[1] Here, I refer to the epigraph to this essay, which is drawn from Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark, (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016), 4. 

     [2] For more on the forms of injury suffered by protestors, see Amy McKeever, “From tear gas to rubber bullets, here’s what non-lethal weapons can do to the body,” National Geographic, June 5, 2020, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/what-nonlethal-weapons-can-do-to-the-body-george-floyd. For a more complete account of the 2020 tear gassing incident in West Philadelphia, see Anne Berg, “The tear gassing of West Philly – a history told in police dispatches,” The Philadelphia Tribune, July 30, 2020, https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/berg-the-tear-gassing-of-west-philly-a-history-told-in-police-dispatches/article_2b7a2042-d266-11ea-86ab-1f46ed049e01.html. 

      [3] Ed Pilkington, “The day police bombed a city street: can the scars of 1985 Move atrocity be healed?”, The Guardian, May 10, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/10/move-1985-bombing-reconciliation-philadelphia.

     [4] Catalina Jaramillo, “Racism left Hunting Park overheated. Neighbors are making a cooler future,” Whyy: PBS, September 14, 2020, https://whyy.org/articles/racism-left-hunting-park-overheated-neighbors-are-making-a-cooler-future/.

     [5] “Senators Markey and Duckworth, Rep. Bush Introduce Legislation to Help Identify Environmental Justice Communities,” January 28, 2021, https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senators-markey-and-duckworth-rep-bush-introduce-legislation-to-help-identify-environmental-justice-communities.

     [6] Francis Lo “Talking with Cheena Marie Lo About A Series of Un/Natural/Disasters,” interviewed by Geraldine Kim, Weird Sister, June 28, 2016, http://weird-sister.com/2016/06/28/interview-cheena-marie-lo-series-unnaturaldisasters/. Please note that the 2016 interview title does not reflect Lo’s chosen name, Francis. 

     [7] Francis Lo, A Series of Un/Natural/Disasters (Oakland, Commune Editions, 2016), 13-14. 

     [8] Adalaide Morris and Stephen Voyce, “Precarity, Poetry, and the Practice of Countermapping,” in Poetics and Precarity, ed. Myung Mi Kim and Cristanne Miller (Albany: SUNY Press, 2018), 120-121.  

     [9] Lo, A Series, 26.

     [10] See Stan Cox for a discussion of the extensive emissions reductions that can be secured through slashing military emissions, demilitarizing domestic law enforcement, and abolishing mass incarceration: The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can (San Francisco: City Lights, 2020).
   
    [11]  “Dr. Sacoby Wilson, “Environmental Justice and Climate Justice with Dr. Sacoby Wilson and Dr. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò,” Warm Regards, podcast audio, January 25, 2021, https://warmregardspodcast.com/episodes/environmental-justice-and-climate-justice-with-dr-s1!a2847.

     [12] Heather Davis and Zoe Todd, “On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene,” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 16:4, 2017, 769.

     [13] Nick Estes, “A Red Deal” Jacobin, August 6, 2019, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/red-deal-green-new-deal-ecosocialism-decolonization-indigenous-resistance-environment.

     [14] See David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth (London: Allen Lane, 2019), 32; originally quoted in Andreas Malm’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline (New York: Verso, 2021), 146.

     [15] Solnit, 4-5.

     [16] Lucy R. Lippard, Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West (New York: The New Press, 2014), 10.

     [17] Lucas de Lima, “Perceptual Challenge,”Big Energy Poetics: Ecopoetry Thinks Climate Change, eds. Heidi Lynn Staples and Amy King (Buffalo: BlazeVOX, 2017), 123.

     [18] Marcus Williams, “Professor Stuart Hall: Sociologist and pioneer in the field of cultural studies,” Obituary, Independent, February 11, 2014, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-stuart-hall-sociologist-and-pioneer-field-cultural-studies-whose-work-explored-concept-britishness-9120126.html.

     [19] As Margaret Thatcher famously put it, “There is no such thing as society,” only “individual men and women.”  For additional reading on neoliberalism and accumulation by dispossession, consult David Harvey’s foundation text The New Imperialism(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

     [20] C.S. Giscombe, Border Towns (Victoria, TX: Dalkey Archive Press, 2016), 27.

     [21] I apologize for the brisk and intentionally punny misreading; in a longer piece, I might elaborate this point more carefully, but for now, I will leave it lodged amidst these other griefs, that readers might think with and press upon grief and its associated idioms themselves.

     [22] I had hoped to use an image or two from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comics, but unfortunately, this ‘lovable loser’ (per the Wikipedia description) is not to be reproduced or redistributed in any form. Good grief!

     [23] For me, serving these horizons entails supporting environmental justice groups in my city, as well as organizing in the Green New Deal commission of my local DSA chapter. But of course, there are countless modes of engagement to be had! That in mind, I am always eager to talk about how to become more of an actor in environmental and climate justice work, so feel free to get in touch and I will gladly to share the modest bits that I know (kegavinn@gmail.com).

     [24] Mark Nowak, Social Poetics (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2020), 254.

     [25] Adrienne Rich, “A Communal Poetry,” What is Found There (New York: Norton 1993), 175.

     [26] Here, I borrow from and modify the title of Rukeyser’s 1941 essay “The Usable Truth,” originally published in Poetry 58, no. 4 (1941): 206-209.

     [27] As such, I often make the conscious choice to incorporate insights from relevant podcasts directly into my writing. Climate justice work requires careful, committed study across varying domains of concern, and podcasts like Warm Regards, For the Wild, The Red Nation, and Cultures of Energy (to name just a few) can help ease the demands of such study. More generally, drawing knowledge from a range of media forms can help us to stay on track, and keep up with the struggles of the day.

     [28] Andrew Cornell’s Oppose and Propose! offers a helpful precautionary look at one such movement, the Movement for a New Society (MNS). This text examines both the successes and failures of MNS (Oakland: AK Press, 2011).

     [29] Quoted by Chloe Malle in Vogue, “Inside the Sunrise Movement: Six Weeks With the Young Activists Defining the Climate Debate,” September 20, 2019,  https://www.vogue.com/article/inside-sunrise-movement-youth-activists-climate-debate