A Climate Uprising in France, Social Ecology, and a Big Announcement | CC Dispatch #35

Welcome to Dispatch #35! This week we’ll be exploring the story of an awesome radical environmental group in France, Earth Uprisings, historical examples of “false flags”, an architect using his skills to support refugees around the world, and more!

In addition this, we are announcing a few changes that will be happening soon at the Conscious Citizens so we can keep this project growing sustainably. We love and appreciate all of the readers and supporters who make this project possible, and we’re excited to continue building toward some of the most requested things - long-form videos, podcasts, educational workshops, in-person events, and more! To do those things, we’re making a some key updates to our membership structure. See our full letter here or keep reading for all the details!

Easy Actions to Take

Little (Movement) Wins

How French Activists are Redefining Climate Action

Activist History

In January 2021, about 200 climate activists gathered at Notre-Dame-des-Landes in the countryside of France, a place already famous for a decades long land occupation by farmers, workers, and environmentalists (that we wrote about previously). They gathered with a painful observation: nothing that environmental movements have tried in the past has worked. COP summits, mass marches, IPCC reports, civil disobedience–none of it managed to slow down the ruling class and corporate interests that’s been destroying the Earth. While still under COVID curfew, these activists gathered to try and figure out what to do differently.

What emerged was Les Soulèvements de la Terre (Earth Uprisings). Not another nonprofit or NGO, but a loose, decentralized coalition of local struggles operating under one banner. They were blunt about the class divide rotting the climate movement from within, saying...

Read the full article to learn about Earth Uprisings’ core philosophies, organizing principles, actions, and key takeaways.

Social ecology is an academic field introduced by Murray Bookchin that studies relationships between people and their environment, often the interdependence of people, collectives, and institutions. Social ecologists examine the larger picture of our "system" by examining how individuals, collectives, and institutions interact and depend on one another.

Bookchin argued that humans are not separate from nature, but a part of it, and that humans should focus less on managing nature and more on addressing the root causes of a problem. According to him, human domination and destruction of nature follows from social domination between humans, and viewed human-made hierarchies as the source of all social and environmental problems. Bookchin thought that society and life should be viewed as an ecosystem, where all the components are equally vital to a stable, healthy, and sustainable environment. Therefore, without solving core social problems, environmental issues could never be properly addressed - establishing a close link between the issues of modern society and the climate crisis at large.

To our amazing Conscious Citizens community —

When we started The Conscious Citizens, it was with the belief that people who already care about their world deserve tools that actually meet them where they are; that people didn’t want more headlines to scroll past, but real education, real resources, and actionable steps you could take, whether you've been organizing for years or just becoming politically awakened.

Since then, over ten thousand (!!) of you have signed up, read our Dispatches, shared our resources, and shown up in ways that remind us why we started this. Ten thousand people who want to be more conscious citizens, in a little over a year. That number still stops us in our tracks, and we’re incredibly grateful to have you with us on this journey! Seeing this project grow has just confirmed to us how people are done watching, and are ready to act.

But we do need to be honest with you about something:

Building The Conscious Citizens - the research, the writing, the long-form essays, the videos, the resource curation, the social media content - is truly a labor of love. For a tiny team running on passion and not much else, it has definitely taken a toll! We've realized that if we want to keep doing this - and do it better - we need to build something more sustainable so we can do this in the long-term. Burning out doesn’t serve anyone (and that’s a big lesson we’ve learned the hard way in the past).

So starting April 13th, we're introducing a new membership structure for The Conscious Citizens.

Here's what's changing, and what isn't.

First, here's what isn’t changing:

• The resource directory stays completely free. Always. We promise!
• The newsletter calls to action, movement wins, the dictionary word, conscious creatives, and featured resources stay free.

Here’s what will be changing:

• Connecting the Dots essays will now be known as “Deep Dives”
• The Dispatch will be released twice per month, once at mid-month and once at the end of the month, rather than bi-weekly.
• Each month, the Dispatch will now alternate between two formats:
  • A full length Dispatch with every segment you already are familiar with, including the Activist History and an original Deep Dive essay.
  • An abbreviated “Action & Resources” Dispatch with calls to action, movement wins, dictionary word, resources, and links to content, books, or articles that we’re consuming so we can continue to learn and grow together.
• We will be releasing more long-form video content, starting with a monthly Youtube video based on our Deep Dive essays.
  • Eventually, and with enough support, our goal is to also launch a podcast and other educational content for you.
• Written Deep Dive essays & Activist Histories articles will be paywalled for $5/mo and up members, since these are the pieces that take the most time and care to produce at a consistent high quality.
  • Don’t worry! Our Deep Dive videos will be free for everyone, but $5/mo and up members will get access to the full written essays, with all our references and sources, 1 week early.

The updated membership tier structure

Starting April 13th, here are the updates to our membership tiers we'll be making. We will also be adding additional benefits to higher membership tiers. Here's the break down:

A thank-you offer for being here first.

We know this is a big change, so we want to show our appreciation for sticking with us. For the next 30 days, you can lock in your first year of any paid tier at 20% off — our way of saying thank you for helping us build this thing from the ground up.

Here's what your membership makes possible for us.

We're not asking for your support just to keep the lights on. We have real plans to grow, we're eager to act, and we need our community to have our back! Your membership is what will help us turn these plans from wishful ideas into reality.

• 📹 Monthly video essays on YouTube — documentary-style videos of the Deep Dive topics we cover in the newsletter since more and more people have shared they prefer to watch instead of read - released a week after each Deep Dive essay.
• 🎙️ A podcast — going deeper than a newsletter can with conversations from creators, intellectuals, educators, journalists, artists, organizers, and activists doing the work.
• 📚 A richer resource directory — more curated, more searchable, more useful. And always free!
• 🤝 A real community — a revamped Discord where we can connect, organize, and find each other locally.
• 💪 More bandwidth — allow us to have more time and energy to organize volunteer programs, in-person events, and develop future educational workshops without burning out (which are also our most requested additions to The Conscious Citizens!)

None of this happens without your sustainable support!

We know change can feel like loss, even when it's designed to help us grow.

This change doesn’t come from nowhere. We’ve thought long and hard about this decision for a while now, and ultimately we truly want to give this platform the best chance possible to thrive, and reciprocal support is key to that happening. We still believe deeply in accessible education which is why the $2 tier exists, the majority of the Dispatch will remain free, and the directory will always be free. But the writing, the research, the video creation work needs to be sustained if it's going to keep being good consistently. If we can get some more support from you all, then we can keep dedicating more time, resources, and energy to making the Conscious Citizens bigger, better, and more impactful!

You don't have to do anything with this. Stay free, go deeper with a membership, or just know the directory is there whenever you need it. Whatever you choose, we're glad you found us and we’re excited to keep building together. We love you!

In solidarity,

Ray & Elisa
Co-founders, The Conscious Citizens

P.S. — We never want cost to be the reason someone can't access this work. If a paid membership is genuinely out of reach, but you still want to learn from us, just reply to this email and say so. We’re happy to give you a year of Activist ($5 tier) membership free. No questions asked!

Conscious Creatives: Shigeru Ban

Shigeru Ban is a Japanese architect known for his innovative use of materials and activist work with disaster relief communities around the world, using his career to prove that great design belongs to everyone, not just wealthy capitalists.

Born in Tokyo and trained by leading modernist architects in the US, Ban learned to fuse Western and Eastern design concepts into his creative approach. After exploring ways he could waste less, he eventually pioneered the structural use of recycled cardboard tubes: a material that is cheap, lightweight, recyclable, and surprisingly durable, and one that became the foundation of his humanitarian practice. When the 1995 Kobe earthquake devastated Japan, he didn’t just watch from the sidelines; he immediately showed up to the disaster zone with cardboard tubes and started building sturdy, temporary, and low-cost shelters for people, giving them safety and dignity they needed to navigate their new realities. After that, he formalized his commitment to using his skills to support society’s most vulnerable and founded the Voluntary Architects' Network, which has since responded to crises of war, genocide, and climate disasters in over 23 countries including Rwanda, Turkey, Syria, Ukraine, Maui, Haiti, and Sri Lanka, designing emergency housing, schools, and community spaces for everyday people forced into unthinkable situations. He’s also worked on many commercial projects using his sustainable approach, won many industry awards, and is a long-time educator (teaching for ~30yrs!), but what makes Shigeru a conscious creative isn't the awards, it's the conviction behind his entire practice: the idea that your skills aren't meant to protect and support to the wealthiest, but a tool to responsibly use and share with those who need them most.

🖥 Visit Shigeru's Website

Resources & Tools

Here are some recent adds to the directory. Please share these links with anyone that might find them helpful:

• 💝 Fallen Fruit: Global Foraging Map | A massive collaborative interactive global foraging map sharing where people can forage for free, fresh, and local food near them. Built by and for foragers around the world.
• 💰 As You Sow: Sustainable Investing Tools | Search to find what's hidden inside your 401(k) or personal investments, then get the knowledge and tools you need to find alternative funds and start aligning your investments with your values.
• 📓 Mutual Aid Toolkit | A detailed step-by-step guide on how to set up a mutual aid network in your community.
• 📓 The Protest Playbook | A practical and tactical guide to help citizens win real change, not just headlines, because we don't have time for marches that lead to nowhere.
• 📓 Methods for Winning Over an Opponent | If you're trying to build community, coalition, influence, or just wanna help someone to come around to your point of view? Here's a great place to start. Learn 2 different effective ways to win over people with opposing views and help them embrace your objectives.
• 🧩 Funding for Grassroots Groups | A collection of strategic recommendations for grassroots groups to increase funding compiled from interviews of both grassroots groups & foundations.

➡️ Explore More on our Directory!

Know any resources that you think would be a great add to our directory? Share it with us! (We only see so much from our corner of the world)

Don't Forget:

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