sheets to the wind: hold everything dear
and a few thoughts after spring days abroad.
Hello! I’m just back from a spring trip to Belgium and the Netherlands. I attended MIRP, an occasional gathering of audio makers, journalists, and artists. It was also my first time speaking at such an event, and it transformed the experience for me. Though people at small festivals like this one are overwhelmingly kind and wonderful, I tend to feel a little on the outside of professional gatherings—which is fine, and maybe that’s just intrinsic to how it is for me to “network,” but of course I know many share this sense of tagging along, trying to keep up. Networking is hard! But after contributing to the gathering, I felt a shift: a new orientation, a clearer space for conversation to begin. It felt much more like we were peers, sharing ideas with each other—which, uh, we were! It felt great, and I want to do it again.
I may share more about this later, but briefly: I talked about something I think people need more from climate & environmental stories in this important moment for our planet. I think people need to access their agency in this crisis, and to see positive (and real) examples of human behavior + climate action. Pragmatic hope.
“We need to consciously seek out experiences that reinforce that sense of possibility—not just because it makes us feel good, but because the expectations we bring into climate work have a huge impact on the outcomes.”
Journalist Amy Martin, summarizing the perspective of ecologist Dr. Harini Nagendra on Threshold podcast
When we make negative assumptions about human nature, unconsciously or not, it influences our reporting. It shows up in conservation policy, schools, prisons, laws, workplaces, etc. And I think negative assumptions happen a lot: as argued on a recent episode of Throughline, veneer theory (the idea that people are at their core selfish + violent) is a pretty foundational belief in our culture.
“We speak of self fulfilling prophesies, but any belief that is acted on makes the world in its image. Beliefs matter. And so do the facts behind them.”
Rebecca Solnit, from A Paradise Built in Hell
But when you look more closely, you find cracks in the foundation of that worldview. People can be “all kinds of things, given the right context,” and often, people demonstrate themselves to be empowered, collaborative, egalitarian, and caring. So, let’s seek out and try to understand the conditions where this happens—again, yes, because it makes us feel good, but not only that: because it helps us imagine our future, and imagining a thing as possible is critical for it to be possible.
I was lucky enough to co-present with Morgan Childs, a journalist who covers migration and asylum in the Czech Republic. She spoke about the complications of wielding empathy and identity in reporting hard stories. The gathering also included performances by Kristina Loring, Inne Eysermans, a musical improvisation/demonstration of Ham radio, and lots of good talks.
One practical takeaway, useful I think whether you’re a listener or a maker or both, came from Dennis Funk in his presentation about cultivating a listening practice. He recommended keeping a listening log, a running journal of podcast episodes you listen to, and jotting down what you liked or not and why. So simple and smart—why haven’t I been doing that?!
It was a beautiful time. My husband came along, and after MIRP, we visited old friends by foot and train and bicycle, saw elderflower and poppies and figs growing everywhere, and ate the best falafel we ever did eat (made with fava beans as well as chickpeas, it was profound).
As often happens while traveling, I was aware of my American-ness on this trip. In neither either a good or bad way, I just felt the difference. This is not a statement about the superiority of Europe, because there are definitely things I appreciate about being culturally American, or one flavor of it, at least. But I felt it in a discussion about the future of AI in audio production: I’m scared of AI, but was a bit surprised to find myself playing with the idea of treating it with the same rights + responsibilities as an individual citizen. And I felt it in how differently the Dutch education system operates—kids are sorted into vocational or ‘higher’ education tracks at just 12 years old.
And of course, the cities felt much more humane than most I’ve experienced in the US, which we observed in the way our friends lived: their walk to work through the park, or how they drop their kids off at school by bike. Their cheap rent and views of the river. The life of the streets.
In Amsterdam especially, the boundary between private and public space is so porous (taking it back to third spaces). It was the first nice weather in months, and people were throwing open the doors, pulling chairs and tables out of the house, and plopping in the middle of the sidewalk, sometimes even laying out picnic blankets. It reminded me of a moment during a visit to the city years ago, when I accidentally walked into a stranger’s house, mistaking the sidewalk tables and the open door for a cute neighborhood café.
Also, people apparently don’t close the curtains (or hang them at all?). At night, the glowing windows of the row houses along the canals resemble the pages of a graphic novel, each an intimate glimpse into someone’s life in silhouette. When I remarked on this, a friend told me that this openness is actually a vestige of Calvinism, the idea that “the honest citizen has nothing to hide.” If that’s true, the windows do feel different—less like neighborliness and more like surveillance.
meanwhile: forest + river, police + pipelines
At Outside/In, we published a series on the changing landscape of protest, particularly climate protest, in the United States. The first episode is about the ripple effects of Standing Rock; the second starts at a drag show and examines how white power attacks on the grid are intersecting with the policing of movements on the left, especially Stop Cop City.
I’ve been reporting this series for months, and it was a big, good challenge—the first time I’ve written about “terrorism,” and in such depth on Indigenous resistance. I got to speak to several members of the Oceti Sakowin (Sioux Nation) who were part of defining the strategy for the gathering at Standing Rock in resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. In doing so, they told me, they sought guidance through ceremony from leaders of the American Indian Movement.
I also learned about the fossil-fuel-industry-backed wave of legislation, drafted in direct response to Standing Rock. It increases criminal penalties for things like trespass near pipelines (and a lot of other things), and it’s passed in at least 18 states so far. And I learned about the movement to Stop Cop City, which sits at the intersection of climate + environmental + racial justice, police brutality, and abolition.
One of the central questions of the series is about property destruction. Property carries specific, especial rights in the US (speaking of unconscious beliefs and being American). Is property destruction a form of violence, or part of a tradition of civil disobedience? How do we distinguish between actions like damaging a pipeline (which is disruptive) and shooting up an electrical substation to cause power outages (which can ultimately kill people), as neo-Nazis are doing? When Lakota activist Tokata Iron Eyes says, “you can’t be violent towards a piece of plastic… you can be violent towards human beings,” what comes up for you?
Consider also the actions of people in a forest in Atlanta, who set fire to a bulldozer on a construction site for a police training complex not far from where a “forest defender” known as Tortuguita was killed just a few weeks before—the first police killing of an environment protestor in the United States. So far, 42 people have been charged with domestic terrorism in connection with this movement.
It’s definitely a lot. But here’s what a poet and community organizer in Atlanta told me. They were referencing Cop City but I think this can be said about what’s imagined by many movements for justice, including those around climate change.
“If I could be so brave as to be optimistic, it's this beautiful possibility-making opportunity to be very clear about what intersectional solidarity offers us...
This is an issue that brings all of our front lines into one single line. And it's terrifying because all of us have a lot to lose, but it's also beautiful because this is potentially a win that we can all share.”
briefly
“The atmosphere is a communal space, and lungs are an extension of it.”
Sharing this again: a time in the forest with the late Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, better known as Tortuguita: “We win through nonviolence. We’re not going to beat them at violence. But we can beat them in public opinion, in the courts even.”
I learned a great deal about the Earth Liberation Front from the BBC podcast Burn Wild, reported by Leah Sottile. She asks, “How far is too far to go to save the planet?” Sottile has covered extremism for years, and for this one, she interviewed former members of the ELF and the FBI agents who investigated them. If you’re not familiar, the ELF is a group which set fire to slaughterhouses, logging equipment, ski lodges, and other targets in late ‘90s and early ‘00s, all in the name of the environment—never killing anyone. Small but important thing: I wish this show shared their transcripts (or at least, I haven’t been able to find them).
I also recommend Buffy, a podcast on the life and legacy of Piapot Cree singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. Her music was an anthem for the Indigenous occupation of Alcatraz starting in 1969.
I pre-ordered Good Tape, a new print magazine about the audio industry.
“I tried to remember: were fairy tales regressive or subversive?”
Following up on my search for positive but real examples of motherhood, lots of suggestions in the comments here.
My friend Aubrey wrote about her daughter’s first laugh and her family’s journey with adoption in a critical moment for ICWA, legislation which protects Native children and is about to be ruled on at the Supreme Court. The podcast This Land details the threat to ICWA and, with it, tribal sovereignty more broadly.
I can’t get enough of 11-year-old Blue Ivy, dancing so smooth on stage, and oh the way Jay-Z and Beyoncé look at her.
lastly: hold everything dear
After the death of his beloved dog, a cook I follow on Instagram shared these words about grief, a thing which is impossible and yet possible to write about.
“To have the capacity to reimagine what love is, is to see down what you care about, and to serve the endings of what you love. The ability to see the end of what you hold dear turns out to be the mothership of holding it dear.”
Stephen Jenkinson
I feel this way about being alive at this time on our planet. We will be witnesses to the end of many things, of ecosystems and species, places and ways of being. As I’ve said here, I think we have agency in the way this goes, but loss is of course going to be part of our experience, and it’s painful, it’s far too much sometimes. I want to hold everything dear. I don’t want to look away.
till the next one,
Justine
Fun, moving, and beautifully thought-provoking, thank you for writing/sharing.