, but hadn’t fully articulated it.

Students are more engaged, Wilkins said. “We’re not just seeing the value; we are seeing a transformation. And it’s not just the kids, but teachers who have been teaching a long time.”

The five-year partnership agreement between the foundation and Tacoma Public Schools comes with training and support for Boze teachers.

“What Trish asked of us is not easy,” said Wilkins. “My teachers are working their tails off, but they are enthusiastic about this.”

Indeed, this style of teaching and learning is hard for everyone.

Tytler, TAF Academy’s third principal, had been at the school five years and said he’s leaving to pursue his doctorate.

He joins four of the school’s 17 teachers who also left at the end of the school year, all for various reasons.

For TAF, the ongoing challenge has been finding educators—up and down the line—committed to this style of teaching. The hiring process is rigorous, and teachers must present a lesson in front of students, who get a voice in the decision.

“You don’t go into the classroom, close your door, and teach,” Dziko said of the TAF style. “You have to create projects every year and create them based on what students decide, not some cool new thing you find on the internet.”

“I’m free to be as creative and imaginative as I want, to ensure these kids benefit and succeed.”

On a recent morning, Carlito Umali’s seventh-grade humanities class was staging an end-of-year Academy Awards celebration, in which students recognized each other for their accomplishments during the year.

Umali said he finds teaching here transformative. Elsewhere, “I felt like I was filling potholes. Here, the administration is invested, and I’m free to be as creative and imaginative as I want, to ensure these kids benefit and succeed.”

The next generation

Artina Daniels is preparing for her final year at TAF Academy and making plans for college.

At the small school, she said, she has received the kind of attention she might not have gotten anywhere else.

She discovered her true passion in its small engineering lab, where she used 3D printing to build materials for sustainable housing and, with other students, created neural prostheses for people with disabilities.

She learned JavaScript from Microsoft employees, studied Japanese, and last year traveled to Japan and to Costa Rica, using her TAF connections.

Artina said her internship at Fred Hutch, where she’s studying synthetic virology, has opened her eyes to the flexibility of a career in science.

“I believe the education we get here is far more in-depth because we focus longer on a topic,” she said.

“We take and apply what we learn to large, college-level projects, with many moving parts, instead of a worksheet. This definitely prepares us well for college.”

I’ve experienced my share of this drawback of social media.

And yet, a 2013 study from the University of Michigan  found that as its 82 participants increased their Facebook use over two weeks, their happiness and sense of well-being declined. And in a 2012 study by Anxiety UK, a majority of participants said social media use was an overall negative experience. Seventy-one percent of adult Internet users in the United States use Facebook. Nearly three-quarters of them log on daily, and close to half log on several times every day. Those percentages are increasing. Why? The simple explanation is that it makes us feel good. A 2013 German study found that participants’ brains signaled a pleasure response when they received positive feedback on Facebook. The study concluded that the brain processed this positive feedback as gains in social reputation. There is satisfaction, almost a high, in seeing those red notification numbers, and more satisfaction when the numbers are higher. My Facebook “friends”—including personal friends, family members, acquaintances, and people in distant locations I’ve never actually met—are people I value and respect, and those red numbers assure me that I am a valued part of their lives, in turn.

“We know that many people on social media sites often present idealized versions of their lives, leading others to make upward social comparisons, which can lead to negative emotions,” said Benedictine University professor Shannon M. Rauch in an article on the website for Adolescent Growth, a California teen healthcare center.

I’ve experienced my share of this drawback of social media. Even as I’m happy for a friend who got a new job, or got married, or had a baby, I often find myself vaguely resentful of their accomplishments. Sometimes it seems like they’re rubbing their hyperidealized lives in my face, provoking feelings of inferiority and inadequacy by comparison.

Social media can actually be a positive force if properly managed.

But despite these negative effects, recent research indicates that social media can actually be a positive force if properly managed. James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego was lead author of a 2014 report that suggests social media can be harnessed to spread happiness through a ripple effect. The report found that positive Facebook status updates tend to lead to other, similar statuses. Fowler proposes that this effect could potentially be cultivated to create what he calls “an epidemic of well-being.”

For teenagers and young adults whose high levels of social media consumption are often used to portray them as born narcissists, the benefits can be even more dramatic. In 2010, researchers at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia determined that social networking sites can positively impact adolescents who go online because they’re lonely. These teens can find intimacy and social anxiety relief through online communication, which protects them from feelings of shame that limit their ability to express themselves. Instead of using online platforms as their own personal spotlights, many kids are using social media to reach out, to form bonds, and to try to find their place in the lives of others. Instead of seeking praise, they are seeking community.

This has been the key distinction in improving my own relationship with social media. I find happiness in community, and in many ways, social media has become that community, the first place I go every day for human connection. In part, this is a function of moving to a new city and leaving 30 years’ worth of in-person relationships behind. I’ve found new people to interact with, of course, but I’ve also maintained connections with people I would otherwise have fallen out of touch with. At the same time, I’ve expanded my personal community to include people whose faces I could only recognize from profile pictures. I’ve been invited to parties and protests that I wouldn’t have otherwise known about. I’ve found opportunities to advance both my career and my creative endeavors.

And others have embraced the possibility of an online community to even greater degrees. I’ve seen people turn to social media for help on every level, from asking friends to assist in a move, to seeking support for the revelation of a sexual preference or an eating disorder. It doesn’t replace individual relationships, but it does facilitate increased connection with a broader group of people. When I’m having a bad day, I use my phone to call a close friend or a parent. When I need to reach out to the larger network I’ve developed over the years, I use my phone to log on to Facebook.

Social media only becomes emotionally unhealthy when we see it as a source of individual validation.

Social media becomes emotionally unhealthy when we see it as a source of individual validation instead of a structure for community growth. The same can be said of our in-person interactions. As we work to maintain the health of our communities, it’s important to include online networks in our endeavors. This technology is not going away, and while it has intrinsic biases like any medium, its overall effects depend entirely on how it’s applied. Our responsibility is to foster a healthy relationship with social media by examining and understanding it in communal terms, while maintaining a balance between the digital and analog methods of experiencing the world.

Finding that balance is a constant struggle, and I would never claim to have achieved it myself. But I have learned to look at the trials and successes of the people who comprise my Facebook feed not as standards of measurement by which to judge myself, but as sources of connection and inspiration. The little red notification numbers in the upper right hand corner of the screen pale in importance against the platform as a whole—the living and changing network of digital relationships that is rapidly becoming the modern community.

Instead of the sunbaked, bare lanes between cornstalks that are typical of conventional agriculture, these lanes sprout an assortment of cover crops. These are plants that save soil from wind and water erosion, reduce the evaporation of soil moisture, and attract beneficial insects and birds. Like all plants, these cover crops convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into a liquid carbon food, some for themselves and some to support the fungi, bacteria, and other microscopic partners underground. A portion of that carbon stays there, turning poor soil into fragrant, fertile stuff that resembles chocolate cake.

The field rustles with larger life forms, too. Lundgren was visiting this particular field to meet up with a group of his grad students splayed among the plants, sucking insects into plastic tubes to be later identified and counted. Lundgren launched a research institute called Ecdysis back in 2016 to conduct comparative studies between conventional agriculture and regenerative agriculture, which is generally defined as agriculture that builds soil health and overall biodiversity and yields a nutritious and profitable farm product. Regenerative farmers avoid tilling so that they protect the community of soil microorganisms, the water-storing pores they create underground, and the carbon they’ve stashed there. They encourage plant diversity and plant cover that mimics nature in their fields, avoid farm chemicals, and let farm animals polish off the crop residue.

All of us are familiar with conventional agriculture: the miles upon miles of farmland growing only one crop, the destructive tillage that wafts soil and its stored carbon into the air and into our waterways; the use of hundreds of chemicals including pesticides like chlorpyrifos that have been found to cause brain damage in children; the confined facilities that are both cruel to animals and make their impact on the Earth an assault rather than a gift.

This is the kind of agriculture targeted in the most recent report, released Aug. 8, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in which a panel of 100 scientists concur not only that the , but also that a more sustainable agriculture can help address global warming.

Reading through the report, I can’t help but wonder whether any of those 100 scientists have visited the kind of agriculture that can turn this mess around or whether they’ve just read about it in studies. Whether they’ve ever smelled the soil that comes from these farms or seen the incredible variety of birds and insects thriving alongside the crops. Whether they’ve ever talked to the farmers who are discovering how to grow healthy food and healthy landscapes at the same time.

I first started writing about those farmers back in 2011, when there were more amazing anecdotes than studies, but that has changed. Lundgren himself published a study with his former student Claire LaCanne in 2018. per farm on 20 farms over two growing seasons, half of which were regenerative and half conventional. The study tracked soil carbon, insect pests, corn yield, and profits.

The results give the imprimatur of science to the successes regenerative farmers have reported for years. Lundgren and LaCanne found that there were more pests in the conventional cornfields that were treated with insecticides and/or used GMO seeds than in the pesticide-free regenerative fields, presumably because the cover crops attracted battalions of predator insects that decimated crop pests—and because there were no insecticides to kill off those beneficials.

And while the regenerative farms used older, lower-yielding corn varieties without fertilizer and had lower yields, their overall profits were 78% higher than the conventional farmers’. Partly, this was because the regenerative farmers’ costs were so much lower, with no cash outlays for costly insecticides and GMO seeds. They also “stacked enterprises” and had two or more sources of income on the same acre—in this case, they grazed their cattle on corn residue after harvest and got a premium price for pastured beef. What was the primary factor correlating with farm profitability? The amount of carbon and organic matter in the farmers’ fields, not their yields.

The venerable soil scientist Rattan Lal was one of the first people to connect the loss of soil carbon caused by destructive farming to the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In a 2018 interview with Soil4Climate, Lal said that he and his colleagues —farms, forests, coastlands, and so on—could restore up to 150 gigatons (a gigaton equals 1 billion tons) of carbon to the world’s soil in 80 years. All the extra vegetation grown to put that carbon in the soil would store 150–160 gigatons more, resulting in a terrestrial biosphere holding an additional 330 gigatons of carbon, equal to a drawdown of 150 to 160 parts per million of CO2 from the atmosphere. “We should encourage the policy makers that this process of restoring degraded soils and ecosystems is a win, win, win option,” Lal says. “It’s a bridge to the future.”

Several of the Democratic presidential hopefuls have added agriculture to their climate platforms—most notably Rep. Tim Ryan, who proposes policies to support . Just this week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren added to her climate platform a to overhaul agricultural policy, while Sen. Cory Booker announced he would propose the to the Senate in September; both would pay farmers for conservation practices.

And farmers of the future are ready to take it on.

“Agriculture is perfectly poised to play a major role in the solution to the climate crisis,” says Bilal Sarwari, membership and communications manager of the National Young Farmers Coalition. “By helping young farmers gain access to land, everyone can help play a role.”

I can’t help but believe that the 100 scientists would become hopeful themselves knowing this, hopeful that humanity can turn away from the dire environmental path we’ve been treading.

The state of emergency in Paris has thrown just about everyone for a loop.

Unsuccessfully trying to make out officers’ French in the hallway, I remember something I was told the night before about the difference between artists and activists: “Activists want to know exactly what the thing will look like from the outset, whereas artists are process-led and trust the process.” Seven years removed from my last art class, I’m doing my best to trust the process. But if my time at COP21 has taught me anything, it’s to place more faith in the people who landed me here than the ones holed up in Le Bourget.

The state of emergency in Paris has thrown just about everyone for a loop. Organizers outside are quick to recap which squats have been raided and how plans for upcoming mobilizations are evolving on an hourly basis. Keeping current with the flow of updates from grassroots groups and COP’s more raucous delegates is a task nearly as exhaustive as understanding the proceedings themselves.

Along with the Climate Games and Attac, one outfit that kept popping up in my conversations over the preceding days was a loose cadre of Europeans and Americans, dubbed Fossil Free Culture, concerned with getting big oil out of the arts. Thirty-six hours before being put in this cell, I met one of its organizers at a bar.

Over beers, Kevin Smith, an affable, high-energy Londoner and longtime organizer now with the group Global Justice Now UK, referred me to an action that he was helping to plan. He focused on the higher-risk portion in particular. The plan: While people demonstrate in front of the Louvre’s iconic crystal pyramid to “Keep Big Oil Out of the Arts,” inside—unbeknownst to all but a few core organizers—another, smaller group would take part in a performance with the same message, expecting arrests. I bit on his offer to tag along as a journalist.

The next night I spoke with Mel Evans and Gavin Grindon, two disarmingly friendly co-founders of the creative direct action outlet Liberate Tate. Evans is the author of Artwash: Big Oil and the Arts. Grindon is an art historian at the University of Essex who consulted on Banksy’s recent Dismaland installation.

Tate’s ties with BP run deep, they explained over the remnants of some pastry. Tate board chair John Browne served as chief executive of BP for 12 years until 2007, and the oil company has sponsored the institution for more than 20 years.

Like similar sponsorships, the sums BP awards to museums are generally small. A lawsuit filed by activists revealed that, on average, the company gives Tate just £224,000 per year—a small fraction of the museum’s £.

We scribbled an allied lawyer’s name on our hands. Just in case.

Organizers with Liberate Tate and other fossil-free culture groups see themselves as protecting, not defaming, the institutions they target. “Public spaces are places where people can reflect on what the future will look like and the answers to different big social questions,” Evans said, grounding the plan’s action in the context of the climate talks. “If you have an oil sponsor at the doorway, you’re not being allowed an open public space to have those important conversations.” BP plastering its name onto galleries and exhibitions, she tells me, means that whatever future museumgoers imagine is still one brought to them by oil giants.

When BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico back in 2010, Evans, Grindon, and the rest of Liberate Tate decided to take their first action. They splashed 5 gallons of molasses—meant to resemble oil—outside the entrance of a ritzy private summer party being hosted by BP in Tate Britain, topping off the discharge with feathers and glitter.

“Seeing that it was political figures in the U.K. that were propping up BP in that time of crisis, we wanted to find a way to question and challenge that support for a company that is largely owned by U.S. banks, and that has acted irresponsibly, horrendously,” Evans added.

Since its inception, Liberate Tate has brought together a mix of cultural workers, museum staff, and seasoned activists, yielding a series of elaborate and stark demonstrations involving funeral veils, chunks of Arctic ice and—of course—mock oil. As members of the art world, Grindon explained, they go to great lengths to make their performances slow and deliberate so as not to alarm visitors and curatorial staff or harm the art. Just last week Liberate Tate—which counts more than 500 activists among its ranks in London—installed itself in the gallery and gave out personalized tattoos noting the level of carbon in the atmosphere in each recipient’s year of birth. They brought the same tattoo gun to Paris.

Liberate Tate has inspired analogous efforts around London and abroad. Art Not Oil, an umbrella network, now contains seven groups trying to gut fossil fuel sponsorship from the city’s museums. Similar outfits have cropped up in the United States (The Natural History Museum) and Norway (Stopp Oljesponsing av Norsk Kulturliv), with upstart efforts in Brazil and elsewhere. This week in Paris was the first time they had come together, holding a three-day retreat that created grounds for further collaboration. It also spawned the idea for today’s action, targeting what Evans calls “two companies that should not be benefiting from the rosy glow of France’s most prestigious art gallery.” Oil corporations Total and Eni each sponsor the Louvre.

At that point in the conversation, forgetting all the talks seasoned organizers had given me on staying mum about high-risk actions, I remembered my talk with Smith and blurted out, “Isn’t there something happening inside as well?” Evans and Grindon looked at one another, and then around the room before lowering their voices. Sheepish and turning bright red, I turned off the audio recorder I’d been using. Minutes later I had my directive, still more than a little taken aback by the trust of near-strangers.

An American organizer was turned away at the door after police found a letter to the Louvre’s curatorial staff stowed in his bag.

Having arrived at the Metro stop rendezvous in the morning uncharacteristically early, I fumbled around on my phone like a teenager waiting for her date’s mom to drop him off at a movie theater. Eventually, I met up with Evans and Clara Paillard, president of the Public and Commercial Services Union’s Culture Sector in Britain. The PCS Union passed a motion at their annual meeting last spring calling on Tate and the British Museum to with BP. Paillard, a French citizen who’s lived in Britain for more than a decade, had been working in the museum sector for several years before getting involved with Liberate Tate.

Art Not Oil-style performances tend to be on the messier side, and the group makes a point of being in touch early with the museum staff, particularly the people who’ll be charged with cleaning up their installations. The cadre putting on today’s demonstration had already contacted Louvre workers and their union, and Paillard met with its president the following day. As we rode the Metro, Evans practiced with Paillard the words each would use in their role as liaisons for the afternoon’s performance to explain to staff what was happening .

We got to the Louvre around 11 a.m., bought coffee and tried connecting to Wi-Fi after scoping out the central atrium directly under the iconic glass pyramid. We scribbled an allied lawyer’s name on our hands. Just in case.

������Ƶ teams of two and three sat down near us, avoiding eye contact with one another that might raise suspicion from museum guards. Evans learned from a text that an American organizer was turned away at the door after police found a letter to the Louvre’s curatorial staff stowed in his bag. Three others couldn’t make it in either. Sheila (who asked that her last name not be used), another Art Not Oil veteran, found replacements without missing a beat.

At 12:20 our group scattered throughout the lobby. I wandered around playing my best tourist, though nerves made it harder than it should have been during my first visit to the Louvre. Minutes later, a small huddle gathered directly under the pyramid’s tip to begin the performance in earnest. Two activists unleashed a puddle of molasses into the center of the floor and ran off.

Seven others took off their shoes, stepped into the mess and began strutting in a tight circle on the spill’s perimeter, releasing black umbrellas they’d brought with them into the air. All begin to sing:

“Oil money out of the Louvre / Move, move, move
Total, Eni au revoir / Allez, allez, allez ”

As the crowd of tourists swelled, I started to film. After a few stanzas (and no interruption by guards), the singers—still barefoot—made their way to the elevator with several officers, along with Evans, Paillard, Sheila, and I, trailing behind. There were 16 police to our 10. Half of them wore full riot gear, complete with armadillo shoulder and knee pads. All were built like tanks, and all carried weapons.

“Je suis journalist,” I croaked in a kind of shock at the very real possibility of detainment. No dice. My lack of bravado and marginally official-looking accreditation didn’t make things easier. With some curt directions in French, I was patted down brusquely, told to open my bag and hand over my passport. For several minutes we stood around in limbo. Our passports confiscated, we gathered in clumps and speculated about what might happen next, trying to catch a glimpse of the larger Fossil Free Culture demonstration unfolding in the museum’s central courtyard.

There were 16 police to our 10. Half of them wore full riot gear.

This was not the state of emergency horror story protesters faced last Sunday before COP21 began, when riot cops fired tear gas and arrested more than 200 demonstrators after chasing them through Place de la République. Nor did it compare to the daily reality France’s communities of color face, living every day under threat of attack. With 2,000 homes throughout France already raided, 24 activists placed under house arrest and others detained at random on the street, our encounter with police was more measured and respectful than most.

The influence of the state of emergency has been felt more in the quantity than the quality of policing in Paris: random checks, getting tailed home at night, even having police board the UN-sponsored shuttles between La Bourget and the nearest Metro station. While our treatment on Wednesday wasn’t especially rough, that 10 people were arrested at all is a window into the anxious, defensive mindset from which authorities are now operating.

Inside the van, we had access to our belongings, and Evans and Sheila were able to get in touch with the legal team about our situation. Those who had thought ahead passed around fruit and nuts they’d packed. Others joked about what parties they’d miss tonight. I staggered through emails to my editors, a hasty tweet and a more carefully crafted text to my sister explaining why she should neither tell our mother nor be away from her phone for extended periods of time.

After what felt like hours, officers shuttled us in twos and threes to the lower floor, and told us to remove our shoelaces and place our bags in crates before being led to our cells. I shared mine with three others, and the adjacent room held the remaining four women in our group. Down the hall were the only two men among us.

French police are legally required to move you through the system in a language you understand, so we were sitting ducks until they could find an interpreter. At some point, it was unclear whether we or the police were trying harder to kill time. One particularly hip cop in well-fitting khakis and horn-rimmed glasses took us out of our cells individually to snap our mug shots on a point-and-shoot.

Through the day, officers in the precinct seemed to realize the absurdity of what was on their hands. Their three rooms could barely hold the 10 of us, and the paperwork and translation required to process our four different passports through their outdated IT systems seemed unnerving. Warnings of 10 years in prison—the maximum sentence for the charge of degradation of cultural objects we could have faced—were quickly downgraded after police determined that the potentially-toxic goop spread in the atrium that afternoon was only molasses.

“They feel much better regarding the substance,” one officer explained in broken English.

The mood shifted rapidly as the sun set. We were suddenly released from our cells, and our good-natured, protest-friendly French lawyer assured us that we were more or less in the clear. We were called upstairs individually for exit interviews, though a prosecutor still needed to make the final call on our case.

After we were released, Cassy, a Canadian (who asked me not to use her last name), told me that her translator had thought it was actually delightful that we were singing and dancing. “She thought that this sort of message does need to get across to people.”

Six hours after our arrest, we were all released, cleared of charges, “reminded of the law,” and told to think carefully about taking similar action within the next three years in France. My adrenaline kicked back in with the cold air. Fossil Free Culture comrades, eager to hear details, met us with chocolate, hugs, and a few bottles of champagne at a nearby cafe.

There is strength in numbers, both in a police van and in press coverage. Small and highly targeted actions like today’s play a crucial role in the ecosystem of a larger movement. As convoluted and reliably disappointing as COP gatherings can be, they provide a rare moment when the eyes and ears of the world are open and focused.

Through the day, officers in the precinct seemed to realize the absurdity of what was on their hands.

If a particular action’s success is judged by negotiators’ decisions, it is easy to feel disempowered. But seeing the talks as a launching pad, meeting place, and opportunity for spectacle—as Fossil Free Culture has these last few weeks—can hack the COP and energize ongoing campaigns in Paris and beyond. Civil disobedience should not be taken lightly, but it should be taken—especially as Hollande’s state of emergency threatens to create a new normal of canned dissent around gatherings of the rich and powerful.

Taking my audio recorder back out waiting for the rest of the troupe’s release, I asked my fellow former-inmate Rob Abrams, of London, what advice he’d give to people thinking of defying l’état d’urgence this weekend. His response? “Do it,” going on, off the cuff, that, “The attack that’s taken place on civil liberties here in Paris is letting the people who want to strike us with violence and fear win. The best way to really exercise our rights and show that we’re free and not scared is to go out in a protest and defy this ban.”

U.S. Bank is behind many oil giants, including , Energy Transfer Partners ( and ), Phillips 66 ( and ), and . All four of these companies own major stakes in the Dakota Access pipeline, and Phillips 66 and Marathon are the primary shippers of oil through DAPL. U.S. Bank also finances , DTE Energy ( and ), EQT ( and ), , , and .

So while they may not be providing project-level loans, U.S. Bank is certainly responsible for the continuing construction of thousands of pipelines.

“Just as weapon manufacturers are responsible for the terror their products reign, by backing big oil, these banks are responsible for the pipelines that violently desecrate indigenous lands and waters,” says Jacqueline Fielder (Mnicoujou Lakota, Hidatsa) an organizer of the San Francisco Defund DAPL Coalition.

The difference between project-level vs. corporate-level financing is important.

Pipeline companies often do not need to structure or disclose their capital flows down to the project level. For example, the entire Dakota Access pipeline system, including its connections to Texas and Louisiana, has an estimated price tag of $5.5 billion, but only was structured as project-level financing.  

The recently launched campaign aims to keep the pressure up on the banks funding the Bayou Bridge pipeline, part of the DAPL system, as well as all four proposed tar sands ​pipelines: Keystone XL, , , and . None of these has project-level financing, so the targets are the pipeline companies themselves: TransCanada, Enbridge, and Kinder Morgan. Not surprisingly, are nearly the same as the compiled by .

These financial institutions are in the business of profiting from extraction and aren’t going to back out easily.

During DAPL’s construction, U.S. Bank provided Energy Transfer Partners with a . Just six weeks ago, on that deal, but the new agreement no longer discloses how much each bank has committed.

Now they say they will stop “project financing”? U.S. Bank knows that the average consumer would not pay attention to the complicated bigger picture, so it was a very clever public relations move—and many green groups bought it.

If U.S. Bank is going to stop financing pipelines, it has to stop lending at the corporate level, too. As early as July, we should get a chance to see if U.S. Bank’s new policy is just words.

On July 2, 2017, the credit agreement EQT has with U.S. Bank and others is . Marathon, a shipper on and a 9 percent stakeholder of DAPL, has an agreement involving U.S. Bank that . Let’s wait to cheer U.S. Bank until it puts its money where its mouth is.

Now is the time to step up our demands that banks divest from industries that endanger our future generations, says Rachel Heaton (Muckleshoot Tribe) of Mazaska Talks. “We know there are always loopholes through which banks will try to pass off responsibility, but we will continue to resist until these banks completely divest from all pipeline and fossil fuel corporations and incorporate the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of Indigenous peoples into their corporate lending structures.”

Sue Joss and Jason Barbosa might seem to be unlikely economic development partners. She is the veteran CEO of a major nonprofit health care provider in Brockton, Massachusetts, just south of Boston. He is the operations manager of a family-run grocery company launched by his immigrant father in the same working class city.

Was there a way they could create jobs, grow their local economy, and reduce blight?

They come from different backgrounds, operate different business models, and manage different financial pressures. But they have a common customer base that includes a large number of low-income residents, many of whom grapple with chronic health conditions.

Three years ago, they began to talk: Was there a way they could create jobs, grow their local economy, and reduce blight, all while helping people live longer and healthier?

Their answer to the question sits at the corner of Pleasant Street and Warren Avenue on a commercial site that had been abandoned for the last 22 years.

Joss and Barbosa led the side-by-side development of a new Brockton Neighborhood Health Center (BNHC) and a new Vicente’s Tropical Supermarket. Opened in 2015, they are connected both physically and programmatically by a shared purpose: to help people eat better.

Together, BNHC and Vicente’s tapped into a complex mix of public, private, and philanthropic funding to help open the doors, including $12 million assembled from the Local Initiatives Support Corporation’s (LISC) national lending pool and Healthy Futures Fund. The project had strong support from local policymakers and community leaders, but nothing would have happened had Joss and Barbosa not spent many hours talking, planning, and driving it forward.

The thinking behind the partnership was basic: Good nutrition is a critical component of good health. Indeed, with nearly one in four Brockton residents living in poverty—along with high rates of diabetes and obesity, and a population of immigrants and first-generation residents for whom food is a cultural touchstone, it would be difficult to tackle chronic health conditions without a focus on food.

“We’ve seen for years what happens in a nutritional food desert: people become sicker as they age than they otherwise would.”

“We’ve seen for years what happens in a nutritional food desert: people become sicker as they age than they otherwise would,” said Joss, long-time CEO of BNHC. “Our goal was to identify ways to expand access to fresh, affordable food in Brockton, to offer solid nutritional information so people can make smart choices, and to teach people how to cook in ways that protect their traditions but help them eat better.”

The result is a level of community outreach and on-site education built on the expertise of both BNHC and Vicente’s. The health center offers a range of primary care, urgent care, dental, vision, and mental health services, along with teen programs and nutrition counseling. Clinicians write “veggie scripts” for patients as part of efforts to promote heart health and weight reduction. They urge patients to enroll in free nutrition and cooking classes, taking advantage of an on-site demonstration kitchen. Guided supermarket tours help people better understand nutrition labels and make healthy ingredient substitutes. In addition, the store is testing incentive programs that both encourage healthy choices and keep food affordable.

“We’re focused on ‘fresh’ when it comes to our market and making a difference in the community,” said Barbosa, whose family has a long history in the supermarket business. “Knowing we could inspire more people to eat fresh, healthy food made this partnership worthwhile.”

Joss and Barbosa also recognized the potential economic impact of their partnership: some 200 jobs for people in the surrounding community, from health professionals to retail clerks to administrative staff. “People see that there is work and there is hope and we can grow with that in the future,” Barbosa said.

It remains to be seen whether this joint effort will significantly shift long-term health trends in Brockton. The two businesses have had their doors open for just a few months, so programming will continue to evolve based on local needs. But the immediate impact on this community is clear: a vibrant commercial corner is helping push out blight and crime in favor of health-focused products and programs that benefit nearby residents—we call that success.

As is often the case in community development, the most successful programs and projects are those that rise up from the ground level, from a deep understanding among residents and local leaders about what their neighborhoods need. Brockton is another example that proves the point.

If you liked this article, you might also like, “” and “.”

This piece is very personal because, as an Indigenous woman, my analysis is very personal, as is the analysis that my friends on the frontlines have shared with me. We obviously can’t speak for everyone involved, as Native beliefs and perspectives are as diverse as the convictions of any people. But as my friends hold strong on the frontlines of Standing Rock, and I watch transfixed with both pride and worry, we feel the need to say a few things.

I’ve been in and out of communication with my friends at Standing Rock all day. As you might imagine, as much as they don’t want me to worry, it’s pretty hard for them to stay in touch. I asked if there was anything they wanted me to convey on social media, as most of them are maintaining a very limited presence on such platforms. The following is my best effort to summarize what they had to say, and to chime in with a few corresponding thoughts of my own.

It is crucial that people recognize that Standing Rock is part of an ongoing struggle against colonial violence. #NoDAPL is a front of struggle in a long-erased war against Native peoples — a war that has been active since first contact, and waged without interruption. Our efforts to survive the conditions of this anti-Native society have gone largely unnoticed because white supremacy is the law of the land, and because we, as Native people, have been pushed beyond the limits of public consciousness.

Monet was nominated for the award by YES! Magazine. The Tobenkin recognizes outstanding achievements in covering racial and religious hatred and intolerance.

“At their heart, her stories were about the religious freedom, sovereignty, and human rights sought by Indigenous people everywhere,” said editorial director Tracy Loeffelholz Dunn in her nomination letter. Monet is a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo of New Mexico.   

The judges said, “Combining a deeply informed historical, cultural, and political frame of reference with compelling narratives, Monet showed how a deep racial divide, poverty, and marginalization of the Lakota Sioux made their act of resistance and the response by police an episode that was decades in the making.” 

To get these stories, Monet took on great personal risk, often dealing with an environment closer to a war zone than civil disobedience on the North Dakota plains. She herself was arrested and charged with trespassing and rioting after getting caught in a police sweep while reporting, despite carrying multiple press credentials. She is still awaiting trial, and YES! launched a campaign to get the county prosecutor to drop charges.

“I’d first like to thank my colleague and friend Mark Trahant and Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz, editorial and creative director at YES! Magazine. They were early chroniclers of the movement at Standing Rock and invited me to join them on this journey, and I am so grateful that they did,” Monet said.

“There were times when I stayed up all night writing because I honestly felt that no one else would, especially following horrific events like the night of Nov. 20, when dozens of demonstrators were hosed down with water in subfreezing temperatures. That story largely happened in a vacuum, just as news has been routinely overlooked for decades from the marginalized reservation communities of the Dakotas. But there was an awakening at Standing Rock, and it has been a treasure to chronicle it. To know that concepts like sovereignty, treaty rights, decolonization, and the overall narrative of the Indigenous struggle has now entered into mainstream conversation, to a degree, makes what I do so much more rewarding.”

Here are a few of Monet’s articles from Standing Rock: 

Climate Justice Meets Racism: This Moment at Standing Rock Was Decades in the Making 

Standing Rock Joins the World’s Indigenous Fighting for Land and Life

This Land Is Our Land: All Sides Move Quickly as Pipeline Nears the River

Sheriffs Refuse to Send Troops to Standing Rock as Public Outrage and Costs Mount

Every preposterous and painful image from North Dakota is another reminder of injustice: The massive military-style police occupation of Standing Rock treaty lands, the rush to protect the frantic construction schedule for the Dakota Access pipeline, and the brutal law enforcement march against people who are fighting for the simple idea that water is life.

I’m angry. How shall I say this without ranting? Tell stories.

Last January, when a gang of gun-toting, Constitution mis-quoting, anti-government militia occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon the reaction from federal law enforcement was patience. Days went by. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (sounding very North Dakota-like) urged the federal government to crack down on “the radicals” before more arrived.

The lands involved were Paiute lands.  “What if it was a bunch of Natives who went in there and took it?”

We now know. And back in Oregon a few days ago, a jury found th

Stories to tell. Injustice.

Since the beginning of the Standing Rock crisis there has been a call for President Obama to get involved. After all, there is a clear federal issue: The Oceti Sakowin Camp is on treaty land now claimed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

And  and this place:

“I know that throughout history, the United States often didn’t give the nation-to-nation relationship the respect that it deserved.  So I promised when I ran to be a president who’d change that, a president who honors our sacred trust, and who respects your sovereignty, and upholds treaty obligations, and who works with you in a spirit of true partnership, in mutual respect, to give our children the future that they deserve.”

How could he have done that? Mutual respect could have, should have, started with a federal presence that made talking more important than acting. The action at Standing Rock is not over. But the federal government’s absence is not productive.

Indeed, if you listen to any politician, Democrat or Republican, you’ll hear them talk about respect for the treaties. Of course. The Constitution says treaties “shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”

The word “shall” is like a commandment. But if that’s true, then how does any treaty tribe have less land than what’s in the document? Legally, morally, a treaty trumps a congressional act or an executive order. A treaty claim to the land is not preposterous.

If the United States lived up to its own ideals, there would be no stolen water, land, and , and the Army Corps of Engineers would have a long history of real negotiation with the tribes instead of a pretend consultation.

Then every tribe in the country has its own Standing Rock story.

Often several stories. Vacant but left behind toxic debris. , so the waste is buried instead. Or 3 million gallons of heavy metal sludge released by the government into the  and communities.

Stories to tell. Injustice.

There have been calls to get the presidential candidates involved. To visit. To see for themselves the love of the land, the water, and how this moment has brought Indian Country together.

Donald Trump wouldn’t be much help. He’s in the same boat as most of the politicians in North Dakota. They hope to profit from this pipeline project and a future where oil remains more important than water. “Trump’s  show the Republican nominee has between $500,000 and $1 million invested in , with a further $500,000 to $1 million holding in Phillips 66, which will have a 25% stake in the Dakota Access project once completed, .

And Hillary Clinton? We know from the WikiLeaks that she was inclined to approve Keystone XL pipeline but then flipped because there was so much attention on her email server. It was a way to change the story. Or so the campaign hoped.

Then election season is a terrible time to actually engage in public policy. Campaigns should be talking about issues and what they might do. But not when that decision is influenced by money, large voting blocs, and an intense election schedule. Eleven days out, a campaign is more worried about winning the election than anything else. Period.

I’ll be polite: The statement by Hillary Clinton on Standing Rock was awful.

The second I read it my heart dropped. I can see this being crafted at a table where folks weighed in from a variety of constituent groups and the writing was designed to not offend. “Secretary Clinton has been clear that she thinks all voices should be heard and all views considered in federal infrastructure projects. Now, all of the parties involved—including the federal government, the pipeline company and contractors, the state of North Dakota, and the tribes—need to find a path forward that serves the broadest public interest. As that happens, it’s important that on the ground in North Dakota, everyone respects demonstrators’ rights to protest peacefully, and workers’ rights to do their jobs safely.”

So in the spirit of reconciliation, Energy Transfer Partners put out its own statement: “All trespassers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and removed from the land.”

There is a schedule to keep.  the pipeline will flow with oil soon. No matter what. Another story to tell. Injustice.

This article was originally published at Trahant Reports. It has been edited for YES! Magazine.

It is the highest number of people arrested in a single day in North Dakota during the last several months of protest actions against the oil pipeline, bringing the total number of arrests up to 222.

Though the protesters behaved non-violently and cooperated with the police, North Dakota law enforcement officials described Saturday’s events as a riot.  —Rapid City Journal article

A line of trucks and commercial vehicles on North Dakota’s Highway 6 Saturday was a speeding train. One vehicle after another. Traveling too fast and too close. Then, still on track, the entire train turned left and began racing down a rural dirt road.

It was clear why: This is where the Dakota Access Pipeline is being constructed.

 Fresh dirt marks where the pipeline has been and where it’s supposed to go. Construction is on a speedy timetable. As the company has testified in court it wants the 1,170 mile, $3.8 billion project up and running by January 1, 2017.

Yet the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and several hundred people camped nearby are determined to slow down that train, protect the waters of the Missouri River, and ultimately, help the country begin the most important conversation of this era about energy, climate and survival.

So the machinery of the state of North Dakota has been engaged to stay on schedule. To be clear: North Dakota is acting as the trustee for the company, using what it considers the powers of state, to make this project so.

How far will North Dakota go? Look at where it has been.

The state has been an ally instead of a referee. Helping to craft a regulatory approach that avoided regulation. There is this crazy notion that the company did everything it was supposed to do—so leave them alone. Yah. Because the plan was to avoid pesky regulation. It’s so much more efficient to be governed by official winks instead of an Environmental Impact Statement.

Even now the Dakota Access pipeline figures the state, with allies in D.C., will give in and sign the final paperwork. As the Energy Transfer Partners attorney told the court: “The status quo is that we’re in the middle of building a pipeline.” So, according to Oil and Gas 360, “the next step will be for ETP to acquire easements to drill the pipeline under Lake Oahe. In the most probable scenario, the Corps will grant permits while District Court litigation will continue. ETP would ‘likely get notice on easement status by the end of October and would take 60 days to drill under the lake with a full crew and no major disruptions.”

In other words: No worries. The state’s machinery is supposed to make it so.

How far will North Dakota go?

They’ve already tried intimidation, humiliation, and the number of arrests are increasing. Pick on protectors, elders, journalists, famous people, anyone who could make the state appear potent. The latest tactic is to toss around the word “riot” as if saying it often enough will change its definition. “Authorities arrest 83 protesters during a riot Saturday,” Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier posted on Facebook. “Today’s situation clearly illustrates what we have been saying for weeks, that this protest is not peaceful or lawful. It was obvious to our officers who responded that the protesters engaged in escalated unlawful tactics and behavior during this event. This protest was intentionally coordinated and planned by agitators.”

What’s extraordinary about that statement is the sheriff’s own pictures show a peaceful protest. As Mel Brooks once wrote in Young Frankenstein: “A riot is an ugly thing.” This was not.

But the key phrase in the sheriff’s words is fuel for the state’s machinery, the words “… or lawful.” That is the important phrase because the state would like a protest that lets the status quo continue building a pipeline. The idea of civil disobedience is that there are unjust laws (or in this case, rigged laws) and there are people willing go to jail to highlight that injustice. The state lost its moral claim when it moved the pipeline route away from its own capital city to near the Standing Rock Nation.

Again, the question is, how far will North Dakota go?

Is the state ready to arrest hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? And then what? The illogical conclusion to that question is too terrible to think about.

Yesterday a call went out from the camps for more people. People who, as  said, are willing to get arrested. People who will interrupt their lives so that this pipeline will go no further. It’s a call to a higher law than the one that’s codified by North Dakota. And for every water protector arrested, there will always be someone else ready to be next.

How far will North Dakota go? The military-style law enforcement base at Fort Rice sends its message: Whatever it takes. Status quo must have its pipeline. That’s frightening. Except, there is an antidote to those fears. It’s found among the people at the Standing Rock camps who continue to use prayer as their status quo.

This article was originally published at Trahant Reports. It has been edited for YES! Magazine.

“We wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the youth activists.”

In a 9-0 unanimous decision, Seattle’s City Council passed , and called for the city to develop policies eliminating the necessity of their imprisonment.

While Council Member Mike O’Brien introduced the resolution in a committee meeting last week, it originated with three organizations that advocate for the abolition of juvenile incarceration: Ending the Prison Industrial Complex (EPIC),  Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (YUIR), and the Seattle branch of the anti-racist organization European Dissent.

“We wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the youth activists,” said Council Member Nick Licata prior to the resolution’s passage. “They’re the ones who created the huge pressure on the county and also the city.”

Seattle’s movement for ending youth incarceration picked up speed after the same city council in 2012 voted overwhelmingly (8-1, with only Kshama Sawant opposed) to fund the replacement of an existing youth detention facility with a new one. What struck organizers at that time was the $210 million poured into the facility.

“I was here the day all except Council Member Sawant voted to build a youth jail with $200 million of our tax money,” asserted white anti-racist organizer James Kahn, addressing the city council. “The movement did not stop after those defeats. The movement could not stop or end until we stop putting children in cages.”

African Americans make up about 8 percent of Seattle’s population, yet account for more than 50 percent of the city’s incarcerated adolescents on any given night, according to a letter by King County Executive Dow Constantine.

Organizers drummed up support not just against the prison, but also toward ending juvenile imprisonment anywhere in the 206 area code by knocking on doors, frequenting city council hearings, and speaking out at community meetings.

Besides pushing for a moratorium on juvenile incarceration, the resolution also calls for the city to fund community-based organizations that are already engaged in anti-racist work and have been working to eliminate youth detention. The amount of funding was not specified.

“Our job is to build our community, to build our analysis, to build our strength.”

“This resolution could be seen by some as an act of good faith, that nothing else changes. And I think that’s absolutely right,” O’Brien said, speaking to those in attendance moments before the vote. “This is a very important step today for the city to take this action, but it by itself does nothing to change the reality.”

O’Brien was referencing that, as a resolution, the measure is nonbinding, meaning the city isn’t legally mandated to enact it. However, to attendees, many of them organizers who had dedicated the last three years of their lives to this movement, there is a moral and human imperative that its promises be fulfilled—not just for the city but also for the United States.

“I think the city council members are gatekeepers, just like anyone else, and if they’re committed to an anti-racist vision, they’re going to have to make sure they’re centering themselves in the community,” said Senait Brown, one of EPIC’s lead organizers, who could barely contain her jubilation after the resolution passed.

“Our job is to build our community, to build our analysis, to build our strength, to build our resilience, to keep tight about what standard it is that we want to see for black youth in Seattle, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do, to continue to hold every institutional body accountable to that.”

Then they came for our Sacred Stone Camp, the original spirit camp we built to lay our prayers to our water, to protect it from the Dakota Access pipeline. But this time, they were accompanied by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council. They had no warrant, but they forced their way onto my private land, my family’s land, where I grew up on the banks of the Cannonball River. It was our own council members together with the Standing Rock Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the U.S. Army Corps, all seeking to evict me from my homeland.

The world wants to stand with Standing Rock, but Standing Rock stands against us. Chairman Dave Archambault threw our people to the dogs when he said the camps’ actions “…do not represent the tribe nor the original intent of the water protectors.”  He forgets that we at Sacred Stone Camp were the first to stand up for the water, and that we stand with all the camps who have joined our struggle.

This movement was started by the people and led by our youth. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s decision to negotiate with the state and disown the people who came to fight for our water is what could ultimately be our downfall. We have had many thousands of people ready to stand together in front of those machines. The Indigenous nations of Turtle Island had united as never before. But as division grows, it is very difficult to see a path forward.

I could not sleep last night, so I sat and made tobacco. There is something calming in working with red willow, sitting and thinking of those times with Grandma, who has been on my mind a lot. It is wintertime; this is supposed to be the time of stories and passing our history down to the young.

It was this time of year, a century and a half ago, when the Long Knives of the military forts and the Indian agents told the people they must either move to the reservations or die (known as the “Sell or Starve,” Act of February 28, 1877).

Historically, our people’s resistance has been repressed with bloody battles and massacres—but also by the hands of Indian collaborators. Our relatives did not see who the enemy was, because it was their own relatives who turned against them, enabled by the same kind of lies from the same kind of corporate media.   

Our traditional leaders were forced aside by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, when federal authorities forced the establishment of tribal councils on the reservations. This is a colonial system of government with no basis in Lakota/Dakota/Nakota culture or teachings. It is the same tactic they used with the Indian agents and the Hangs Around the Fort betrayals. They fabricate a leader that will allow them to take what they want from us. The hunger for power can divide a people.

As everyone knows, there are many leaders to this movement, and yet there are none. This is a people’s movement; this is a movement for the water, not owned or controlled by anyone.

Like Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, and the other “agency” Lakota who so quickly surrendered our lands and way of life while thousands fought back alongside Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, today our tribal council has misunderstood what is really at stake.

This movement is not just about a pipeline. We are not fighting for a reroute, or a better process in the white man’s courts. We are fighting for our rights as the indigenous peoples of this land; we are fighting for our liberation, and the liberation of Unci Maka, Mother Earth.  We want every last oil and gas pipe removed from her body. We want healing. We want clean water. We want to determine our own future.  

Each one of us is fighting for our grandchildren, and their grandchildren, and for our relatives who cannot speak or fight back. Imagine if we had stood together on October 27, the day police pushed us out of the Treaty Camp we built in the very path of the Black Snake—our most powerful position in this entire struggle. What if our own people had not negotiated away our power? What if our people had not opened the roads and then turned to march against us with outstretched arms, in line with the riot police and armored vehicles? Why pass resolutions calling federal agents to attack our people and evict the camps as the drill digs beneath our sacred water? How powerful could we be if we agree to stand our ground on our treaty land where we have laid thousands of prayers?

Our ancestors did not abandon the Pȟežísla Wakpá (the Little Bighorn River), when we last unified the Oceti Sakowin and defended our land from the Seventh Calvary; we too must not abandon Mni Sose (the Missouri River). We must not sell our people’s blood, land, and water to uphold the dysfunction we live under now. We have no choice but to break the cycle of trauma so our future generations can have a better life. I believe it starts with the water and ends with the water. Water is life.  Will you stand with us?   

Obama’s most vigorous opposition now comes from progressives, including most of the senators and representatives of his own party, who only a few months ago were his most loyal political base. The few corporatist Democratic members of Congress who still support Obama face the threat of opposition in the 2016 primaries, as Democratic voters mobilize to defend democracy, workers, and the environment.

TTP will strengthen corporate rights.

The goal of Obama’s surprise alliance is to finalize a series of international agreements—the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA)—each of which will strengthen corporate rights at the expense of human rights, democracy, economic justice, peace, and the healing of Living Earth.

Leaked text from the secret negotiations that are crafting these agreements reveals that contrary to the claims of proponents, virtually every provision would weaken democracy and undermine the ability of nations, people, and localities to shape their economic destinies. Americans from across the political spectrum have been stunned by the sudden emergence of this unholy alliance. In historical context, however, it may be less unlikely than it seems.

America’s bipartisan corporate political alliance

U.S. corporations have been actively advancing an agenda of corporate rule since at least 1971. That was when Lewis Powell, soon to be a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, submitted his infamous memo outlining a grand strategy for a corporate takeover of U.S. politics. The resulting actions rapidly played out as a global corporate colonization of the world’s people and resources. I spell out this history in detail in released this month (June 2015) in a 20th anniversary edition.

Corporations have been advancing an agenda since at least 1971.

As the corporate agenda unfolded, the Republican Party quite proudly branded itself as the party of big business and, more deceptively, of small government. The Democratic Party became seen as the party of big government, corporate restraint, and social programs for those the corporate state excluded.

But there has long been more cooperation between the two parties in support of big business than either is inclined to acknowledge. Democratic President Carter began the deregulation of the airline industry. Democratic President Clinton rolled back welfare programs, expanded corporate rights with the passage of the WTO and NAFTA agreements, and sponsored the Wall Street deregulation that led to the financial collapse of 2008.

Democratic President Obama carried forward the bank bailouts started by Republican President George W. Bush, shielded senior bank managers from prosecution and prison, and made no effort to restrict the continued growth and consolidation of the biggest Wall Street banks. His campaign for fast-track authority to push through a series of new international corporate rights agreements removes all ambiguity as to where his true loyalties lie.

The public, however, is catching on. Awareness of accelerating consolidation of global corporate rule and its implications for peace, equality, and the environment began to emerge in the mid-1990s about the time When Corporations Rule the World first launched. For many people, that book helped them connect what they were experiencing with what they were beginning to suspect.

The issue a bogus debate obscures

For the past several decades, corporate interests have managed to define the political choice in America as between small government Republicans and big government Democrats. It was a clever misdirection. Because most Americans are properly distrustful of big government, they easily buy into the anti-big government argument. The result is to deflect attention away from the sins of big business—and the implications for government size.

The public, however, is catching on.

The idea that government is essential to the function of complex societies should be immediately evident to any thinking person. It is similarly clear that letting money-seeking transnational corporations rule as best suits their financial interests has disastrous societal consequences.

Entirely missing from the debate is the extent to which it is the growth of corporate size and influence that creates the need for big government to limit corporate excesses, clean up their messes, subsidize their operations, and field the military and police forces required to protect their global and domestic properties. The subsidies include welfare for underpaid employees, unemployment for those whose jobs they outsource abroad or displace with robots and migrant workers, and medical insurance for those they fail to insure.

Without the burden that monopolistic and predatory corporations place on society, government, particularly national government, could be dramatically downsized and public debt largely eliminated.

An abstract debate over the size of government is a pointless distraction—as those who promote it are likely aware. We should instead ask, “Does our federal government represent the interests of the United States and its people and is its size appropriate to that task?” Tragically, the answer for the United State is no.

Although the American people pay the bills, it is a government of, by, and for the United Corporations of Planet Earth and their needs, not a government designed to meet the needs of our people. We could do nicely with a far smaller federal government, if we limited the size of corporations and structured their ownership to assure that they are accountable to the people of the communities in which they do business.

The essential work of our time

The institutional system of corporate rule is essentially a robotic system programmed to use its economic and political power to extract limitless short-term financial gain by whatever means available. It runs on autopilot beyond human control. And it values life only for its market price. It should be evident to any thinking adult not brain damaged by taking too many economics courses that peace, economic justice, and ecological balance will remain beyond humanity’s reach for so long as the rights of people are subordinated to the rights of the corporations that populate this system.

Hope for humanity requires a successful transition to democracy grounded in strong place-based communities and local economies. This transition is not just an ideal. It is essential to human viability.

President Obama and the Republican and Democratic corporatists currently allied with him have positioned themselves on the wrong side of history.

Fortunately, there may be a positive side to their betrayal of the human interest. It reminds us that true transformational leadership depends less on the empty promises of political leaders than on social movements of we the people. The public outrage now focused on their betrayal of democracy and the human interest lays the groundwork for what could be a seismic political realignment.

Possibilities of a transpartisan political awakening

Over the past 20 years, public awareness of the nature and consequences of the expansion of corporate rule has grown significantly. This awareness finds particularly visible expression in the public demand to overturn the Citizens United decision of a corporatist Supreme Court that removes most restraints on corporate funding of elections. And, most recently, we are seeing broad-based and increasingly vocal resistance to the current betrayal of America by Obama’s trade agenda.

Does our government represent the interests of the US and its people?

Progressive voters are outraged by the assault on democracy, workers, the environment, and local communities entailed in the Trans Pacific Partnership. Conservative voters are outraged by the attack on national sovereignty.

The resulting political shock is shining a public spotlight on the extent to which corporate influence has corrupted our national government. It is a short step from here to a recognition that the failures and burdens of our national government are not inherent in government. Rather they are inherent in corporate control of government.

Two highly intelligent, articulate national leaders—Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—are articulating a new message with the potential to redefine the debate and win broad support for steps to end corporate rule. Even voters who may disagree with their politics are drawn to their courage and integrity—qualities otherwise far too rare in American politics.

The moment seems ripe for the foundational political realignment proposed by Ralph Nader in his recent book Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State and outlined in a recent YES! Magazine interview with Ralph Nader and Daniel McCarthy, editor of The American Conservative magazine. Fran Korten, publisher of YES! Magazine (and my wife) suggests we are experiencing a new populist moment.

Call it populism versus corporatism or democracy versus corporate rule. Either way it is a far more meaningful political division than the current division between two big-government political parties debating big versus small while both compete aggressively for corporate money and pursue variations on corporatist agendas.

The distinction between democracy and corporate rule is the issue that underlies most other issues. The task before us is to recognize and act on the potential for a momentous political realignment that can make our government truly “of the people.”

“If people don’t have ownership over the decisions being made, then they’re not going to invest in them.”

During the 60s, his uncle David Richmond was a member of the “A&T Four,” a group of freshman college students whose ignited protests at “white-only” restaurants nationwide.

In the 70s and 80s, his father, Steven Allen, served as a civil rights attorney and eventually became the first black superior court judge in one of North Carolina’s largest counties.

Today, the 29-year-old sprints with the torch they passed on to him.

Irving leads the Gate City Black Lives Matter chapter in Greensboro, North Carolina, where his advocacy in Guilford County focuses on holding local police accountable, improving the county’s public education, and paying its people a living wage

The chapter’s work also addresses affordable housing needs and developing food co-ops in areas with limited access to healthy food. It is in the midst of building a neighborhood congress to create public policy at the community level.

Much like those who came before him, Irving primarily aims to leave fertile ground for future leaders to blossom.

YES! Reporting Fellow Marcus Harrison Green spoke to the southern organizer about what today’s movement can learn from the past and bestow on future generations.

This interview has been lightly edited.

Marcus Harrison Green : Your family has a pretty rich history of civic activism in the area. What would you say is the most important lesson you’ve learned from family members that still guides you today?

Irving Allen: My father always led by example. He would always lead by example and let me make my own decisions. That’s a principle I use in organizing because if people don’t have ownership over the decisions being made, then they’re not going to invest in them. I think that’s how you grow and that’s how you develop people. You can display guidance and give guidance, but ultimately you’ve got to let people make their own decisions. I was his child, but he definitely gave me free range in all decisions.

Green: What advice would you give to youth who are uncertain of how to become civically engaged?

Allen: The reason most folks aren’t involved is they don’t feel that they can really make a difference, and our job as organizers is to instill that type of empowerment in them. So my advice would be that when you see someone who inspires you, reach out to them. When we find people younger than us who are better at organizing than we are, then you know that makes us look good. You’re not organizing unless you’re training up the next generation, and I think a lot of people lose sight of that even if they’re doing great things and accomplishing great things. If you’re not training up anybody behind you to make sure that those things stay in place, then you’re not really thinking about sustainability. You’re not really organizing.

“You’re not organizing unless you’re training up the next generation.”

Green: How do you get them involved when the stereotype persists that millennials are too self-absorbed to be movement-oriented?

Allen: I hear that a lot, but that’s never been my experience. My experience with folks I’ve worked with for the past four years—with the youth from this community—is that they are highly involved. And I’m talking about hundreds of folks around the state. People with that assessment of millennials are jaded.

Green: How much of an issue is ageism in the movement? There are some “elders” who argue they don’t necessarily feel welcomed.

Allen: It’s a problem, but I don’t think it’s new. I was talking to elders of the movement, and they were telling me how their predecessors felt the same way. When you look at it in that scope, he’s 80 years old, and he’s telling me that the same problems existed then. I can’t be mad at him. There’s going to be arguments and people being told they don’t know enough to make change. I’m pretty sure they told King he didn’t know anything. I’m pretty sure they told Fannie Lou Hamer and all those people they didn’t know anything because the position or lack thereof. You see how history remembers it, so I really feel like you can’t get into a battle of egos or a back and forth of “oh you’re young,” or “you’re old.” It’s not about that. It’s about what are we doing? Are we doing the work, and are we caring for each other while we’re doing the work?

That’s the dynamic we’re working with nowadays, and I think that’s nothing new and it’s never going to end. Maybe one day I’ll be an old man, saying what people say today about the young.

Green: There’s a constant comparison of today’s civil rights movement to that of the 60s and 70s. What do you think is different and unique about today’s movement versus yesterday’s?

Allen: There are a lot of things unique about what’s going on today, and there are a lot of similarities. There are more similarities than differences, but I think we romanticize the past. We forget how many young people were involved in civil rights demonstrations while the NAACP was mostly a bunch of preachers. We forget those dynamics, so when we see it today, it looks interesting and new, but it’s nothing new.

With Black Lives Matter, in particular, we’re not afraid of being confrontational to get our point across. Many people didn’t like King when he was talking the way he was talking. He was shunned from black churches in the South and things like that. A lot of those things are comparable today. I do think about some of the differences we’re talking about today, particularly the erasure of some of the intersectional folks, like LGBTQ organizers, who we know were vital to our movement but aren’t celebrated like other folks. We have to really focus on what unites us. We have to make sure we’re not erasing the folks who are doing the work and make sure we’re being representative of everyone who’s been affected by racism. We need to uplift those folks so that nobody is excluded from the movement.

“I love black people. It’s as simple as that, from the most ratchet to the most refined. They propel me every day.”

Green: What’s your opinion on electoral politics? Do you see them as playing a significant role in the movement?

Allen: I think it’s a necessary thing. If you want to have a sustainable movement, you have to shift political will. People make decisions all the time. You may influence them for the moment, but if you want to make them sustainable, it has to be policy. You can’t change the world through hearts and minds; it’s not going to happen. You’ve got to change it through policy and practice. And the way you do that is by getting things written up and making sure folks are included in those processes to where they’re not falling through the cracks, and that’s historically not what America has done. To change that is a daunting task, but it’s necessary in this movement, and we’re not going to be able to get free without these changes.

Green: Sometimes the work of an organizer can be thankless. Why do you continue?

Allen: Because I love my people. I love black people. It’s as simple as that, from the most ratchet to the most refined. They propel me every day. When I’m down, they’re who lift me up.

It was a heartbreaking experience, she said, because voting is part of her family’s culture. She remembers her grandmother and mother taking the whole family to the polls when she was a child. “The fact that I wasn’t able to engage in the process for my children,” Hanson says, “words cannot describe the feeling.”

During those years, Hanson says, she encouraged others to vote. “Even when I couldn’t vote, I was sending five, 10, 15 people to the polls.”

Hanson’s voting rights were restored about a year ago, when she finished her probation. Today, she’s the board president of Out For Justice, a nonprofit organization that promotes criminal justice reform and the rights of formerly incarcerated Maryland residents.

Thanks to a law that took effect in March, people previously convicted of felonies can now vote in Maryland without having to complete parole or probation.

Hanson and other advocates for former-felons’ rights are registering “the reentry community” to vote, educating them on the political process, and motivating them to actually go to the polls. Because people released from prison face constant obstacles in employment, housing and financial security, activists see this as a way to teach them how to affect the changes they seek and hold their representatives accountable.

Out for Justice is part of a broad effort to support Maryland’s reentry community in voting. Staffers with the Maryland Justice Project carry voting registration forms with them everywhere, co-founder Monica Cooper says. And the group is working with Out For Justice on a survey to find out who among the reentry community is voting in the five zip codes where former offenders comprise a significant percentage of the population. Organizers set up pop-up voter registration booths in places with high foot traffic, at probation offices, and at community events where they educate the public on the political process—even provide instructions on how to Google state and local representatives.

Because they’ve been disengaged from democracy while in detention, or even before then, some are  learning for the first time about their local representatives and how they make decisions. Those newly able to vote need to make informed choices by learning about government and the political process itself, Hanson says.

“We’re really dedicated to teaching individuals the process of voting,” she says.

Not only that, but Out For Justice wants this voting bloc to be seen as powerful. New voters are taken straight to the halls of power and shuttled to the state capitol in Annapolis for rallies and meetings with lawmakers. They pass out literature to legislators, distribute talking points, and make themselves visible as new constituents.

Now that lawmakers have restored their right to vote, Out For Justice wants to demonstrate that the newly enfranchised—up to 40,000 Maryland residents—are exercising their voices to the fullest and will help decide whether these legislators keep their jobs.

When legislators head to work, “they see us,” Hanson says. “They see this huge group of returning citizens.”

Back in Baltimore, volunteers phone lawmakers on issues unique to the reentry community and hold letter-writing and email campaigns.

Voting is just one part of creating a more equitable world for ex-inmates, who also face barriers to employment, housing, and education.

Another problem ex-offenders and their advocates want to address is expungement of records for unjust arrests and charges, in light of new data.

A recent federal report shows the scale of that problem. In the wake of the death of Freddie Gray last year at the hands of Baltimore police officers, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into the city’s police agency that it “makes stops, searches and arrests without the required justification” and “unlawfully subject(s) African Americans to disproportionate rates of stops, searches and arrests.”

“Those convictions are now on the records of thousands and thousands of people in the city,” Hanson says.

So former offenders support the expansion of state laws on expungement—a process that allows crimes to be erased from a person’s record.

The state made progress with the Second Chance Act of 2015, which nonviolent misdemeanors to be wiped from offenders’ public records. But Out For Justice and several Baltimore politicians of those laws so that former inmates can obtain easier access to housing and jobs.

Additionally, criminal records can prevent former felons from obtaining a professional license or certification. For example, women coming out of prison who want to become a certified nursing assistant or physician’s assistant, Hanson says, need certifications that require background checks. That can put them at a disadvantage.

The Maryland Justice Project also seeks to expand to the entire state Baltimore’s 2014 “Ban the Box” ordinance, which that employers not ask about a job-hunter’s criminal history in job applications.

Additionally, the Maryland Justice Project is collaborating with teachers and religious communities in the Open Society Institute’s Solutions Summit, a public event in which residents will vote on priorities for the newly elected mayor and city council.

Greg Carpenter is one of the ex-offenders whose voting rights were restored by the law that went into effect in March.

Now 63 years old, he spent 20 years in prison, but has been home for 21. He now runs a bakery, 2 a.m. Bakery:Where the Dough Rises, where he trains residents returning from prison who have an interest in baking and culinary arts.

Because he was on indefinite probation, this past primary election was Carpenter’s first chance to vote since he first went to prison in his 20s. He’s eager to vote in his first general election in November.

“One of the most responsible acts for an individual who participates in society is to vote,” he says. “It’s a powerful thing for me.” He’s now encouraging others like him to vote, but faces the challenge of convincing people that their vote will make a difference.

“Folks like to think it don’t count, it don’t matter,” Carpenter says. “No matter what you think about your vote … it’s going to have an impact on something or somebody.”

A week after conservatives had their CPAC gathering, it’s The Liberal Hollywood Elites’ turn to throw their own party—also known as the Oscars.

At least that’s how you’re likely to think of the Academy Awards if you’ve been exposed to talk radio or Fox News.

Host Jimmy Kimmel is guaranteed to roast President Trump to some degree, and you could make a drinking game out of the number of winners who make #ResistanceStatements before the orchestra plays them off. And #MeToo (sexual abuse) will surely show up. And #NeverAgain (gun violence).

Cue the outrage.

Those political moments have become expected, even if they’re not part of the Academy’s official plan, let alone the event’s purpose.

Start in 1972, when for Marlon Brando in protest of depictions and treatment of Native Americans, and go right up to last year, when Iranian director Asghar Farhadi had a surrogate read a statement about “the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S.”

Look, Transformers flicks notwithstanding, film is an art, and the arts teach us how to be human. (See also: “the humanities.”) They broaden our perspective and teach that quality Republican lawmakers mock: empathy.

Of course, they get pissed at the Oscars. They’re the ones making it harder to get a college education and making a liberal arts one an exorbitant boondoggle. They know that the more educated people are, the less likely they are to be or . The head of the GOP couldn’t be a starker embodiment of the bigotry, misogyny, and general lack of principle that can fester in the absence of a liberal arts education.

Film is an art, and the arts teach us how to be human.

This year, there’s plenty of opportunity for political statement. Nominees include stories about Black people (Get Out), gay people (Call Me By Your Name), women (Lady Bird), the miserably poor (The Florida Project), and plenty more subjects that fall outside a lot of Americans’ day-to-day experience. In the way that traveling broadens the mind, exposure to people who aren’t the same as you can only help. Unless you’re exposed to Ben Shapiro.

Which brings up a key difference between the Oscars and the Conservative Political Action Conference.

CPAC audiences cheer at Obamacare’s obliteration and millions losing health care, making it resemble a massive live production of the DSM-5 highlighting antisocial personality disorder.

But those liberal elites who dare to mouth off at the Oscars do so for humanitarian reasons.

Let’s say you’re an artist, you have a conscience, and you’ve got a few seconds in front of upward of a billion people worldwide. How could you not speak out against injustice?

Especially now, under a kakistocracy that threatens nuclear and environmental disaster, wages war on the poor, the social safety net, and even facts. It’s practically a moral imperative not to just grab your little golden dude and get offstage. The latter is infinitely more an act of privilege.

When Michael Moore got his 2003 Oscar for Bowling for Columbine and blasted a “fictitious” president and the war in Iraq, he drew a mixed response and became even more of a hate target than he already was for making the movie. But 15 years later, knowing George W. Bush was illegitimately installed and Iraq had zero to do with 9/11, doesn’t Moore only look more righteous and the ones who booed him more like jerks?

And the movies being honored? If you think Oscar-worthy movies are strictly about excellence, maybe you also believe the Grammys are strictly about the best music in America (cough). No, they’re all making statements.

The Shape of Water subverts tradition by depicting what would have been the Yankee alpha-male protagonist as the despicable villain.

In Get Out a young Black man goes with his White girlfriend to her affluent parents’ home for a weekend that goes from awkward to horrifying. A truly great film? Nah. It’s a well-crafted satirical thriller that unsubtly echoes The Stepford Wives. Director/writer Jordan Peele crafted an entertaining riff on racism at a time when racism is spiking that isn’t an off-putting lecture. Even liberals cool with Colin Kaepernick taking a knee can watch Bradley Whitford’s patronizing dad character and think twice before they open their mouths next time.

Steven Spielberg’s The Post chronicles the rebellious publishing of “The Pentagon Papers,” which eventually led to the resignation of President Nixon. A stirring reminder of the importance of the free press, it couldn’t be more important now when , attacks the press fascistically as “the enemy of the American people,” and the “fake news” refrain for any reporting that doesn’t favor him has become the conservative rejoinder against accountability.

That said, I think we can all agree that Crash winning Best Picture in 2006 was a stinker. They meant well.

I’m looking forward to the outrage over Oscar politics next year, when Black Panther wins everything—even though, as Shapiro pointed out, Wakanda is not a real place.