The mood is decidedly chunky these days. Chunky boots—some of truly comical proportions. Chunky sweaters. Chunky oatmeal cookies. Large hunks of bread dipped in chunky stews. Chunky blankets. Chunky sharks. In these early-dark days of our deep-sigh era, chunk is a comforting counter-weight. A thick embrace. Something solid, not easily moved or dismissed. Heavy like the moment.

Views on the hospitality crisis, from the workers. Life on an oil rig and in the nation's largest meat-processing plants. Small island nations assert themselves at COP26. A sea-faring rock band serenades stranded cargo ship crews. The hole that whaling left behind. Living with chronic pain means becoming your own advocate. Divorce is in the air. How the infrastructure bill made families a bargaining chip. The power of Black horror films—and why the workplace is like a thriller for Black women. "It’s easy to see the Middle of America as an empty expanse, instead of what it is: intentionally disemboweled." The great organic food fraud. The high cost of living in a disabling world. It was their job to execute people for the state, and it nearly destroyed them. The uncomfortable truths of American spaceflight. The Israeli government is creating a massive database of Palestinian faces and criminalizing the most prominent Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations. An ode to tea time with a Palestinian grandmother. Dune's desert problem. The global streaming boom is creating a translator shortage. A dispatch from an NFT conference in New York, where art-world elite to mix with rich tech types. On Astroworld, the delicate balance of crowds, and who's really to blame. Kelefa Sanneh on learning to love—and hate—music. Crediting the artist is not enough. The empty promise of viral "plant a tree" posts. The power of NO.

Become a paying member and support my weekly work for just $15/year. That's 28 cents per edition, or $1.25 per month. Pennies!! If you're already a cherished paying member, rest assured you'll be among the first invited to my personal metaverse.

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Poems read aloud by Saeed Jones and Arriel Vinson. Aliza Nisenbaum's NHS portraits. Like a Virgin, a new podcast from Fran Tirado and Rose Dommu. An interview with Emily Ladau on how to be a better ally to the disability community.

Chunky knit by Millihelen.

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This is the fourth in a series of micro-essays on the meeting of culture and climate by Shanti Escalante-De Mattei. Shanti is one of two inaugural AF WKLY writing fellows whose work is supported by paying members of this newsletter. -Ann

By Shanti Escalante-De Mattei

The environmental activists of the 70s and 80s might be remembered as hippie-dippie tree huggers, but they were also willing to blow shit up. Organizations like the Earth Liberation Front and Earth First! sought to ward off the destruction of forests and rivers through direct actions like tree spiking, an illegal tactic where a piece of metal, like a nail, is hammered into a tree in order to damage machines that cut and process wood. These organizations were inspired by Edward Abbey’s The Monkeywrench Gang, a novel about four enterprising individuals who seek to protect the American Southwest from the viral growth of industrialization by tree spiking, sabotaging bulldozers, and seeking to blow up a dam. As contemporary authors address the climate crises, I wonder why this revolutionary, anarchic spirit is so mysteriously absent. 

Maybe fear is behind it. To tamper with private property, even if that property is destroying the habitability of this planet, is to be backhanded by the law. Take, for example, the case of Ruby Montoya and Jessica Reznicek, two Dakota Access Pipeline protestors. They took it upon themselves to sabotage the above-ground portions of the DAPL, causing delays and financial annoyance to Energy Transfer, the company behind the pipeline. Crucially, they stopped their work before oil began to flow, knowing how dangerous that could be. They were still threatened with 110 years of prison time each. So far, only Reznicek has been charged, and she was sentenced to 8 years. The pipeline is now under environmental review after—surprise, surprise—multiple oil spills, but that has not changed their status in the eyes of the law. Even staying within the boundaries of the law tends to land one in prison. Look at Steven Donziger, an environmental lawyer who won a $9.5 billion lawsuit against Chevron (which was then appealed and overturned by the oil titan). He has spent the past two years under house arrest for not violating his attorney-client privileges. He said goodbye to his teenage son and went to jail last week. 

Considering the law is so lawless, where is the rage? Activists face perilous consequences for fighting destruction with destruction, but writers are at no such risk. Yet their only solution is a simpering sentimentality, a woe is me attitude. Activist destruction is nowhere to be found in Richard Power’s Bewilderment, which is centered around grief and a special child, who is the hope. Or Joy Williams’s Harrow, which is also centered around grief and a special child, who is the hope. I’m so sick of the adults licking their wounds in the corner and wondering what went wrong, all the while pawing at their idols of magical youth (always special in an intellectual sense, not special at, like, organizing). Does no writer wish to give cathartic release to her sense of injustice? To imagine, if only for a moment, that destructive action might do more for our collective hope? 

The support of popular narrative might ease the burden of the sacrifice of protest. It could expand our imaginations as to what is possible or open our eyes to what is happening on the frontlines. Because things are happening. There are girls hunkered down in the mud on half-constructed pipelines in North Brooklyn, forest protectors in Canada’s Fairy Creek and in Chihuahua’s Sierra Madre, blockaders in Israel-Palestine. Might there be a song for them, a eulogy and rallying cry? 
 

Find more of Shanti's work here, and follow her on Twitter.