Close to Home
The failure of the federal government in the face of this global pandemic has created a space for protective, positive actions at the state and local levels. Across the country governors, mayors, and city councils have been stepping forward to respond in thoughtful and innovative ways. The orders to slow the spread of the virus came from governors, with Gavin Newsom of California, Jay Inslee of Washington and Andrew Cuomo of NY offering early, forceful actions with stay-at-home orders, closing businesses, and providing real, concrete information to people. Michigan joined the effort with aggressive shelter-in-place strategies as we suffered tremendous losses of life.
Mayors and local governments also moved swiftly to enact a range of policies that acknowledged our collective interdependence. In so doing, they highlighted the narrow cruelty behind business as usual. Rent collections halted, utility shut offs and water restoration policies were quickly put in place. Jail house doors were opened as thousands of people were set free. Evictions and debt collection stopped. As one activist in Kansas said, “We’re winning stuff that last week sounded radical.”
The success of these policies provoked the anger of the President, his administration, and right wing forces across the country. We have seen the petty withholding of protective gear to punish states critical of federal incompetence and armed protests in state capitals, demonstrating the violence inherent in those who would protect power and privilege.
These clashes are framing the contours of the choices ahead of us. In one way or another, the US Empire, long in decline, is falling apart. The failures to provide for the most basic security of life is evident. However we emerge on the other side of this pandemic, we can no longer evade the question of how to organize ourselves for the well-being of our communities, our families and the places that sustain us.
The actions of our governors are already reflecting a regional sensibility. Governors in the northeast are coordinating plans for reopening, as are those on the west coast. Here around the Great Lakes, conversations are evolving that are not only coordinating re-openings of state economies but discussing strengthening regional ties and production.
For more than 50 years radical thinkers have been challenging us to undo the scale of life required by empire. In 1973, E. F. Schumacher published his influential book Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. At the same time members of the American Indian Movement, inspired by their earlier success occupying Alcatraz, took over the Pine Ridge Reservation. These events accelerated a growing understanding of ecology and indigenous wisdom, providing the context for the North American Bioregional Congress a decade later. These congresses, which convened over nearly a 30- year time frame, argued for a rethinking of our political ecology, based on the laws of nature and the needs for sustainable life.
Thomas Berry, who described himself as a geologian, and advocated for a deeper understanding of history and evolution to inspire us to the “great work of change” was quoted in the original call to congress, saying:
So now we experience a moment when a change of vast dimension is demanded… A period of change from the mechanistic to the organic, from an oppressive human tyranny over the planet to the rule of the earth community itself, the community of all the living and non-living components of the planet, that neither the nation states nor western civilization has ever seen before.
This is the moment to do the kind of radical reconstruction of our relationships that is essential to protect our people and our earth. It is a reconstruction that has to be rooted in the values that best reflect what we know makes life meaningful, productive, and joyful. We are learning that the decisions about what matters to us, are best made close to home.