Category Archives: Neighborhood

What I’m doing to prepare

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I realized on Friday that all my experience in organizing marginalized frontline populations in times of crisis is really going to come to bear on the upcoming years. This time, we even have some time to prepare, and lots of foundational work has already been happening in our communities by those who haven’t been served by ANY administration that’s been in power.

Find your people

Ideally, you already know some of your neighbors. But maybe you don’t! Capitalism and eviction culture lead to not knowing who’s around you. It means we have less solidarity and less strength against the ruling class. If you don’t already know your neighbors, start getting to know them! Get comfortable knocking on doors with cookies. Be open to who you meet. More and more people are uncomfortable with the status quo, even if they voted differently to you. Remember that the uniting cry of the Zapatists was “¡Ya Basta!” (“enough!”). You may end up with strange allies, but they will be allies nonetheless.

Have a good sense of who you can trust with what. Some folks are excellent at helping people feel welcome, but also don’t have a good gauge of how discrete a new person can be. Some folks are good in a crisis but otherwise aren’t dependable. Etc. There are many things you can trust someone with, have a good sense of who to trust with what.

Be open to new folks showing up, but also be aware that there will be lots of attempts at infiltration as time goes on, especially as you become more known. Each person having a story and a personal contact who can vouch for them goes a long way, but also just behave as if you’re already infiltrated.

Scope your focus

I have chosen to focus on my state and county. If a trans kid from Florida shows up on my porch, Reed and I will talk about housing them. However, I can’t do anything about trans kids in Florida at this point. I can keep giving money to Planned Parenthood in the Midwest and the South, and I can keep giving money to Translifeline, but other than that, I need to hone my focus close to home. Maybe you’ll pick a specific cause to focus on rather than a geographic one. But regardless, pick something that matches your area of influence and stick to it. Else we all go mad and burn out.

I also really liked this article that’s being passed around, that has four areas of focus: protect people, disrupt and disobey, defend civic institutions, and build alternatives. I think it’s good to know which frame folks are using when they’re asking for action. I also think it’s important that all four of these bases be covered (or intentionally left out) when organizing a broader group.

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Living honestly

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I’ve got the resources, so here’s how I live as honestly as I can in this late-stage-capitalism hellscape. Not a judgement on whatever setup works for you, just a nudge to see where you can be more in alignment with your goals and ethics.

Side projects – since always

Despite being employed in the private sector for 40+ hours a week, plus having a toddler and robust local organizing life, I have been dedicated to seeing meaningful side projects through. Right now, that’s working on getting a book about sex workers and kinksters fulfilled (do you know anyone who does fulfillment, btw??) shipped out, and working on a disaster response zine. I get a moment here and there to push them forward, and spend my Sunday mornings working on these. They are of and by my community, and I will do my part in logistics and some writing. I have always prided myself of being the person in the group of artists who gets rewards shipped, why would that change now?

No car – since 2008

While facilitated by living in the hearts of cities for most of that time, since 2021, I’ve lived in the suburbs. However, I think cars (and specifically, the lengths we go to for car infrastructure) are a big part of what have destroyed America and our local communities. I refuse to partake. Even having a child, I still refuse. We will take him to the ER in our cargo bike, thank you very much. Reed and I were even downed on my motorcycle when I was 9 weeks pregnant, and I hold to this: the problem is not me being outside the vehicle and prone to damage, it is the person operating a 2+ tonne murder machine while stressed and/or looking at their goddamn phone.

I have the luxury of a shuttle to/from work the 3 days I go in. But also, we picked where we were willing to live and work based on a setup availability like this. And yes, I sometimes take a Lyft or borrow a car from a neighbor. We still live in this (car-centric) world, after all. But I do make a conscious effort to not be in cars.

Eating less meat, and locally sourced food – this year

When Reed was able to go off keto, the first thing I asked was if we could eat less meat. He is now totally invested in researching the best places to get our eggs etc from, and has the space to go to the farmers’ markets. Truly, having extra income for local supplies and a house husband who hyper fixates on feeding the family good food is the absolute best and I’m mostly just along for the ride here. We even got a rice cooker and I can pull off a pretty good tofu stir fry! Pretty good for this protein-shake-consuming food-unit-optimizer!

Buying locally – since 2022

I hate Amazon, and also it’s so convenient. I still order from them sometimes. However, whenever possible, I try to buy locally, even when it’s a pain. I’ve found a local bike shop and a local book shop that I adore and am willing to suffer the inconvenience and slightly higher prices for. Plus, deep discussion whenever I go in about how our neighborhoods are doing and how to support each other! And, not making Bezos richer.

Non-main services – this year

I’ve been off Facebook since 2011, and left Twitter when Elon Musk took over. I’m on Mastodon, but frankly I’ve been getting way more into group chats on Signal, Slack, and Discord grown organically from people meeting each other in person. I miss the heydays of Twitter, but doomscrolling just got to to be too much. Although now I might have to re-join Facebook to deal with local politic stuff. Blah.

So other ground I’m trying to figure out here instead is search (using Kagi to great success) and a recent switch to Proton for mail (and calendar?). This has been some lifting to get things set up, but I have friends who are well acquainted with this setup and have been willing to help me through the process when I get stuck (despite very good documentation). We’ll see how far down this hole I go.

What’s next?

I’ll keep looking for ways to live honestly that I have capacity to support. Again, no judgement in any of this. We all have different constraints and goals. The only pressure here is to live intentionally. 💙

Preparing the neighborhood

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As y’all probably know, I got married, moved to the suburbs, and had a kid. Because I’m figuring out how to be involved in local politics, I joined the neighborhood association (not an HOA). But I’m still thinking about crisis response. So the natural combination of these things was to get involved in preparedness in my neighborhood. The association has an open meeting twice a year, and I requested that the one last month be focused on disaster preparedness.

We first heard from the city emergency manager. We’re a mid-sized city in the shadow of both SF and Oakland. We have about 100k people who live here, and have 5 public works employees and 80 police. Our fire department is “on lease,” whatever that means (I didn’t want to completely derail the presentation with a deep dive into this) (also, why we prioritize having our own police but not our own fire people is beyond me). The message in this presentation was the same that I’ve heard elsewhere: folks really need to be able to fend for themselves for the first 72 hours. We were told about a risk map (state and neighborhood) and the basics of being prepared (have predetermined emergency contacts; store water, food, and other supplies). The city representative told us about their main issue being how to get the word out – emergency alerts don’t seem to be getting the job done (again, I want to know more about that), so she suggested we sign up for a thing called NIXLE alerts (text your zip to 888-777) that works if the cell towers are up. Radio is still used. We have sirens in my town, but they don’t work. 

We also have resilience hubs in my town, and we heard about them from a college intern for the program. These centers keep racial equity in mind when approaching quality of life year-round. The disparity even in the urban tree canopy was called out – more affluent neighborhoods have more trees, which also means they’re cooler in heat waves. Their goal is to help groups “bounce forward” in climate adaptation. Their programming has a few arms – Community Care and Belonging, Disaster Preparedness, Climate Solutions, and Equity – during everyday, disruption, and recovery times. They also strive to have great buildings that can be useful in crisis; plus communications, power systems, and operations abilities (including conflict resolution protocols). I am clearly stoked about all this.

After hearing from the two speakers, I asked attendees to break into smaller groups and talk about what they would like to see happen in our specific neighborhood, and what questions they still had. This was amusing – the attendees hadn’t been asked to be participants beyond taking a mic to speak to a board in the past – but we got some good results! Based on the feedback folks had, I’m going to work with a small group to put together a risk and resource map of our neighborhood for our next Chili Cookoff and BBQ in August, which folks can add themselves to as resources. I’d also like to privately start collecting names and addresses of at-risk neighbors for block captains to check in on during the next heat wave or earthquake or whatever. At the same event, we’ll probably do a prize for the best go bag, and hawk this phenomenal guide another neighbor has put together for preparedness called Here Comes the Apocalypse. I am delighted by this fun visual guide and hope you check it out. I hope Jen and I get to be friends, because she’s brilliant for this.

It’s exciting to merge two things I’m so passionate about – the disaster cycle and my neighborhood. Fingers crossed we never need it, but if we do, we’ll be more ready than we would have been otherwise.