As I write this, Pacific Islanders in Vanuatu are left picking up the pieces after the worst natural disaster in recent memory ripped through the region. Vanuatu’s president referred to Cyclone Pam as a “monster,” a storm that singlehandedly leveled the capital city leaving at least sixteen confirmed dead and countless others displaced.
Closer to home, Boston is still digging out from its snowiest winter on record. Meanwhile, drought continues to plague California, and a NASA scientist recently warned the state has just one year of water supply left in its reservoirs.
Monster storms, mega droughts and record-breaking precipitation are not some distant threats in the future – they are the new normal. Climate change is here and now.
Forget about the politicians who deny climate science, or worse, ban the use of the term “climate change.” While they bury their heads in the sand, the rest of us need to channelour frustration to collectively organize and mobilize.
A crisis this big – climate disruption is a crisis of unprecedented magnitude – calls for a radical and widespread response. Thanks to the Citizens United court decision and years of chipping away at environmental statutes, we can no longer count on our government and our regulations to protect our interests. Our democracy is eroding under the profit maximizing, “free market” machine, just as the earth we tread upon is being ravaged and raped by industrial development. Ultimately, we’re in the midst of a power struggle, with the extractive industry doubling down on tar sands, fracking, and ever more dangerous and dirty fossil fuels.
We’re starting to fight back, and it’s certainly refreshing to see fossil fuel resistance mounting globally, including a rapidly expansive, largely student-led divestment movement. But we still have a long way to go, and we must keep up the pressure.
As Frederick Douglas once said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” And when the stakes are as high as they are now in terms of the climate crisis, those demands have to be bold, and they have to be broad. Bold – like policies aimed at steep emissions reductions in line with climate science, not aimed at safeguarding industry. Broad – reaching beyond energy and climate policies and demanding reforms and reparations for all kinds of social ills and injustices, and uniting what are framed as disparate issues into one momentous movement for change.
From #BlackLivesMatter to immigration to LGBTQ and women’s rights, it’s time to recognize the linkages between forces of oppression and to elevate the call for systemic change and climate justice. We’re all in this together, and we need everyone to change everything.
And we especially need the energy and the voices of young people. As Millennials, we need to rise to our historic moment and lead the call for justice and the transformation to a more sustainable society. We have to treat this as the fight of our lives, for the actions we take now will determine whether the decades that follow will be uncomfortable but bearable, or truly catastrophic. With each passing day we inch closer to climate calamity. This is our reality, but we cannot turn to despair and indifference. We have to stand up and fight. Together, we can turn the tide of injustice and oppression.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy