Remember: NO KINGS is Saturday. Also some notes on my new book

Find your #nokings march here. And while marches, protests, and demonstrations don't do the work of protecting democracy and human rights all by themselves, they're an important part of it, and very often an inspiriting one.

[What follows is a thread of various media with and about me and my new book (strictly optional reading, but also audio and video options for those who like to take in their information and ideas that way) and a discount code at the end in case you want to order The Beginning Comes After the End yourself from the publisher; there's also an audio version I read myself.]

I might have mentioned I wrote a book and it got published and now I'm rushing about doing events and interviews and things, including, Tuesday night, a conversation with one of the writers I most admire: Anand Giridharadas, who's a brilliant political thinker, often scathing about the present but sometimes visionary about the possibilities, which is why he contributed one of the epigraphs to the new book: “We are living through a revolt against the future. The future will prevail.”

He posted that Brooklyn Public Library conversation at his (highly recommended) newsletter The Ink Wednesday morning.

Stop despairing. Start building

My conversation with Rebecca Solnit

The.InkAnand Giridharadas

The Guardian conducted an interview with me last month that also dropped Wednesday:

‘A new world is being born’: author Rebecca Solnit on the ‘slow revolution’ the far right cannot tolerate

It’s easy to focus on authoritarians and their petty victories. But zoom out and the picture is more encouraging, says the woman who popularised the term ‘mansplaining’, whether it’s in feminism, or the environment, or civil rights

The GuardianZoe Williams

And there was this big New York Times thing in print, video, podcast, and glam photos. I was pleased that the thing that seemed to resonate most with people was this: "One of the great weaknesses of our era is that we get lone superhero movies that suggest that our big problems are solved by muscly guys in spandex, when actually the world mostly gets changed through collective effort. Thich Nhat Hanh said before he died a few years ago that the next Buddha will be the Sangha. The Sangha, in Buddhist terminology, is the community of practitioners. It’s this idea that we don’t have to look for an individual, for a savior, for an Übermensch. I think the counter to Trump always has been and always will be civil society. A lot of the left wants social change to look like the French Revolution or Che Guevara. Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war." I have more to say about that when I have a moment.

Which led to this essay about me as a theologian:

We Don’t Need a Savior. We Need a Sangha.

On Rebecca Solnit, implicit religion, and the theology hiding inside progressive politics

Religion, ReimaginedLiz Bucar

Speaking of theology, I then went to San Francisco's progressive Grace Cathedral and had a conversation with this lovely guy who's the dean:

Earlier, I had a conversation with Rowan Hooper, a young British scientist who zoomed in on the parts of the book focusing on new ideas in biology and their implications, and it turned out that Rowan has a fantastic new book coming out in August called Togetherness about symbiosis and collaboration in nature, which I'm reading (in advance) with enthusiasm.

Rebecca Solnit On Why the Future Isn’t as Dark as It Looks

Episode 353 The world might feel dark right now, but life is actually getting better, rapidly. From the rise of feminism and antiracism to environmental movements and shifting understandings of gender, the Western world looks nothing like it did 75 years ago. Yet despite so many historic victories for rights and ideas in recent times, it often feels like we’re living in dark times - with progress that’s stalling or going backwards. In her new book, The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, writer and activist Rebecca Solnit explores how for decades social movements reshaped the world in ways we often fail to notice. Solnit argues that we are witnessing nothing less than the slow dismantling of an old worldview. And it’s time we pay attention. Rowan Hooper speaks to Solnit about the power of a good story, our growing understanding of the interconnectedness of nature and humanity - and why recognising progress may be essential to shaping the future. To read more about these stories, visit https://www.newscientist.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Scientist

There's a Youtube version here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuyaGP3bAz0

And one more podcast, a conversation with Anne Strainchamps, formerly of the beloved NPR show To the Best of Our Knowledge:

Rebecca Solnit: Hope After the End

As institutions unravel, Rebecca Solnit argues despair is a mistake—and that a more compassionate, just world is already being born.

Wonder CabinetAnne Strainchamps

I did manage to write something for someone other than you, dear subscribers....

It begins: Feminism is far from dead, but people love to write its obituary. I’ve lived through dozens of them over the decades, and there’s been a fresh flurry over the past few years. These death announcements are mostly based on two dubious assumptions. One is that we’re at the end of the story, the point at which a verdict can be rendered and a moral extracted. In this version, 60 years on from the great 1960s surge of feminism, the process should be over, and if feminism has not won, surely it has lost. In reality, it’s naively defeatist to assume millennia of patriarchy entrenched in law, culture, social arrangements and economics could be or should have been fully disassembled in one lifetime.

and then it goes on to look at reproductive rights, #metoo, and the Epstein implosions. It was particularly satisfying to note: The eager obituary writers tended to announce that #MeToo had failed whenever further incidents of high-profile sexual abuse were reported (though the very fact they were reported and in some cases successfully prosecuted may have been a result of these shifts). The single most important impact of #MeToo, I believe, is akin to what many environmental victories look like: nothing, in the absolute best sense of that word. Success for many environmental campaigns is the river that was not dammed or polluted, the forest that was not cut down, the species that did not go extinct, the oil wells that were not dug, the coal that was not burned. Unfortunately, these results are invisible if you don’t know why the river is flowing freely, the birds are singing or the meadow near your home wasn’t paved over.

The one thing everyone gets wrong about feminism

People love to declare the death of the women’s movement, pointing to the ‘failure’ of #MeToo or the Epstein files, but don’t give up the fight just yet, writes Rebecca Solnit

The GuardianRebecca Solnit

The Beginning Comes After the End can be ordered from the publisher at a 30% discount at this link:

 https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2617-the-beginning-comes-after-the-end?discount_code=BEGINNING

And I cannot tell you how excited I will be to settle down and just be a writer again, not an opinion-slinger in person and podcast all over creation.