Solarpunk Now!

Measure H was a ballot initiative in the 2022 election in Pasadena, CA (a city in Los Angeles County). The measure–now Article 18 of the city charter–established citywide rent control, “just cause” eviction protections, and a rental housing board to implement the law.

On average, Pasadena is more economically unequal than California, as well as the United States as a whole. Histories of this inequality, as well as redlining and racial covenants, are clearly visible in the city landscape. As you can probably imagine, landlords and landlord associations representing their class interests fought pretty hard against Measure H. But the measure passed (by a lot!), and Pasadena tenants now have the basic protections that were so desperately needed.

On the face of it, Measure H might seem like just another electoral campaign, but my guests today saw it as a lot more. They saw an awakening of political consciousness, and an expansion of the horizon of possibility for disempowered and disillusioned tenants. In this episode I talk with three on-the-ground organizers from the Pasadena Tenants Union: on the state of tenants rights in Pasadena, how this measure changes the playing field, and what they learned in the struggle to get it passed.

Sources:

• Report on Inequality in Pasadena (Occidental College)
• Pasadena’s Measure H (City gov. website)
• Measure H Campaign Website (Tenant-run)
• The Full Text of Measure H (Beginning with the “Findings” cited in the episode)

Further Reading:

• Pasadena Tenants Union
• Red Bridge Strategies (The campaign consultants mentioned in the episode)
• My previous episode on Tenants Unions

Support the show

Solarpunk Now! is hosted & produced by Luka Dowell. The solarpunk theme is by Red Keener, with additional music by Gabriel Rivas. You can follow the show on Instagram or Mastodon, and support my work at Buy Me a Coffee. Please join the email list to get notified when a new episode drops. Keep dreaming big, and keep up the good work!

Bee Rooney is both a scientist and a socialist. She got her PhD in environmental engineering and science at Caltech (Pasadena, CA), and now organizes with the Socialists of Caltech and Pasadena Tenants Union.

Bee shares her insights on balancing the demands of research and activism. We also discuss her work in relation to climate, public health, and building a solarpunk future. Scientists can do a lot when they organize together, and when they bring their skills and knowledge outside of the academy to benefit their community. In this episode we’ll hear what it takes to get together, get involved, and make change happen as a scientist.

Sources:

• Bee’s Dissertation
• More of Bee’s Research (on measuring methane emissions via satellite)

Further Reading:

• Socialists of Caltech
• Pasadena Tenants Union

Support the show

Solarpunk Now! is hosted & produced by Luka Dowell. The solarpunk theme is by Red Keener, with additional music by Gabriel Rivas. You can follow the show on Instagram or Mastodon, and support my work at Buy Me a Coffee. Please join the email list to get notified when a new episode drops. Keep dreaming big, and keep up the good work!

Last summer, tenant organizers from all over North America came together in Los Angeles for the 2022 Autonomous Tenants Union Network Conference. The conversations in this episode were recorded with permission live at the conference.

Tenants are uniquely situated between socioeconomic inequality and climate change, so a tenants union fights against a wide variety of challenges: harassment and illegal evictions, gentrification, natural disasters, displacement, racism, and more. In this episode, we’ll hear from two tenants unions who have faced unique regional challenges. We’ll see where their struggles overlap, as well as unique obstacles they face and strategies they’ve developed as a result.

West River Tenants United, based in occupied Oceti Sakowin land (aka South Dakota), are battling racism, poverty, displacement of indigenous tenants, and the challenges of organizing in a rural area. They organize in tricky situations like trailer parks, homeless encampments, and a hostile political environment. You can find their website here.

The Houston Tenants Union operates in an area especially prone to disasters caused by climate change. They help keep each other safe and rebuild in the aftermath of disaster, offer services that landlords and the city refuse to provide, and organize buildings against negligent management. You can find their website here.

Sources:

• The Autonomous Tenants Union Network Points of Unity
• Gary Potter – Socialism and Rural Organizing (Partisan Magazine)
• Walter Benajamin – On the Concept of History

Further Reading:

• Brentis Mock – Why Detroit Residents Pushed Back Against Tree Planting (on environmental justice in marginalized communities)
• Robert D. Bullard – Dumping in Dixie – Race, Class, and Environmental Quality

Support the show

Solarpunk Now! is hosted & produced by Luka Dowell. The solarpunk theme is by Red Keener, with additional music by Gabriel Rivas. You can follow the show on Instagram or Mastodon, and support my work at Buy Me a Coffee. Please join the email list to get notified when a new episode drops. Keep dreaming big, and keep up the good work!

This is a collab episode with fellow podcaster Elia Ayoub of The Fire These Times. We talk in detail about the research I was doing before I started my show, as well as how it connects to Elia’s current research. We cover neoliberalism, capitalist realism, hauntology and ghosts, and all sorts of issues with temporality and imagining the future.

Fun fact, The Fire These Times was actually the podcast that encouraged me to start Solarpunk Now! I listened to some of his episodes on solarpunk while I was still learning about the genre and trying to come up with a central theme to design my own podcast around.

The Fire These Times website: https://thefirethesetimes.com/
You can also follow Elia on Mastodon, and support his show on Patreon.

Sources:

• Byung-Chul Han – Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power
• Melinda Cooper – Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism
• Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
• David Graeber & David Wengrow – The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
• Michel Foucault – The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979

Further Reading:

• Pierre Dardot & Christian Laval – The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society
• Jacques Derrida – Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International
• Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe – The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective

Support the show

Solarpunk Now! is hosted & produced by Luka Dowell. The solarpunk theme is by Red Keener, with additional music by Gabriel Rivas. You can follow the show on Instagram or Mastodon, and support my work at Buy Me a Coffee. Please join the email list to get notified when a new episode drops. Keep dreaming big, and keep up the good work!

We need to change our very understanding of nature. Or more specifically, our relationship with nature. We need to see it not as something to exploit, or restrain ourselves from exploiting, but rather as a continuation of ourselves. We desire a world where our choices don’t feel like choosing the lesser of environmental evils–where we can fully enjoy our lives without destroying a river or a rainforest in the process.

This is the second part of my conversation with Chaia Heller, author of The Ecology of Everyday Life, as well as lifelong activist and teacher. In this episode we bring her theory of the five aspects of social desire to life, showing how this theory unfolds into practice: direct actions, illustrative opposition, building alternative political structures, and beyond! The theories of social ecology and social desire provide a rational basis for solarpunk projects of all kinds.

Sources:

The Institute for Social Ecology

Chaia Heller- The Ecology of Everyday Life: Rethinking the Desire for Nature

Murray Bookchin- The Third Revolution: Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era

The Symbiosis organization

Emma Goldman- Living my Life

Audre Lorde- The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

Learn more about Rojava

Support the show

Solarpunk Now! is hosted & produced by Luka Dowell. The solarpunk theme is by Red Keener, with additional music by Gabriel Rivas. You can follow the show on Instagram or Mastodon, and support my work at Buy Me a Coffee. Please join the email list to get notified when a new episode drops. Keep dreaming big, and keep up the good work!

When it comes to doing our part to “save the environment”, we’re often limited to making superficial choices as consumers. Choices which don’t do much, if at all, to preserve or improve the health of our planet. What if we had a real choice? What if our ways of life–from basic needs to our deepest desires–were aligned with ecology, rather than in tension with it?

In this episode I sit down with Chaia Heller, author of The Ecology of Everyday Life, to discuss social ecology and her work developing a philosophy and politics of social desire. Social ecology, starting with the work of Murray Bookchin, draws from sources like Marxism, feminism, and the environmental movement to develop a rational society that values both social justice and the environment. Chaia expands on this, drawing from feminist theories of desire and the erotic, to show how a rational ecological society should emphasize enjoyment, not just satisfying basic needs. Sounds pretty solarpunk to me!

Sources:

The Institute for Social Ecology

Chaia Heller- The Ecology of Everyday Life: Rethinking the Desire for Nature

Murray Bookchin- Freedom and Necessity in Nature: A Problem of Ecological Ethics

Murray Bookchin- Post-Scarcity Anarchism

Learn more about Rojava

Support the show

Solarpunk Now! is hosted & produced by Luka Dowell. The solarpunk theme is by Red Keener, with additional music by Gabriel Rivas. You can follow the show on Instagram or Mastodon, and support my work at Buy Me a Coffee. Please join the email list to get notified when a new episode drops. Keep dreaming big, and keep up the good work!

Imagining the future isn’t easy, especially when we’re constantly told that our demands for freedom, justice, and societal transformation are unrealistic. While theorists have pointed out the importance of developing a radical imagination, it can be hard to know where to start.

Solarpunk Surf Club is “an artist collective that creates and curates egalitarian platforms for surfing the waves of still-possible worlds.” Nick and Max, two members of the collective, have spent the past few years developing a card-based tabletop RPG designed to break down barriers to radical imagination and strengthen our imaginative capabilities. That game is Solarpunk Futures. It’s well-researched, beautifully executed, and ultimately a powerful and versatile tool for imagining a better future.

In this episode, I discuss Solarpunk Futures with Nick and Max. We dig into their design process, artistic philosophy, and vision for their game as a tool that can help us transform the world.

Get Your Copy of Solarpunk Futures: https://thefuture.wtf/
More from the Solarpunk Surf Club: https://solarpunksurf.club/
Follow @solarpunkclub on Twitter

Sources:

Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism

Ursula K. Le Guin’s acceptance speech for the NBF Medal

Ursula K. Le Guin – “A War Without End”

Deleuze & Guattari – Anti-Oedipus

Support the show

Solarpunk Now! is hosted & produced by Luka Dowell. The solarpunk theme is by Red Keener, with additional music by Gabriel Rivas. You can follow the show on Instagram or Mastodon, and support my work at Buy Me a Coffee. Please join the email list to get notified when a new episode drops. Keep dreaming big, and keep up the good work!

This is Part 2 of my conversation with Andre–hacker, gardener, organizer, and all-around solarpunk. In this episode we continue our discussion of historical social movements, then talk about how to build power and organize your community in the 21st century. The secret? A little something called Acid Communism.

Follow Andre on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HydroponicTrash
On TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hydroponictrash
On Substack: https://anarchosolarpunk.substack.com/

Sources:

Acid Communism (Unfinished Introduction) by Mark Fisher

Support the show

Solarpunk Now! is hosted & produced by Luka Dowell. The solarpunk theme is by Red Keener, with additional music by Gabriel Rivas. You can follow the show on Instagram or Mastodon, and support my work at Buy Me a Coffee. Please join the email list to get notified when a new episode drops. Keep dreaming big, and keep up the good work!

Andre–aka HydroponicTrash–is a hacker, gardener, organizer, and all-around solarpunk. In this episode we discuss technology: as an industry, as a cultural phenomenon, and as a potential method of liberation. This takes us back to the 60s counterculture, which had a big influence on the early development of the internet, and the neoliberal turn of the 70s and beyond, which played its own major role in shaping technology today.

This is Part 1 of a two part conversation.

Follow Andre on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HydroponicTrash
On TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hydroponictrash
On Substack: https://anarchosolarpunk.substack.com/

Further Reading:

Andrewism’s Youtube Channel (videos about solarpunk, social movements, revolutionary philosophies, and so much more!)

Definition of Appropriate Technology from Appropedia, the sustainability wiki

Andre’s Blog Post covering the history of the 60s, and their relation to today’s struggles

Support the show

Solarpunk Now! is hosted & produced by Luka Dowell. The solarpunk theme is by Red Keener, with additional music by Gabriel Rivas. You can follow the show on Instagram or Mastodon, and support my work at Buy Me a Coffee. Please join the email list to get notified when a new episode drops. Keep dreaming big, and keep up the good work!

Sarah is an addiction counselor at a nonprofit agency in California. Her agency offers a wide range of services, both inpatient and outpatient, and they primarily serve low-income clients with publicly funded health insurance. In this episode we discuss: the structural barriers her clients face, encouraging developments in addiction treatment, and a vision for a future where everyone gets the care they deserve.

Sources:
Pierre Dardot & Christian Laval – The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society
William Davies – The Happiness Industry

David Graeber on Care:

• http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/managerial-feudalism-revolt-caring-classes/
• https://jacobinmag.com/2021/03/david-graeber-posthumous-essay-pandemic
• (it also comes up in his other work! these are just a few examples)

Further Reading:

Melinda Cooper’s Family Values is a historical/sociological account of the alliance between neoliberal policy and social conservatism.

The Museum of Care is a collaborative project around the concept of care, started by Graeber and many of his friends/students/comrades.

Support the show

Solarpunk Now! is hosted & produced by Luka Dowell. The solarpunk theme is by Red Keener, with additional music by Gabriel Rivas. You can follow the show on Instagram or Mastodon, and support my work at Buy Me a Coffee. Please join the email list to get notified when a new episode drops. Keep dreaming big, and keep up the good work!