Reading Rebecca Solnitz's A Paradise Built in Hell

[nadia]

It brought to mind this post that a member of our community posted a while back

Revolutionary Memories and Building New Worlds in El Salvador

Edgeryders Blog Post- El Salvador As we continue in the process of understanding autonomy, there is an emphasis on the “to come”, on the future of where we will be. Western culture and capitalism are ingrained with a belief of progress, that each day we become more “civilized”, more “perfect”, more true to the selves that we can become. We are told that our children will always live better than we do. But as late-capitalism continues its undeniable destabilization, we can no longer place a b…

[alberto]

@woodbinehealth

In addition, there are a wide array of health and care related projects. Two young women run the Rehab Center, utilizing massage and physical therapy to work with many of the individuals with disabilities in the community. There is the local psychiatrist who is forming community mental health groups where people can talk about their mental well being in safe environments. Many of these projects arise from a failure of the government to provide such resources. In addition, it stems from a general understanding that the government will likely not provide such services and that they must own their own models of care and social reproduction.

Hah, I had forgotten about this post. It is relevant because it is an example of a community built in the hell of a (man-made) disaster did not go away when the emergency was over, but rather stabilized somewhat. And yes, there is a whiff of Walkaway there.

[nadia]

yes, Frank Coughlin put it together as part of his OpenCare fellowship work, could get in touch with him and see if he could connect us directly with the people in El Salvador?

[matthias]

Does the topic title imply the book is currently processed in the Sci-Fi Economics reading group or something? If so, you might like to see that Rebecca Solnit had this Guardian piece a few days ago, specifically about applying her observations to the pandemic world:

'The way we get through this is together': mutual aid under coronavirus |...

[alberto]

I read it. It is a more or less direct application of her thinking to Corona times.

A very interesting bit of disaster response literature that also is happening in Corona times is the idea of “corrosive communities”. This is not Solnit’s own idea, but was forwarded by Schultz, more or less the founder of this filed of studies. The idea is this: when a disaster strikes, people come together. Unless there is clear blame to be laid on someone: in that case there will be finger-pointing and division. Imagine you had been warning for a long time that that nuclear power station in your region was not safe, and then it actually fails… you are not going to want to come together, right?

I am seeing some of this now.

[nadia]

Yes I had it in mind as a session/webinar within the Scifi Economics Webinar series