Disasters Can Be Liberating

As the climate crisis worsens, and more people and places in the world are devastated by hurricanes, droughts and other weather catastrophes, we need more discussion on the role that disasters can play in bringing about social transformation.

Many progressives have accepted Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine narrative that disasters provide opportunities for right wing forces to take over (“disaster capitalism”). But it has been rejected as “disempowering” by anti-nuke activist and writer Rebecca Solnit in her fascinating book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster.

Solnit believes that disasters provide the opportunity for people to grow spiritually.

“Although disasters are terrible, tragic, grievous and not to be desired, they provide an extraordinary window into social desire and possibility and what manifests there matters elsewhere in ordinary times and in other extraordinary times.”

In other words, disasters provide opportunities for Visionary Organizing.