Threat modeling for disasters

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Environmental hazards

Investigate what sorts of hazards are likely to occur in your region by using available tools. If you can’t trust the tools, talk to people who have been around for a long time about what is likely to happen and how to prepare. Discuss it with neighbors. 

  • First, find broad strokes. I’m in the Bay Area, so I look up earthquake hazards at a large level to see where one might occur near me.
  • Narrow down to your region. I look up liquefaction zones because that’s what matters in an earthquake.
  • We also have wild fires in California, so I find the state’s hazard website, which tells me which areas are protected how against fires and other hazards.
  • Floods can happen just about anywhere. Here’s the current way to look up your flooding risk.

There are often environmental justice organizations in each region as well, who will have different maps that include super fund sites you’ll need to be wary of if you can no longer trust that government one. During 2017 we worked with Public Lab to find and combine maps of issues.

Political hazards

Depending on the political climate where you’re at, you may face some challenges to your response organizing work.

  • Disinformation – people may try to skew information people are getting in order to further their own political ends. Be aware of who you can trust, and read the pages in here about understanding and combatting disinformation.
  • Cops – bullies with power may tell you that you can’t do some of the things you’re doing. Know your rights in your area, and record interactions. And shut the fuck up. Have your local legal team’s number written down and/or ideally memorized.
  • Wanna be cops – bullies with guns and a sense of power may come by and try to interrupt what you’re doing. Have a sense of what risks you’re willing to take, and stand your ground whenever possible. Have a crew of folks who are willing to show up against these folks, and have them be on an on call rotation. 

Community hazards

Hopefully you already have a sense of who is in your neighborhood. If you don’t, start knocking on doors with cookies. 

  • Narcissists – who is going to show up and look for power in order to look good? They’ll drive things in a way that doesn’t help the community but has their name all over it and looks good for a moment in the news. Not willing to share power or take critical feedback. Should be removed from power and ignored as early as possible. Grey rock that shit. 
  • Spontaneous unaffiliated volunteers – people who show up and disrupt your work in order to “help.” Figuring out who is useful and who is going to get in the way is vital. More in that article. 

Community resources

Map your neighborhood for resources folks are willing to provide. I did this by showing up to community events with a form for folks to fill out with what they were willing to provide, posting on community forums, and hosting disaster-themed get togethers for folks who were interested.

  • Power – who has generators or solar with batteries
  • Water – who has water stored in their house, and is likely to fill up a bathtub
  • Food – who keeps a backstop of food at their house and is willing to share
  • Medical capabilities – who can help with medical issues
  • AED – anyone who keeps an AED in their location
  • Disaster experience – those who are trained and/or experienced in disaster response
  • Block captains – folks who are willing to check in on each other in a crisis

Kickstarting like it’s 2009

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So all those blog posts I’ve been making about informal disaster response? Yeah, it’s growing into a full-on zine. Drew and I have enough put together that we can publish something in the first quarter of the new year, but we’d like to make it even bigger and better. So we’re doing a kickstarter like it’s 2009 again or something.

I’m hoping to pay some folks what they’re worth to do a full-on website, some extra graphics for the zine, and finish up some great articles. It can end up shipping as the mostly-Willow-show, but that doesn’t feel good or right. I’ve run through my 5k personal budget of what to spend on generating this, but people keep getting excited for what it could be. So this Kickstarter is to see if there’s enough heat there to expand the scope. Throw in and share if you think it’s a nice idea. Otherwise, no worries. We can still ship with what we’ve got.

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. 💙

A normal day

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I want to get this down. I want to cherish each of these before things get gnarly again in January. I’ve created a very good routine for myself, and I want to celebrate it. I want to remember what Normal looked like, because I’m willing to fight for it. I’m willing to die on my goddamn porch for this and the neighborhood we’re a part of. I love the East Bay and the life I have here.

This is a boring post, but I lead a beautifully suburban life at this point, and I like that my life is boring.

Monday

I wake up around 6a and make myself some decaf quietly, with doors closed, so as not to wake up Reed. Holiday is under foot, North is cuddling Reed. Locke’s yellow light clock won’t indicate it’s ok to be out of bed until 7, at which point he plays quietly until the light turns green at 7:30. I check in on work to see what the week has in store, and knock out a few tasks to get things in order, and take the cats through their morning routine (play outside, scoop litterbox, feed). Between 7:30 and 8, I see Locke and Reed a bit while they do morning things, and I get myself in order for the work day.

At 8, I ride my bike for 15 minutes to the shuttle, hang out with my shuttle buddies in line, and then do email and Slack and meeting prep for the ~90 minute shuttle ride. I work for 5 hours with 1ish hour for lunch from Apple Park, focused on securing our users’ devices from state sponsored attacks and intimate partner surveillance alike. I take an hour away from my desk to pick up heavy things and set them down again gently. Then I spend 90 on the shuttle debriefing from meetings and doing focus work, ride my bike 15 minutes home, and then have dinner with Locke and Reed.

I read something relatively light in bed and fall asleep by 9p.

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Documentation in disaster response

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There’s so much going on! Surely slowing down to write about it isn’t worth the time and effort. But it is! Promise.

Use it for learning, use it for community

  • Lightening your onboarding lift – if you write down how something works, it means someone can onboard themselves while you focus on more complex things. Bonus if each person updates the documentation to help the next person do even better based on what they learn.
  • Passing on knowledge – we shouldn’t have to keep reinventing the wheel for crisis response. What did you learn, and can you teach it forward? Occupy Sandy folks helped those organizing about the tornadoes the following year.
  • Solidifying what you know – do you really understand something until you’ve written it down and someone else has done a review of it?
  • Helps with fundraising and countering misinformation. You’ll have a written log of what happened, when, that can be used as reference in the future.

Celebrate your documentarians! It’s fairly thankless work that helps the whole organization keep going smoothly.

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Looking in the mirror after body horror

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I was pregnant as an agender person, and it was hard, but it didn’t destroy me.

The tenses in this one are a doozy. I use “breast” in here a lot as I believe it’s already a gender-neutral term.

Before being pregnant, I was pretty ok with my body shape. My breasts were small enough to bind but also present enough to wear cute dresses in. My hips were present if I chose to accentuate them, but also disappeared in men’s style clothing.

I got misgendered my entire pregnancy by medical professionals. They even had my pronouns in their system! But calling people “mama” all day is a hard habit to break, and it happened all. the. time.

Willow about 7 months pregnant in front of a mirror, swollen

And also — my breasts grew 2 cup sizes. My hips expanded. Not as much as they might have if Locke had completed his damn pregnancy, but still. My fairly androgynous figure was gone. I couldn’t bind anymore. After pregnancy, it wasn’t just medical professionals that were seeing me as femme, based on my newly acquired hourglass figure. I was Uncomfortable. I was hiding in bland clothing. I couldn’t look at myself in a mirror. I shied away from sexy times. I was, and I mean this with all the dark humor in the world, “not feeling myself.”

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Flying drones in disaster zones

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This post is from Rakesh and Pascal of Crisis Commons, who know WAY more about drones than I ever will. I tweaked a bit for flow and readability. They’ll be hosting a conversation soon amongst folks who are sharing airspace to figure out how to be good neighbors to each other – hit us up if you’d like to be a part of that at connect@crisiscommons.org and my first name at this blog’s domain. That conversation will apply to Milton as well as Helene. 

On Thursday, the FAA reported 30 “near misses” of crewed flights in the Helene disaster area in one 24 hour period. 

TL;DR for operating aircraft <400ft

  • Uncoordinated shared airspace, and its near misses, bring crewed aircraft delivering aid or performing rescues to the ground for the safety of the crew. Crewed aircraft ALWAYS takes precedence over drones both for human safety and for response needs.
  • Drone pilots are always legally responsible for understanding any relevant restrictions and airspace authorizations necessary.
  • Local authority doesn’t have ownership of the skies. A police officer cannot (usually) tell you not to fly. The FAA coordinates the sky, and you should follow their guidance as best you can for the safety of all.
  • Here’s how the FAA would like you to be operating in disaster zones. (H/T to jdg for finding this link)

It is not your god given right as an American to crash into a helicopter.

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Dealing with Money in disaster response

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Co-written with Devin Balkind. Much love to Drew Hornbein, Seamus Brugh, and Mark Ferlatte for their input on this piece. 

At some point, if you are visible enough, people will want to give your group money to do what you’re doing in responding to the crisis. 

Ideally, you will have been tracking who is putting money into the response so you can later pay them back if outside donations start coming in. Have a spreadsheet somewhere that folks can see (but not necessarily edit – see “data security”).

Some quick models that might work for you

If you want to be able to take tax deductible donations quickly, you can partner with a 501c3 in something called fiscal sponsorship where they take the donation and then pass it through to you after taking a small amount as administrative overhead (I’ve seen 10% most often). Some bureaucracy and you have to partner with an org that is values-aligned. You’ll want to take a look at a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to see how these partnerships are set up.

If you want to move fast and are expecting small amounts of donations, and don’t care about tax deductible donations, you can just open up a business bank account as a sole proprietor. There will be confusing tax implications later, someone in your group who has been an independent contractor will have insights. If you want more folks on the account it can get more complicated by needing to form a business or nonprofit (see below for when you have more time), but a local bank or credit union will want to help you figure it out. 

Framing conversations about dealing with money

Money often starts coming in AFTER you’ve already figured out what you’re doing and why. But people will start to see what you’re doing after you’ve been doing it, and want to support you in doing so. This means some of the tenor of your work will already be shifting as funds start coming in. You’ll be shifting from the response phase (getting people off of roofs and from under rubble) and into the recovery phase (getting people food and medicine, gutting houses, setting up warming shelters; longer term rebuilding housing, reestablishing businesses).

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Self and Community Care in Crisis

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With love to Kate Falkenhart for her additional kind contributions and course corrections to this post.

We’ve all heard about self care at this point, and probably even have our own routines. However, when crisis strikes, it can be tempting to throw out your adaptive routines in favor of all the pressing work that surrounds you. When this is the case, we must both model the behavior ourselves as well as instigating strong guidelines across the community, lest people burn out and hurt themselves (or others). 

I struggled to do this for myself and those around me during digital response campaigns earlier in the 2010s, saw better success as more coordinators came online and came up to speed around 2015, and saw the best example yet during Occupy Sandy response in 2012.

Bringing joy

Take time and space to notice the things that bring you joy, make you pause to pay attention, shake your preconceived notions, or inspire those around you? Laughter and joy are important things to experience during a crisis, even though it may feel inappropriate at the time. This is something we can give to one another: time to stop and experience.

Embed assumptions into everything else

Everyone is always jumping from topic to topic as priorities change during a response. As systems fall into place, people start making notes in their “space” – whether physical space (as pictured above), in onboarding docs, or as reminders present in digital communication. Self-care guidelines should be included in this, along with an explicit expectation that people support each other if someone is struggling to follow community care guidelines. They may already be facing internal shame for not modeling the behavior.

For example, rotation of duties is an excellent way to build resilience of responsibility in your community and to strengthen the overall system by knowledge sharing. Taking at least one day off a week is a necessary additional example. Both come at a cost – a maximum of 5 days in one’s speciality – but the overall benefit to the system is well worth it.

Lead by obeying

You cannot go all out indefinitely and your body, relationships, and work will suffer if you try to. If someone (including you) is unwilling to take care of themselves, there is likely either a codependent need to be valued that needs self reflection, or they may be more interested in being seen as heroic than in actually being effective or modeling care for others, and that should be avoided. Life will continue after the crisis, and you have to have things worth going back to, that hopefully you’ve been able to enjoy and maintain in the meantime.

Pushing power outwards

Look for people invested in the cultural context of the group you’re working in. They will foster the emotional safety that will allow you to take informed risks. Look for people who make space for others, and ask them to lead. Quiet, competent leaders are often overlooked in favor of those who are brasher. However, the quiet, competent people can also be the most skilled at delivering on group goals while also uplifting the group. 

Those folks can be quiet, though! And quiet people sometimes like quiet spaces. Having a “sacred” quiet space to go amongst the chaos of response can help people recenter themselves and find balance. It’s a good place to practice gratitude and pause to be strategic rather than reactionary.

Support your leaders, IE if a quiet, competent leader is also a single parent, find a way to get them child care support while they coordinate your group. Additionally, it is a full time job to support the frontline workers. Those support roles ALSO need support and can succumb to burnout.