I write while staying in one of the great forests of British Columbia, a forest in which the inextricability of life from death is gorgeously evident. Several kinds of fern spring from this soil, some taller than me, birds move among the branches, many kinds of berries abound. It is
Yesterday I wrote, "The United States is being destroyed from within, and mainstream journalism isn't making that clear. It's when you assemble the whole picture that you have to raise the question if the intention is to destroy this country and whether this country is
The United States is being destroyed from within, and mainstream journalism isn't making that clear. When I was a kid, there was a popular phrase--"what if they had a war and no one came?" What if we were in a war and no one noticed?
It has never been easy to be an immigrant to the United States – for most economic, linguistic, and cultural barriers make life here a struggle, even if they were escaping a worse life elsewhere. The utterly evil bill that just squeaked through in Congress, among other harms, aims to make
We have distant enemies, the enemies of truth, justice, human rights, and environmental protection, and they are easy to recognize and oppose. We also have near enemies, the cynics and defeatists among us who in theory agree with our goals but in practice are forever sabotaging them by insisting that
It's high summer in San Francisco and apricots, peaches, cherries, and corn are in season at the farmers markets and kids are out of school and Pride weekend is here, and on the days when the fog doesn't hang over us, the sunlight is glorious. Beautiful,
For a lot of people in public life women's rights are something to make a lot of noise about when it's convenient and sweep aside when it's not. Or so it seems with the rush to forgive and whitewash or just deny sexual abuse,
I was writing about last week's news when I was interrupted by this week's news, – I joked a few days ago that the whole country would love a slow news week, and I sure would. For one thing we could think about where we are and
No one can ignore or smooth over or play down that the Trumpists are going full authoritarian now. So we must go full resistance, and it's good to see that many elected officials are addressing this emergency forcefully and fearlessly, tens of thousands have been acting in solidarity
In one of my early posts on this site, I wrote "I have faith in the American people – faith that we're an unruly, insubordinate bunch scattered across a vast swathe of land, from our beautifully diverse cities to our remotest rural communities, that we are not easy
I think maybe it's begun, the bigger fiercer backlash against the Trump Administration which is itself a violent backlash against every good thing that's happened over the past several decades – the advance of rights for nature, women, children, indigenous peoples, BIPOC and immigrants/refugees, queer people,
On November 6, 2024, and after, it became clear to me that a lot of organizations addressing climate and human rights had made plans for what to do if Trump won, and of course Daniel Hunter had already published his soon-to-go viral article on what to do if Trump wins.
I've always been annoyed by those people who, when they didn't like the outcome of a presidential election, announced they were moving to Canada. Those declarations seemed to be about comfortable people prioritizing remaining comfortable and not wanting to stick around the discomfort of an administration
An unnamed source says that at an earlier point in time it was thought that a octogenarian might come to need to use a wheelchair at a future date, but the person in question has as of press time not reached that point, but continues to walk and bike, and
Imagine if we were at war with a foreign power that bombed most of the federal buildings in Washington, destroying the records and functions of those departments and killing millions of federal workers – bombs falling on Health and Human Services, on the Justice Department, the Department of Interior, Veterans Affairs,
I published this in Orion Magazine in 2014, about the environmental activist Jo Anne Garrett of Baker, NV, who would've turned 100 on April 30th. I wanted to pay tribute to her by republishing this (slightly shortened) essay about her. The Las Vegas Water Grab mentioned in it--the
There's an old saying that March came in like a lion and left like a lamb. April came in a bit sheepishly and is leaving roaring and baring its teeth, and tomorrow is May Day. Not Mayday as the distress signal,. May Day the historic red-green celebration of
This is a slightly edited version of a talk I gave at last Saturday's benefit concert by the adventurous and world-renowned Kronos Quartet for Oil Change International, a climate group on whose board I've served since 2017. It was at the Oakland studio of the dance
In the summer of 2011, I went to a protest against economic injustice in New York City. I've gone to a lot of demonstrations over the decades, and this one was as forgettable as most of them are--they're good, they contribute, they aren't landmark
Imagine you were on a ship, and reports kept coming to you that the new captain and his crew had done a series of strange things--jettisoned the anchor, blew some holes in the hull, shredded the sails, thrown some of the old crew overboard. But also imagine that the person
I was the closing speaker at the ebullient San Francisco Hands Off rally, and when I got home later I scoured the news for reports on the more than one thousand other rallies. Of course people would show up in the big cities and the bluest places, but what really
I wrote the following early yesterday before the big news of the Wisconsin election in which Elon Musk's estimated $20 million and illicit bribes to voters did not net a win for his candidate and may have done the opposite and before Cory Booker's filibuster entered
The new Netflix mini-series Adolescence is not about teenagers so much as it's about how adults perceive and fail to perceive teenagers. They're presented in the first two episodes as an alien life form, leading lives adults fail to see or comprehend. I've joined
Spring is here and so is authoritarianism, and I recommend your serious attention to both. We may be at this resistance business for a while, so take care of yourself so you can keep taking care of human rights, truth, justice, and the natural world. What that means for each