EP 12: LIVE from New York Climate Week -- The Symbiocene

Coming to you LIVE from New York Climate Week, we’re bringing you a very special episode of Supersede. Partnering with our friends Queer Brown Vegan (Isaias Hernandez) and Nowadays on Earth (Kalpana Arias), Seeding Sovereignty co-hosted The Symbiocene, a beautiful evening and panel discussion with Willow Defabaugh (Co-founder and Editor-In-Chief of Atmos), Isais Hernandez (Founder or Queer Brown Vegan) and Wawa Gatheru (Founder of Black Girl Environmentalist) moderated by Kalpana Arias of Nowadays on Earth. 

We’re lucky to join forces with the amazing folks at TEDxLondon’s Climate Curious, the UK’s top climate podcast. Head over to Climate Curious to listen to more casual conversations with the panelists, and don’t forget to subscribe to CC and Supersede! 

This discussion dives deep into emergence amidst climate breakdown. What does it mean to live at the end of the world as we know it, at the verge of emergence? Touching on the significance of decay, the conversation roots hope in the futures that might grow from the ecologies of collapse.  

The term ‘symbiocene’ was coined by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht; inspired by this term, we believe that we can rewrite stories of ecologies.

BIOS

• Isaias Hernandez is the founder of Queer Brown Vegan. He is a Gen Z environmental justice activist and educator from Los Angeles, CA. After growing up in a community that faced environmental injustice, he found his purpose in creating accessible environmental education with a focus on social justice issues.
• Wawa Gatheru is the founder of Black Girl Environmentalist. Wawa Gatheru is a GenZ climate activist, speaker, and founder passionate about cultivating a climate movement that is made in the image of all of us
• Willow Defebaugh is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Atmos, a nonprofit biannual magazine and digital platform curated by a global ecosystem of artists, activists, and writers devoted to ecological and social justice, creative storytelling, and re-enchantment with the natural world. She writes a weekly newsletter called The Overview which offers a holistic look at life on Earth through the lens of deep ecology.
• Kalpana Arias is the founder of Nowadays On Earth. Kalpana Arias is a technologist, urban gardener, climate activist and food growing educator, writer, speaker and the founder of Nowadays On Earth, a social enterprise advocating for contact with nature in the digital age.

Special thanks:

• Danielle at Rosa New York for providing us with an incredibly special space to hold this event
• Drew Wesley for live engineering all audio of the evening
• Josie and the rest of the Climate Curious team for the collaboration

Transcript

Hi everybody. So not only are we live streaming this on Seeding Sovereignty's Instagram, but we are recording this panel for Super Seed. So I want to acknowledge everybody listening. If you're listening to the podcast, welcome. Welcome back to Super Seed. And we have a very special episode. We are joined by some fantastic individuals doing really powerful work. And we're gonna listen to them talk about systems

and the symbiose scene. So take it away everybody.

So we are living at the end of the world as we know it, but there's little collective knowledge of what the end is. Globally, we're experiencing climate breakdown and injustices as our leaders continue to sustain a system designed to harm and oppress people and planet. The serial apocalypses we now face, we must face together.

But we are not alone. Communities on the front line of the crisis are experiencing endings, collapse, and transformation daily. And these stories will guide us into imagining the unimaginable and winning the world that we want. Today, I'm joined by activists, climate educators, storytellers, and futurists to visualize the many possible futures growing from the ecologies of collapse. So let's get into it.

To, I'll get started by introducing myself. So I'm Kalpana, I'm a technologist, an urban greening activist, and the founder of Nowadays on Earth, a social enterprise advocating for contact with nature. And I'll pass it off over to my right, to Willow. Hi, my name is Willow Duffabaugh. I am the co-founder and editor-in-chief of a climate and culture magazine called Atmos. Yes, give it up for Atmos. Thank you, I love to hear that.

I'm a storyteller at heart, and if there's one thing I love talking about, it's decay and collapse, which might sound weird, but maybe it'll make sense in a few minutes, I don't know, we'll get into it. But thank you all for being here tonight. Hi everyone, how are you doing? Woo!

We're feeling good. I'm so excited to be here. My name's Wawa Gethero. I identify as a Gen Z climate activist, and I'm the founder and executive director of the national nonprofit called Black Girl Environmentalist. And so. Woo!

We are essentially co-creating a climate future in the present that really wants to see black people not only survive but thrive. And our mission is really around addressing the pathway and retention issue that exists in the climate sector for black women and black gender expansive folks. A lot of people don't know, but people of color have very high levels of turnover in the climate movement. And when it comes to doing work in the climate space,

lowest retention of any other group. So we want to create infrastructures of community care that keep us in the movement of our lives. So I'm excited to be here. Woo!

Hi everyone, my name is Isaias Hernandez. I am an environmental educator and the creator of Queer Brown Vegan and I'm a grassroots media platform that just really focuses on curating really detailed events, producing independent web series now and also just really using education as a tool to empower rather than to interrogate individuals and to really accelerate the discourse around the ecological crisis we're in today and talk about melodic futures.

And I just want to acknowledge Sophie Strand, who is one of our panelists, couldn't join us today, but she has sent us a recording of her message to us, and we'll be playing that after the panel inside, so be sure to go in and listen to that when we finish. So Willow, your work focuses on deep ecology offering a holistic view of life on Earth.

What does the idea of total collapse mean to you and what can we learn about decay and decomposition in the process? So when we talk about decay and collapse, what first and most immediately comes to mind is the binary that we love to create between life and death, growth and decay, right? We see these as being opposing forces. But when we break down, particularly, I'm gonna talk about the binary of life and death.

When we break that binary down, we understand that it really hinges on the idea of the individual. When I think of myself, Willow, I think I am alive, and someday I will not be alive. I have my life and death. But when we step outside the role of the individual and we start to see ourselves as walking stories, microbials, bacteria.

We begin to understand the forces that underpin all of nature, which are essentially that everything is in transition from one thing into the next. Everything is constantly changing from one thing into the next. And when you start to see the world from this perspective, you understand that death is not actually an opposing force of life. It's actually an invention of life.

to keep itself going in other forms and combinations. It's, in a sense, the most ingenious recycling program there is out there. And we love recycling. Do we love recycling? Okay, great. Want to go down a rabbit hole about recycling, but we're not going to do it right now.

decay. So when I think of collapse, what I also think of is possibility. And none of this is to say that death, decay, collapse, any of these things are not heartbreaking, that they're not exhausting, and that they're not terrifying, because they are. And I don't think there's a single person who is in this room tonight who has not been touched by one of those things.

In fact, it's Thursday of climate week, so I would imagine we're all on the verge of collapse right now, but we're here. So when I think about looking at the world and the moment we're in through a lens of collapse and decay, I think about that also as being a moment of possibility because so many of the structures that have been underpinning our world.

So many of our imbalanced structures that have been underpinning our world for so long are beginning to collapse because it's clear that they're not sustainable and they don't benefit everyone. And so the question is, what will it transition into? Because our world is changing. And when you begin to understand that our world is constantly in a process of change,

Well then we can think about what it's transforming into. And that's why I'm so happy to be here with all of you tonight, because you're part of that change.

Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I think there's something really special about being able to see the possibilities around us throughout endings, because one of the things that these very harmful systems do is oppress our imagination. And without our imagination, we can't see beyond what's immediate. So Wawa, I would love to hear from you. Your practice as a movement builder has led you to create spaces outside of the mainstream climate movement for black people

thrive. What was your inspiration and what's the importance of building spaces on the margins of dominant cultural narratives?

Imagine all the possibilities beyond that noise.

question. So my inspiration comes from my community. My inspiration comes from my ancestry. It comes from the matriarchs that have raised me. And yes, let's take a moment. The matriarchs that have raised us are fundamental.

And that's given me the inspiration to be able to co-create a movement that is existing on, you know, the margins of the mainstream climate movement and really pushing against what has for so long excluded a lot of frontline folks. When I think about the rest of the question of why, you know, we need to create spaces for us, we have to create spaces for us outside of the mainstream climate movement so that we can actually reconcile what it looks like

truly grounded in liberation. Today I was at a black climate leadership summit and they grounded the space in asking the question of whether or not it was possible for us to cultivate spaces in the climate movement in which liberation and oppression didn't coexist together. And that made me think a lot because I think something that I've been bonding, maybe trauma bonding with a lot of people this climate week has been the fact that we're all really burnt out.

have with folks coming into this space, people are like, aye, I'm burnt out. My social battery is all the way at the ground. I feel as though I'm investing so much emotional and intellectual labor into this space and not really seeing a lot of those returns. And I think the reality is that we don't know how to rest, and that's by design.

All of these dynamics are grounded in history. When I think about black liberation and the reality that oftentimes black people don't know how to rest, it's because there have been systemic policies that have created these conditions. I can think of the Vagrancy Act of 1866 that quite literally made it illegal for black people not to be employed. And the legacy of those policies exists today in which we don't know how to rest. It's criminalized.

So when it comes to us co-creating spaces on the margins of the mainstream climate movement or the mainstream in general That's us pushing the bounds on that means us co-creating spaces that allow us to rest and allow us to uplift folks when they need support and actually allow people to step back when they need to so that others can step in and Actually be able to co-create conditions where that's actually truly relational

I think I really resonate with that and that's also I think one of the driving things that I says and I wanted to create for this in Bioscene is create spaces that centered joy and rest within our collective movement so I think I want to give you guys a round of applause for being here as well today and giving yourself that rest in a very busy week so I say as an environmental educator and storyteller you studied the theories of music nature and ecology

First, what is eco-musicology? And can you elaborate on how music can help us to forge planetary liberation?

Yeah, absolutely. One of my past lives was being a musician. And ecomusicology basically looks at how music, sound, and nature have deep complexities with each other when it comes to sonic and sound and melody issues. And I think one way to describe this in environmental movements is that I know a lot of us refer to heartstrings as the human body. So it's not really called heartstrings.

a chordae tenonae, so they're like inelastic cords in her heart. So what has been studied, and it's called the heartbreak syndrome, is that when there are large moments of distress, whether that's through genetic issues, health issues, or people actually, it's been found, experiencing high amounts of climate disasters, those strings break inside the human body. And so I use, I think for me, education and music

those things because I really feel that

each heartstring rips in our bodies, the more loss of melodies that we continue to hear and continue to remind ourselves of what memories are we losing. I really feel that as someone that was a former musician, the reason why I really loved playing the saxophone, both alto and tenor, is that it relies on the breath of the body. So you might have seen the quartet that I was playing here that relies heavily on the strings and hands. When instruments really rely on the breath

the individual. So in times of those ecological crisis, we have seen that in revolutions and during movements of periods that were banned for people talking. One example is jazz that comes directly from black liberation. And I have such like an honor to have been able to study jazz music years ago and recognizing that these melodies are so sacred to so many cultures and communities. Yet when we're trying to talk about this ecological crisis,

I think sometimes we try to discredit each other to say, that's not the same song that you're playing, therefore you're not an environmentalist. And instead, I really use education as a way to really flip that narrative and say, what is the unknown? Yeah. Thank you. Yes.

I really love that.

a phrase you mentioned, like our songs have memories. And I think in this space, it'd be really interesting for each other to ask what are the memories living inside us, that the songs that we need to hear for our cultures and for the ones that we want to continue to build. So, Wawa, we know that the global climate emergency is a crisis of culture and disconnection. What does relational solidarity mean to you?

day-to-day to create systems of community care and earth care that demand justice? I love this question and this challenge this question actually really challenges me I was really nervous about answering it honestly because no one's ever asked me that before so I was like sitting back there trying to you know maneuver and reconcile with all the thoughts that were coming up.

And I wanted to include some of the notes that I took from some of the conversations that I've had today and some of the other spaces that I've been and share that. So I think ultimately relational solidarity is all about co-creating spaces of care that are not conditional.

And that's really difficult. And I don't think that's something that we've ever necessarily been taught to do. It's something that we have to learn together. And it's also about challenging what exactly it is that we're building towards. I think we often use the terms liberation and freedom, and they don't mean the same thing. Freedom is a temporary state of being. Liberation is a process, and it's something that never ends.

for us to be really, really specific in our language about liberation. And it actually requires us to ask a question that was also a grounding question in the other seminar that I was in today, which I wish like there were some recordings so I could share it with everyone. It was so transformative. I was asking the question of, what if we created vast networks of care and community that render obsolete the systems that are harming us?

I'm going to say that one more time. What if we created vast networks of care and community that render obsolete the systems that are harming us?

And getting to that point is going to be very uncomfortable. I think it's something that we haven't had the ability to live through. And that's the whole point of the symbiocene, right? It's a new geological epoch in which we are challenging what it means to live in community, to love unconditionally. And that requires also understanding that true liberation requires understanding the dynamics of justice

Everyone needs to not only survive, but to thrive. And that requires really intentional community. And yeah, that's what I have to say to that.

I guess this is more of a thought than like a...

a statement, but I think what comes up for me when you share that is what are the systems that I hold within my personal interpersonal relationships that I have to let go of, that I have to let collapse and use as compost for these very vastly different worlds that we all want to live in and that we know is possible because we wouldn't be here if we didn't know it was possible.

and metaphor. How can storytelling be a tool to communicate this collapse as a lifeline to wider audiences? And what rules do you think need to be broken in order for a collapse to be safer and sexier as we transition into building this better world?

Okay, I just want to say this is one of my favorite questions ever. How can we make Collapse sexier? I mean, amazing. But I actually would love to start by turning this question around a little bit to all of you. How many in the room, show of hands, has ever felt so completely touched or moved by a story? It would be a book. I didn't even finish the question and you're all like, yes. Well, what I was going to say is that you felt totally undone by it.

This is the power, yeah, okay, we can raise our hands again. Perfect, okay, every single person in this room, pretty much. Stories are foundational in shaping who we are as human beings. And I will ride with that to my grave, I believe it. And part of that means that stories have the power to...

create collapse of our ideas, of the ideologies that have shaped us, that shape our society and our culture, a story has the power to bring things back to the Earth so something new can take its place. And so when I think about storytelling through this perspective, storytelling is the way that we change people's minds. Richard Powers once said, I'm going to do my best not to butcher this, but he said,

An argument can't change a person's mind. Only a good story can do that. And I believe that wholeheartedly. At Atmos, just to use an example, we tell a lot of stories on the subject of queer ecology.

And there has not been a lot of storytelling around queer ecology very much in history. In fact, nature and the environment and biology is something that's often weaponized against queer people and trans people. And actually, so much of that is just storytelling. And also, it's a lack of stories around how queer and how trans nature actually is, how often homosexuality appears in nature, how many animals change sex. Nature is incredibly queer.

comes down to the storytelling because it's been missing. And so I believe that stories have the power to create collapse of all of the oppressive ideologies that we're really here to talk about tonight. And I think the more that we can use storytelling to shift the very idea of collapse from being something that is always scary and something to run and turn away from.

towards something that is transformative and generative, then.

only up from here. That's all I got. But strap in because it's a wild ride. Yes, I think it leaves a lot of food for thought and to, I guess, what are the stories that we want to tell for our own lives and for our communities. And...

I say as I know that not many people know that you're a musician, but you just shared that. But how can education use music to create those new stories and those new narratives and the cultural shift that we need to see into building more resilient climate futures? Yeah, I mean, I think to me the reason why I'm so passionate about education is just like a personal story of mine is like my mother.

earned her degree in Mexico to become a teacher and then months later immigrated to the United States and then was deemed undocumented, therefore unable to work. And the idea of to me being an educator wasn't so much about having a piece of paper, but it was a way that you taught stories. And so to me, like at a young age, my mom was my Spanish teacher. She taught me how to read, she taught me how to write, she taught me about the cultural stories

when she was young living in the land. And so the story about me going into music actually was a gateway for me to really express my pain and power.

that I was experiencing as someone that was really discovering themselves in middle school, like what it meant to be, quote unquote, bisexual at the time. But people have changed their identities, and it's so beautiful. And I think for me, when I picked up the saxophone, it was the alto saxophone. So for those who don't know a little bit about music, is that alto produces a slightly higher pitched noise. Soprano is the highest, but then alto and then tenor is a little bit deeper. Then baritone is usually the deeper part,

the Simpsons plays, that's the saxophone that she plays. I remember picking it up and remembering the very first time having to interact with nature. So in musical instruments, you use a reed for wind instruments, some of them not all. And that reed is made out of wood. So already I was intact with this. I remember complaining of, it tastes like wood. But I was actually in it. My lips were touching nature.

And I think for me, that was one of the beautiful ways to be able to really express myself of what it meant to be an environmentalist. Because for so many young kids, we look at this narrative of you have to be doing this, you have to look this way, you have to support these policies. For me, I was just discovering what it meant to just be by myself, but also to really express that deep grief I had of the complex emotions of the words I couldn't say to my parents of how they felt about being homophobic towards me.

you know, the idea of having to choose to love in both the living and dying world is an act of humility. And so to me, that's where I felt that education today is being currently defunded and many public education programs. I mean, one of the most horrific examples that we talk about is like in Florida, for example, conservative right-wing media is like implementing these educational programs where they're literally comparing climate change activists to Nazis. And it's so disgusting to see.

the ways in which we're defunding arts and cultural programs for so many black and brown people that now when I went back, actually my friend works at that middle school that I used to go, that they don't even have a music program anymore. And that's just almost like, I don't know, like 10 years, like 12 years since I've been in that grade. 14 more, I don't know. But to me, you know, it goes to show like education is really a pathway for all of us here of how we got inspired, whether you work in fashion,

science and research and development writing. There was always that one teacher to do it, and I think for me it was an instrument that also taught me the ways of how to really express my anger, which is why I have such a deep love and respect for all musicians out there, for the singers, for our favorite artists, because that, to me, is the way that we express environmentalism.

That was beautiful and yeah, thank you for sharing that. And I think it goes back to your first answer as well, the songs and the alternative dynamics that music can give to communication, but the songs that we carry within us and what do they sound like, what do they mean for us in our own process of transformation and liberation.

So we're nearing the end of the panel, but I'd love to start with a bit of a quick fire question for everyone. So you can choose to answer it, whoever wants to go first. But what are the worlds that are emerging right now that inspire you?

I can go first. Yeah? Oh, yeah. OK. So I'm a huge Tumblr fan. I still use it.

And to me, the world that are emerging is like Gremlin core. Like this idea of grunge and upcycling and hoarding. And we all have those friends who hoard. Like, I hoard too. I do hoard sometimes, and it's really hard for me to give up. But to me, honestly, embracing this naturalistic slash grimy lifestyle is something that I really love, because I feel that we can mix that mythology into that type

how we're working together. And I always say, make your love life or make your existence your mythology because the amount of ways that you can creatively upcycle and downcycle parts of pain into different statues of fountains of wealth, to me, is one of the most beautiful things to do. Woo!

Everyone get back on Tumblr. Yeah. I can go. You really just turned gremlin core into something beautiful. Like, that was really something. Worlds that are emerging right now that excite me, I think, I mean, the thing that fruits most immediately in my mind is our cultural obsession with fungi that has come up. I think really in the last few years, especially this year, was anyone at the Climate Drag Show last night?

Yeah, I mean, I was sitting there watching this mycelial drag performance, and I was like, incredible that we got here. And I think that there's always a deeper meaning behind cultural...

and undercurrents and fungi represent so much untapped possibility. They represent such a vast swath of life on earth and they are the great decomposers. They are the ones who from collapse create flourishing and I think also the mycelial networks that connect forests, everyone else, this is our point of connection that we're all craving and I think that's really what we are

loving fungi and having a fungi moment in culture. It's because there is a deeper root system here that we are trying to tap into. And you know, as much as we love to hate on social media, I love to hate on social media. It also is this kind of mycelial network that brings us all together. And I'm sure for so many have brought us.

into this space tonight. I mean, what a beautiful thing during climate week. How many people have you gotten to meet in person that you haven't, you've only talked to on Instagram or email or something else? So yeah, I think the fantastic world of fungi infiltrating the cultural zeitgeist for me. Yeah. Woo.

exciting emerging worlds that I'm seeing come into fruition. It's also interesting because I'm not sure if it's just because I'm reaching an age where I'm seeing this happen with people in my life that are just all.

together going through this, or if this is like a generational thing that I'm seeing. But I think people are really actually invested in that ministry and practice. And I'm seeing it for the first time, really in my life, for the past like two years. Being the child of Tukeng and immigrants, work has always been placed very high up there as a way to even express love.

to essentially

you know, care for your family. And so I think that when it comes to being able to see one's value outside of what one can produce and seeing people actually live that out, it's been really inspiring. So when I was saying about how I'm not sure if it's people in my life reaching that, like it's kind of like seeing older people in my life retire early and be like, you know, this whole like capitalism thing isn't working for them and deciding to like actually invest themselves

into futures based off of care, collective care amongst each other and like actually like moving back to their homelands that they actually left because of the climate crisis. But then also it's been through a lot of my mentors, particularly like black women and other women of color, deciding to remove themselves from toxic workplaces, toxic movements sometimes, toxic relationships. And seeing so many folks do that and be audacious about that,

and those toxic dynamics has been really, really inspiring for me and I'd say it's emerging worlds that I'm seeing because I'm not there yet. I think I'm still trying to unlearn what it means for me to see value in myself and my work, see value in myself outside of my work. And it's like a process that I'm trying to unlearn. I think it's gonna be a lifelong process, but seeing so many people that I admire.

begin to live in that world and I see their joy just blooming really honestly allows me to like see that there are better, that better worlds are possible in this lifetime. And I wanna emulate that.

Separation is a process and I love that. That's gonna stay with me. In one word, before we hand it over to our incredible guests for any questions, what is the symbiosis for you?

Okay, you know it's funny because I was thinking like when we thought about this event back in we did this event in less than three weeks y'all like can we just appreciate all of you all who came here and like thank you to everyone who just showed up.

You know, when we first had the original concept, I remember we were thinking about ideas and we were throwing about sun or something. I don't know, there was some sun. And then I had this dream about cells and organisms. And I'm really inspired by Melanie Martinez. I was like, I love her to death. And she literally has this really unique music videos that she released recently. And I had this dream of, okay, everyone talks about the Anthropocene.

What's after that? And I looked up different scenes that have happened. So there's other ones that's called the pyro scene, that's the age of the fire. But I was like, I don't like that, because that just assumes that I'm literally burning up. I want something that's just post-apocalyptic or things like that. So when I think about symbiotic, I think just about multi-species justice. That's it.

Maybe you go? I would just say relationship. I think symbiosis is something that can really transform our worldview. And we start to understand that we're in relationship with literally everything else. And symbiosis itself is categorized into typically three different categories. There's mutually beneficial symbiosis, which benefits both.

participants in the relationship. There's commensal relationships, which are fairly neutral. And then there's parasitic relationships, in which one benefits and the other doesn't.

And when you can actually apply that to the relationships in your life and you start to examine, well, where is this relationship one-sided? Where am I extracting and not giving? Where is the other person extracting, not giving? How am I in relationship with the planet, with community, with work? Everything else, it can really start to create some shifts in more intentional relationships. So.

I'll give Wola some more time to think. I think that the symbiocene is having the audacity to love a better world into existence, in a world that we have never lived in before, but a world that we know is possible. And I think that's really exciting. And that's all about leaning into the possibilities of the unknown. And yeah, that brings me a lot of joy thinking about that.

Yeah, I think for mine, I mean, I echo a lot of what everyone shared here and those unsaid thoughts that are probably lingering in the atmosphere. But for me, the symbiosis is about.

emergence and merging. It's about two different species, very similar, like lichen coming together to create one thing, one united thing. And for me, that's the solidarity and the collective solidarity that we can show to each other and show up for each other in these spaces that can be quite oppressive when a whole system is saying that we're not allowed to be here.

that we are nature, but we are also way beyond things unknown that we're coming to know by existing. So I guess I'll leave it there and if anyone has any lingering questions, please come up and you can take the mic or you can also just shout. We'll take maybe just like one or two because of time. Yeah?

First of all, thanks. This was so inspiring. I just, each one of you bring so much to this and it's just been an honor to listen. I have a question that I guess kind of spans what each one of you have said. I've been thinking a lot about music lately and specifically the relationship of music to language. I run a page called Enchanted Ecology and I chose the name, the term enchanted there because enchanted means it's an incantation, it's a singing into, cantos. And...

I learned that music, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that music comes before language, comes before words. And every indigenous culture on the planet has songs, and those songs come from the oikos, comes from the ecosystem, and you know, coyote songs, owl songs. And it seems that song in prefiguring language...

can carry story in a way that, as you said, argument can't. And now we live in a time when music and song are relegated to, I mean, we can have a whole conversation about how all of the arts are relegated to just one small part of the world when they really should be the focus, but how can we rescue?

music and song from its peripheral position in our culture to center it and to tell stories. And one other thing about something that you said about unconditional community, I mean, when we, words sort of differentiate us, right? Oh, I call it God, you call it spirit, you call it the universe, you call it nature. But if we all sing the same note, then that's what creates unconditional community. And I just feel like with all these things, there's something to music here.

And maybe it's just the pathways, the networks my mind has gone down recently. But I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on this, on re-centering song and music in this movement. Yeah.

Beautiful question. It makes me think of, I was listening to Greta's climate book on a drive recently and there was a line in there about how can we take the story of what we're living through right now and how can it become infused with every aspect of our everyday life? And one of the examples she used was how can it be a part of our songs?

And I think that we think of songs now as entertainment. We think of music as entertainment. And it's something that only musicians or artists are a part of. And I have seen that there is truly transformative potential when a group of people who are singers, not singers, come together and use their voice in song, because I do think that sound has a potential to resonate in a different frequency.

And yeah, I was, yeah, I'll leave it there. I think song is so critical to our movements and we've seen that time and time again. I think right now.

In the climate space, we often talk about how we already have all the technology required to solve this crisis. It's just a matter of creativity and folks harnessing different spheres and talents to basically solve the crisis. I think that we have a lot of historic amnesia around...

what we need in this moment. Like if we look at the civil rights movement, music and song was so central in how people came together. And even like, I'd even challenge the idea of music being like on the periphery of society. Like going to a black church, it doesn't matter what you believe, but what you feel in your heart, it's so human and like,

Immediately when you're talking, I started thinking about, you know the song, Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. Okay, right? Do we all know like the history of that song?

No? OK, so we all know Stevie Wonder, right? So that song came out because there was this massive movement within the black community around making Martin Luther King's birthday a federal holiday. And there was tons of pushback. And it felt like a losing fight. So Stevie Wonder quite literally stepped up and created a song to which even the people that were opposing the federal holiday were dancing the song.

And before you knew it, every January, we're celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So I mean, that's just an example of how music in our movements is so crucial. And actually, yeah, agreeing with your point of taking us to the next step in which, you know, traditional language is limited. So it's like a yes, and we've done that in the past. We just need to lean into that more.

Yeah, okay, one more and then go on. Yeah, do you want it?

Okay, well, hello.

Well, first of all, thank y'all so much for such a powerful panel. I'm like, okay, Heartstrings, okay, Unconditional Community, okay, Beyond the Self. I'm like, taking a lot of deep themes and feeling super resonant with them. And my question's kinda coming from narrative organizing and thinking about fields, because each of you carry and hold very specific fields, but what's super powerful, right, is thinking about the potential of super bloom. And I'm thinking a lot about symbiocene, relating to those eras that you were talking about

prophecy, all these sort of characteristics that embody those different eras. And as someone who is really interested in narrative strategy, narrative organizing, I almost feel like this concept is a field that is wanting to be fertile, wanting to grow. And I think a lot about ensemble stories and casts. We're done with the hero's journey. I mean, okay, heroes are great, but we're trying to bring together something that's

every single vein, every single strand that this planet is holding, all these different species, all these different peoples, all these different cultures. And so my question comes to you all about in the spirit of thinking about field building and kind of creating the fertile energy for that field to proliferate. Do you have any sense of like in the mega story that's happening right now with the climate crisis and the different hats

would you contribute to that mega story, whether that's like a plot line or whether that's like a character that needs to be spoken for. I guess just like curious thinking from that frame, like what would you offer to this that you've created here? And not to mention just like gratitude for that because a mega story is how we get everyone on board. That's how we get every single identity to come through. So I'm just like, half gratitude, half like just spewing out reflections of like powerful stuff that you all said. And I'm just like, how do we keep this story going?

So that's my question. I love you, and I want you to answer that question, because I think that we would all benefit. No, I'm serious. No, no, we got, no. If you don't know this person, by the way. So, no, I would love for you to share with us all, actually. What? Y'all, y'all.

thinks a lot about how.

Sometimes I feel like the world is really daunting when all these different social issues. You think about fossil fuel extraction in one corner, we think about water pollution in the other, we think about the plight and the very specific experience of diasporas that have entire cultures erased, and then also thinking about the experience of indigenous culture keepers that are trying to keep their cultures alive. All those things are existing in the same place, but the dissonance is when each wound is not looked at very specifically, but also at the same time, how do you carry the collective story

love that holds everything to be like, yes, I don't know. I mean, I think I'll think about the, I can't tackle the enormity of that question, but I can think about a very specific experience with what I just said about the diaspora and indigenous peoples, because that's one point of contention, right, where you have folks that have had colonial pain, and those have looked two different ways. One is that you have people that are existing in the urban post-colonial world that's like,

I've gotten robbed by that culture, from this colonial culture and trying to recover. And then you have the indigenous keepers that are fighting and don't have the resources, don't have the access. And so part of me thinks a lot about, and I think the symbiosis feels like an example of the antidote, which is how are we creating.

frames that people can embody and live into. And I loved what you said about liberation and freedom being very, very nuanced. Like that freedom is a fleeting experience and liberation is a commitment. It's an ongoing relationship. And those types of ideas are the ones that can carry entire movements and entire mass amounts of characters to continue holding that story up. So I feel like there's something there.

I really don't want to talk anymore. I want to hear from y'all. But I just, yeah, okay, sorry. Woo! That was good.

I think I'll maybe just wrap it up and add, I will add though, I think that there's in this room something that we haven't spoken to so much but I know Sophie will in the recording that we'll hear outside or inside are the non-human communities and then the storytellers and how they can commune through us and really if we plant ourselves exactly where we are and share the space with

of course of where we need to be that can really be quite transformational so yeah I'd love to leave everyone

I'd like to leave everyone off with one of my favorite quotes by Bell Hooks, who says, to be truly visionary, we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality, while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality. So, for the rest of the evening, please plant yourselves right here and right now, and start imagining those possibilities that are right beyond us. Thank you.

We're gonna please enjoy drinks and snacks and food. We're gonna do a little mic change for the musicians to come up again and just play some music in the background while we kind of think about all the possible futures that are ahead of us. But yeah, thank you so much everyone. Thank you.