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Curtis Gerhardt "Standing Ovation"

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So when are we going to acknowledge solar punk isn't solar futurism? Sure imagination and thinking about the distant future is important, but shouldn't we be talking about what we can be doing to achieve these dreams? Or what we can do to improve the environment? Punk doesn't mean future, it's a method of how we get to these futures :((

Anyways, I'm p excited that tiktok is getting their hands on solar punk

#solarpunk

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Solarpunk Action Week 2021

It’s that time again, space cadets!

Solarpunk Action Week has been ongoing twice a year since 2019, with every week looking bigger and better than the last. People all over the world are planting gardens, learning new skills, building things, reducing waste, spreading information, taking direct action, and getting their neighborhoods and workplaces organized. We, your humble hosts, have consulted the auguries and scheduled Solarpunk Action Week 2021 for:

April 25th to May 1st!

Mark your calendars, kids

What is Solarpunk?

Solarpunk is  a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion and  activism that  seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a  sustainable  civilization look like, and how can we get there?” The  aesthetics of  solarpunk merge the practical with the beautiful, the  well-designed  with the green and wild, the bright and colorful with the  earthy and  solid. Solarpunk can be utopian, just optimistic, or  concerned with the  struggles en route to a better world — but never  dystopian. As our  world roils with calamity, we need solutions, not  warnings. Solutions  to live comfortably without fossil fuels, to  equitably manage scarcity  and share abundance, to be kinder to each  other and to the planet we  share. At once a vision of the future, a  thoughtful provocation, and an  achievable lifestyle.”

And what is Solarpunk Action Week?

Solarpunk  Action Week is a week dedicated to taking radical environmentalist and anticapitalist action to make the world a better place.  Previous Action Weeks have seen people starting gardens, learning new skills, making and repairing things, reducing waste, spreading information, getting involved in community organizing

All you have to do participate is begin or continue with an environmentalist, anticapitalist project and talk about it in the #SolarpunkActionWeek tag; it’ll get a lot of signal boosts to connect with other people around the world doing the same. &and follow along on Mastodon at @[email protected]

- - -

The previous Solarpunk Action Weeks saw a lot of individual actions, and those were incredible to witness, but we’re at our most powerful when we come together, so your homework for the next 6 months between now and the end of April is: Get organized! If we were able to do so much as individuals back in March, just imagine what you could get done rolling into Solarpunk Action Week with a crew ready to go

If you’re new to organizing, here are some great places to get started:

The Industrial Workers of the World (which has that good good Environmental Unionist Caucus and Southern Coordinating Committee)

Food Not Bombs

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief

Transition Initiative

Buy Nothing Project

Food Not Lawns

Can’t find anything in your area? Start something yourself!

Got 1 or 2 friends? You can start an affinity group

Guide to small-town organizing  

7 steps to starting a Food Not Bombs group

Wet’suwet’en supporter toolkit  

And I’m sure people will link to all sorts of other great projects and resources in the rebagels, so keep an eye on the notes!

If you’re already part of a union or a tenants’ association or what have you, even better! Get them in on it.

What can I do?

So many things! You can check out the #SolarpunkActionWeek tag to see what others have done in the past for inspiration. The two dinguses organizing these events have got resource tags full of just so many things you might could do and how to get started on them, here and here respectively. And here are some other fun ideas:

Everything you need to know about solarpunk

Everything you need to know about gardening

Everything you need to know about agitprop

Everything you need to know about antifascist action

Everything you need to know about making and repairing things

Everything you need to know about organizing in your workplace and your community

Learn how to become a street medic

Learn how to repair clothes

Regrow food plants from kitchen scraps

Recycle scrap fabric into yarn

20 plants to grow indoors

Make your apartment more energy efficient

Build a beautiful and functional vertical garden out of your literal garbage

Get out there and invent the future, space cadets, because we have a world to win. I know y’all are gonna make me proud; y’all always do.

If you want to keep up with/support the mods between Action Weeks, here’s our info:

Pops: Mastodon, tumblr (resources tag), Patreon, ko-fi

Natalie: Mastodon, tumblr (resources tag), Patreon, cashapp $NatalieIronside, buy Natalie’s book

—

“We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, we can also build. It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.“ 

–Buenaventura Durruti

#solarpunk action week #spaw #solarpunk

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A landback legal primer for landowners - (credits on slides, not mine)

#solarpunk #indigenous rights #indigenous solidarity #landback #land back

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“If all stays on schedule, the river, green and clear, will be back in its original channel and free flowing again within weeks.

‘From here, it only gets better,’ Miller said, looking upstream at the sparkling river, overhung with a deep forest. The tall trees cast lush shadows on water laughing over rocks smoothed round by the current.”

#solarpunk

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HIGHLY CURSED NEWS

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/361135

#solarpunk #socialism #ecosocialism #anti capitalism #economy #economics #water #water defenders #water rights

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#solarpunk #ecosocialism #anti capitalism #social ecology #socialism #environmentalism

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I read the words, “mutant enzyme” in this story and shuddered. Just what we need, another mutant whatever to learn to eat us because we have plastic in us.

Excerpt from this EcoWatch story:

Scientists have engineered a mutant enzyme that converts 90 percent of plastic bottles back to pristine starting materials that can then be used to produce new high-quality bottles in just hours. The discovery could revolutionize the recycling industry, which currently saves about 30 percent of PET plastics from landfills, reported Science Magazine.

Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is the plastic used in soda bottles, textiles and packaging. With almost 70 million tons manufactured annually worldwide, it is also the most abundant polyester plastic because it is strong and lightweight, explains the study’s abstract, which was published in Nature.

Unfortunately, current PET recycling is inefficient. When plastics of different colors are melted down during the recycling process, a gray or black plastic starting material results that few companies want to purchase to package their products, explained Science Magazine. The process results in low-grade plastic fibers only good enough for clothing and carpets, reported The Guardian. These eventually end up in a landfill or incinerated, added Science Magazine.

“It’s not really recycling at all,” explained professor John McGeehan, the director of the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth, to Science Magazine.

McGeehan, who was not involved in the research, called the new enzyme “a huge step forward,” reported Science Magazine. He also noted that Carbios, the French sustainable plastics company behind the breakthrough, is the industry leader in engineering enzymes to break down PET at large scale, reported The Guardian.

The mutant enzyme broke down 90% of 200 grams of PET in a small reactor in just 10 hours. Different colors didn’t matter because the enzyme can ignore dyes and other plastics in the molten mix. The researchers were able to use the resultant chemical building blocks to produce new PET and food-grade plastic bottles that were just as strong as those made from virgin plastics, reported Science Magazine.

#solarpunk #sustainability #recycling

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Anarchist tip: if you need some piece of equipment, or anything really, look up if there are any alternatives designed in or otherwise for exploited countries. People have invented many of the necessities for renewable power, medicine, machining, internet - all the comforts of modern life really - in ways that are low-tech, small-scale, often made of recycled or abundant materials, using little to no electricity, and best of all, absurdly cheap

Like a microscope and centrifuge made of paper that cost less than a dollar together, and a non-electric sun tracker for solar panels that costs about 1/30 what a commercial sun tracker does

Great for squats, occupations, communes, mutual aid, personal independence, etc.

#solarpunk

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Long post but I’ve been seeing way too many people come out as ecofascists saying this virus is some sort of ‘awakening’ thinking they’re some kind of spiritual gurus recently so this is a highly important read!

#solarpunk

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In November we heard about wildcat actions of Amazon workers in Poland. [1] Comrades in Croydon and Bristol wrote leaflets to circulate the good news amongst local Amazon workers. [2] In the meantime we spoke to a friend who works at Amazon in Scotland – where workers still lack the confidence to take similar steps. You can find the interview below. The interview is part of a wider series and will form part of a pamphlet to be circulated in early 2021. [3] We want to intervene in the developing struggles against the current attack on wages and jobs [4], encouraging independent workers’ coordination. Keep your heads up!

I work in a sortation centre in Scotland. I started there in early September, employed by Adecco. Most of the guys in the warehouse are agency workers. Covid plays a big role where I work. So many are unemployed or furloughed in this region and Amazon can capitalise on this. People are flocking to our Amazon warehouse, from Edinburgh and Glasgow. Some come on the company shuttle bus. There are less migrant workers here compared to London, perhaps a quarter of the workforce, but they all speak English.

People say conflicting things like: “we can really be happy to have this job during the pandemic” and “I don’t want this job, I will leave after Christmas”. For example, one of my friend who works here is a welder, but he says it’s difficult to find welding jobs at the moment. Inside the warehouse they have a strict 2 metre social distancing policy. They hand out red cards and threaten you with the sack if you don’t comply. But it is impossible to subscribe to that formula. The work you are doing there necessitates that you are in close proximity to others. If the rule was actually applied, Amazon would not fulfil half of their orders. People are rushed, people throw parcels at each other, managers rush them to hurry up. At the same time they threaten to fire you. Initially, they told you no one has to lift more than 15kg, but now everyone lifts heavier items alone. Some have complained about this.   

That’s the most frustrating thing at the moment; they’re weaponising health and safety against you. It feels like an important tool in their hand to discriminate against people in the warehouse. There are people whose job it is to walk around with a big stick saying ‘2 metres distancing” and to shout at you, we call them the “2 metre Nazis”. At the same time, you have grid controllers who send you to work in overcrowded aisles. They pressure you, they say “I’m sorry, but you have to do it”. If you have arguments with them, they report you. We had a meeting with a big site manager last week, normally we hardly see him. He said that he was appalled at the chaos and lack of social distancing in the warehouse. He told us that on his first day back from holiday he sacked 50 drivers because they weren’t abiding to the distancing rules. He was bullshitting, he didn’t sack 50 drivers, but he wanted to scare us.  

The other problem is that they cancel shifts frequently. They hired too many people in October and November to be ready for the Christmas season, which meant that before December, lots of shifts were cancelled. On average one shift a week. Sometimes people are sent home at the door. Or they let you come in and say, “take a seat in the canteen and wait”. Then they say “sorry, someone messed up, you have to go home”. They offer to give you holiday for that day, if you had accrued enough holidays, or they take the piss and say “I can give you a day off”, unpaid of course! That’s just a polite way to say “fuck off”. They have the power over you. There is an agreement that Amazon pays higher hourly rates than the other warehouses in the industrial estate, but then that doesn’t mean much when they cancel your shifts. Apart from the shifts, getting your overtime pay on time is like constant guerrilla warfare with the company. 

There is no union presence. People might have heard of the GMB, but mainly that they want to discuss Amazon in Parliament. Most of the socialist organisations I talked to about Amazon had standard answers, such as “join a union” or “things can only be changed through government intervention”. 

There is not much collective resistance. There were two incidents where people said, “we should start a group”, when they had their shifts cancelled. People suggested a petition, but that would mean handing over names of people who might then get even less shifts. Once when I was stopped at the door, four, five of us waited and told the manager that he should sort out a job for us. There was a bit of militancy, but basically with the aim to get some work. There was a refusal though to just go home.  People are not aware of the other Amazon struggles that are going on internationally. Many people who started recently also don’t know that Amazon paid a bonus during the first lockdown period. 

Amazon have told us all we are working an extra two hours every day to cope with increased orders (with no prior notice, of course). Lots of us have refused, simply told them we can’t do it, and leave when we are scheduled to leave. There is certainly an increasing sense of disdain towards Adecco and Amazon.

These would be things for a leaflet.  

https://www.ozzip.pl/english-news/item/2718-2-000-pln-for-everyone-polish-amazon-workers-demand-bonus

https://letsgetrooted.wordpress.com/2020/11/21/leaflet-on-current-wildcat-actions-at-amazon-poland

https://letsgetrooted.wordpress.com/2020/07/07/interview-series-workers-power-during-the-lockdown/

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-9021181/BT-staff-head-strike-new-Winter-Discontent-looms.html

#solarpunk

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Sigh.

#solar punk #ubi

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food sovereignty >>>>> absolute veganism for everyone

#solarpunk #food sovereignty #Veganism #vegetarianism #agriculture

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working full time is terrible why do we just accept that having 8 days off a month is normal and okay........ being alive could be cool but we waste it at our JOBS.... sorry i’m just heated about capitalism again i’ll be fine

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crazy how India can have the largest labor strike in world history and it doesn't even make the news in the US. it's almost like they don't want us to know we can demand better working conditions

#solarpunk

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Getting a little bit tired of posts that are like “adhd is only a disorder because of capitalism” as if it’s mr monopoly man’s fault that i struggle to stay committed to artistic projects i undertook personally for myself and that I enjoy, have trouble regulating my emotions, and procrastinate on eating and going to the bathroom.

I get what they are trying to say, but even if capitalism didn’t exist I would still want to have things like “the motivation to clean my living space and the ability to actually notice that it’s dirty.” I know this is part of the misperception of adhd, but adhd doesn’t just affect academics and work. It affects EVERYTHING, including your personal goals and your own basic needs

#solarpunk