Shining Some Light On Solarpunk's Politics

Artwork courtesy of T.X. Watson

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you've probably heard of steampunk. I've also covered steamfunk and silkpunk. There's a cyberpunk off-shoot that started via artist tumblrs and has grown from aesthetic to a speculative near-future with some interesting political underpinnings: solarpunk.
It's been the prompt for at least one game jam, and has an oversize influence in visual domains: There's a seemingly endless scroll of solarpunk pinterest boards, and the concept has worked its way into webcomics and concept art for Black Panther.

Writing for Medium, Andrew Dana Hudson has an in-depth look at the vision behind this speculative future, and the politics behind the genre. An excerpt:

Let me say from the outset: the world of solarpunk is this world. The here, the now and the very soon. Burdened with all that that’s been slung across our backs. While you might set your solarpunk stories in far off futures or fantasy universes (I won’t stop you), great speculative fiction always reflects the fears and aspirations of the time and place it was written. This is what I’m interested in: what solarpunk can tell us about the civilization we have right now, where it’s going and what we’ll be living through.
I’ll also offer up my own ideas about what exactly we should be doing with this strange bloom we’ve found. Solarpunk feels like a cathartic uncorking of a pent up imagination, and that energy can be channeled in different directions. A genre explores ideas through motifs, variations on a theme. A movement provokes change through iterations of strategy and deed. I love the former, but we need the latter.

The entire article is fascinating reading, so I implore you to read the whole thing. Then, once you've done that, have a look at the impressive body of work from the late, great Solarpunk Press, where you can find art, podcasts and fiction that explore the genre.

Update: How to Call Congress When You Have Anxiety

I posted a version of this post about 8 months ago. As the current administration marches on, calling your state and local representatives as a means of taking direct action and affecting change have become even more vital than ever. For those that struggle with chronic mental illness or anxiety, taking this sort of action can be even more difficult than it would be for a neurotypical person.  The artist Cordellia of echothroughthefog recently made a comic about how they pushed against anxiety, made those calls, and how you can do that, too! A transcript of the comic and more resources follow.

“How to call your reps when you have social anxiety”

There’s a LOT going on in the U.S. right now. The civil rights and safety of many groups are at risk at the moment. You’ve probably heard that one of the most effective ways to advocate for issues you care about, or stand up against dangerous policies and appointments, is to call your local representatives.

If you want to help but have social anxiety and find phone calls very intimidating, you may be thinking, “How do I do this?!” (An over-sized telephone handset hovers ominously over the narrator with its cord spiraling around her body. She looks up at it with great concern.)

Here’s a step-by-step:

• Block off time on your calendar. Each call only takes a minute or so, but you might want to block off more time for your first call, so you can prepare your words & nerves. Don’t rush yourself! Scheduling is super important, otherwise you will perpetually delay calling.
• At the scheduled time, go sit somewhere quiet.
• Find out who represents you. Some places to look: House (http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/) and Senate (http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/).
• Write out exactly what you plan to say. It only needs to be a few lines, and there are lots of templates online that you can use. e.g. “Hello! I am constituent from city (zip code) and I am calling to urge Some Name to publicly…” If they have already released a statement, don’t use that as an excuse to avoid calling. I know it’s hard, but call anyway. Thank them and ask them to keep pushing.
• Take a deep breath. You can do this.
• Do this: dial. (This is the hardest part.)
• Read from your script. At this point, you’ll likely be sent to voicemail or to an actual person. The person will most likely be friendly and probably won’t have much time to talk, so you shouldn’t have to deviate much from your script. It’s a quick conversation.
• That’s it! Say “Thank you” and hang up.

You did it! If you’re thinking “Hey, that wasn’t so bad…”, call more people! And follow up with them next week, or even tomorrow, to make sure they keep these issues top of mind.

It is okay if your voice shakes. It is okay if you feel awkward.They get a lot of calls, so they don’t have time to judge you by how well you delivered your message. It is also okay if you can’t call.

This week, my best friend told me, “Do something that is uncomfortable but not harmful to your mental health.” For me, calling was enough outside my comfort zone to be stressful and scary, but not so far away as to use up all my energy. That might not be the case for you, and that’s okay. Do not beat yourself up about it.

There are lots of ways to take action without picking up a phone:

• Write to government officials, One great tool is Resistbot-- a free service that turns your texts into a formal letter, and then faxes it to your elected officials. You'll get a copy of the letter, and a notification when the fax goes through. Although it takes its name from the idea of “resisting” the current administration, it’s a straightforward tool that you can use to voice your opinions, no matter what they are.
• Create art that challenges and art that inspires
• Donate, if you’re financially able, to organizations that fight injustice
• Listen to immigrants, people of color, women, trans and non-binary people, people of all faiths and orientations, and people with disabilities. Support their work. Amplify their voices.
• Keep it up.

And here are some resources:

• Phone calls are still the most direct way to get a staffer’s ear, but this text-to-fax service has a few advantages on your end: you can speak up any time, the bot will keep trying if the lines are busy, and you don’t have to work up the nerve to talk to a stranger. Some members of Congress still have actual fax machines, while others will receive your message as a sort of glorified email. Either way, if your contact information is on the letter, it will be counted along with other messages from constituents.
• Emily Ellsworth explains why calling is the most effective way to reach your congressperson.
• Sharon Wong posted a great series of tweets that helped me manage my phone anxiety and make some calls.
• Kelsey is tweeting pretty much daily with advice and reminders about calling representatives. I found this tweet an especially great reminder that calls aren’t nearly as big a deal as anxiety makes them out to be.

Informational resources:
There are a lot of these, as well! These three are good places to start:
Find your representative at house.gov
Find your senators at senate.gov
Use the “We’re His Problem Now” scripts when calling

Listen Up: MEGASheen

MEGASheen is hosted by Nick and Viktor, with a focus on queer people of color that identify as geeks or nerds. Nick is a passionate video game and 80s cartoon fan, while Viktor's wheelhouse is comics (he's a graphic novel creator himself as the creative mind between the amazing urban fantasy StrangeLore) politics and pop culture.

MEGASheen has a website, and you can follow the podcast via iTunes on iOS or via soundcloud .  They're on a 3 week hiatus right now, so this is the perfect time to catch up!

Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.

Writer Who Made Captain America Nazi Has IRL Bigoted Past, Politics

Description: A panel from a Captain America story from
the 1970s, As superhero Falcon looks on,Captain America
walks off dejectedly. Caption reads: "This man is now
crushed inside. Like other Americans, each in his own way
he has seen his trust mocked. And this man is Captain
America."

I previously wrote about the asinine retcon that Marvel writer Nick Spencer came up with after his plot twist that Captain America was made into a secret double agent for Hydra, the super powered occult Nazi group he fought in World War II. as it suddenly turns out, that's because in the Marvel Universe, the Nazis had actually won World War II. Captain America was never, ever a good guy. The Allied Powers used the Cosmic Cube to rewrite reality and make it so the Nazis lost, Captain America was a good guy (but somehow the Holocaust still happened) and Hydra never had a secret agent. So Captain America becoming an ally to super-powered Nazis was actually "restoring" him to his true self.

What he hasn't been shy about has been his contempt for critics and his denial about another Nazi Captain American twist: it was revealed that Hydra Captain America was deemed worthy to wield the hammer of Thor. Not only does this have gross implications in-universe... "...that you must be good and worthy person to wield it, Mjolnir has been a moral compass of sorts — and Spencer is already crossing many, many lines with what he clearly thinks is some kind of edgy, potentially iconic imagery. But this isn’t just some subreddit level attempt at being cool. At this point Spencer is literally putting hate symbols into the pages of Marvel’s comics," Rosie Knight says, and explains how Thor's Hammer has been used in recent decades as a symbol of neo-Nazi groups and white pride in the US.

Nick Spencer has taken to twitter over and over over the past year to defensively dig in his heels. He insists that there is nothing political in his writing, that critics of his writing are somehow threatening him, his livelihood and comics as an art form. He says that just because he's defended a real life neo-Nazi who got punched in the face, or that he wrote college-age "social justice warrior" caricatures as bad guys so awful that the Black superhero Falcon later apologizes for ever sounding like them doesn't mean he's a conservative, and that his personal views and history don't inform his writing.

Which makes his personal and political past stand out more. As blogger Kim O'Connor lays out, just a little over a decade ago, Nick Spencer made two failed bids for public office in Ohio as a Republican. He had a website for both campaigns, got some press (local and national), and in 2005 ran on a platform of eliminating all human services in Cincinnati, building more jails and arresting homeless people as "quality of life" issues.  He even wanted the city government to buy up the buildings that housed homeless shelters and get rid of them;

Per Cincinnati CityBeat, Spencer's 2005 campaign blog called on the mayor of Cincinnati to use eminent domain against Mary Magdalene House (a homeless shelter) and the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless. 

Here's Spencer: "It's time to stop playing around and get tough here. ... The city must use all of its powers to protect the civic and financial investments that have been made in the area. The glut of social services that encourage panhandling in the district must be addressed." 

You read that correctly. Nick Spencer described organizations dedicated to helping homeless people as a "glut of social services that encourage panhandling."

He also worked for John McCain's campaign. Some may argue that Spencer is just running on a platform similar to many Republicans, so it's not so unusual, right? He's just echoing an official party platform! You might be able to say that about his policy ideas... but not so much about his racist blogging about black people as thugs, drug dealers, and at one point comparing black folks to being worse than stray dogs! As Cincinatti Black Blog covered at the time of Spencer's campaign, he wrote on his blog stuff after a highway shooting like this, emphasis mine:

Lots of blame to throw around here. Let's try this one: Ross Love. To hell with that guy. He owns the WIZ [a local radio station], then tries to walk around town like he's such an upstanding citizen... maybe you should look into that shit you've got on heavy rotation over at your station. You know, like "Ridin' Dirty" a song about drug dealers trying not to get caught by the cops while they've got crack in the car...
And let's give it up one more time for The Ritz ownership [a local club with mostly black clientele]...
I love going to IHOP after we close up the bar, and the place has a big post-Ritz crowd there around the same time... I see stray dogs act with more survival instinct than some of the Ritz clientele.

What Spencer didn't mention was that Ross Love had sold the radio station 5 years earlier, that "Ridin' Dirty" was about police brutality, that "Ridin' Dirty" also aired on a Clear Channel radio station affiliate run by a white owner that Spencer never called out, and The Ritz was a club that directly competed with a bar that Spencer owned at the time. Oh, and the song was never connected to the shooting in any way by authorities. He was also growing increasingly paranoid, convinced that "thugs and prostitutes" were waiting to shoot at him and hiding guns in trash cans.

On his campaign blog, Spencer also talked about how the possibility of The Ritz's owners or clientele moving into his neighborhood meant that either he'd mobilize against it, or he'd pull up stakes and leave:

Bad news... Jump Cafe' space on Main may be leased out to the owners of The Ritz in Roselawn. I'm not kidding-- just when you thought thing couldn't get any worse. The neighborhood is going to have to mobilize in a big way to prevent this from happening... I don't have any hesitation in saying this: if they move in, we go. 

Writer Kieran Shiach, who also did a great recap of Hydra Cap and related issues earlier this year, sums up my feelings on this:

Nick Spencer has been uncharacteristically silent about this on twitter.

Social Anxiety Guide To Calling Gov't Representatives

In the wake of the recent United States elections, calling your state and local representatives as a means of taking direct action and affecting change have become even more vital than ever. For those that struggle with chronic mental illness or anxiety, taking this sort of action can be even more difficult than it would be for a neurotypical person.  The artist Cordellia of echothroughthefog recently made a comic about how they pushed against anxiety, made those calls, and how you can do that, too! A transcript of the comic and more resources follow.

“How to call your reps when you have social anxiety”

There’s a LOT going on in the U.S. right now. Many people’s rights and safety are at risk. You’ve probably heard that one of the most effective ways to advocate for issues you care about, or stand up against dangerous policies and appointments, is to call your local representatives.
If you want to help but have social anxiety and find phone calls very intimidating, you may be thinking, “How do I do this?!” (An oversized telephone handset hovers ominously over the narrator with its cord spiraling around her body. She looks up at it with great concern.)
Here’s a step-by-step:

1. Block off time on your calendar. Each call only takes a minute or so, but you might want to block off more time for your first call, so you can prepare your words & nerves. Don’t rush yourself! Scheduling is super important, otherwise you will perpetually delay calling.
2. At the scheduled time, go sit somewhere quiet.
3. Find out who represents you. Some places to look: House (http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/) and Senate (http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/).
4. Write out exactly what you plan to say. It only needs to be a few lines, and there are lots of templates online that you can use. e.g. “Hello! I am constituent from city (zip code) and I am calling to urge Some Name to publicly…” If they have already released a statement, don’t use that as an excuse to avoid calling. I know it’s hard, but call anyway. Thank them and ask them to keep pushing.
5. Take a deep breath. You can do this.
6. Do this: dial. (This is the hardest part.)
7. Read from your script. At this point, you’ll likely be sent to voicemail or to an actual person. The person will most likely be friendly and probably won’t have much time to talk, so you shouldn’t have to deviate much from your script. It’s a quick conversation.
8. That’s it! Say “Thank you” and hang up.

You did it! If you’re thinking “Hey, that wasn’t so bad…”, call more people! And follow up with them next week, or even tomorrow, to make sure they keep these issues top of mind.
It is okay if your voice shakes. It is okay if you feel awkward.They get a lot of calls, so they don’t have time to judge you by how well you delivered your message.
Is is also okay if you can’t call.
This week, my best friend told me, “Do something that is uncomfortable but not harmful to your mental health.” For me, calling was enough outside my comfort zone to be stressful & scary, but not so far away as to use up all my energy. That might not be the case for you, and that’s okay. Do not beat yourself up about it. There are lots of ways to take action without picking up a phone:

• Write to government officials
• Create art that challenges and art that inspires
• Donate, if you’re financially able, to organizations that fight injustice
• Listen to immigrants, people of color, women, trans and non-binary people, people of all faiths and orientations, and people with disabilities. Support their work. Amplify their voices.
• Keep it up.

And here are some resources:

• Emily Ellsworth explains why calling is the most effective way to reach your congressperson.
• Sharon Wong posted a great series of tweets that helped me manage my phone anxiety and make some calls.
• Kelsey is tweeting pretty much daily with advice and reminders about calling representatives. I found this tweet an especially great reminder that calls aren’t nearly as big a deal as anxiety makes them out to be.

Informational resources:
There are a lot of these, as well! These three are good places to start:

• Find your representative at house.gov
• Find your senators at senate.gov
• Use the “We’re His Problem Now” scripts when calling

Mayor Orders Police Raid On Parody Twitter User

Photo illustration courtesy of ArsTechnica

Jim Ardis, the mayor of Perioa, Illinois was so upset at a parody twitter account making fun of and insulting him that he had the city legal team try and find a misdemeanor as a pretense to involve city police to shut the account down. It ended with 4 officers showing up to a house, dragging everyone in it down to the station for questioning (including one woman who was in the shower at the time) as well cops rifling a mobile phone, a laptop, and asked for access to the full contents of someone's Gmail account. Ars Technica's Nate Anderson has the story in "How a mayor’s quest to unmask a foul-mouthed Twitter user blew up in his face":

On March 11, 2014, Urich was working early. "Someone is using the Mayor's likeness in a twitter account," he wrote to Peoria's Chief Information Officer Sam Rivera at 6:06am. "It's not him. @Peoriamayor. Can you work to get it shut down today?"
...Urgency was the watchword; Settingsgaard almost immediately assigned the matter to Detective James Feehan of the Computer Crimes Unit, and Feehan just as quickly got to work. By 11:00am that morning, he wrote back to his chief that nothing in the @peoriamayor account added up to a criminal act—though "there are tweets posted by the individual which amount to defamation," he said. Should Ardis want to pursue that angle, he could do so through a civil lawsuit, but the police would have no involvement. At 11:21am, Settingsgaard passed the bad news back to Ardis. No crime had been committed, and indeed, even the possible defamation angle raised by Feehan might be problematic. "I'm not an expert in the civil arena but my recollection is that public officials have very limited protection from defamation," he concluded. Case, apparently, closed.

Except it wasn't. The mayor, Jim Ardis, leaned on his staffers to see if there was any way to turn the parody twitter account from a civil case into a criminal one. They found a possible loophole in a newly-enacted misdemeanor statute, which was enough justification for the mayor to involve the police by pressing charges. Police subpoenaed Twitter, and used the information from that to subpoena Comcast. From there, they were able to isolate the physical address the the parody account (which had since been suspended by twitter) posted from, and from there... there was a police raid!

What had begun as a few tweets to a handful of people had now escalated to the point that the Peoria police were ready to send men with guns over to a local home with orders to search every drawer and dresser for clues to the owner of a Twitter account that had already been suspended... It was also a hunt for drugs. One of the images tweeted out by @peoriamayor had included an image showing "a hand holding a razor blade which was separating a white powdery substance." This was enough for the police to believe that "cocaine, heroin, [or] drug paraphernalia" might be found at the home. 

At 12:34pm on April 15, a judge signed the warrant. Five hours later, a Peoria detective and three additional officers were at the University Street house, knocking on the door. In a thorough search, the police turned up three desktop computers, one laptop, four iPhones, an iPad, two SD cards, an iPod, and two Xboxes belonging to several different people who lived at the house. They also found a "broken black ashtray with green seedy substance," "two multicolored glass pipes," a "large gold gift bag with five sandwich bags containing a green leafy substance," and "two glass pipes [and] two metal pipes with small blue Bic lighter." 

... Jacob Elliott, the 36-year-old whose name was on the home's Comcast account, hadn't created @peoriamayor, but got his home turned inside out by the police anyway. He ultimately copped to ownership of the "green leafy substance," which was of course marijuana. “I couldn’t believe this much force was being used for a fake Twitter account—it blew my mind,” he told the Journal Star after the raid. “It was extremely frightening. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life... As soon as I opened the door, a female officer shoved her hand into my pocket and screamed, ‘What’s in your pocket?’" A second officer then handed him a copy of the warrant. No one was charged with "false personation" related to the Twitter account. Elliott was charged with felony marijuana possession and spent two days in jail before getting the chance to make bail; when he got out, he was suspended from his job.

The whole sordid episode was hard to believe but had absolutely happened, leading to questions first from a local crime reporter, then from the Associated Press raising questions of abuse of power, criminalization of free speech, and wasting taxpayer's money as well as police's time. The mayor was raked over the coals by both council members and citizens at a town meeting.

Then came another bombshell: There might not even have been a misdemeanor committed in the first place.

The Ars Technica article is a great example of using a FOIA request in the service of some really good investigative journalism, and I urge you to read the rest of the article to find out the rest of the story.

A qucik summary of RaceFail '09

What is RaceFail '09? daedala provided the shortest summary of RaceFail '09 here and it is as followed:

1. Elizabeth Bear writes a post about "how to write the Other"
2. Avalon's Willow critiques one of her books on racial tropes
3. Bear agrees unequivocally in writing
4. Commenters defend Bear in increasingly racist language.
5. Massive fail all over the internet.
6. Bear says that she was lying in 3. in order to model appropriate conversation.

But daedala's summary barely scratches the surface. Here are other more detailed, but still brief summaries of events:

» A reader's digest of RaceFail '09 by white_serpent, which dmarley kindly provided some contexts here.
» A summary of RaceFail '09 by withdiamonds.
» A Timeline (of the Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of Doom '09) (a summary of the beginning of RaceFail '09) by Willow.
» Because "tl;dr" shouldn't be an excuse (a summary of the middle and later part of RaceFail '09) by rydra_wong.
» Endangering somebody is okay when you do it under your real name (a summary of later events of RaceFail '09) @ unfunnybusiness.
» Racefail09: Just This (a summary of the beginning and later part of RaceFail '09) by mpoetess.

And here are a few longer overviews:

» A themed summary of RaceFail ‘09 in large friendly letters for those who think race discussions are hard by Ann Somerville.
» O HAI RACEFAILZ: Notes on Reading an Internet Conflict by tablesaw.
» I have stayed quiet about something for too long, and I am ashamed by popelizbet.

For a comprehensive overview though, rydra_wong has provided an almost chronological link list here and you could follow the discussion at her gcadod 09 tag. And among the many, many people who have spoken up about RaceFail '09 are asim, bossymarmalade, ciderpress, coffeeandink, deepad, helsmeta, inalasahl, nojojojo, oyceter, Seeking Avalon's Willow, shewhohashope, sparkymonster, spiralsheep, vito_excalibur, vom_marlowe, yeloson and zvi_likes_tv.

The reason it’s called RaceFail ’09 is to distinguish this from past incidents, and also to acknowledge that not only it is ongoing, but that this could happen again.

Does that worry you, too?

To quote Nick:

If the Fail is happening anyway—if havoc is already being wrecked in the hearts of authors and fans of color, if people who shouldn’t be driven out are already being driven out (or at least too damn close to out)—then I kind of want it to impinge on the space of as many white fans and authors as is humanly possible. Yes, it IS too high a price for mere education, but if the price is being paid regardless, let’s goddamn GET something for it. The more clueless-but-well-meaning white folk (I firmly include myself in this category) see the hurt being caused and start reading, thinking, and trying to understand the things being said by the myriad brilliant fans/authors/theorists of color (and allies!) involved here, the more likely it is that something will have changed by the time the next high-profile racial screw-up rolls ‘round.