reclaim.agency

“One of the functions of art is to give people the words to know their own experience. Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want.”
- Ursula K. Le Guin

The stories we tell ourselves, about both our public and private pasts, determine so much of how we will show up for the present. How we interpret experiences has a profound impact on our capacity for both agency and compassion, and subsequently our personhood. The relationship between agency and victimhood is a nuanced one, and how we live our lives may be determined by the lens through which we view our own narrative and the ways in which we tell those stories.

The narratives we construct around our own experiences not only constitute the deeply personal epistemological scaffolding which come to inform our worldviews, but also the lens through which we view that very world. The capacity to interpret, assimilate, and often cope with past experiences holds great bearing on the way in which we move through the present and what we are able to conceive as possible for the future. This has profound implications for both our individual and collective lives, and thus our ability to engage embodied change and sustained transformation on a societal level. In order to enact equitable, pluralistic, and reparative futures, we must first believe they are possible. In this effort, the importance in politicizing trauma¹ is paramount given the immediate threat climate change and systemic violence pose to frontline communities². “Enacting Just Futures” examines urgent questions³ about the human condition in crisis through storytelling. “Enacting Just Futures” takes the form of a screenplay; a speculative and visionary fiction⁴ that seeks to empower adaptive agency in order to collectively enact a new world order⁶. I use fiction as a means to challenge the relationships between crypto-colonialism⁷, capitalism, and climate change that systematically subjugate communities that do not subscribe to their ideologies⁸.

A society’s capacity to usefully integrate tragic compassion⁹ as a structural tenet hinges upon philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s insight that “people are dignified agents, but they are also, frequently, victims”. That victimization, catalyzed by environmental degradation, will become rampant for millions¹⁰ as we enter an age of unprecedented insecurity in a truly anthropogenic era where no part of earth - whether directly or indirectly - has been untouched by the impact of mankind¹². In order for those most disenfranchised to be treated with dignity, the collective narrative for activists seeking to dismantle systems of oppression needs to shift from resilience¹³ to resistance - we cannot keep asking the same vulnerable communities to absorb the risks and costs of this crisis.

“Can we really not imagine anything better?”

This question was first posed to me last spring by Collette Pichon Battle in a lecture on Leadership in Environmental Conflicts. It is one that I have since envisioned as the call to action of my graduate studies; one that requires both a realistic assessment of current political and economic systems, and a radical revisioning of what they could be. Addressing this question as a society will require organized, empathic leadership that promotes purposeful experimentation and prioritizes a just and inclusive process. In order for this undertaking of transformative justice to be successful, we will not only need creative strategies and tactics, but public narratives that inspire action in the face of uncertainty - ones that inspire hope. Hope alongside grief, fear, and anger - because all of those things coexist. Collette Pichon Battle’s lecture highlighted the failures of our collective moral imagination that have perpetuated oppressive, hegemonic systems through complacency. We have not been living by the question - can we not imagine anything better?

We are surrounded by evidence of tremendous suffering, yet too often those with the ability to create positive change are complacent or impaired by empathic distress rather than striving to embody radical hope. I take inspiration from activist-scholars such as Rebecca Solnit, who reframe ideas of hope in terms of transformative solidarity that requires action. Transformative away from the status quo rather than reactionary and protective of it. This piece is about the self-work of interrogating our own narratives, ones where we may play the role of bystander or victim, to become agents of change for ourselves and our communities. Personal and societal transformation is inseparable. We need to build our capacity to hold that complexity while organizing together. Can modeling generative conflict through empathic storytelling lead to collective action? Imagined scenarios that invite readers to look beyond individual experience to interrogate the social, political, and economic roots of trauma? This piece attempts to build an imperfect world¹⁵ that we can not only hope for, but realistically work towards. We cannot move on to envisioning radically different social configurations and material flows without confronting the colonial legacies we inherited and perpetuate in the daily productions of our lives.

“Transform yourself to transform the world.”
- Grace Lee Boggs

My personal trauma and socialization have led me to believe that I am inherently wrong: my ideas are wrong, my emotions are wrong, my personhood is wrong. Invalid, irrelevant, unimportant. I put tremendous effort into believing that my opinions and emotions are equally as valid as those of the next person, but my depression and anxiety warn me otherwise. My unstable upbringing led to a belief that I am incapable of grasping concepts that seem obvious to everyone else around me; a belief which is amplified in settings where people are posturing and constantly claiming space (i.e. Harvard and Movement spaces in general). Taking up any amount of space feels dangerous to me, and sometimes when I speak my mind or assert a claim my body reacts as if I am in physical danger even if my mind knows better. Pragmatism and reparenting can only take me so far when I walk into a room not only believing these things about myself, but being convinced that every other person has the same assumption. I bring this up because this deep-seated fear has been a barrier to engaging with activism broadly. In part, I have not known what I have to offer; a sense of self doubt that has heightened in organizing spaces where burnout is high and patience is low¹⁶. Spaces of resistance have sometimes felt just as siloed and exclusionary as academia. There is also a sense of self-sacrifice and martyrdom associated with committing one's life to the revolution that has further complicated my relationship with activism. What are the ways to find joy and the ability to be present despite a societal expectation that suffering is inherent to justice work and success?

My views on this shifted after reading adrienne maree brown. Her latest book, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, has convinced me that changing the world doesn’t just have to be another form of work, but rather can be regenerative, healing, and pleasurable. She posits that we settle for suffering and self-negation because of oppression; that oppression makes us believe that pleasure (for me, happiness without fear or shame) is not something that we all have equal access to. In order for activism to be sustainable, it must be generative, inclusive, and more than that, imaginative of a more just future which does not further replicate the fissures of the status quo. Movement should feel satisfying; a relationship between what we have to offer and what the Movement needs from us. Adrienne has taught me that misery and Movement shouldn’t feel synonymous. That is the sweet spot we should strive to occupy--the one that precludes the voice of doubt that tells us we have nothing to offer, or that what we have to offer isn’t enough. In order to find that sweet spot, we have to establish boundaries alongside our politicization and build our capacity for love and rigor simultaneously¹⁷. Logic alone doesn’t change behavior; an emotional call to action is necessary to push forward a new social philosophy. We cannot make moral decisions without emotional information - if we cannot experience emotion, we cannot experience values that orient us to the choices we must make¹⁸. As Angela Davis says, “the revolution must be irresistible.”

Cultivating self-knowledge is a prerequisite to empathy and living in community. Complexity of character¹⁹ and personhood is often flattened and made dichotomous by identity politics and the reductive nature of the roles we play (or that are assigned to us). Liberating ourselves from these identity traps is necessary in order to facilitate sustainable momentum in the face of crisis and injustice. This should happen through an individual and communal healing process that prioritizes those who have been generationally oppressed²⁰. Organizing for this movement should be a liberatory practice and an act of resistance that allows our visions and our values to align over time. ”Enacting Just Futures” seeks to play a role in collectively growing our capacity for hope in order to organize against further oppression and cultivate communities of care.

“There is nothing radical about moral clarity”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

In order to craft the screenplay as a call-to-action for enacting just futures, I looked to the framework and organizing principles of the Green New Deal (GND)²¹. Over the past 2 years we have witnessed the unveiling of equitable and inclusive climate policy in the form of the GND, spearheaded in the states by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and The Sunrise Movement and by many others abroad.

The GND is a departure from previous climate policy in that it addresses the roles of multiple systems and institutions in creating and perpetuating the global climate crisis. It assigns blame directly and provides adaptable paths forward against incrementalism, austerity, and concentrated wealth and ownership. It explicitly rejects logics of perpetual growth and extraction that are ingrained in the foundational institutions and practices that determine how wealth is produced and distributed. It acknowledges that moving beyond market fundamentalism will require deep structural shifts - not only in how the economy is organized, but in what is perceived as possible in the dominant social imaginary.

I believe in a necessarily radical global Green New Deal. Radical in its swift and dramatic departure from business-as-usual and in its recognizing (and uplifting) the undervalued labor of care²⁴. With COVID-19 and state efforts to ‘return to normal’, we are living through a historic moment that has exposed clearly that ‘normal’ for most of the global population is a constant state of crisis. It has exposed the politics of preordained inequality and predatory economics that have so tragically exacerbated not only the coronavirus crisis, but every pre existing inextricable crisis that undergirds it.

COVID-19 presents an awakening from the hypnosis of normality. Isolation during the pandemic has felt like the eye of a storm at times. A familiar vantage point as someone who grew up in Florida with hurricanes rather than snow days in my childhood. That calm window presents an opportunity to assess the damage while awaiting the storm’s imminent, unstoppable second wave. The next wave is on our horizon, and the impacts of systemic breakdown in the midst of this pandemic are incomprehensible without storytelling. We are in the eye of a storm. Will we succumb to an insidious ethos of individualism, or forge new trajectories of connection and support?

The self is constructed by our experiences, and thus our trauma. So much of how I situate myself in my life, but especially in academia and spaces of activism, is tied up in embodied survival strategies that determine how I react in moments of uncertainty. Some reactions are so embedded that they are impossible to see; we are blinded by our own subjectivity. I look to Movement leader Staci K. Haines’ definition of trauma as it resonates most clearly with my own experiences and the false tradeoffs trauma presents. “Trauma is an experience, series of experiences, and/or impacts from social conditions, that break or betray our inherent need for safety, belonging, and dignity. They are experiences that result in us having to vie between these inherent needs, often setting one against the other. For example, it might leave us with the impact of “I can be safe but not connected (isolated),” or “I have to give up my dignity to be safe or connected.” This is untenable, because all of these needs are constitutive or inherent in us.” Haines, Staci. The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice. North Atlantic Books, 2019.

low-income communities and communities of color that are hit “first and worst” by the impacts of climate change.

How do people access hope and joy amid climate grief, Trumpism, and trauma? What are the moral milestones needed to catalyze new societal trajectories? What do we accept as knowledge? When do we question its premise - how, when, and for whom was it produced? How can we help people realize their agency through supporting and promoting indigenous and local knowledge?

⁴

Adrienne maree brown defines visionary fiction as: “working to generate fiction that intentionally disrupts the status quo, examines change as a collective, bottom up process, centers marginalized communities - and is neither utopian nor dystopian.” “Science Fiction and Social Justice: Giving up on Utopias.” openDemocracy. Accessed May 3, 2020. opendemocracy.net.

⁶

Another world feels possible when “just and liberated futures [are made] irresistible.” From adrienne maree brown’s (AMB’s) book Emergent Strategy. AMB learned this from Toni Cade in an interview with Kay Bonetti in 1982. Brown, Adrienne M. Emergent Strategy : Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017. Pg 19.

⁷

I am not suggesting that the process of decolonization or even a post-colonial world will be peaceful, but I believe it will be more just.

⁸

In exploring these topics through fiction it is not my intention to exempt myself from responsibility or assume “settler innocence”. Seeing as I am writing this from the unbelievably privileged position of a harvard graduate student, I have clearly benefited immensely from these projects of oppression. This is just to say that these world ordering projects are so embedded and ubiquitous that they have been naturalized/normalized to the point of invisibility. Only to those who benefit from them, of course. They are viscerally present for the rest.

⁹

Nussbaum looks to Greek tragedies to explain the development of compassion through lessons on the connection of common humanity. My simple interpretation: bad things happen to good people. Those bad things can never strip a person of their humanity and dignity. Nussbaum’s compassion requires discernment - “Tragedy asks us, then, to walk a delicate line. We are to acknowledge that life’s miseries strike deep, striking to the heart of human agency itself. And yet we are also to insist that they do not remove humanity, that the capacity for goodness remains when all else has been removed.” This false binary between agent and victim is a hallmark of American life. Nussbaum, Martha C. Upheavals of Thought : The Intelligence of Emotions. 1st Pbk. ed. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

¹⁰

Forced migration due to violence, land degradation/loss of livelihood, and climate change are examples of sociocultural and climatic events that leave their physical and psychological marks on places and the individuals who endure them. They are not only collective traumas but cumulative traumas in that they have detrimental and additive impacts on one’s mental and physical wellbeing over time. Displacement is not in the future. It is the reality for over half a million Americans and 70.8 million refugees worldwide. For so many families a shifting climate is what uproots their lives. Whether indirectly through land degradation, desertification, and job and resource scarcity (or designed scarcity rather) or more explicitly through acts of violence, severe weather events, environmental racism, and land grabbing. Most of these refugees (58%) are not in camps or rural areas, but rather in cities(where the hell did i find this??). With capitalism in direct opposition to the climate, these trends will only increase. In fact, although the most widely cited estimate for global climate refugees by 2050 is 200 million, the forecasts range up to 1 billion. That would mean 1/9 humans on earth would be migrants in 2050.

¹²

By impact of mankind I am not only referring to anthropogenic emissions from extractive projects, but particularly insidious anthropocentric mentalities. Ones that I believe long predate what some scholars deem the onset of the Anthropocene, such as the Industrial Revolution or the Great Acceleration. I align with Zoe Todd and Heather Davis’ definition and timeline of the new epoch which integrates indigenous knowledges: “The Anthropocene is not a new event, but is rather the continuation of practices of dispossession and genocide, coupled with a literal transformation of the environment, that have been at work for the last five hundred years.” Davis, Heather, and Zoe Todd. “On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 16, no. 4 (December 20, 2017): 761–80. acme-journal.org.

¹³

Resistance over resilience. To borrow from urban ecologist Maria Kaika, a new paradigm in an old framework can only act as immunology. She, like many, is skeptical of development goals as a means to ensure socio-environmental equality. Kaika specifically calls out recurrent concepts, such as resilience, as attributes to be allocated and which “fail - by design - to address questions related to the conditions that made it necessary for people and environments to seek resilience in the first place.” Kaika, M., and Urban Planning. "'Don’t Call Me Resilient Again!' The New Urban Agenda as Immunology...or...What Happens When Communities Refuse to Be Vaccinated with ‘smart Cities’ and Indicators." Environment and Urbanization 29, no. 1 (2017): 89-102.

¹⁵

One that does not attempt to be a utopia, for utopias are inherently built upon another’s dystopia. They are also so distant from our current reality that they feel naive. I want a world that’s believable, that people will want to fight for.

¹⁶

I am of course only speaking from my own experience, and hope that this is not true for most. I am not throwing any groups under the bus, but am only sharing that certain climate justice conversations can feel exclusionary and unforgiving. That being said, there can and should be multiple movements and revolutions moving towards a Just Transition. They will be incommensurable, and that’s ok.

¹⁷

Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: what's somatics got to do with it?, directed/performed by adrienne maree brown (2019; San Francisco: Generative Somatics), Youtube.

¹⁸

See footnote 9.

¹⁹

“We contain multitudes.” We are all internally plural. The self is not immutable. It’s edges are not discrete, but porous and ever shifting, constructed by the trauma that lives in our bodies.

²⁰

This piece does not seek to reappropriate or exploit lineages of historically marginalized and disenfranchised communities as a means to promote self-care. Sustainable movement towards a Just Transition must provide for joy to be self-perpetuating and part of the process rather than a departure from the norm.

²¹

Like the Just Transition, there are many contested definitions for a Green New Deal (and even more for a global Green New Deal). In short, it is a climate proposal that seeks to rapidly decarbonize the economy while dismantling racial, class, and gender inequalities. It envisions doing so by creating millions of jobs which prioritize disenfranchised communities while ensuring universal public services like Medicare for All, free education through college and free childcare. For the sake of brevity, I will quote my favorite long-view explanation: “We hope that confronting climate change will also be the occasion for breaking from capitalism. We see the Green New Deal, like its namesake, less as a particular suite of policies than as a multi-decade effort to write a more humane, sustainable, and democratic social contract. But whereas the New Deal ultimately saved capitalism for capitalists, we aspire to channel a new wave of mass mobilisation in a more radical direction.” “For a Global Green New Deal.” Accessed May 3, 2020. common-wealth.co.uk.

²⁴

By radical I mean not only of a rejection and rehauling of the status quo, but a reshaping of traditionally militant modes of activism that become more inclusive and caring.

OVER BLACK: Slow, heavy breathing. The sound of vital signs monitor beeping. Unclear whispers.

MAN’S VOICE:
(impatient, agitated)Yes, you’ve told me that five times and we’ve discussed it. He wants to come home. I’d like to speak to my husband.

DOCTOR’S VOICE:It’s important that he rests. We need to keep him for at least one more night, perhaps you could-

MAN’S VOICE:Oh, fuck off!

SOUND OF A CURTAIN BEING PUSHED OPEN

“Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” - Friedrich Engels. How the hell do I mark the end of capitalism?? Managing labor in a post capitalist economy...? Tech sector - automation and robotization freeing people from involuntary labor? Decarbonization and liberation have to happen in tandem. These days, changes to infrastructure is carceral. Muscular social movements.

INT. HOSPITAL CANCER WING - BROOKLYN - 2050SCENE OPENS ON WYATT, FROM SEBAS’ POV. He is clearly agitated. Hair tousled, bloodshot eyes. Sleep deprived and short tempered, but well dressed in a suit and tie.

WYATT
(relieved but manic)You’re awake! That asshole doctor just-

SEBAS
(weak, tired)Cariño, it’s fine. Calm down. Please.

WYATT kneels by Sebas, holds his hand.

WYATTI’m sorry, I was just worried about you. How are you feeling?

SEBAS
(gives his husband a tired smile then looks up at the ceiling)I don’t want to upset you.

WYATT puts his head down, anticipating the next question.

SEBASIs she coming?

INT. HIGH SPEED TRAIN - RURAL SW US - 2050 - NIGHTMAREN STARES OUT THE WINDOW AT THE FIELD OF SOLAR ARRAYS REFLECTING THE LIGHT OF THE FULL MOON OVER THE SPRAWLING DESERT, HEAD AGAINST THE GLASS. THE NIGHT SKY IS CLEAR AND FULL OF STARS. THE CAMERA SWITCHES FOCUS FROM THE VIEW TO HER REFLECTION IN IT, LAYERED.Sounds of the train mix with sounds of whispering and splashing water.MONTAGEFLASH OF blockades and caution tape blocking south 3rd, 2nd and kent in BROOKLYN - an out of focus Williamsburg Bridge in the background.SOUNDS OF wading into not very deep water. Giggling, whispering, shushing.FLASH OF the top of two 80’ gantry cranes out front of the old raw sugar warehouse, full moon behind. red from air pollution.FLASH OF east river, and manhattan beyond.

High speed, zero-carbon rail now operating major lines up and down east and west coasts and many cross country routes.

EXT. SUBMERGED DOMINO PARK - BROOKLYN - 2038 - NIGHT“CIRCLES” BY MAC MILLER PLAYS IN.GROUND LEVEL SHOT of two teenagers from behind, wading through shin deep water - one in shorts, one with already soaked rolled up jeans. Each is carrying a child’s blow up innertube over their shoulder, one with a six pack of beer. Trash sparsely populates the water which is glistening with oil and runoff. In front of them, a narrow patch of the water is bubbling as if over rapids, but really this is the area of Domino Park with run-through water jets for kids to cool off in during grueling summers like this one. The rainbow lights from the jets are creating iridescent currents with the oil. There had been heavy rain for the past three days that had finally let up. The high tide came with the full moon making the flooding even worse. A huge red orb illuminating the whole haunting scene.The teens find a spot beneath one of the gantry lifts and post up. The boy takes off his belt and uses it to attach the two innertubes together in case a current comes along while the girl secures their backpacks on a brace at the base of the crane. They plop down fully clothed into their innertubes, each crack a beer, and cheers. MUSIC FADES LOWER.

TEEN MAREN
(pulls loose cigarette out of her shirt pocket)You gotta light?

TEEN JAYEAre you fucking with me, Mar? This water is a fire hazard.

TEEN MAREN
(rolls her eyes, sticks out her hand)

TEEN JAYENah, we have enough problems. We’re already trespassing. I'm not adding arsen from a flammable flood to the mix. Just enjoy the view.

TEEN MAREN
(sips her beer, jaded)I’ve never understood your love for this city.

TEEN JAYE
(shakes his head)I don't buy that. I’ve never left it and honestly never need to.

TEEN MARENMaybe that’s your problem. (looks at him)Why? I don’t get it?

TEEN JAYE
(sarcastically)Oh I’m sorry, didn’t realize I had a problem. (looks around)Even if I had already seen everything there was to see, walked every street, explored every building - it wouldn’t matter. I mean look at this fucking park right now.

TEEN MARENThey need to figure this shit out.

TEEN JAYEThat’s my point though. This place is alive. Changing every minute. I know I’ll meet new people every day. (sips beer)I need that.

TEEN MAREN
(look of disgust)I hate people. And anyway, new people should definitely not be moving here. If it weren’t for Sebas I would have already left.

TEEN JAYEWow, thanks.

TEEN MARENYou know what I mean. It’s not like this is going to get any better. Doesn’t it piss you off?

TEEN JAYEUm, I’m actually having a great time right now. Did I miss something, what is this mood?

TEEN MARENI think I’m maybe just restless.

TEEN JAYE
(goes to undue belt holding them together)I can send ya down the East River if you need a little trip.

TEEN MAREN
(finally smiles, gives a little laugh)Jaye, I love you. I just...I can’t do it anymore.

TEEN JAYEDo what?

TEEN MARENPretend. (figuring it out)Pretend like...I fit in? Like we’re the same, like your friends are my friends or that we are heading in the same direction.

TEEN JAYEIs this you freaking out about us graduating? Cause this is supposed to be a celebration right now, and I’m gonna be honest you are really killing¹ the vibe.

TEEN MAREN
(truly sad)I’m being serious, Jaye. I’m lost. (starts crying)And I’m exhausted.

TEEN JAYE
(apologetic, concerned)Whoa, whoa, whoa Mar, I’m sorry. Hey, I know a lot is happening but-

TEEN MARENNo it’s not this, it’s not just now. I can deal with this. I feel like I am pretending to live in community. Like I don’t even really know what that means, and it doesn’t feel comfortable or natural AT ALL to me. Meanwhile the three men in my life - you, Wyatt, and Sebas - are all saving the fucking world WITH EASE.

TEEN JAYE
(trying to suppress a smile)First of all - we have to find other men for your life besides your best friend and your two dads.

Maren tries to push him out of his innertube.

Hopefully violent, colonizing language won’t be so commonplace but I can’t help but use it.

TEEN JAYESecond of all - what are you talking about?? You love the Movement crew. You are an incredible organizer. How could you not be with Wyatt and Sebas as dads, activist culture was like...your main diet growing up.

MARENThat is what I mean. That diet was fucking force fed.

TEEN JAYELook, I know you’re upset, but don’t hate on them. They love you. You are Sebas’ pride and joy. I know that Wyatt can be-

MAREN
(irritated) Jaye, you don’t know. I know you’d like to think it, but we don’t know every little thing about each other. You don’t know what it’s like to-

JAYETo what? Have a dad?

MAREN
(backtracking) That’s not what I meant, I meant-

JAYEMar, I know you like to think you are unloved. Or feel abandoned. But you need to look around. So what you get screamed at once in a while.

MAREN
(hurt) Is that really what you are diminishing this to? (then angry) This - this - is why I want to leave. Because everyone thinks Wyatt is a goddamn saint and that I’m, what, a charity case? Don’t tell me what to appreciate. I never met my father - fuck him, I don’t care. I know you miss yours everyday but at least you have your mom.

JAYEYou have her too! My mom loves you, she thinks of you as a daughter. Maren this fight is stupid, I am SORRY. I wasn’t trying to diminish I was trying to-

MARENWhy - why do you always defend him?

JAYE(Defeated, shakes his head) Because he looks out for me. (beat, finding the words)

CUT TO QUICK FLASHES:
JAYE HAVING DINNER WITH WYATT, MAREN, AND SEBAS
WYATT HELPING JAYE APPLY FOR COLLEGE
WYATT AND JAYE SHOOTING HOOPS TOGETHER

He... believes in me. He’s been a mentor. Because... because I owe him.

MAREN If you think you owe him, where does that leave me? I didn’t ask him to take me in. I was fine on my own, I was honestly better on my own. Sebas’ heart is the only thing that makes me believe Wyatt must be good deep down. And it’s not the same, Jaye. Your mother is your mother. Wyatt is my uncle. On a good day, him adopting me was a road bump in his career. On a bad day, he could convince me this flood was my fault. (beat) And I’d believe him.

JAYE He’s under a lot of stress. He’s doing the best he can. (seeing her get even more upset) Hey well at least we’ll have space in the co-op in the fall? You can move in before classes start at NYU and-

MAREN I’m not staying, Jaye.

JAYE Come on, Mar.

MAREN I’m serious. I already found a job.

JAYE College for All finally passed and you’re going to skip out to work?

MAREN Yes.

JAYE
(indignant) Ok, doing what?

MAREN Work that actually feels important to me. In a place where I can just breathe. My life here has been one long guilt trip. (beat) I’m joining the CRC to help decarbonize and reclaim indigenous land and farming practices.

JAYE I know that you know that you can do that here in New York. With my mother. Who, to reiterate, loves you.

MAREN Please don’t make me feel awful about wanting to do something for myself.

JAYE Leaving your friends and family to help the cause in a way you could do in your own backyard just... feels like martyrdom. If it’s Wyatt you’re trying to get away from just head upstate for the summer to see how...

MAREN I already booked my tickets, Jaye. (beat) I leave next week.

Silence. JAYE takes this in. Stares at MAREN, betrayed and defeated.

CUT TO:
EXT. TRAIN PLATFORM - RURAL SW US - 2050 - NIGHT MAREN LIGHTS A CIGARETTE AND TAKES A LONG EXHALE AS SHE NOTICES A YOUNG FAMILY, TWO SIBLINGS PLAYING TAG AND MESSING AROUND ON THE PLATFORM. THE DAD YELLS AT THEM TO STOP.“How Hard It Is for a Desert to Die” by Jeff Tweedy plays in.

lots o’ gigs switching combustion-based activities like heating systems, air conditioners, and automobiles over to electric power. #% of institutions now producing their own power? clean water free and publicly provisioned in the states and?? Climate Leviathan/Geoengineering support complicates Just Transition. End to subsidizing meat production.

FLASH OF 12-13 YEAR OLD JAYE AND MAREN WREAKING HAVOC, SPRINTING LOUDLY UP THE STAIRS OF THE CO-OP - one of the first public housing retrofits after Housing For All passed in 2028. Truly affordable, quality housing as a human right. Jaye’s mom, Penny, had been the super since. We see an old neighbor step out to shout at them but complains to Penny instead as she walks up the stairs behind them with a bag of groceries.MAREN GIVES A WRY SMILE AND STOMPS HER CIGARETTE OUT. BOARDS THE TRAIN.

CUT TO:
EXT. ROOFTOP OF CO-OP - BROOKLYN - 2050 - NIGHT JAYE SITS WITH A GROUP OF FRIENDS AND HOUSEMATES DRINKING IN CAMPING CHAIRS. It is clear this rooftop is well tended to but all well used. It is large enough that it has a series of greenhouses and beekeeping structures as well as a small stage for music. [SCENE NOT WRITTEN. JAYE INTRO TO FOLLOW, HE EXPRESSES ANXIETY AND EXCITEMENT ABOUT MAREN RETURNING]

OVER BLACK: MUFFLED WIND AND RUSHING WATER SOUNDS WITH A FAINT, AMBIGUOUS BUZZING.INT. SINGLE WIDE TRAILER - MINDEN, WV - COAL MINING COUNTRY - DREAM SEQUENCE1-point perspective of a dilapidated trailer’s front door, pink vinyl peeling around a small plexiglass window, outside obscured by a dirty sunflower-printed curtain.“Mary” by Big Thief plays in, layers with sounds, instrumental intro extended x3...

Ash and coal dust start coming through the loose, flimsy seams of the structure. the room starts to darken as ash settles on every surface, a feeling of asphyxiation. close in on window, A WOMAN’S HAND PUSHES THE CURTAIN ASIDE. outside, the trailer rests in a valley flanked by two immediately proximate mountains with their tops blown off. each erupting like volcanoes but with steaming black water instead of lava.

LYRICS IN, (V.O.)“Burn up with the water
The floods around the plains
The planets in a rose
Who knows what they contain?”

the valley quickly becomes a slurry reservoir³. the ground shifts as the contaminated water lifts the trailer off its cinder block foundation -

“And my brain is like an orchestra
Playing on, insane”

THE WOMAN’S HAND MOVES TO THE DOOR HANDLE. when it opens the sounds crescendo to a sudden stop -SMASH CUT TO BLACKINT. MAREN’S BEDROOM - CO-OP IN BROOKLYN - MORNING - APRIL 2050MAREN’S POV: OUT OF FOCUS VIEW OF THE CORNER OF A BEDROOM CEILING. THE BUZZING HAS RETURNED AND A BEE FLITTING IN THE CORNER COMES INTO FOCUS. WE HEAR A DEEP BREATH -

What will long outlive coal plants are the contaminants they leave behind, in both our environments and our bodies. High-sulfur coal, common to the east, is washed with water to meet environmental regulations, the byproducts of which are often left in wastewater ponds (aka, slurry reservoirs). More than 700 such reservoirs exist in Appalachia alone, containing hundreds of millions of gallons of mine waste which can easily seep into surface and groundwater supplies. “How Coal Works | Union of Concerned Scientists.” Accessed April 25, 2020. ucsusa.org.

1-point perspective view of Maren from the bedroom door looking towards a small cramped room with a twin mattress on the floor and a single window over her head. Her hair long and thinly box braided with a middle part. Her dark skin punctuated by pronounced cheek and collar bones - she’s all elbows and angles. Sweating from dream, face resigned. MAREN SITS UP WITH EFFORT, we see her look at the bee. Hear the creek of the floorboards under the shifting weight, rustling blankets. MAREN’S POV: GAZE SHIFTS TO THE REST OF THE ROOM - SUITCASE IS OPEN ON THE FLOOR WITH BELONGINGS STREWN ABOUT. UNSTABLE CAMERA, MOVES IRREGULARLY WITH GAZE (SLIGHT SHAKE). MONTAGE, QUICK CUTS:CHILD MAREN POV: closeup of woman with food stained apron and waitress uniform kneels and puts her worn hands on maren’s knees lovingly, we don’t see her full face, just her caring smile. TEENAGE MAREN POV: same sitting position, this time with a young man kneeling in front of her, grips her bare knees, she squeezes her legs together tightly, clearly tense. we don’t see his full face, just his grimace. TEENAGE MAREN quickly packing the same present day suitcase.CHILD MAREN in old biodiesel truck looking out passenger window at a blown off mountain top⁴ and a barren extraction site in rural west virginia, surrounded by wild landscape - the stark contrast strangely, eerily beautiful. CHILD MAREN LOOKS AT THE DRIVER - the same waitress woman from before -- her mother. she holds maren’s hand and gives it a double squeeze. She looks unwell but happy. PRESENT DAY MAREN double squeezes her own hands together without looking, as if she’s holding someone else’s. sits in train car⁵, view of a barely recognizable New York City out the window. SMASH CUT WITH SHARP SOUND OF WINDOW OPENINGINT. CO-OP BEDROOM - BROOKLYN - MORNING With the window open, natural sounds are amplified. the humming of insects we would associate now with summer in the south - the high pitch of clicking cicadas. MAREN LOOKS OUT OVER THE SAME STRANGE SKYLINE, UNFAZED. every midrise rooftop a lush garden with hive-like structures attached to their parapets for beekeeping and rain water filtration. streets are mostly pedestrian only now, obvious by the expansive tree canopies and bioswales reclaiming the right of way. an electric bus⁷ drives past in her periphery. SHE TAKES ANOTHER DEEP BREATH, AND IS STARTLED BY A TAP, TAP, TAP.ENTER JAYE, tall enough that he instinctively ducks when he leans through the partially opened door. Lean but strong, with an oversized windbreaker pulled back over his forearms. His hair is tightly coiled and longer on top; facial hair at a two day stubble. Even when he’s not smiling his eyes are.

JAYEDid I wake you?

FLASH OF OPEN TRAILER DOOR FROM SAME VANTAGE POINT, MIRRORING PRESENT-DAY JAYE IN THE DOOR FRAME. THE SLURRY RUSHING AROUND HIM THIS TIME.CLOSE ON MAREN

MAREN CON’T
(to the camera) Things happened so much faster than anyone anticipated (beat) climatically, politically. The acceleration¹² of everything set the stage for a new era of climate emergency response - some reactionary, some revolutionary. The legacies of which are coming to a head today.

⁴

This is a small acknowledgement that there are some landscapes that can never be replaced or repaired; the emotional weight and void of their absence carried by the communities who grew up in the presence of these beautiful giants. Personally, I spent a great deal of my youth trail running the Blue Ridge Parkway - one of my only escapes and moments of peace away from my crowded foster home. Worldwide the increase in ecosystem distress is matched by a corresponding increase in human distress syndromes, a concept known as Solastalgia. A sense of homesickness for a home that no longer exists. Albrecht, Glenn, Gina-Maree Sartore, Linda Connor, Nick Higginbotham, Sonia Freeman, Brian Kelly, Helen Stain, Anne Tonna, and Georgia Pollard. “Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change.” Australasian Psychiatry: Bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists 15 Suppl 1 (2007): S95-98. doi.org.

⁵

Free, public, zero-carbon high speed transit.

⁷

As of 2017, transportation is the leading source of CO2 emissions in the US. This future envisions cities like Detroit becoming revitalized job hubs for creating fleets of electric vehicles (EV). The EV Freedom Act, if enacted, would require the U.S. Secretary of Transportation to create a network of high-speed EV charging infrastructure along interstates and highways.“Rep. Andy Levin Drives Towards Green New Deal with Electric Vehicle Bill.” Accessed April 25, 2020. wdet.org.

¹²

-- If you’re full up with climate anxiety, go ahead and skip this footnote. --
Accelerated feedback loops - an infinite domino effect of amplified impacts of climate factors - are what perhaps scare me most. One accelerator is the exponentially higher warming potential of methane than CO2 which is being rapidly released by thawing permafrost (global permafrost contains twice as much carbon as exists in the atmosphere today). I am clearly not a scientist, so as I have learned about the limitations of climate models and the impossible task of accounting for the interconnectedness of all our living systems I have come to more questions than answers. Questions about Arctic Oscillation, and the implications of unprecedented warming in the stratosphere. Questions on Thermohaline Circulation, and the implications of the gulf stream slowing down. How much more heat from the atmosphere can the oceans absorb, before all systems are thrown off? The prediction that summer sea ice in the Arctic will be non-existent by 2050, exposing the dark ocean which will absorb even more of the sun’s heat. The list goes on (and on and on and on). Don’t follow me down this rabbit hole unless you’re a masochist. In that case go ahead and read the infamous 5th IPCC report in its entirety.

MAREN
(to Jaye with distracted eyes) You didn’t. (Then, more clearly in voice and presence)Watcha got there?

A cup of tea in his visible hand, the other obscured from view as his shoulder rests against the door frame, his body half in the room. He enters but keeps the other hand behind his back. He kneels in front of her, hand still behind his back, and hands her the tea. She accepts it skeptically, balancing it on her knee.

JAYEAnd -

MARENDon’t -

JAYEJust a little something -

MARENStop-

JAYE clearly enjoying this part of their repertoire

JAYE
(With a smirk) For your birthday

MAREN LOOKS UP AT CEILING EXASPERATED

JAYE
(Excited whisper) Cause you’re thirty

MAREN LOOKS DOWN AT HER LAP NOW WITH A “WHAT IS TIME?” WIDE-EYE STARE

JAYE
(shimmies with excited whisper) Woooooo!

JAYE PRESENTS A POORLY HAND DRAWN CARD FROM BEHIND HIS BACK AND A MISMATCHED PAIR OF SOCKS - the mirror pair to which he’s wearing.

JAYEFor my elder - part one.

MAREN knows this game and that there is likely a scavenger hunt set up around the house for her. SHE ACCEPTS BOTH OFFERINGS WITH FEIGN ANNOYANCE. This was a long time tradition, but she hadn’t seen JAYE in a decade so there was something that still felt a little rusty and forced in their interactions, at least that’s how her anxiety was telling her to feel. JAYE clearly is on another track and picks up right where they had left off without missing a beat. He had this ease about him in general, but especially with MAREN. Nothing made him uncomfortable.Sketched on the front of the card are two stick figures in a triangle - JAYE’S attempt at drawing a tent. MAREN SMILES DOWN AT IT.

JAYE (V.O.) Remember that night?

FLASH OF TEENAGE JAYE AND MAREN IN A MAKESHIFT BLANKET FORT IN THE SAME FLOODED GARDEN APARTMENT FROM BEFORE, 4 FLOORS DOWN IN THIS BUILDING

END OF CAPITALISM ROUND ONE: creation of a modern and adaptable interpretation of the International Clearing Union (ICU) and the International Trade Organization (ITO) to replace the IMF, WTO and World Bank. money raised is channeled into a global sovereign wealth fund and invested in a global GND & regional institutions built on cooperation instead of free trade and capital mobility. plans to punish fossil fuel executives for criminal offenses (crimes against humanity) are well underway, IMF next on chopping block.

SLOW PAN OF SPACE The space was empty and clearly water damaged with warps and stains throughout. The only light is from a small projector they have propped on the extra chair outside the fort, cascading them in images. They are lying down side by side watching projected images on the sheets - live news coverage of a historic moment: half of all federal prisons had been shut down, and no new jails had been built since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s first term in 2028.images of _______, one of the largest private CAR prisons¹³ located next to an extraction site, had been renovated into an open aired retraining facility for guaranteed job placement and a living memorial and for those who unjustly endured its confinement.

NEWSCASTER (V.O.)This oil field, once the most profitable ____ polluting the air and water of those caged in the most profitable private immigrant detention center¹⁴, reveals a different reality today. Since the nationalization of the oil industry¹⁵ the move to adapt infrastructure for renewables has been an arduous one, but here we see a slightly different success story.

OVERHEAD SHOT OF MAREN AND JAYE TURNING TO SMILE AT EACH OTHER, JAYE’S EYES CLOUDY WITH TEARS

NEWSCASTER (V.O.)This oil field has been remediated to its former beautiful ______ landscape, with the help of the CCC¹⁶. Hopefully the first of many memorial national and international parks¹⁷ to reshape our carceral geography¹⁸.

¹³

Criminal Alien Requirement (CAR) prisons make up a shadow prison system in the United States entirely operated by private prison companies (the most notorious of which Harvard has invested millions in. I believe detention centers are worsening migrant outcomes, and the outcomes for our society. With the vast increase in migrants from the Northern Triangle arriving at the U.S./Mexico border, it is critical to mitigate retraumatization of those making this dangerous journey with the environments they are detained in. This will not require a radical revisioning, but rather a reallocation of resources, and can be achieved using human-centered and trauma-informed design approaches for those seeking asylum at the border.

¹⁴

I don’t know that I need to be this specific, I just want to draw out the legacies, especially in the south, of using incarcerated labor to exploit natural resources. I also want to call to attention where these prisons and detention centers are located - usually on stolen land and near extractive, polluting industry.

¹⁵

I know this footnote will be out of date literally tomorrow, but we could nationalize the oil industry during COVID 19 by buying the majority of shares for pennies - - this amount changes every day so im putting off adding it. This narrative envisions nationalizing the oil industry in the next five years.

¹⁶

A reimagined Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) would provide more than a short-term, low-pay, long-hour learning experience modeled by the og New Deal. As a key element to a future job guarantee, a renewed CCC would center caring for our planet as a viable and respected long term career instead of a temporary self-sacrifice.

¹⁷

As prison abolition plays out over time, I imagine some facilities being converted to rehabilitation or retraining centers, and others perhaps becoming monuments dedicated to the history of carceral omni-present state violence and those who survived it. Some will be demolished - their building materials reused - land reclamation and rewilding efforts will blossom in their absence.

¹⁸

A category of scholarship developed by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, carceral geography examines “the complex interrelationships among landscape, natural resources, political economy, infrastructure and the policing, jailing, caging and controlling of populations.” If you’d like to learn more about prison abolition (I don’t believe in reform as a financially viable or ethically acceptable long-term solution) Ruth is your woman. Kushner, Rachel. “Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind.” The New York Times, April 17, 2019, sec. Magazine. nytimes.com.

PRESENT - MAREN’S ROOM -

MARENOf course (then)Is another environmental win in store for my bday?

CLOSE ON JAYEFLASH OF A DESOLATE, ABANDONED RIKER’S ISLAND¹⁹.JAYE’S memory focused on more than the environment²⁰, something that had always been a tension between him and MAREN. He’s a master at positivity, so his face gives none of this away.

JAYEOh more than you know, Mar. (Standing up)Wanna come listen?

MARENFor sure, I’ll be down in a minute.

Maren puts on the mismatched socks and slowly stands up out of bed, exhausted from traveling. There are a couple posters, a plant, and small mirror on the wall - all JAYE’s efforts to create a sense of home in haste before her arrival. She walks over to the mirror and peers at herself, expressionless. She hasn’t seen herself in some time. She looks just like -

¹⁹

This stain on human existence will hopefully be closed in the next decade, a memorial raised in its absence. Perhaps as a sister project to Hart Island.

²⁰

In this future.

AOC president elect? Massive funding for GND projects - cooperative and land trusts abound. Alternative agriculture, such as underwater and vertical farms are now the norm, while polyculture and indigenous farming practices proliferate in this new era of reparations. demise of wage labor (economically, but not yet socially?)

FLASHBACK:INT. SINGLE-WIDE TRAILER - MINDEN, WV - 2028We see Maren’s mother, Jules, again. The single-wide is one long open room save the bedroom and a small bathroom with iron stained sink and toilet from the (then unknown) poisoned well water. It’s clear someones been sleeping on the sofa. Jules is in the small linoleum kitchen and something is burning in the oven - we don’t hear her but can tell she’s cursing, aggrieved. She burns herself taking it out and throws it in the sink, turns on the water and steam rushes up, mixing with smoke from oven. Man stomps in from back room and yells; Jules yells back. Young Maren sits at the small kitchen table and does homework through this, clearly used to the scene. The silence indicates her ability to block it out entirely.Over the shoulder shot of Maren doing her homework on the basics of how the climate is changing and what that means for Appalachia. This is now a standard part of curricula even in the South. Jules’ hand comes into the shot and rests on Maren’s shoulder. She turns to look and -CUT TO:Night time view. Maren’s POV - she’s the one that’s been sleeping on the couch which directly faces that pink vinyl door. She stares at it. A different man from the previous scene stumbles into view from back room and looks at Maren drunkenly, menacingly. She quickly closes her eyes to pretend she’s asleep. With them, the camera CUTS TO BLACK.OVER BLACK:We hear him stumble out the door, zippo light a cigarette, and start taking a piss right outside.CUT TO:CLOSE IN ON JULES’ back, LYING IN BED from MAREN’S POV. They are in the small bedroom of the trailer. Dark except for the light from the TV, washing mother and daughter indigo. JULES coughs and shivers, MAREN lies behind her, a little big spoon with space between. She scratches her mom’s back to comfort her. Unclear if she’s sick or going through withdrawals. Perhaps both.

CUT TO PRESENT:“Range Life” by Pavement plays in.MAREN CLOSING DOOR as she leaves the bedroom. We see the rest of the COOP. It’s clear this place is well-loved. MAREN’S and 6 other rooms are situated on a U-shaped mezzanine level that looks over the communal space. It has a small library of worn books and couches on one side with an assortment of instruments and amps. SHE WALKS TO THE RAILING and looks down onto a half dozen other flatmates celebrating in the kitchen. The space is animated with gratitude for this moment. Genuine connection is obvious, this is a chosen family. CUT TO:INT. LARGE INDUSTRIAL COOP KITCHEN/LIVING SPACE“Range Life” plays on, but the source switches to a record player. The space itself feels alive between the excitement in the air and the humid stretch and expansion of the building materials on this spring day. The season had actually come “on time” this year, if they were going by 20th century standards. There were even mushrooms sprouting near the sink; not the best sign but a sign of life nonetheless. There was a large, operable window wall that opened like a fan onto a view of the communal courtyard, framed with young Oak trees²². The neighbors were already celebrating and their joy was drifting in through the open windows, making the whole scene feel like a collective living room. Having missed a decade of this city, we get her first smile. This is her first encounter with collective hope of this measure. The extent to which Brooklyn has prioritized frontline communities²³ and rapidly adapted without compromising joy pulls her out of her fog. Music cuts to live stream over speakers.

REPORTER 1 (V.O.)Today, twenty years after the international ban on mountain top mining, fracking, and all forms of fossil fuel extraction passed, we are able to say that the global trade economy has been fully decarbonized. Laira, can you comment on...

Station switching frequently

...economic and ecological extractivism has...

...redirecting the global expenditure of nearly $2 trillion spent annually on military weapons²⁴ towards addressing the climate crises, a convening of global leaders in...

...protection of producers over people has led...

...full public ownership...

JAYEKeep it here!

...indigenous sovereignty and control over indigenous lands...

JAYE hugs and high fives housemates, sits on kitchen table and looks at Maren staring off pensively, sipping her tea.

Presidential election postponed due to COVID-19; Maren born in June in WV to single mom Jules; Sebas, Maren’s adopted father, is working on regional deglobalization efforts in Mexico; beginning of recession which lasts...?

joe biden drops out and Bernie is elected in January; Federal job guarantee @ $15/hr creates national wage floor, compels the private sector (retail, fast food?) to raise wages; solar tax credits extended; GND act fails to pass, but labor organizing is mounting; sunrise movement sees its largest ever turnout - over 6 million americans striking following onset of recession and Trump’s attempted buyouts

JAYE (to the camera) Maren was born in 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the global economy and exposed clearly the politics of preordained inequality and predatory economics.

CUT TO: Scenes from early 2020s. Trump postponing the 2020 election, Joe Biden beating Trump in a shockingly close race - one for which Trump demanded a recount and incited riots. Insisted the polls were rigged along with other unintelligible racist slurs that culminated in him refusing to leave office.

JAYE (V.O.) The seeds may have already been sown for an insidious ethos of individualism, but Trump was dousing them with chemical grade Miracle Grow that spring. A stimulus package was proposed - a perverse word when people were concerned with their very survival - that gave then US Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin, the Foreclosure King, a $500 billion slush fund with little to no oversight. (beat) I love Maren, but I think a lot of that individualism lives on in her²⁶. (glances at her) Not because she doesn’t care.

CLOSE ON MAREN

JAYE (V.O.) - I think it’s a defense and deflection mechanism. And a general mistrust of humans? That girl’s been in the boonies for too long, I have worried about her...

FLASH TO MAREN SOLO BACKPACKING IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST.

nationalization of all fossil fuel companies. GND Act passed. Medicare for All is first to roll our after the horrors of the pandemic. Worst hurricane season on record. record high temps exacerbate global public health and security concerns. desertification rates and low crop yields spur mass migration from central america (& lots of other places, just for sake of narrative will focus on this.) The Sanctuary Movement founded in the Trump Era becomes a national effort to help feed and house immigrants as they transition.

now nationalized oil industry begins retraining the majority of its 900k workers. satellite internet free and publicly provisioned globally (elon’s Starlink). All hospitals now generating their own energy - first to retrofit post covid? worst wildfire season on record - massive public health implications pressure China, India, and the States to tighten regulations resulting in ### metric tons of carbon/yr to not be released into the atmosphere; worst mass extinction year on record - loss of 3500 species in one year. Clean-tech capitalism poses yet another hurdle to rapid decarbonization - exploitative, extractive mining for rare minerals needed to produce clean energy.

institutions are being massively repurposed and taken under public control. carbon price policies lower demand for carbon-intensive goods and services, incentivize transition to a zero carbon future. Beginning of phaseout and repurposing of fossil infrastructure. Bernie second term. Micro grids GALORE.

CUT TO HISTORICAL MONTAGEThe transition was anything but easy given the Senate’s Republican majority and the then dominant historic bloc’s²⁷ hegemony (SHOWN THROUGH ALT RIGHT PROTESTS AND VIOLENCE). At that point Fascism was spreading faster than the unprecedented wildfires, but the Labor Movement was growing as well - just out of the spotlight(SHOWN THROUGH SHOTS OF ACTIVISTS ORGANIZING, UNION MEETINGS). Of course in the end it wasn’t the crises²⁸ or consensus that forced the establishment’s hand so much as a rupture in collective thought and action (IMAGES OF MASS MOBILIZATION WORLDWIDE) - a mass movement that both of Maren’s adopted fathers were and still are deeply involved in (CLOSE IN ON MAREN’S FATHERS MARCHING, viewers don’t know them or their significance yet).While their generation inherited the implementation of inclusive, ecosocialist²⁹ policies, they also inherited the hail marys of technocrats and corporate executives clinging to their power through carbon capture and geo engineering³⁰. The haze was just lifting from the sulfides they’d released into the stratosphere when Maren and Jaye were in middle school (SHOW JETS SPRAYING AEROSOL INJECTIONS IN STRATOSPHERE; SHOW SUBTLY DIFFERENT, BUT EERIE ATMOSPHERE). The health implications being what some pundits described as no worse than what we already had coming. Maybe for some...

FLASHBACK - MINDEN, WV - 2030Over five decades after polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from electrical equipment manufactured for the coal industry contaminated the soil and water sources (SHOTS OF ARBUCKLE CREEK). Initial PCB contamination from local Shafer Equipment Company (SHOTS OF SHAFER AND 8 LOCAL MINES CLOSED) was the source of cancer clusters.

EPA SPOKESPERSON 1³¹ (V.O.)“We’ve started planning and scoping our remedial investigation, which will include conducting additional sampling and testing to fully define any remaining contamination”

Shots of signs in front yards “PCBs Kill Communities”

MINDEN RESIDENT 1 (V.O.)“They talk a good talk, but let’s see if they’re going to do what they say because I don’t believe nothing. The EPA has failed us three or four times and lied to us. They didn’t do nothing for us.”

Shot of Jules and two other moms from the trailer park smoking under the carport on camp chairs while Maren and other kids play beyond. We hear the creek. Jules wears a headscarf. She’s late stage Ovarian and Breast cancer.

MINDEN RESIDENT 2 (V.O.)“I really don’t see an effort from the government to get anybody out. They’ll just wait and let everybody die out like they have been doing.”

Images of younger, healthier Jules protesting in front of old Shafer Site, pushing to have Minden declared the 11th Superfund site in her state. This was before over 100 people in a town of roughly 250 were also diagnosed with cancer³². 1 in 4 Americans live within 4 miles (by some estimates 3) of a Superfund site.

EPA SPOKESPERSON 2³³ (V.O.)“EPA rarely relocates residents and does not consider relocation unless the environmental data supports it.”

Images from Jules’ funeral. View of 12 year old Maren from the back, her head down. Two men stand on either side of her; their affect warm, her’s icy. Shots of empty Minden - people had finally been relocated³⁴ via a government buyout. A bittersweet victory. It was one of the first towns under ______ Act that required and supervised the clean up of the contamination, but this was little consolation in a young Maren’s mind when she lost both her mother and her home to ______________.

²²

Assuming by 2050 NYC is in Hardiness Zone 8 with climate change shifting them northwards.

²³

Define now and what it will mean then.

²⁴

Use this footnote to address “how do we pay for it” arguments and give tips on how to engage in those conversations productively.

²⁶

I think some of the historic tensions between the environmental and social justice movements will dissipate as growing climate justice efforts combine their visions, but individualism is something that will exist regardless. As collective trauma increases, the importance of grieving and healing in community will become increasingly important.

²⁷

“assembly of property owners, fossil fuel corporations, war-makers, tech giants, media outlets, health care management firms, industrialists, monopolists, and financiers.” “A Green New Deal for Agriculture.” Accessed April 26, 2020. jacobinmag.com.

²⁸

Just a quick soapbox here on human exceptionalism and a general denial of interspecies dependence - genuinely don’t understand it. But it’s ubiquitous in our over-consuming societies and the extractive systems that constitute them.

²⁹

Name a few

³⁰

Including this in the narrative is to acknowledge the very real possibility of solar geoengineering via Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI), especially as it gains traction in mainstream climate action conversations. Kevin Surprise posits that leading centers of SAI research, such as the Harvard Solar Geoengineering Research Program (HSGRP), “construct the ‘necessity’ of research, experimentation, and potential deployment under ideological pretenses aimed at maintaining the hegemony of liberal-capitalism.” He sees SAI under HSGRP as a “form of imperialism rather than a tool for climate justice.” Surprise, Kevin. “Stratospheric Imperialism: Liberalism, (Eco)Modernization, and Ideologies of Solar Geoengineering Research:” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, April 18, 2019. doi.org. There is only so much we can learn from simulations, and there is no testing SAI. We have one global atmosphere. If SAI is deployed, earth’s inhabitants will be the guinea pigs. Who gets to decide if and when this will happen? The dialectic between the IPCC’s recent executive summary and emergent specious technologies is of particular interest at this critical moment in human history. Reliance on existing infrastructures in the context of today’s climate crisis is a version of moral hazard whereby people will not alter behaviors under the belief that their risks will be mitigated by technological innovation. It recalls historian Donald Worster’s inception of an infrastructure trap: once a society commits a certain amount of resources to solving a problem in a particular way, those choices become a straitjacket, making it difficult to think about or address problems in any other way. Technology is not our savior. (still need to cite but seriously can’t find).

³¹

Quote from Stepan Nevsheirlian, EPA’s project manager for the Shaffer site, in 2019. 4 decades after initial marches against contamination in 1989.

³²

Baptiste, Nathalie. “This Town Is so Toxic, They Want It Wiped off the Map.” Mother Jones. Accessed April 26, 2020. motherjones.com.

³³

EPA spokesperson David Sternberg quote from

³⁴

Managed retreat or rapid relocation will likely happen more frequently in the future. How can communities prepare for this collectively? It may depend on the type of disaster - slow or fast. Slow may be toxic industry or rising tides in which case people have more time to plan for strategic obsolescence of compromised infrastructure and support relocation over time. Fast disasters however, like wildfires, will require immediate evacuation followed by the question of whether or not to rebuild. We saw this firsthand with Paradise in 2018 (add link). The loss of place and home is devastating, yet the burning of ______ creates toxic sites like Minden. Tough questions that should be addressed.

CUT TO:INT. LARGE COOP KITCHEN, MAREN SITTING CROSS LEGGED ON THE BENCH SEAT READING THROUGH HEADLINES AND JAYE RUMMAGING THROUGH THE CUPBOARD. SUN IS SETTING

JAYE
(looks over his shoulder) What’s the birthday girl³⁶ craving? You’ve been eating trail mush for years, dream big. We got food.

MAREN
(without looking up, lost in reading) Hm? I’m okay, I’m not really hungry.

JAYE
(turning to face her) Hey? You good? You haven’t said a thing since breakfast.

MARENWha? Yea, sorry. Sorry about that, I just...

If at all, show sebas growing up as his own tandem story: Aaaand Dad, well, Sebas - he grew up in Oaxaca.

Well his dad, Papa Lencho, was a Mixtec farmer. Used to work super closely with Jesús León Santos on a land renewal program (sips tea, pulls her hair behind her ears). They were working to reclaim and regenerate depleted land through the reintegration of indigenous farming practices in a region that used to have one of the highest soil erosion rates in the world (x)³⁷.

MAREN
(smiling) Can’t never could. Well he knew there would not be a meaningful outcome from solely negotiating with government entities, obviously. And under NAFTA, he knew that they were going to continue working within the realm and rules of international markets instead of supporting grassroots sustainability efforts.

JAYEClassic, thanks again, NAFTA. Good times.

MARENAfter demonstrating that enhancing biodiversity and integrating indigenous practices was significantly increasing yields, he eventually won the attention and the respect of the government³⁸.

JAYEAnd Sebas...?

MARENWas also raised as a Mixtec farmer, but with the rates of desertification and migration, he decided to study environmental law. He ended up getting accepted to UNAM (add footnote on free education?) and graduated in 2015, I think? When two-thirds of all farm workers were from Mexico, and half of all farm workers were undocumented. Thanks again NAFTA and good ol’ CAFTA³⁹.

MARENTruly the least impressive part of this story. Post UNAM he moved to Oakland with his then partner Ricky -

MARENYea, yea, and Sebas immediately becomes invested in BIPOC⁴⁰ farming coalitions and efforts towards land reparations⁴¹. He hadn’t really been exposed to the American context, but had learned about Pigford v. Glickman⁴² and Cobell v. Salazar⁴³ as precedents.

WATER STARTS TO BOIL

³⁶

I’m using this language as an expression of closeness, but really I think gender binaries will be essentially non-existent in this future - at least in cities like New York around the world. I think gender discrimantion and gender-based violence will greatly improve but be far from gone in thirty years.

³⁷

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), more than half of agricultural land is affected by soil degradation (x). Desertification presents unprecedented development, migration, and economic challenges which will require significant shifts in land practices if we are to combat food insecurity and poverty in this anthropogenic age.

³⁸

Jesús León Santos is a Goldman Prize winner.

³⁹

NAFTA & CAFTA footnote, add one

⁴⁰

Black, Indigenous, and People of Color

⁴¹

What is the best way to footnote reparations?? Claiming sovereignty? Want to include that 98% percent of private rural land and 96% of private agricultural lands are white-owned; less than 1 percent of farms are blackowned (inequality.org).

⁴²

1999 class action lawsuit against the USDA, alleging racial discrimination against African-American farmers in its allocation of farm loans and assistance. To date, almost $1 billion has been paid or credited to more than 13,300 farmers under the settlement's consent decree, under what is reportedly the largest civil rights settlement to date. As another 70,000 farmers had filed late and not had their claims heard, the 2008 Farm Bill (cite) provided for additional claims to be heard. In December 2010, Congress appropriated $1.2 billion for what is called Pigford II, settlement for the second part of the case (cite).

⁴³

In 2009, $2 billion was allocated to Tribal Nations for the Land Buy-Back program to repurchase indigenous lands for communal tribal ownership.“Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations,” May 31, 2015. doi.gov.

JAYEI clearly don’t know what either of those are, but I think I can safely assume small wins that didn’t address structural issues whatsoever? And probs perpetuated business-as-usual and propped up predatory agro-business on stolen lands?

MARENPretty much. I think this is around the time Sebas started focusing on revamping Parity Pricing⁴⁴, contract reform, trade policies, and anti-trust measures like the Booker Bill⁴⁵. He also wanted to make sure that all the farm workers from his country had the option of a path to citizenship through human rights based immigration reform.

JAYE
(sudden recognition)Wait, I do remember this... did he have anything to do with (come up with a court case name)⁴⁶?

JAYEDamn, I remember my mom was working for Soulfire when that happened - it changed everything.

Maren feels immense relief and comfort at being near someone that knows her so well. She and Jaye had gone to middle and high school together in the city, but she hadn’t seen him since. So much had happened that she was nowhere near ready to talk about, but Jaye’s presence at least temporarily suspended her haze of grief and anxiety. Worrying was not possible around him.

CUT TO FLASHBACKMaren had been an incredibly shy, bespectacled, and awkward tween. Her kinked hair often knotted atop her head with Sebas’ favorite handkerchief. She had just been adopted by him and her Uncle Wyatt the summer before returning for 7th grade, and this updo was Wyatt’s best attempt at hairdressing. She missed getting her hair braided by her mom, but Sebas’ kerchief brought her some comfort on this first day of school in a new place.She met Jaye during their urban farming class. Their school had dug up the adjacent parking lot and remediated the soil beneath it, but still used raised planter beds to be safe. Maren was sitting on the edge of one, staring mindlessly at two squirrels chasing each other up a London Planetree when Jaye kicked her sneaker. He had her same hair, but his was held at bay with a sports headband. He was unreasonably tall for a 13 year old and you could tell that he was outgrowing his clothes faster than his caretakers could get ahold of new ones. If that were a reason to make a kid uncomfortable, it didn’t phase Jaye at all.

YOUNG JAYEYou seem pretty lazy. Or sad. Or both?

YOUNG MAREN
(confused, squinting up at him) What?

YOUNG JAYEIt’s just kinda weird that you’ve been staring at that tree for I dunno... all of class?

YOUNG MARENWhat does it matter to you?

YOUNG JAYEWell, my gramps always tells me if someone is really looking intently at something, they are either hatching a brilliant idea, or are really going through something. Both are worth asking about.

CHILD MARENWell why did you ask me if I was lazy then??

Their friendship had always been a complete understanding of weird quirks and mood swings, joking about both in stride. It was as if no time had passed.

PRESENT DAY, COOP KITCHEN, DUSK. JAYE AND MAREN EATING LENTILS AND DRINKING BEER. MAREN PICKS UP WHERE THEY HAD LEFT OFF.Today’s historic announcement didn’t just mark Maren’s birthday, but Earth Day’s 80th anniversary. April 22nd, 2050. Both a political and pragmatic decision that reflected a win for the planet but also something less overt... something akin to a new empire, a new world order that brought with it deep uncertainty.

⁴⁴

New Deal era national policy of price supports that functioned from 1933 – 53, providing a minimum wage for farms. In “Crisis by Design: A Brief Review of US Farm Policy,” Mark Ritchie and Kevin Ristau describe the parity system as extremely successful: Farmers received fair prices for their crops, production was controlled to prevent costly surpluses, and consumer prices remained low and stable. At the same time, the number of new farmers increased, soil and water conservation practices expanded dramatically, and overall farm debt declined. Current subsidies fail to that purportedly compensate for constantly falling farm prices, but really only subsidize the big processors, vertically integrated livestock factories, and international traders, family-scale farms need a system of fair pricing, that is, prices that cover the real costs of living and farming, including conservation practices that regenerate natural resources.“Why Sustainable Agriculture Should Support a Green New Deal.” CounterPunch.org, January 16, 2019. counterpunch.org.

⁴⁵

Calls for a moratorium on mergers - S.3404, The Food and Agribusiness Merger Moratorium and Antitrust Review Act of 2018. Booker, Cory A. “Text - S.3404 - 115th Congress (2017-2018): Food and Agribusiness Merger Moratorium and Antitrust Review Act of 2018.” Webpage, August 28, 2018. congress.gov.

⁴⁶

Going to imagine a class action lawsuit with BIPOC farm workers that happens around 2030 with the largest amount of indigenous and black owned land being returned... can yall help me come up with this?

Jaye had had a nightmare the night before the news aired. One where he felt an immense pressure surrounding him and an all encompassing darkness. He couldn’t see a thing; wasn’t even sure if he had eyes, yet somehow it felt like a million eyes were on him. His psyche searched for some logical scape that could produce this pressure and cavernous effect simultaneously. Was he in space? At the bottom of the ocean? He realized he couldn’t breathe and started to panic. He perceived something in the periphery. Was that a light? The faint glow was bobbing towards him, growing. Quickly. Hope, then dread. Was it one of those wild light bulb fish 1,000 meters under the sea approaching with her bioluminescent lure? Or some cosmic ray beyond earth’s atmosphere? He was debating which would be worse, complete isolation or becoming fish food when the pressure changed directions. He couldn’t tell you which, he had no sense, but it was emanating from the light whatever that meant. He felt fractured into a million pieces and sensed that all those “eyes” around him, whatever they were, had also exploded from the pressure. They were all mixing together in some primordial gaseous soup, now floating upwards towards a new light as if being abducted. By what? He could see again.

FATHER JOHN MISTY PLAYS IN THE BACKGROUND, “NOW I’M LEARNING TO LOVE THE WAR”

“Lets just call this what it is
The jealous side of mankind's death wish
When it's my time to go
Gonna leave behind things that won't decompose”

JAYEI had the craziest dream last night.

MARENGood or bad?

JAYEIt felt like a fever dream, it was surreal. I couldn’t wrap my head around it last night, but. I think I was shale.

MARENLike, rock? Not to diminish but that sounds about as tame a nightmare as possible.

JAYENo no, I mean yes but. I was me... I was... fossilized. We all were, humans I mean. I think we were the new fossil fuel, I think I was being fracked.

MARENThat is next level terrifying.

JAYEYea I don’t know who or what was fracking us... definitely the equivalent of a deadline anxiety leading up to the announcement. But it does make me think. Of all the ways the currents of consumerism have flooded around barriers and through gaps. How much we are still missing the point.

MAREN(lifts legs and rotates to extend them on the bench seat) The point of?

JAYE(copies Maren in the opposite direction on his own bench seat, they do a forward fold in unison to stretch) The point of community. The point of uplifting the alternatives and the ideas of people instead of just the innovation of technology.

MARENI am - (cocks her head pensively) - not disagreeing, but wouldn’t we not have reached this milestone without technology? I think strangely I have always perceived technology in tandem with my anxiety. They are kind of the same beast in my imagination.

JAYEHow is that a good thing??

MARENI mean... I think of my anxiety as a permanent fixture, like that leaking faucet. (nods towards sink)

JAYEI thought I’d fixed that...

MARENI mean, maybe that’s my point? Temporary fixes keep full breaks at bay, but the incessant drip returns. And it doesn’t matter if you are listening for it or not, cause you’re in the echo chamber. But what would I do without it to keep pace?

JAYEYou don’t always have to keep pace, Maren. Feel like I’ve been telling you that since we were kids. Not everything is a competition.

MARENIt’s not about winning, or at least not against someone? It’s more for my own sanity. I think I need my anxiety to keep up, keep going. I don’t know what I’d be without it. Don’t know that I would ever accomplish anything without it.

JAYEAccomplish what though? I don’t know whose standard of success you’re living by, Mar. It’s all self-policing. Antifa, get that shit out of your head. We are post debt.

MARENWe’re not though... I mean, it lives on. I don’t know how to explain it. It feels inherited.

JAYENot from Wyatt, you didn’t. That man’s classroom was an organizing space of resistance. He was the resistance.

MARENI don’t mean him, or just him. And you know it’s not that simple... I think both my dads carried... still carry the weight and fear of raising a child in a capitalist society. Of myriad oppressions.

JAYEYes, I hear you, I promise I am listening BUT (spreading his arms for scale and affect) we outlived capitalism. That’s what today is about, be happy with me.

MARENYou are the one having future fracking fever dreams! And it doesn’t so much matter that we are post debt... it’s just taken another form. Debt’s just the promise of future time, onto the next deadline. IOU forever. I never needed a debt society to oppress me, you know that shit’s in our DNA.

JAYEI’m not downplaying or belittling, I feel that too. I am just making the point - the same point you just made - that it is self enforced.

MAREN
(turns to face Jaye on the bench, staring as if she’s been slighted)

JAYE
(anticipating this, and finally getting frustrated himself - a rarity) Do you think it’s easy to be this easy-going? That it’s without truly all my effort? (puts both hands on table and stands up to leave)Thought you knew me better than that.

MAREN, with guilt, tries to form a sentence.

JAYE
(walking towards his bedroom now, turns back to Maren) Were you even going to ask about my mom? About anything?

“One of the functions of art is to give people the words to know their own experience. Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

“Can we really not imagine anything better?”

“Transform yourself to transform the world.”- Grace Lee Boggs

“There is nothing radical about moral clarity”Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

“One of the functions of art is to give people the words to know their own experience. Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want.”
- Ursula K. Le Guin

“Transform yourself to transform the world.”
- Grace Lee Boggs

“There is nothing radical about moral clarity”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez