Today is National Voter Registration Day. How much do you know about voting and elections? Take CNN’s quiz. Another easy thing you can do today to help is to share the link to this page on usa.gov.
Tweet it out or share it on Facebook.
Author: Leigh Hopkins
Method 45: Demonstrative Funerals / Report on the dangers of being a climate activist
Today, as sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg leads and inspires the world in a climate strike, there’s a disturbing new report that shows darker proof of her bravery. In July, Global Witness released a report that showed that in 2018, more than three people a week died defending their land or our environment:
- In 2018 Guatemala recorded the sharpest rise in murders, which jumped more than fivefold to make it the deadliest country per capita.
- The Philippines had the highest number of killings of any country this year, with at least 30 defenders murdered.
- Mining was the worst sector, causing 43 deaths, though deaths related to conflicts over water sources also surged. Attacks driven by agribusiness, logging and hydropower continued too.
- Private security groups, state forces and contract killers – sometimes working together – are all suspected of carrying out killings.
On Tuesday, the activist group Extinction Rebellion staged a demonstrative funeral to mark the end of Fashion Week in London. According to CNN, Bel Jacobs, a former fashion editor who now belongs to Extinction Rebellion, told CNN that Tuesday’s protest was organized to “lay to rest the toxic system that is destroying us all, and to mourn those who have already lost their lives and those still to lose their lives to the effects of climate change.”
Today’s Student Strike is Method 62 of Gene Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action. Since beginning this project a year ago, every time it’s time to do a new post, I’ve never had to look far – these methods are being used every single day, all around the world.
“For way too long, the politicians and the people in power have gotten away with not doing anything at all to fight the climate crisis and the ecological crisis. But we will make sure that they will not get away with it any longer.”
– Greta Thunberg
A note on the image for Method 45: On August 19, Iceland held a demonstrative funeral for Okjökull, a 700-year-old glacier. Okjökull lost its status as a glacier in 2014, and is now a small patch of ice atop a volcano.
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Method 44: Mock Funerals / Brett Kavanaugh
I didn’t ever want to hear Brett Kavanaugh’s name again, but if it means that the FBI might grow a pair and investigate this dirtbag, bring him out. While impeaching a federal judge is rare, there is a process for it. If you want to make your voice heard on this issue, 5 Calls has a script for calling your Members of Congress.
Mock Funerals were first used in this country in 1765, just before the Stamp Act was scheduled to go into effect. On November 1, the Sons of Liberty marched through Newport, Rhode Island carrying a coffin marked “Old Freedom.” When the protestors reached the cemetery, a groan came from the coffin and a figure emerged – freedom was not dead! A battle between Freedom and the Angel of Death was played out in the graveyard to cheers and the ringing of Newport’s bells. Similar protests were staged on the same day in three other cities. The idea behind this method is to create a spectacle – one that onlookers can’t resist, and the people in power will notice.
From the early days of the Trump administration, the White House has been doing everything it can get away with to limit the role of the FBI. It’s time a coffin marked “FBI” was dragged down Pennsylvania Avenue and dropped at 1600. For updates on Kavanaugh, the climate crisis, and the other Riders of the Apocalypse, subscribe to 5 Calls for weekly updates on how to make your voice heard.
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Postage from Fid
Dear Fid,
Receiving your Postage was the best kind of surprise. Like you, my grandparents were artists, and they often included small watercolor paintings or cray-pas illustrations in their letters to me. I would hold the envelopes to my nose before opening them to see if I could guess the medium they used. For a long time, researchers thought that pigeons used smell to find their way home, and your relationship to handwritten letters feels warm and familiar, like a kind of homing instinct. I so wish I could join your workshop this weekend, and since I can’t, I followed your prompt.
Dear Uncle Dick: before i had a name for who i am, i had you. when i think of you, my feet curl and stretch to free themselves, and soon they’re up and running back to that cabin in the woods, the lake still sparkling, the smell of sun on cedar shingles. i’m making dinner tonight! you called, and everyone laughed, but you pointed to me and then to bobby: yes, i’m making dinner, and they’ll help. you shooed all the grownups off to the lake and said c’mon kiddies, we’re going to make a real dinner party. you took us by the hands, your skin soft and safe, flecks of paint under your nails and in your hair, and the three of us skipped down that pine-hallowed stone road like thieves. for two hours, we waded waist-high in a field of queen anne’s lace, gathered the flowers up in our arms like they were bales of hay, and carried them home. when we’d piled them on the picnic table you said, go on, i’ll take it from here, and you poured yourself a drink. by the time you banged a spoon against the bottom of a dinner pot, the sun was longways along the lake’s edge and everyone was cranky from hunger. by then I’d pulled a sundress over my bathing suit, anticipating something from somewhere else, somewhere that smelled like gin and aftershave and conversation. what happened next is something i plan to take to my ever-after: as we made our way up from the lake, it was like the sun had set behind the water and rose inside the cabin. the first thing i noticed were the porch railings, wrapped in garlands of queen anne’s lace, thick green braids the size of my thighs. i reached for bobby’s hand and said look! but there was no need to show him, his mouth was an o, his brown eyes shining in the candlelight, because that was the next thing i noticed – the candles. hundreds of tea lights, maybe a thousand, you had filled that place with so much light, the cabin seemed winged. behind me, granny was laughing, oh dick, you’re something, and when i turned, granny and gramps and mom and dad were all laughing, too. come-come-come you called, before dinner gets cold. up the stairs, the pathway to the table was a petaled runway of green and white, on the table, vases of white petticoats, sprays in vodka bottles and medicine bottles, too. and at our places, each plate held a crown of queen anne’s lace. when we were adorned and laughing, you reappeared from the kitchen with a steaming pot, twirled your spoon in the air, and presented the meal with a flourish: hot dog stew for everyone! nothing could contain us then, whatever crankiness people had felt was gone, and it was then that i understood the most important lesson about entertaining: whether the food is good doesn’t matter, it’s all about presentation and connection. as you dished out the bowls, i remember the way you looked at my grandfather like he was something that could be eaten up, and i remember the way he beamed back at you when you ran your fingers through the bristles of his silver hair and placed another garland on his head. it was a smile i saw him make only once in all the time i knew him, a smile i see now he must have saved for you. and that’s when i knew that the words i had heard used to describe you – irresponsible, bankrupt, flamer, cirrhosis – they were all wrong, because when i imagine what god must be like, i think of you.
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What’s on my Nightstand: August 2019
Fiction
Naamah | Sarah Blake
What Belongs to You | Garth Greenwell
Nonfiction
Horace | Reverend T. Buckley
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel | Alexander Chee
American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass | Douglas S. Massey & Nancy A. Denton
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl | Harriet A Jacobs
Women | Annie Leibovitz & Susan Sontag
Maid | Stephanie Land
Short Fiction
Cougar |Maria Anderson | The Iowa Review
Madeline | Ludwig Bemelmans
Under the Wave | Lauren Groff | The New Yorker
Open Mouth | Ayla Zuraw-Friedland | Gay Mag
Poetry
The Doe | Leila Chatti | Narrative Magazine
Scylla and Charybdis | Megan Fernandes | The New Yorker
She Had Some Horses | Joy Harjo
Dog Moon | Rikki Lights
Almost Human | Ocean Vuong (listen)
The New Yorker
Essay (selected)
Elegy in Times Square | Lily Burana | Longreads
Why I’m Joining the Climate Strike – and Why You Should, Too | Rio Constantino | Global Climate Strike
How I Came to Own My Name | Lauren De Pino | The New York Times
Cyrus Grace Dunham on a Year Without a Name | Cyrus Grace Dunham | The New Yorker
Remembering Woodstock ’94 | Steve Edwards | Longreads
If You Jump Into my Arms I Will Catch You | Miriam Feldman | ENTROPY
The Borderland | Leigh Hopkins | The Rumpus
Gioncarlo Valentine’s Searing Portrait of the Fears of Young Black Men | Kiese Laymon | The New Yorker
The Meaning of Silence in Conversations About Death | Michael Erard and Mosaic | The Atlantic
Early Menopause Gave Me a Dating Superpower | Lisa Kirchner | Dame Magazine
The Dehumanizing Politics of Likability |Teow Lim Goh | Los Angeles Review of Books
The Gall of Ghislane Maxwell | Naomi Fry | The New Yorker
On Likeability | Lacy M. Johnson | TinHouse
Rise and Fall of the Pocket Protector | Henry Petroski | American Scientist
Interview / OpEd / Review
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #189: Sarah Blake | Greg Mania | The Rumpus
Kristen Stewart Plays It Cool | Durga Chew-Bose | Vanity Fair
“Next year, Stewart will embark on adapting for the screen Lidia Yuknavitch’s book The Chronology of Water...listening to her speak about first reading the book sounds holy and indoctrinating, as if Stewart mainlined the words. “The way [Yuknavitch] talks about having a body, and the shame of having that. The way that she’s really dirty, embarrassing, weird, gross, a girl. It was a coming-of-age story I haven’t seen yet. I grew up watching fucking American Pie, these dudes jacking off in their socks like it was the most normal thing, and it was hilarious. Imagine a girl coming—it’s like, what, so scary and bizarre. I feel like I started reading her stuff, and she was articulating things that I’m like, ‘Dude, I didn’t have the words for that, but thank you.’”
Meet Chani Nicholas, The Fashion World’s Go-To Astrologer | Hannah Hanra | Vogue
U.S.-Denmark Relations Are Now in the Hands of a Conspiracy-Loving, Climate-Denying Ex-Actress | Will Sommer | Daily Beast
Paul Lisicky Interviewed by Adam Swanson | Adam Swanson | Corporeal Writing
Magazine / Newspaper / Pamphlet
The CRISIS | April 1964
Lesbian Connection: free to lesbians worldwide, but the suggested donation is $7/issue (more if you can, less if you can’t), May/June 2019 issue
The New Yorker
The Week
TIME
Vanity Fair
Random
clothespin
Rose Art washable markers (red, black)
Vintage Notebook Agenda | Jenni Bick Custom Journals
Tibetan singing bowl / lavender springs
beach stones
Pixel glasses
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Method 43 / Construction begins on Border Wall
In early August, my essay “The Borderland” was published at The Rumpus. The piece describes life in the border town my parents have called home for the past seventeen years. They moved to the Arizona/Mexico border to work as volunteer park rangers at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a protected biosphere and home to many Native American sacred sites.
Yesterday morning, this happened:
Quitobaquito springs is a sacred site of the Hia C’ed Oodham people. Federal laws waived by DHS for the construction of new border wall include:
From No More Deaths/No Más Muertes:
- National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA]
- Endangered Species Act
- Clean Water Act
- National Historic Preservation Act
- Migratory Bird Treaty Act
- Clean Air Act
- Archeological Resources Protection Act
- Safe Drinking Water Act
- Noise Control Act
- Solid Waste Disposal Act
- Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act
- Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act
- Antiquities Act
- Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act
- Wild and Scenic Rivers Act
- Farmland Protection Policy Act
- Coastal Zone Management Act
- Wilderness Act
- Federal Land Policy and Management Act
- National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act
- Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956
- Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act
- Administrative Procedure Act
- Otay Mountain Wilderness Act of 1999
- California Desert Protection Act [Sections 102(29) and 103 of Title I]
- National Park Service Organic Act
- National Park Service General Authorities Act
- National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978 [Sections 401(7), 403, and 404]
- Arizona Desert Wilderness Act [Sections 301(a)-(f)] 30.Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899
- Eagle Protection Act
- Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
- American Indian Religious Freedom Act
- Religious Freedom Restoration Act
- National Forest Management Act of 1976
- Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act of 1960
- Military Lands Withdrawal Act of 1999
- Sikes Act
- Arizona-Idaho Conservation Act of 1988
- Federal Grant and Cooperative Agreement Act of 1977
- Migratory Bird Conservation Act
- Paleontological Resources Preservation Act
- Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988
- National Trails System Act
- National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997
- Reclamation Project Act of 1939 [Section 10]
- Wild Horse and Burro Act
- An Act of Oct 30, 2000, Pub. L. 106-398, 1, 114 Stat. 1654
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In springtime, the arroyos fill with water and the desert floor swells with green. By July, the saguaros bloom red with fruit. Ha:sañ is the O’odham word for saguaro cactus, and Ha:sañ Bak means “the saguaro is ready.”
Before the first harvest, Tohono O’odham rub the meat of a fallen saguaro fruit on the body near the heart. When you enter the desert, you must have a clear mind and a good heart.
In Tohono Oʼodham there is no word for wall.
“The Borderland,” The Rumpus
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Method 42: Motorcades
In the midst of Denmark laughing off Trump’s hints to buy Greenland, the Amazon is on fire. Brazil’s Bolsonaro claims “hoax,” saying that NGOs are setting the rainforest on fire in order to make him look bad. Another way of looking at it? Watch the rainforest burn, buy Greenland before it melts, and run away with your new BFF. The new normal sucks so bad it’s tempting to cover myself with couch cushions, but instead, I’ll offer you this little slice of joy:
What does this mean? GAME ON, sisters.
To understand the power of Method 42 (Motorcades), imagine what would happen if every Sunday morning for the next 440 days, all of us got in our cars and drove around our neighborhoods at 5 mph passing out voter registration and election information.
Imagine it from drone perspective.
The whole point of the 198 Methods is to be a consistent, unified presence – to be a recognizable FORCE. What that means is that wherever and wherever you see one of these methods in action, let as many people know it’s happening as you can as fast as you can, join in if you can, and keep doing it until November 3, 2020.
Ready to act now?
If you like to talk, go to 5 Calls, and if you like to write, try Postcards to Voters. Both are fantastic organizations consistently doing the work.
