Community Care

Finding Hope in Crisis

‘Hope’ by Edward Ruscha (1998)

I had an entirely different newsletter planned for today. But life took an unexpected twist, a very dramatic turn of events.

As the world is now well aware, Los Angeles has been on fire. Perhaps you’re tired of hearing or reading about it, but since this is the reality I’ve been living for the past week, it’s hard to place my mind elsewhere.

I’ve lived here for 11 years and my partner for 30 years. And though we’ve both witnessed many fire seasons and a number of earthquakes, the scale of what’s happening surpasses any natural disaster we’ve ever experienced.

We’re amongst the very lucky ones who are safe and still have a home. But I’ve sadly witnessed many friends and acquaintances lose their house. Entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, with no trace left of the bustling life that was once there. It’s raining ash and tears are flowing. As a dear friend, who lost her family home of 62 years, said: “Riding waves of numbness, shock, grief, and disbelief on repeat.”

I don’t spend much time on social media usually, but for the past week I’ve been scrolling endlessly. Every few hours a new fire was announced, a new zone had to be evacuated. I watched heartbreaking videos of people with nothing left but the clothes on their back. I watched lost dogs roaming the streets, and wild animals escaping the ravage.

But I also witnessed something else: the most profound sense of community, resilience and kindness. I’ve seen so many people jump into action, opening their homes, donating money, food, clothes, and fostering pets.

In fact the turn-up has been so immediate and at such a large scale that it’s been challenging to find ways to volunteer, as most organizations are at their maximum capacity. I was finally able to find an open slot yesterday, organizing donated goods for those in need. Even though I’m eager to do more, I remind myself that this is not a sprint, it’s a marathon of reconstruction and the efforts required to rebuild a city will last for a number of months.

I’ve been incredibly moved by those who have reached out and checked in. I can sense the deep care that people have for each other. I have often wondered about human nature, but the scale is currently tilting towards goodness. The media, politics, and corporations can make us believe that we’re a selfish and greedy species. And while there’s plenty of individuals that would prove that right, there’s also many more examples that show that we’re ultimately willing, generous and compassionate. A crisis can bring the best out of people.

If anything, I hope we can adopt this mindset for our everyday lives, not only when a metropolis is burning to the ground. Sadly, we often need extremes to have an embodied perspective shift. Times of profound grief often rewire my priorities and instilled a much deeper appreciation of life.

Sometimes tragedy can lead us to greater compassion. Until then, our understanding of the suffering of the world is often intellectual, remains conceptual. It is only when we go through hardships ourselves – displacement, sickness, loss, grief – that our hearts can break open to feeling what so many others face.

What we take for granted – having a home, electricity, safety – can suddenly become sources of privilege. And those of us who have them can easily offer them to those who don’t. Imagine what the world would look like if we always functioned in this way. Not out of fear or lack, but driven by an outpouring of love, a wave of compassion that can put out the flames of misery.

In reading Rebecca Solnit, I was reminded that inside the word “emergency” is “emerge.” If there is anything to emerge from this catastrophe, I hope it is the reminder of our interconnectedness, the awakening that we need each other. Whatever happens – in a city, country, on our shared planet – affects us all. Let the myth of the self-made man burn to the ground, let the reality of community-built arise.

For this month’s full moon edition, I wanted to explore 7 sensory examples of mutual aid, offering you hope in the form of something to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.

In Solidarity,

Sabrina

PS: if you’re in a position to donate, here’s a Go Fund Me list for the families (including our friends) who have lost their home.

SEE

‘Hope in the Dark | book by Rebecca Solnit

Available at your indie bookstore or online

I’ve had this book on my shelf for years and I finally read it this week (thanks for the reminder

Anna Brones

). It’s been hard to focus on anything lately, but I needed a compass to navigate these days and these pages offered that.

Originally published in 2004 based on her viral essay, Solnit decided to reissue the book in 2016 with a new forward. In it she examines the myriad ways in which hope emerges from dark times. Each chapter illuminates the various hopeful acts of individuals, communities and organizations that have led to change.

She starts with defining hope, staging: “It’s important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act.”

Ron Finley, urban gardener, one of the featured speakers on ‘Giving it Away’

HEAR

‘Giving it Away’ | TED Radio Hour podcast

Listen here

The TED radio hour compiles short segments of TED talks, curated around a specific theme. I was inspired to listen to this episode this week, which was released over a decade ago. It features various speakers on the topic of “giving it away” whether that’s time, food, or even art.

I learned about an LA urban farmer who planted food for his neighborhood, of a musician who decided to give away her music for free and accept donations. All of them modeled unique alternatives to our traditional capitalist systems, and each one reaped the benefits far beyond their expectations.

Fittingly, the first speaker featured is a volunteer firefighter who learned a valuable lesson of humility on his first shift. He shares: “It’s so easy to dismiss the opportunity to do something good because you’re hoping to do something great.”

SMELL

The Hidden Life of Trees | book by Peter Wohlleben

Available at your indie bookstore or online

A couple years ago, while spending time in my favorite redwood forest, I read this incredible book about the life of trees. Author Peter Wohlleben showcases the various ways in which a forest functions like a community. Trees communicate through scent, share nutrients, help each other from disease. They can even warn each other of fire harm through chemical signals transmitted by the fungal network in the soil, sending alerts to nearby trees to prepare for potential danger by adjusting their growth or water usage. Forests are naturally a system of mutual aid, as Wohlleben notes:

“It appears that nutrient exchange and helping neighbors in times of need is the rule, and this leads to the conclusion that forests are superorganisms with interconnections much like ant colonies.”

Dog tag, Chicken Soup Brigade, Seattle, ca. 1990

TASTE

The Chicken Soup Brigade

The Chicken Soup Brigade was born in 1982 when Tim Burak, who volunteered at a Seattle gay clinic, called a New York program to ask about their “Buddy Network.” The concept was to organize a loose-knit group of helpers to assist those with disabling illnesses to deliver groceries to them, get them to doctor's appointments, and provide companionship.

By 1984, the organization started focusing on serving people with AIDS. They drove patients to “medical appointments, helped them with letter writing, brought meals, cleaned apartments, helped care for pets.”

Eventually, the group focused solely on providing meals. By 1986, they hired their first paid staff member, Carol Sterling, who helped grow the organization from a handful of volunteers to 400 helping hands by 1991.

Chicken Soup Brigade has since merged with Northwest AIDS Foundation to form Lifelong AIDS Alliance. Their food program now includes various medical assisted groups, such as cancer patients, and those who suffered from COVID-19 during the pandemic.

Rauschenberg with Jasper Johns, John Cage, and others in Rauschenberg’s or Johns’s Pearl Street studio, New York, ca. 1955 Photo: Jerry Schatzberg

TOUCH

The Foundation for Contemporary Arts

Learn more online

In 1962, artists Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage organized a donated artwork show – which included 67 artists, such as Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol. The goal was to raise funds for the choreographer Merce Cunningham to put on his first Broadway show. They managed to raise more money than what was needed for the show, so they decided to donate the rest of the funds to other performing artists.

This practice is what started the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), where well-known artists donate their work to sell and use the funds as grants for experimental and performing artists. The FCA’s executive director, Kay Takeda, describes the organisation as “mutual aid for ephemeral art forms.”

In the 1980s, the FCA started offering grants to visual artists as well,such as James Turrell’s ‘Roden Crater’ project. By the 1990s, the organisation expanded to include poets as well. They’ve continued to fundraise by selling artist-donated works and now award two dozen artists $45,000 grants every year, across various artistic fields such as music, dance, poetry, theatre, performance art, and visual art.

BALANCE

The Biggest Little Farm | documentary

Watch to watch on Youtube, Apple TV, Amazon Prime

I was so inspired when I first watched this documentary a couple years ago and it feels like the perfect example of establishing a natural mutual aid between the vegetal, animal and human world. The documentary follows a couple (The Chesters) who acquire a farm 40 miles north of Los Angeles, where the soil has been ravaged by decades of monoculture (with barely any living microorganism).

They set out to create a biodynamic system that relies on the mechanisms of nature to create balance. Some of the examples include crop diversity, no-till, and integrating livestock, to feed fungi, bacteria, and microorganisms to enliven the soil.

Whenever they’re faced with an issue, such as pests consuming their harvest, instead of using pesticides, they turn to animals to restore balance. When snails start devouring their orchard trees, they bring their pond ducks to eat the snails. They rely on guard dogs to protect their livestock from coyotes, and utilize barn owls to hunt the gophers.

They’ve managed to succeed in creating a little green paradise, and I’m lucky to see their farm stand (Apricot Lane) at the Santa Monica Farmer’s market each week.

visual poem by Václav Havel (part of his series ‘Anticodes’)

ENVISION

Words by Václav Havel

There are many poignant passages in Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Hope in the Dark’ and I wanted to leave you with this particular one, a quote by poet playwright Václav Havel, who later became the president of the Czech Republic. He shared these words in 1985 while he was jailed in the Soviet Union:

“The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizon. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”