The Community Power Issue - YES! Summer 2020

J ournalism for P eople B uilding a B etter W orld

S ummer 2020

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Issue 94 YesMagazine.org

FROM THE EDITOR

The Community Power Issue

PHOTO BY ANTONELLO VENERI / AFP/GETTY IMAGES

L i k e m a n y o f y o u , I ’ v e e x p e r i e n c e d g r i e f —deep personal grief, shared familial grief, collective community grief. But until the COVID-19 pandemic, I had not felt a part of an immense and widespread global grief. So often we in the United States watch from a distance as epidemics, famines, and wars plague other parts of the world. But now we’re in it too—sheltering in place, social distancing, wearing masks and gloves in public—and dying—right alongside people in Italy, Japan, South Africa, and most other countries.

In my hometown of Detroit, one of the current hot spots of the U.S. epidemic, I’m watching the number of new cases and deaths climb. I’m seeing reports that the number of deaths among Black people in the U.S. is disproportionately high. Michigan is No. 5 now in cases, and No. 3 in deaths. While African Americans are only 14% of the state’s population, we’re 33% of the COVID-19 cases and 41% of the deaths. As I write this in late April, more than 3,000 people in Michigan have died from the disease, nearly 1,000 of whom are Detroiters.

Some of them I knew professionally, some personally.

None can be mourned by gathering in grief as a community. This pandemic has robbed so many of us of the traditional rituals and ceremonies for our deceased, or as we say in my community, our loved ones who have joined the ancestors. It has taken away our ability to be close to one another in a time when we need the healing of touch most.

Yet amid so much grief and renewed anger at the undeniable visibility of the inequalities and injustices related to health, housing, employment, water, we’re witnessing a rising up of our communities on a breathtaking scale as we draw on reserves of resilience and discover power within. That’s why in March, in the middle of magazine production, the YES! editorial team made the quick decision to change the focus of this issue. We wanted to capture this unprecedented moment. I’m still amazed by all we were able to accomplish in such a short period of time!

We’ve organized the stories in this issue around exactly what we saw: We have seen the power of community … to change the future … to draw on reserves of resilience … to look out for all people … to cultivate joy despite fear. From neighborhood support groups to mutual aid to the movement calling for a people’s bailout to looking forward to the light at the end of this darkness. Our team went into overdrive to produce stories for this issue that reflect the just, sustainable, compassionate world that we are capable of building.

Perhaps the phrase is overused these days, but it is true that we’re in this together! Continue to take care of yourselves and each other.

Zenobia Jeffries Warfield

Peace,

Zenobia Jeffries Warfield

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SOLUTIONS WE LOVE

People We Love Diversifying the Tech Workforce | 12 Indigenous Foodways 5 Ways to Eat a Rose | 13 The Page That Counts | 16

WHAT’S IN A SOCIAL JUSTICE DIET? You can make whatever diet you’re currently eating even healthier.

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The Trejo family, Bristow, Virginia. yesmagazine . org

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The Giles family, Great Falls, Virginia.

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A Square Mile of “Ready for Anything” “When you have humans and you have heart, you’re pretty much used to doing what you have to do to make things happen.”

Story by Lornet Turnbull Photos by Jovelle Tamayo

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Shawna Murphy hosts one of her neighborhood’s 24hour sharing tables on the sidewalk outside her home.

Murphy says she wanted to “normalize the sharing of resources” in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood.

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What Indian Country Remembers About Survival The community care at the heart of Indigenous response.

Jade Begay

Storm clouds pass over one of many rural homes on the Navajo reservation that do not have electricity or running water. March 27, near Cameron, Arizona.

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PHOTO BY GINA FERAZZI/LOS ANGELES TIMES/ GETTY IMAGES

Malik Rahim started Common Ground to organize volunteer workers in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Left, the original free health clinic in a former corner grocery store.

Riding the Waves of Mutual Aid Volunteer crisis responses are crucial in an emergency. But can they make lasting change?

Micco Caporale

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n the husk of an old grocery store, on an unassuming corner in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans, sits the Common Ground Health Clinic, a front-line fighter of COVID-19 that emerged from the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina. In leftist circles, Common Ground became one of the most storied mutual aid projects in recent history, in part because it was co-founded by a man later revealed to be an FBI informant who now works for Breitbart.

But it’s also one of the longest-standing examples of the community change mutual aid can bring—and it offers lessons that still guide organizers elsewhere.

FROM LEFT: PHOTOS BY LEE CELANO/NYT/REDUX AND CHRISTOPH BANGERT/LAIF/REDUX

Common Ground began in 2005 as an anarchist collective in the backyard of Malik Rahim, a long-time community organizer and former Black Panther.

While Hurricane Katrina still raged, he asked organizers Brandon Darby and scott crow to help him protect himself from White vigilante groups who were roaming the streets. Soon, members of their robust networks were asking how they could help, and the trio was inundated with donations, supplies, and volunteers.

From the outset, Common Ground’s motto was “solidarity, not charity.”

It’s a common refrain for mutual aid projects—shorthand for the organizing opportunities crises can present.

On the surface, a group’s disaster response might look similar to that of established organizations. After Katrina, for example, the Red Cross served hot meals, while Common Ground delivered groceries to those who needed to replenish their supplies.

Mutual aid groups might even outdo the relief offered by nonprofits and government agencies. Before people began filing FEMA claims, Common Ground

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their wealth at a dizzying pace. A people’s stimulus response must end tax dodging and restore a fair tax to pay for a real safety net and health system. We have the money: There are many billions in untaxed riches—and in the military budget—that could be better deployed for the common good.

In his new book, From What Is to What If, about preparing for the economic and ecological transition, Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the global Transition movement, writes about the power of imagination and two powerful words: “what if?”

What if we applied the lessons and new habits from this pandemic to our need to reduce energy consumption and transition to a post-fossil fuel economy?

What if we had all voting done by mail to enable millions of disenfranchised people to participate in our democracy?

What if Zoom and universal broadband services were treated as public utilities, connecting rural communities and allowing more adult students to take flexible-hour courses online while working, parenting, and engaging in community service work?

What if we built up and shifted our consumption to the place-based economy, strengthening local and regional food systems and enterprises?

What if we realized that the things we are doing to care for one another in a pandemic are the things we should be doing every day, and we organized the economy to put the care and flourishing of people at the center? What if we valued all humans equally and left no one behind, including the elderly and those with underlying health challenges and disabilities?

What if we strengthened local and authentic face-to-face culture, lifting up local artists and performers?

And what if our sense of global connection—the shared global experience of human solidarity— informed our actions and policies going forward as we rebuild our local communities?

Let’s celebrate how quickly a culture can shift, and how our warped sense of “freedom”—I can do whatever I want whenever I want—can be dislodged by a greater sense of community responsibility and connection.

They say if you want to permanently change your behavior patterns and develop new habits, it takes a couple of weeks of forcing yourself into a new routine. We may have longer than that. Let’s use it well to dream big and act bigger. y

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Health of all people is the top priority.

Expanded federal funding for Medicaid

Expanded hospital capacity to underserved areas

Paid sick leave and paid family medical leave— no exceptions

Free and accessible testing, treatment, and protective equipment

2.

Relief is for communities and front-line workers.

Not shareholders or corporate executives

Loans maintain payroll and benefits

Funds tied to conditions that ensure fair employment opportunities for all

Chuck Collins is director of the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is author of Born on Third Base (Chelsea Green) and the forthcoming The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Billions (Polity Press). Twitter: @Chuck99to1

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Source: thepeoplesbailout.org Infographic by Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz /YES! Magazine 2020

Full fundi for Indian H Service an urban Ind health cen

“People’s Bailout”: How to Fund a Just Economic Recovery Congress so far has allocated $2.5 trillion in emergency stimulus funding.

Economic and climate justice advocates are pushing for distribution that will address immediate needs of communities, but also lay the groundwork for a more resilient and just economy. “This pandemic has unveiled the interdependent crises of classism and racism, economic decline, and climate destruction. COVID-19 is magnifying the ills of normalizing profits over people,” says a 350.org statement.

As of May, 50 members of Congress and hundreds of social change organizations had endorsed the #PeoplesBailout’s five principles:

3.

Funding gets directly to those who need it.

ing Health nd dian nters

Broaden unemployment insurance

Sizable cash payments to every person

Increase food aid programs

Extend housing assistance, halt evictions and foreclosure

Expand childcare for working families

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Democratic processes are protected.

Everyone can vote by mail

Relieve student debt

Stop water and electricity shutoffs

Automatic voter registration

Accurate 2020 Census

Larger payments to front-line workers and the poor

Continuance of government even without in-person sessions

4.

Investment in a just, regenerative economy: Counter systemic inequities.

Tackle the climate crisis.

Create familysustaining jobs.

Rebuild infrastructure

Expand wind and solar power

Replace lead pipes

Clean and affordable public transit

Build and repair public housing

Weatherize buildings

Manufacture clean energy goods

Ecological restoration

Regenerative agriculture led by family farmers

Reductions in climate emissions and pollution yesmagazine . org

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ABOUT YES! MEDIA

Summer 2020 Issue 94

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ABOUT YES! MEDIA

LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Christine Hanna

New Ways of Being A few days ago, I came downstairs to stretch my legs after being holed up working in our home’s little spare-roomturned-office. The back door was open, and I heard squealing. I saw my husband trying to escape my two boys in a feverish game of trampoline tag. The joyful squealer? My husband. We’ve lived in this house for 18 years—12 years with kids and three with a trampoline. And that scene, that precious sound, was a first. Like many working families with overscheduled lives, time for parents to let loose and just play is rare. This is one of the many crisis-induced norms that I want to keep post-coronavirus.

Other new norms I want to keep: Cuddling with my kids during the workday. The satisfaction of making a great meal with what’s lying around. Cleaner air. Emerging safety nets. Local and state politicians who tell it like it is. Mainstream questioning of our unsustainable economic growth model, our house-of-cards banking structure, our cruel health care system, and the pernicious lack of equity through all of it.

There are old norms I’m ready to let go of: Commuting daily to an office.

Errands to the store for those “just right” ingredients. The incessant busy-ness of modern life. Excuses by our political leaders for why we can’t take care of each other and our planet.

At YES! we’ve heard from readers who are struggling with isolation and uncertainty in this crisis, and those who are experiencing more connection and more community than they have in decades. They have found themselves working with others in urgent common purpose. What other incredible things are possible when we put the health of our community at the center of our collective attention?

A few weeks ago, we published an online article by Viking Economics author George Lakey. In “The Nordic Secret to Battling Coronavirus: Trust,” Lakey describes how Norwegians moved quickly and efficiently to lock down the country before a single death from coronavirus had been recorded. This was possible because Norwegians knew they could pause their economy and be OK, thanks to the country’s strong social safety nets. But those policies weren’t always in place— they were hard-won through a persistent process of nonviolent revolution in the 1920s and ’30s when there was massive poverty and oligarchs ran the government.

So back to the question of norms: Now that we’re getting a taste of the society and systems we could have, what gains are we willing to fight to keep? What other ideas will we push forward?

Th an k yo u , th an k yo u to th e th ou sa n d s of re ad er s w h o h ave m ad e an em er ge n cy gi ft to YE S ! to h el p u s w ea th er th e fi n an ci a l imp ac t o f th is cr is is . — C .H .

We’re asking each of our readers to do two things: 1 Make a one-time emergency gift to help YES! weather the financial crisis presented by coronavirus.

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Wishing you strength and health,

Christine Hanna P.S. For nearly 25 years, YES! has supported social change, examining powerful ideas and telling the stories of communities reshaping what is possible. You can help! Give a gift subscription, become a monthly donor, share stories online, or simply pass along this issue once you’ve read it.

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