How much longer until the utopic Solarpunk future where Capitalism is dead and we all live in ecologically sustainable high-tech forest cities? Asking for a friend.
Until we make those ecologically sustainable high-tech forest cities ourselves. It’s going to take a lot of us to do it though, so best to spread the word (and gather native tree seeds).
And, like, get started now. Then our “weirdo houses” will be the only thing functioning when everything falls apart!
The only reason why we don’t live in a solarpunk world right now is because no one has bothered to make it yet.
We’ll have to make it ourselves, and we’ll have to help each other make it. That’s why it is solarpunk.
Some resources to consider creating or joining or doing:
Repair cafes - create or join your local repair cafe! Repair stuff, learn how to repair stuff, teach others how to repair stuff.
Map of Makerspaces - make some things! learn how to make some things! teach others how to make some things!
Community Garden Map (note that this is US-only, and not a complete list) - join a local community garden
Learn some basics on passive solar design - clever use of the sun can create extremely energy efficient homes and buildings. You can use these principles to save on energy bills, even if you’re renting.
Free USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2015 revision - cut down on personal food waste! Learn how to safely preserve food. Very useful if you suddenly harvest / purchase for crazy cheap in season / dumpster dive a ton of perishable food.
Donate to One Acre Fund, which provides training and capital to farmers (making them more productive and pulling them out of poverty) in various east African countries
Donate to Bridges to Prosperity, which provides technical expertise, money, and volunteers, to help local people build and maintain their own footbridges in extremely isolated rural areas
joining r/solarpunk, and sharing links/ideas/art/music with the community. Also, upvoting stuff for greater visibility. There’s over 900 members!
I am dead serious: If you are a Walmart employee, at any level and in any store — like if you are a high school kid with a part time job stocking shelves — message me any question you have about unions. Like ask me “What’s a union” if you want. I will explain it to you.
I am a grievance chair for a white collar union whose workplace only unionized within the last five years and whose management fought as every step of the way, but in the end we fucking won. It can be done, and I can tell you how.
For anyone with no understanding of what’s happening to Kurds right now, here’s a little (simplified) history lesson for you….
Kurds have been living on the land they call home now for thousands of years. After WW1 and the fall off the Ottoman Empire, the British and French promised Kurds they could continue to reside in those areas peacefully because they intended to create a country called Kurdistan. They went back on that promise and split the Kurdish homeland into four with the creation of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria.
All four of those countries have persecuted their Kurdish populations ever since. Turkey has committed the worst atrocities during that time, and up until recently, the Kurdish language, Kurdish names, and more were all banned. Turkey even refuses to call the people Kurds, and refers to them as “Mountain Turks” - a slur designed to brand Kurdish people as barbaric and uneducated.
Thousands of Kurds lost their lives during the 80s and 90s fighting against their Turkish oppressions, and yet the situation barely improved.
Cue the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
When the US, UK and other Western countries invaded Iraq, Kurds fought alongside the allies, and against Saddam’s army. They managed to create an autonomous region in Iraq because of it. When ISIS began grabbing mass amounts of land in Iraq, the Kurds fought back with allied assistance and stamped them out.
When ISIS started taking land and murdering thousands in Syria, the Syrian President Assad ordered his army to leave the region and he left millions of Kurds there to die. They would have done too if it weren’t for the assistance of coalition air strikes and weapons that allowed them to push ISIS back and carve out another autonomous region in their homeland.
That region is Rojava. The people there live under a system called Democratic Confederalism which is based on workers’ rights, equality, feminism, and ecology. In principal, this version of democracy is far more democratic than any system used in a Western country today.
The Kurds didn’t want to team up with the US in Syria, they just didn’t want to die, and they were left with no option after being abandoned by Assad.
Now the US has abandoned the Kurds and left them to die too. They’re no longer “useful” and heaven forbid America is seen to be assisting a people who don’t bow to the international banking cartel, and are determined to live in a real democracy.
The US said it wanted to bring “democracy” to the Middle East, but not THAT sort of democracy.
Assad and Russia refuse to back Kurds now because they worked with the US instead of being murdered. And Turkey (the biggest oppressor of the Kurdish people, and the country that literally funded ISIS) has invaded their land with one of the largest armies in NATO with the intention of ethnic cleansing, genocide and freeing ISIS prisoners.
The Kurdish people just can’t win. Every major global power uses them when it suits their agenda, and then they feed them to the wolves.
The US won’t stand up for the Kurds. The Syrian Government won’t stand up for them, and neither will Iran or Russia. That is why every single person with a heart reading this must raise their voice now!
There’s an old Kurdish saying that goes:
“NO FRIENDS BUT THE MOUNTAINS”
Please show our Kurdish brothers and sisters that isn’t true. Do everything you can. I beg you.
Large silver statues are very rare in ancient Egypt. This may have been a figure from a temple of Nefertem. The god of perfume, Nefertem, was also a god of healing who was said to have eased the suffering of the aging sun god Ra with a bouquet of sacred lotus.
Late Period, 26th Dynasty, ca. 664-525 BC. Now in the Saint Louis Art Museum. 223:1924
