The Response (Shareable)

Mutual aid is a concept and practice that has come up many times in the stories we tell on The Response — so we thought it would be helpful to devote an entire episode to exploring what mutual aid is with someone who is deeply immersed in it on the ground.

Joshua Potash — an anti-capitalist abolitionist based in New York City. Joshua co-founded Washington Square Park Mutual Aid which provides free food, clothing, and various supplies once a week in the New York City park. They also co-host events like film screenings, skill shares, and various trainings. The group was founded in response to NYPD violence with the aim of creating a counter-narrative and being a community hub for folks in the park and surrounding area.

In this episode, we explore some of the history and theory behind mutual aid and how it presents a counternarrative to capitalist ideology and a practical path away from it. We also learn about Joshua’s work on the ground in New York City and discuss the concepts of municipalism, police abolition, and much more.

Episode credits:

• Host and editor: Robert Raymond
• Presenter and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Additional Resources:

Joshua Potash on Twitter, Instagram, and Substack

Washington Square Park Mutual Aid

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

We’re back with the second installment in our Mutual Aid 101 Learning Series. 

 Today, we're sharing the audio from the half of Session 2, and will be joined by Stephanie Rearick, to discuss how to start and build momentum for a new, or (re)newed mutual aid group. She’s a longtime organizer and advocate for cooperative economies, and the founder of the international Humans United for Mutual Aid Networks. We had Stephanie as a guest on the show a couple of years ago and knew she would have an important voice to feature in this series as well.

Stephanie starts with a 25-minute presentation before addressing questions submitted by the live audience. Next week on The Response, we’ll feature Julian Rose from the New Economy Coalition and EndState ATL, who focussed on power dynamics and how to work with others during Session 2.

Our next live event is tomorrow, Wednesday, March 5th, where we’ll focus on the benefits and limitations of formal structures, financial basics, and fintech for mutual aid, as well as how to understand risk and safety protocols for mutual aid projects. 

Presenters include: Erika Sato, Attorney of Sustainable Economies Law Center; Elijah Baucom, Founder of Everyday Security & Director of UC-Berkeley Cybersecurity Clinic; and Sarah Philips, a Campaigner at Fight for the Future.

Resources:

• Mutual Aid 101 Learning Series
• Mutual Aid 101 Community Canvas
• Mutual Aid 101 Session 2 w/ Stephanie Rearick and Julian Rose (Video)
• Mutual Aid 101 Session 2 w/ Stephanie Rearick and Julian Rose (Transcript)
• Mutual Aid 101 Session 2 w/ Stephanie Rearick and Julian Rose (Slides)
• Mutual Aid 101 Session 2 w/ Stephanie Rearick and Julian Rose (Links from Stephanie, Julian + chat)
• Donate to The Response

Episode credits:

• Hosted and executive produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Produced and edited by Paige Kelly

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

Today on the show we’ve brought on Breya Johnson, an abortion doula, reproductive justice organizer, writer, curator, and the Deputy Director of Organizing at Girls for Gender Equity.

Since the Dobbs decision was passed last year, we’ve continued to see the right wing’s assault on legal abortion and bodily autonomy escalate. Most recently through a ruling by a Trump-appointed, anti-abortion Federal Judge in Texas that intends to revoke the FDA's approval of the abortion pill mifepristone — part of a 2-part medicinal cocktail used in self-managed abortions — the most common form of abortion in the United States.

This ruling is perhaps the most outrageous ruling since Dobbs, and in this episode, we’ll explore the attacks from the right on legal abortion and their implications more broadly. We also explore what self-managed abortions are, everything you need to know about how they work and where you can access abortion pills, and we also explore what a broader framework of reproductive justice looks like and how we can get there.

Resources:

• Breya Johnson on Twitter and Instagram
• Find your local abortion fund: Abortion Funds
• Abortion Pills: Plan C Pills, Just the Pill, Aid Access
• The Response’s 2-part audio documentary on abortion: Abortion access and reproductive justice in a post-roe landscape

Episode credits:

• Host, producer, and editor: Robert Raymond
• Executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net.

This week, we're continuing our collaboration with the Rise-Home Stories Project to bring you the first episode of BUT NEXT TIME, a limited-run podcast that spotlights powerful stories of community-led disaster prevention and recovery.

As fires ravaged California's world-famous wine country in 2017, a community radio station, emergency dispatcher, and tenant organizers helped the most vulnerable in their community survive and recover. Community organizers and hosts of the podcasts But Next Time, Chrishelle Palay and Rose Arrieta, bring us the first of four stories of hard-won lessons learned from people on the front lines of California’s wildfires and Texas’ storms as they work to answer the question, how can next time be different?

The Response is an award-winning documentary film, book, and podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters with host Tom Llewellyn. 

Episode credits:

Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn

Series producer: Robert Raymond

Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Let us know what you think of the show: info@shareable.net

How do we respond to natural disasters? What comes to mind? Large relief organizations like the American Red Cross? Or perhaps the Federal Emergency and Management Agency? Well, those images are certainly part of the story — but they're not the whole story. In our new podcast series, The Response, we aim to share a perspective that isn't extensively covered in the mainstream media. Specifically, we ask the question: how do communities come together in the aftermath of disasters — often in the face of inadequate official response — to take care of each other?

In the first-ever episode of The Response, we began to answer that question by taking a deep dive into the Rockaways Peninsula in New York City, to explore how, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, a grassroots network of activists and volunteers emerged to coordinate one of the most effective relief efforts in the city. The group became known as Occupy Sandy, and in this episode, we tell their story, focusing on the personal narratives of three New Yorkers who were thrown into this spontaneous relief effort. We'll explore how, in the midst of the unfolding catastrophe, unlikely friendships were formed, deep bonds were cultivated, and a perhaps dormant side of New York City was awakened — one based on collectivity, mutual aid, and solidarity.

Episode Credits:

• Producer, writer, audio engineer: Robert Raymond
• Executive producer and host: Tom Llewellyn
• Field producers: Paige Ruane and Jack McDonald

Music by:

• Chris Zabriskie
• Pele
• Lanterns

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

Over the course of producing three seasons of The Response podcast, we’ve explored how natural hazards and other disruptions disproportionately impact marginalized communities at length. 

But one population we haven’t discussed before is people who use drugs. There is still so much stigma associated with using illegal and legal drugs despite the fact that it’s a normal part of life for millions of people worldwide.  

For the past 9 months, our team at Shareable have been working with Higher Ground Harm Reduction to explore how community-based harm reduction programs (and people who use drugs) are impacted by, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from climate-related and other systems-disrupting emergencies (like the pandemic).

I recently spoke at length with Christine Rodriguez, the executive director of Higher Ground Harm Reduction. We touch on her personal journey, what harm reduction actually is, how the current climate of disasters has impacted this work, and why we need to have more compassion for one another.

Next week, we’ll bring you part 2 of this special series with an audio documentary exploring the impact of disasters on harm reduction through the experiences of community service providers in California, Florida, and Puerto Rico.

The Response is executive produced and hosted by Tom Llewellyn, the series producer is Robert Raymond, and our theme music was provided by Cultivate Beats.

The Response is a project of Shareable, a nonprofit media outlet, action network, and consultancy promoting people-powered solutions for the common good. 

Our latest book, “Lessons from the First Wave: Resilience in the age of COVID-19”, is available as a free download at shareable.net.

Support for this project has been provided by the Threshold, Shift, Guerrilla, Clif Bar Family, and Abundant Earth foundations, Shareable’s sponsors including Tipalti, MyTurn, and NearMe, and tax-deductible donations from listeners like you. 

Additional funding for this research and 2-part series was provided by Resist, The Emergent Fund, Comer Foundation, NASTAD, and AIDS United.

A full transcript of this episode is available at www.shareable.net/the-response

If you like the show, please hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

And send your feedback about the show to theresponse@shareable.net

The last decade has shown us that information on social media cannot always be trusted. In fact, it's oftentimes weaponized by nefarious forces. So how do we ensure that the information that is being shared during particularly sensitive periods — such as during natural disasters — is accurate and timely? Enter Atma Connect.

Atma Connect on an award-winning organization building the digital infrastructure to connect people together so they can share vital information and create bottom-up change.

Meena Palaniappan is the Founder and CEO of Atma Connect. She's an Ashoka Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, and awardee of the Million Lives Club. Since 2014, Meena has led Atma Connect to become a globally recognized technology company focused on helping vulnerable people connect, neighbor-to-neighbor, by sharing practical information and solutions, taking collective action, and building community resilience.

AtmaConnect built and deploys AtmaGo, a neighborhood-level mobile app in Indonesia and Puerto Rico for users to share real-time information and solutions to better prepare for disasters, to improve their access to basic needs, and to address chronic vulnerabilities. AtmaGo has reached over 10 million people in Indonesia and Puerto Rico.

Episode credits:

• Host and exectutive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Presenter and editor: Robert Raymond
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

Today on the show we’ve brought on Daniel Baryon, an anarchist and organizer who runs the Youtube channel Anark. 

When we talk about horizontal power structures, for example in the context of grassroots mutual aid response, we're talking about a concept situated within a very specific theoretical framework. Likewise, when we explore the concepts of "prefiguring" the new world within the old — practicing solidarity and mutual aid— for example, we're also talking about concepts that have unique theoretical underpinnings. Perhaps, then, it could be helpful to explore the theories behind the themes that we talk about a bit more, to help ground and place ourselves within historical traditions that stretch to the present. 

This is what we're planning on doing in this new, ongoing series on theory. We're keeping it casual for now, so just expect to see a few episodes here and there in the coming months, but our first dive into the theory framing this show is going to be today's episode on anarchism.

Specifically, we’ll explore what anarchism is and isn’t; how many of the themes of this show — things like disaster collectivism and mutual aid — come out of anarchist theory and practice; we’ll give some examples of anarchism in action; and explore what we can learn from this rich and beautiful tradition in terms of radical transformation and revolution in our modern world.

Resources:

• Anark YouTube Channel
• Daniel Baryon on Twitter

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in extending our reach and broadening our audience.

The Response is published by Shareable.

The Response is an award-winning documentary film, book, and podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters with host Tom Llewellyn. 

It’s the first week of November in 2021 and COP26 is in full swing. Many people had low expectations going into it, this is the 26th COP after all and the outlook for Climate Change is only getting worse year after year. With all of the moneyed and political interests influencing the framework for discussions, could the agreements coming out of the conference actually meet the moment? Probably not...

One aspect of climate change that isn’t talked about nearly enough, is the mass migration of people that it’s already forcing. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, more than 75% of the 40 million internal displacements last year were caused by disasters. And a 2020 report from Institute for Economics and Peace, found that over a billion people lived in 31 countries that aren’t sufficiently resilient to withstand ecological threats.

With the increasing number of climate-fueled disasters impacting nearly every corner of the world, the number of displaced peoples will most likely only go up from here.  

With all of that in mind, we want to resurface an episode from season 3 which offers an inside look at an active migration route into the continent that’s hosting this year’s Climate Summit, Europe.

The Western Balkans are the entryway for asylum seekers from places like Afghanistan, Syria, and Northern Africa to enter into the European Union. As they approach this region, many are hunted down by authorities, violently beaten, and forced into camps with terrible conditions. 

In the face of this crisis, a project emerged to help provide food and other basic necessities to these asylum seekers. It’s known as No Name Kitchen, but don’t let the name fool you, as you’ll see, the project is much, much more than just a community kitchen.

Response producer Robert Raymond, spoke with one of the project’s co-founders, Bruno Morán, about what exactly is going on in the region and how No Name Kitchen is helping to build community while providing mutual aid to one of the most vulnerable populations in the world.

https://www.nonamekitchen.org/en/

Episode credits:

Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn

Series producer: Robert Raymond

Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Let us know what you think of the show: info@shareable.net

Documentary #10: Wartime Mutual Aid in Ukraine

Short: For the 10th audio documentary episode of The Response, we’re going to focus on the war in Ukraine. As the fighting grinds on, what kinds of solidarity and mutual aid actions are taking place in the country and in bordering countries to provide relief and assistance to refugees? 

Long: In February, after a month’s long prelude which many never believed would come to fruition, Russian troops landed in Mariupol and Odessa along the Azov and Black sea coasts, and Russian tanks rolled in through the Belarussian border crossing of Senkivka in the north. The Russian invasion of Ukraine had officially begun. A lot has happened since then, and what started as an anticipated speedy “decapitation” of the Ukrainian government, to quote the Kremin, has now revealed itself to be a war with no immediate end in sight. The impacts have been devastating to Ukraine and its effects have rippled out globally. And as the carnage continues, it’s difficult to say just how devastating this invasion will be on the Ukrainian people in the months, years, and decades to come. 

In the face of this horror, the Ukrainian people are not just fighting back against an imperial war of aggression, they’re also coming together to take care of each other. Millions of people have been displaced by the war, both within Ukraine and as refugees to other countries — it’s a humanitarian crisis on a scale much larger than the other disasters we’ve covered on The Response. In this episode, we’re highlighting stories of Ukrainian resistance and solidarity. A small but significant glimpse into how the Ukrainian people have come together to survive the war, to strengthen their communities, and to fight for each other and their autonomy. 

The transcript is available here: 

The Response with Tom Llewellyn is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

Episode credits:

• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Series producer (+ research and scriptwriting for this episode): Robert Raymond
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats
• Additional music: Death Pill, oh, deer!, American Football 
• Original artwork was created by Bethan Mure

This episode features:

• Yaroslav Minkin – Chairman of the Board of the NGO Youth organization STAN
• Romeo Kokriatski – Managing Editor at the New Voice of Ukraine and Co-host of the podcast Ukraine Without Hype
• Yosh – Head of the NGO Feminist Workshop 
• Joseph Bednarek – Senior Director for Global Grantmaking at Global Fund for Children. 
• Ruslan Stanga – Senior Advisor at The Institute for Rural Initiatives in Moldova

The East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EBPREC), facilitates black, indigenous, people of color, and allied communities to cooperatively organize, finance, purchase, occupy, and steward properties. We spoke with Noni Session, the organization’s executive director, about what they’re doing to achieve systemic solutions to the Bay Area’s affordable housing crisis. 

For our first episode of 2024, we interviewed noted disasterologist and previous guest, Dr. Samantha Montano. We discuss the impact of climate change on disasters and the need for better disaster management and planning. We also explore the difference between emergencies, disasters, and catastrophes. And highlight the importance of community involvement in all stages of disaster management. We’ll wrap things up with a review of recent changes to FEMA's individual assistance program and touch the role of journalism in bridging the gap between public expectations and government actions in disaster response.

Resources:

• “Disasterology: Dispatches From The Frontlines of The Climate Crisis“
• Samantha’s monthly newsletter
• Samanth's twitter

Episode credits:

• Hosted and produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Edited by Paige Kelly
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

Shareable and FSTV recently co-hosted a panel discussion after the television premiere of the documentary film, “The Response: How Puerto Ricans Are Restoring Power to the People.” Panelists Susan Silber, Tré Vasquez, Juan C. Dávila, and Christine Nieves explored a wide range of topics including mutual aid, community resilience, and the impact of colonialism on Puerto Rico’s response to COVID-19.

Designed to provide a deeper context for the ongoing impact of disasters on Puerto Ricans and other communities in the U.S., panelists explored how people are working together to increase their collective resilience.

The entire discussion is available in several formats. In addition to this podcast, the video recording and written transcript are available on shareable.net.

The Response film is available for free virtual community or educational screenings and is an effective tool for convening local, regional, and national organizing meetings aimed at launching and strengthening mutual aid and resilience work. Sign up to host a screening at www.shareable.net/the-response-film or find out more information by sending an email to theresponse@shareable.net.

On our last show, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Land Back with David Cobb — specifically, we discussed moving the idea of land back from a metaphor to a reality, by focusing on a specific case in northern California where the city of Eureka actually gave 200 acres of land back to its original stewards, the Wiyot tribe. 

On today's episode, we're going to continue the conversation, and, in a way, pull back from the specific policy examples of land back and look at it as an idea again, specifically, as a revolutionary ideological framework that exists as a part of Marxist thought, a continuation of Marxism-Leninism — what has been called decolonial Marxism.

To do this, we've brought on Lakota activist and political educator Sungmanitu Bluebird. Sungmanitu grew up in both Detroit and on Pine Ridge reservation and is currently based in Michigan's upper peninsula. 

Sungmanitu’s work synthesizes Marxism with Indigenous knowledge and decolonial Marxist theory and practice. They are a former member of the Red Nation, a mutual aid movement builder, and an organizer with the Chunka Luta Network, a project meant to push decolonial Marxism-Leninism as described by the Guyanese Marxist academic, writer, and educator, Walter Rodney.

Resources:

• Chunka Luta Network
• Land Back: A Yellowhead Institute Red Paper
• Decolonial Marxism:Essays from the Pan-African Revolution by Walter Rodney
• Questions about the LandBack movement, answered, High Country News
• Absolutely epic: Blackfeet release wild buffalo on tribal land, Independent Record
• This new wildlife sanctuary will be unlike any other part of the U.S. — and it’s 6 times the size of Yosemite National Park, The Cool Down

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

The Response is published by Shareable.

On today’s show we brought on Mohamed Shehk, Campaigns Director for Critical Resistance and member of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center here in the Bay Area. 

In this conversation we talk about some of the recent actions taking place to support the struggle for Palestinian liberation, including recent actions aimed at stopping military cargo intended for Israel from leaving docks in Oakland and Tacama. We talk about the role of direct action in our movements, the horrific situation in Palestine, and some of the ways you can get involved.

This is Robert's last interview with The Response! You can follow him and his work at Upstream.

Resources:

• Critical Resistance
• Arab Resource and Organizing Center
• The Palestinian Youth Movement
• US Campaign for Palestinian Human Rights
• Palestine Legal
• Our episode with Pedro Mancilla of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and Anchor Brewery: Labor Battles and the Beer Industry
• For more on police abolition check out our episode: Mutual aid and police accountability with Tha Hood Squad
• Upstream's episode: Palestine Pt. 1 with Sumaya Awad

Episode credits:

Produced, hosted, and edited by Robert Raymond.

Co-produced by Tom Llewellyn

Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

The Response is published by Shareable.

On this episode of The Response, we’re joined by author and organizer Andrew Lee. In his book Defying Displacement: Urban Recomposition and Social War, Andrew writes about how gentrification is often seen as inevitable or automatic and an “economic, social plan.” 

In that sense, the resulting displacement of people from their homes and communities is, in essence, a planned disaster. Andrew brings a nuanced perspective to this issue, drawing from his work and experiences in neighborhoods facing rapid economic transformation. 

Gentrification, as he sees it, is not just about rising rents or new developments but about the displacement of people, histories, and cultures that have shaped these communities for generations.

Much like our previous episodes—whether discussing mutual aid in disaster-hit regions or grassroots movements reclaiming public space—this conversation reminds us that collective action is a powerful tool. Andrew shares stories of resistance: how communities are organizing to protect their homes, create alternative housing models, and ensure that development serves the people already rooted in these spaces.

Thanks for tuning into The Response. We’re back after an unanticipated summer break. We love making this show, but have a small team at Shareable, and often have to redirect our efforts to other parts of our work. That said, we’ve got new monthly episodes scheduled for the rest of the year. Please email TheResponse@shareable.net with feedback about the show or if you have suggestions for people you want to hear us interview. 

Resources:

• Defying Displacement by Andrew Lee
• In Struggle substack by Andrew Lee
• Follow Andrew on Instagram and TikTok
• Andrew’s website
• Shareable zoning series
• Free ebook: How racism shaped the housing crisis & what we can do about it today
• Donate to The Response

Episode credits:

• Co-hosted and executive produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Co-hosted, produced, and edited by Paige Kelly
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

Every element of a city’s design, from a neighborhood’s street lighting to a sidewalk’s drainage to the shape of the skyline, has politics behind it. It’s not always clear what those politics are, or who the decision-makers behind them were, but it’s there. You just have to look closely and you’ll see it.

This week we’re bringing you an extended interview with author Barbara Brown Wilson, an assistant professor of Urban and Environmental Planning and the Director of Inclusion and Equity in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. 

Her current research projects include understanding how grassroots community networks re-frame public infrastructure in more climate and culturally appropriate ways across the U.S.

In her latest book, “Resilience for All,” she uncovers the politics behind our urban landscapes and lays out an alternative to business-as-usual urban design and planning. 

Last week we participated in a panel discussion during the Regenerative Communities Summit where we talked about how Crisis can be a Catalyst for Transformation. 

This episode features a recording of the second half of that event. We’ve decided to omit the presentations that were delivered by each panelist, so there are a few times when you’ll hear references to what was presented earlier. If you would like to watch the entire event, you can access the recording by registering for the summit at TransitionUS.org.

The speakers in this episode have been addressing the challenges, crises, and disasters we’re currently facing while finding new and innovative ways to not only respond but to open new opportunities and to use the times we are living in as a way to build better, more resilient communities.

Featured Speakers:

Jul Bystrova, co-founder of the Inner Resilience Network and Director of the Eomega/Era of Care project

John Liu, catalyzed the creation of The Ecosystem Restoration Camps movement which has grown to nearly 50 camps in 6 continents

Elaine Miller-Karas, Co-Founder and Director of Innovation of the Trauma Resource Institute and author of the book, “Building Resilience to Trauma: the Trauma and Community Resiliency Models” (2015).

Bob Stilger, founder of NewStories and author of the book, “AfterNow: When We Cannot See the Future, Where Do We Begin?”

Episode credits:

Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn

Series producer: Robert Raymond

Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

The Response from Shareable.net, is a documentary film, book, and podcast series exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters.

Let us know what you think of the show: info@shareable.net

The Response is an award-winning documentary film, book, and podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters with host Tom Llewellyn. 

A clear and present danger awaits our species if we are unable to keep global temperature below the 1.5 degrees Celsius rise that climate scientists have identified as proverbial the line in the sand. Even at current levels things are looking and feeling pretty dire.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, significant actions are being taken at the city level in spite of the mostly disappointing (inter)national policies coming out of COP26. 

On this week's episode, The Response producer Robert Raymond interviews Eleni Myrivili, the first Chief Heat Officer for the City of Athens, Greece. 

Episode credits:

Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn

Series producer: Robert Raymond

Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Let us know what you think of the show: info@shareable.net

New TED Talk from The Response host Tom Llewellyn is out now: "Building Collective Resilience in the Wake of Disaster"

Watch it here: https://youtu.be/-SamQq9-wTg

I’ve been told that I never get tired of giving people bad news, so here we go. 

The impacts of climate change are already being felt. This is no longer just a challenge that future generations are going to have to face. It’s ours now.

According to a recent report from the UN, in the past 20 years, there were over 7,000 major disaster events causing 1.2 million deaths, affecting more than 4 billion people, and resulting in almost three trillion dollars in global economic losses.

Strikingly, the number of climate-related disasters nearly doubled from the previous two decades.

Last year we hit the hottest global temperatures on record, saw the first Giga fire (burning over 1 million acres in Northern California), and even had a Zombie Storm in the Atlantic! 

The questions now are:

• How bad is the climate going to get? 
• How quickly can it get better?
• And what are we going to do in the meantime?

I don’t know about the first two questions, but I’ve seen a number of things that might just hold some answers to the last one. 

That's just a short excerpt from the TED Talk. 

Despite all this bad news, disasters can have a silver lining. Time after time, remarkable communities rise up after natural, social, or political disasters, revealing the core of our humanity and providing a glimpse at how we might respond in the face of even bigger challenges. 

And after you watch the talk, please leave questions and share your stories of collective resilience in the comment section. 

We’ll be back in a few weeks with a new episode.

In the second of this 2-part series of The Response, we pick up where we left off in Episode 1 and continue our deep dive into how communities are responding to the growing abortion access crisis in the United States, sharing the stories of those impacted and highlighting a number of radical grassroots, mutual aid, and solidaristic efforts aimed at helping people access abortion in the places where it's currently outlawed or restricted. 

Abortion access has always been limited here in the United States, but since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June of this year and the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision held that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion — things have gotten dramatically worse — especially in parts of the southern United States, the Great Plains, and parts of the midwest. 

In the face of trigger laws banning and criminalizing abortion in many states — as well as state-sanctioned harassment and targeted campaigns against people seeking abortions — the centuries-old movement for reproductive rights and justice has only grown and strengthened. This movement takes many forms, and in the second part of this series we’re going to explore mutual aid efforts focusing on medical abortion pills and emergency contraception.

You can listen to Part 1 of this series here.

Episode credits:

• Series producer and writer: Robert Raymond
• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats
• Additional music: Chris Zabriskie, Do Make Say Think, and Pele
  
• Original artwork was created by Bethan Mure

This series features:

• Julie Amaon: Family medicine physician and the medical director for Just the Pill
• Jenice Fountain: Executive Director of Yellowhammer Fund
• Gulf South Plan B: Mutual Aid organization that distributes free emergency contraception in Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi 
• Angel Jones: Recipient of medical abortion pills
• Laurie Roberts: Executive Director of Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund

Additional Resources:

Lists of Abortion Funds by state/region:

https://abortionfunds.org/

https://apiaryps.org/pso-list

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

Today on the show we’ve brought on Konstantin — a Parisian garbage collector and union militant.

For the past two months, France has been in a state of agitation. A growing movement of workers has been engaged in protests and strikes which erupted in Paris and other cities in response to President Emmanuel Macron unilaterally raising the French retirement age from 62 to 64. You may have seen the viral images of piles and piles of garbage bags out on the streets in Paris — this is because garbage collectors in the city have been on a series of strikes to protest the new pension reform.

We spoke with Konstantin about the state of the movement and what it’s been like organizing and participating in the strikes, the long string of events that have led to this current uprising, why it’s more important than ever to build class consciousness and solidarity — not just in France but internationally, and where he sees this movement headed.

Episode credits:

• Host, producer, and editor: Robert Raymond
• Executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net.

The Response from Shareable.net, is a documentary film, book, and podcast series exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters.

Climate-fueled disasters are radically transforming the world we live in; with the increasing amount of deaths, displacements, and economic damages acting as a wake-up call for many. 

The severe storms, wildfires, inland floods, crop freezes, droughts, and tropical cyclones have touched nearly everyone around the world.

And yet, news coverage routinely underplays the central drama of these disasters. More often than not, it's the people living in the affected communities that, despite all the obstacles, rise to the occasion to save lives, reduce suffering, and form a community of care. 

And the re-imagining of what’s possible doesn’t stop after the initial recovery is over; instead, it continues as communities regenerate; often increasing their equity, resilience, and capacity for joy.

Subscribe to The Response for in-depth interviews, round table discussions, and immersive audio documentaries. Listen to every episode here (or wherever you get your podcasts).

“The Response: Building Collective Resilience in the Wake of Disasters” (book) features over 30 case studies, interviews, and how-to guides to deepen your understanding of community-led disaster response and collective resilience. Download a free ebook.

Shareable’s award-winning 30-minute micro-budget film, “The Response: How Puerto Ricans Are Restoring Power to the People,” explores how the mutual aid centers sprung up across the island of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Learn more about The Response film here.

Stay up to date on all things The Response by subscribing to Shareable's weekly newsletter.

After a statement about the war in Palestine, we’re in conversation with Stephanie Rearick, a founder, and Director of the Madison Mutual Aid Network Cooperative and Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks, or HUMANS for short, which is a new type of networked cooperative ‘creating means for everyone to discover and succeed in work they want to do, with the support of their community’.

Stephanie talks about how mutual aid has changed since the pandemic began, how to create networks of Care that can actually support members of our communities long term, the new tech stack that they’re creating to support mutual aid work to scale, and what it means to live a POSHtarity Lifestyle.

Resources:

• Mutual Aid Network
• Humans at Home
• Call for a Ceasefire in Gaza
• Jewish Voice for Peace Call for Ceasefire in Gaza
• Mutual Aid and the Movement to Stop Cop City

Episode credits:

Presented, hosted, and co-produced by Tom Llewellyn

Edited by Robert Raymond

Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

The Response is published by Shareable.

This summer has truly turned out to be a hot labor summer, with a number of high-profile labor actions stretching across industries and across the country, from the streets of Hollywood to the shop floors at UPS — things are heating up. 

With that said, there is a story that hasn’t hit headlines in the same way as some of these other actions and confrontations. And that’s the story of Anchor Brewery in San Francisco. You might have seen their Anchor Steam beer in the beer aisle before, or heard about their unionization campaign that took place in 2019 after this locally beloved brewery was bought by a giant beer conglomerate, Sapporo. That unionization campaign was successful, but recently, Sapporo abruptly, and controversially, closed Anchor Brewing down. Now, some of the workers at Anchor who don’t want to see this centuries-old institution stripped for parts, want to turn the brewery into a worker-owned cooperative.

This is really a sort of David and Goliath story, and to tell it, we’ve brought on Pedro Mancilla, who led the Anchor Brewery tour program, is a member of the ILWU Local 6 Warehouse Union, and is part of the team working on the cooperativization campaign. 

Pedro has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of beer and beer history, and he begins by giving us a sort of virtual tour of the San Francisco brewery’s history and also a bit of San Francisco labor history. He then talks about the union, the struggles with Sapporo, the effort to convert Anchor into a worker cooperative, and also, how local Bay Area beer producers and enjoyers are coming together in an act of true solidarity to stand behind the workers that have been the backbone of this historic brewery. 

Resources:

• Anchor Brewing Union
• Stand Together to Save Anchor Brewing Company!
• Solidarity Ale Release at Enterprise Brewing in San Francisco
• Project Equity

Episode credits:

• Hosted, produced, and edited by Robert Raymond
• Presented by Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

The Response is published by Shareable.

But Next Time: "Rising Waters"

From a chicken coop providing omelet breakfasts to underserved communities, to a network of farms stretching from Oakland to East Palo Alto, to a night watch program aimed at keeping the police accountable and protecting marginalized communities from police violence, to providing grassroots disaster relief during the most recent storms in the Bay Area — The Hood Squad seems to do it all. 

In this episode, we’ve brought on JT, Savage, and Nay from The Hood Squad, a mutual aid and police accountability organization based out of the Bay Area. Through their six principles of peace, love, harmony, balance, unity, and justice, the Hood Squad aims to shift the systematic oppression which has targeted the disenfranchised communities of the world. 

We discuss their origins as a grassroots art and media collective, their expansion into a very broad array of mutual aid work including police patrols or “night shifts” and disaster relief work, and how the Hood Squad reinvests into their community with farming and training for self-sufficiency, self-awareness, and communal responsibility.

Follow Tha Hood Squad on Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube. And support their work at thahoodsquad.com

Episode credits:

• Host, producer, and editor: Robert Raymond
• Presenter and exectuvie producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

"Harm reduction is not just service delivery, it's not just a set of techniques, it's not just a viewpoint of how to engage problematic drug use or sex or whatever have you, it's also part of a social movement that looks for a more just world for drug users, sex workers — that population. So it has a social critique saying, no shit, this is not right." - Rafael Torruella

This documentary episode of The Response explores how community-based harm reduction programs are responding to climate-fueled disasters and other systems-disrupting emergencies. The 40-min audio documentary features interviews with Rafael Torruella (executive director of Intercambios Puerto Rico), Justin Kunzelman (executive director and co-founder of Rebel Recovery Florida), and Savannah O'Neill (associate director of capacity building at the National Harm Reduction Coalition). 

Episode credits:

• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Senior producer and scriptwriter: Robert Raymond
• Field production and script editing: Tom Llewellyn
• Additional script editing: Elizabeth Carr and Neal Gorenflo
• Graphic art created for this episode by Kane Lynch 
• Theme music: Cultivate Beats
• A special thank you to everyone who was interviewed for this project

Today on the show — a special presentation of a live conversation between Saket Soni and Rebecca Solnit on Saket Soni’s new book, The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America.

The Great Escape is the harrowing story of how 500 disaster relief workers from India were trafficked to the United States under false pretenses and exposed to inhumane conditions while rebuilding New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Rebecca Solnit has described the book as being “paced like a thriller, written like a poem, and full of vivid characters who’d enliven any novel, but it’s the true story of one of the largest modern-day trafficking incidents in recent history and how Saket Soni and his crew went after the powerful perpetrators. A story as important as it is riveting to read.”

Saket Soni is the co-founder and executive director of Resilience Force, the national voice of the resilience workforce — whose labor helps us prepare for, and repair after, climate disaster. He will be in conversation with renowned author Rebecca Solnit, who wrote, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster — a book that inspired the creation of this show and which we’ve talked about many times in past episodes.

This conversation is a recording of a live event co-organized with The Green Arcade in San Francisco on March 3rd. The Green Arcade is a bookshop featuring socially conscious nonfiction, plus select literature & kids' titles, located on Market St.

Episode credits:

• Live recording and editing by Robert Raymond
• Executive production and hosting by Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net.

On today’s show we’re continuing our ongoing Disaster Dispatch series with a deep dive into the Maui wildfires. Earlier this month a series of wind-driven wildfires in Hawaii, predominantly in Maui, led to widespread devastation and destruction, killing at least 115 people and leaving 850 others missing in the town of Lāhainā. These numbers are estimated to actually be much higher as the search to find and identify victims remains painstakingly slow. 

To tell us more about what happened and what the community response has been, we’ve brought on Nicole Huguenin. Nicole is based in Maui and is the co-lead of Maui Rapid Response, an ahupua’a-based citizen disaster response team that’s part of a much broader community response ecosystem working all across the island to provide relief and mutual aid to residents of Maui. 

Resources:

• Maui Rapid Response
• Maui Rapd Response on Instagram
• Help Maui Rise Donation Google Doc
• ʻĀina Momona
• Kāko'o Haleakalā
• Tamara Paltin
• Mauna Medic Healers Hui
• Kanaeokana

Episode credits:

• Hosted, produced, and edited by Robert Raymond
• Presented by Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

The Response is published by Shareable.

Unhoused populations are struggling to find enough to eat. Farmers are faced with both surplus produce and lower incomes as they are left without places to sell. Individuals have a renewed desire to plant gardens as they grapple with long grocery lines and rising food prices.

In short, the pandemic is surfacing many of the systemic issues in the global food system that we’ve been mostly ignoring for a long time.

But what can we do about this at the community, town, or city levels?

One grassroots organization in the San Francisco Bay Area is attempting to answer that question.

Today, we’re bringing you the audio from a live roundtable discussion we co-hosted with NorCal Resilience Network last week as part of the launch of “Produce for the People.”

The new initiative will activate NorCal’s existing coalition of organizations and Resilience Hubs to address critical food security needs in a way that can be replicated on a larger scale in communities all over the world.

Featured Speakers:

Keneda Gibson: artist, community organizer with the East Oakland Neighborhood Initiative, and recipient of a Resilience Hub grant to develop a garden rooted in community at her house

Wanda Stewart: Executive Director of Common Vision and garden educator at Hoover Elementary School

AshEL Seasunz Eldridge: co-founder of Essential Food and Medicine (EFAM) which reclaims surplus and locally grown produce to make juice, soups, smoothies, and natural medicines that directly serve the most vulnerable people in their communities for free.

Moderated by Ayano K. Jeffers-Fabro: independent consultant for community food initiatives (most recently acting as project manager for incubating a community-led grocery cooperative in East Oakland).

Our panelists dove into many difficult topics and questions including:

• The history of racial inequities within the food industry and how this intersection between food justice and racial justice could evolve moving forward
• How communities have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic
• What an equitable hyper-local food web could look like in the future (based on the building blocks that currently exist), including resilience hubs as centers for food growing and distribution
• And how to “squash the beef” by physically working through conflict together while digging into common ground.  

A full transcript of this episode is available at www.shareable.net/the-response

If you like the show, please hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

And send your feedback about the show to theresponse@shareable.net

As of now, the majority of the global population has been impacted by the pandemic for more than a year. For the first time in a century, pretty much everyone on the planet has experienced the same disaster at the same time. 

And while most of us have had our daily lives disrupted in significant, and in many cases catastrophic, ways, there has also been an incredible outpouring of support for one another. 

With the daily case count continuing at a high rate in many countries, now is a good time to pause and ask the question: what have we learned from dealing with the pandemic over the past year. 

On March 16th, we partnered with Idealist to host a public presentation and discussion based on our free ebook, “Lessons from the First Wave: Resilience in the Age of COVID-19.” 

In addition to the extended talk delivered by The Response host Tom Llewellyn at the beginning of the episode, you’ll hear short presentations from two mutual aid organizers from Idealist’s global network, Liam Elkind, the co-founder of Invisible Hands in New York City, and Shila Jassal coordinator of Mutual Aid Road Reps - Let's Get Chatty Service in Medway, UK, before we open it up for a discussion with the live audience moderated by Carol Walton, a Community Organizer at Idealist, who co-hosted this session with us. 

Episode credits:

• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Series producer: Robert Raymond
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Last month, Shareable writer Aaron Fernando spoke at length with Dr. Gordon, about his innovative approach to working with trauma caused by social, political, and environmental disasters. 

From the ongoing occupation in Gaza to wildfire survivors in Sonoma County, students and teachers in Parkland after the school shooting, military veterans returning home with PTSD, and the systemic marginalization of the Lakota people on the Pine Ridge reservation, Dr. Gordon and his team have seen and supported the many faces of Trauma happening around the world.

The Response, a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters with host Tom Llewellyn.

One of the biggest challenges to executing an effective response to the pandemic is data. Without enough accurate data, it’s impossible to know exactly how far-reaching and deadly the coronavirus is. There’s still so much uncertainty about basic things like the infection rate of asymptomatic carriers, or how easy it is for them to pass it on to others.

As this crisis continues to drag on, we’re starting to see some of the damaging results of incomplete data. As It’s become increasingly difficult for communities to advocate for the resources they need without it. 

One place, where the lack of support has become a lived reality, are the favelas in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. 

This week, we spoke with Theresa Willamson, the founder and director of Catalytic Communities in Rio.

Over the course of our conversation, we discussed many of the favela-led responses to the pandemic — things like food distribution, communication techniques, and the tracking dashboard.

We also touched on the importance of historical memory following disasters and other crises’ and how Rio’s legacy of being the world’s largest slave port is continuing to exacerbate the ongoing social disaster the favelas were facing before the pandemic.

The transcript of this episode is available here: www.shareable.net/the-response-crowdsourcing-data-to-fight-the-pandemic-in-rios-favelas

If you’re interested in contributing to Catalytic Communities' Covid-19 response efforts in Rio de Janeiro's favelas, check out their crowdfunding campaign at www.bit.ly/FavelaCovidResponse.

Anyone who's been in a disaster and experienced the initial government or major nonprofit response may have noticed that there's a lot of waste involved. From the thousands of single-use water bottles and throw-away medical supplies to the constant churning of diesel and gas-powered generators, there’s just really no other option. But what if there was? Would it be adopted? How could these large disaster response institutions even know that things could be done differently?

That’s where Footprint Project comes in. Since 2017 they've been proving that it's possible to respond cleaner and build back greener by deploying 200+ kW of mobile solar and 600+ kWh of mobile battery storage on more than 20 disaster response and recovery missions, to provide emergency clean power access to over 28,000 people in some of the hardest hit communities following disasters.

Today on the show, we’ve brought on Footprint Project’s Operations Director, Will Heegaard, who shares the genesis stories for how he got involved in disaster response work and the impetus behind launching the organization. He also unpacks the importance of building resilient communities and the role he feels that state agencies should play in disaster relief.

And for those listeners who just completed our Emergency Battery Network Co-Lab (or are planning to check out the course recordings and Toolkit that are soon to be on our website), stick around for the full conversation to hear Will’s advice on how to build power in your community.

Resources:

• Footprint Project

Episode credits:

• Hosted and co-produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Presented, edited, and co-produced by Robert Raymond
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

The Response is published by Shareable.

Last week, we were blown away by the 2,200 people who registered for our new Mutual Aid 101 Series. 

We were fortunate to have Dean Spade, organizer, teacher, and the author of "Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next)” and “Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together” lead the first session.

Dean dropped some serious knowledge for nearly 90 minutes straight. All the while, the chat was on fire while a new learing community was being formed.

The series continues tomorrow, on Wednesday February 26th with Julian Rose from the New Economy Coalition and Endstate ATL and previous guest on The Response, Stephanie Rearick from Human’s United for Mutual Aid Networks. They’ll be focussing on how to build and sustain mutual aid projects while not burning out.

The first phase of this series runs through the end of March with several more trainings scheduled throughout the rest of the year.

There’s also the Mutual Aid 101 Community Canvas, where we’re posting recordings, resources, and session updates.

There are links to everything I just mentioned in the show notes.

Through out this season of The Response, we’ll be sharing a mix of original interviews, dispatches from the front lines of disasters, and excerpts from Mutual Aid 101 (like this one). 

Today, we’ll be playing the full recording from Dean’s training. We’ve posted the video, slides, and transcript to Canvas, so you can create an account there to follow along.

Resources:

• Mutual Aid 101 Learning Series
• Mutual Aid 101 Community Canvas
• Mutual Aid 101 w/ Dean Spade (Video)
• Mutual Aid 101 w/ Dean Spade (Transcript)
• Mutual Aid 101 w/ Dean Spade (Slides)
• Mutual Aid 101 w/ Dean Spade (Links from Dean + chat)
• Dean's Books
• Donate to The Response

Episode credits:

• Hosted and executive produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Produced and edited by Paige Kelly
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

In this episode of The Response, we explore a devastating and ongoing story of environmental disaster, Indigenous resistance, and corporate exploitation in Brazil. This powerful installment brings listeners face-to-face with the catastrophic failures of Vale, a multinational mining corporation, and the resilient efforts of the Kamakã Mongoió people to protect their sacred land and water.

The episode features a compelling conversation with journalist, filmmaker, and community organizer Allen Myers, whose recent article for Shareable,  Modern Day Colonialism and the Disastrous Fate of an Indigenous Water and Land Protector, offers a chilling look at the ongoing struggles in the region. Myers shares insights from his 2022 trip to Brumadinho, Brazil, where he witnessed the enduring scars left by a 2019 dam collapse and the fight for justice that followed.

In January 2019, a toxic dam operated by Vale in the State of Minas Gerais failed catastrophically, releasing 12 million cubic meters of sludge into the surrounding environment. The disaster claimed 272 lives and decimated the livelihoods of countless others. This was not an isolated incident—just four years earlier, the Mariana dam collapse, also operated by Vale, caused Brazil’s worst environmental catastrophe. Despite warnings and inspections highlighting structural vulnerabilities, Vale failed to act, prioritizing profits over safety.

For the Indigenous Kamakã Mongoió, the collapse was not just a distant tragedy but a direct assault on their way of life. Chief Merong, a prominent leader of the tribe, emerged as a steadfast protector of his community's land and water, standing against the encroachments of Vale. He and other Kamakã Mongoió have faced threats, harassment, violence, and even death for their resistance, a chilling manifestation of what Myers calls “modern-day colonialism.”

While the subject matter of this episode of The Response is tragic, it’s also a call to action. Myers draws parallels between the disasters in Brazil and the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, highlighting the universal dangers of corporate negligence and environmental exploitation. Both of these stories serve as stark reminders that disasters exacerbated by greed are not inevitable but preventable.

Resources:

• Survivors for Peace
• www.allen-myers.com
• Donate to The Response

Episode credits:

• Hosted and executive produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Produced and edited by Paige Kelly
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

The Response, a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters with host Tom Llewellyn.

In this episode, we’ll travel halfway across the world to the Western Balkans, where thousands of asylum seekers are being brutalized as they flee from places like Afghanistan, Syria, and Northern Africa. 

The Western Balkans are the entryway into the European Union, and as they approach this region, many are hunted down by authorities, violently beaten, and forced into camps with terrible conditions. 

In the face of this crisis, a project emerged to help provide food and other basic necessities to these asylum seekers. It’s known as No Name Kitchen, but don’t let the name fool you, as you’ll see, the project is much, much more than just a community kitchen.

Response producer Robert Raymond, spoke with one of the project’s co-founders, Bruno Morán, about what exactly is going on in the region and how No Name Kitchen is helping to build community while providing mutual aid to one of the most vulnerable populations in the world.

 https://www.nonamekitchen.org/en/

For the past decade, communities across the state have faced severe challenges on multiple fronts - from extreme fires and flooding to earthquakes and the COVID-19 pandemic.

But how have they responded and what community resilience strategies have proved most successful?

In this episode of The Response, we explore some of the answers to these questions with two guest speakers

Lisa Beyer is an Urban Water Infrastructure Manage at World Resources Institute. As part of that role, she is responsible for developing and scaling financially innovative, environmentally sustainable municipal water management solutions in cities across the country. 

And Greg Kochanowski is a licensed architect, an aspiring landscape architect, and educator in the State of California. His new book, The Wild, explores the urban periphery of Los Angeles, where the city meets the mountains, a landscape inherently vulnerable to wildfire, and its secondary and tertiary effects, including flash floods and debris flows.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

Episode credits:

• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Series producer: Robert Raymond
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

*This episode features the audio recording from a webinar that was co-hosted by American Institute of Architects San Francisco (AIASF) and Center for Architecture and Design. As a result, here are several references to images that were shared by our presenters. The video recording of this talk can be accessed by becoming a member of AIASF.

In this second episode of our new radio documentary series The Response, we shine a spotlight on Puerto Rico. When Hurricane Maria slammed into the island about a year ago, it resulted in thousands of deaths and knocked out power for almost an entire year. The result was what many consider to be the worst disaster in the United States.

Further, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria exacerbated the ongoing debt crisis that has been crippling the country's public services for years — a crisis that has forced many communities on the island abandon hope that the government will ever come to their assistance. And so when Hurricane Maria hit, it wasn't a surprise to many of these already-abandoned communities when the official response was often nowhere to be seen.

This conversation has been told before by many mainstream news outlets. What you might not have heard, however, is the story of the grassroots response that arose after Maria. In the midst of all the austerity and hurricane-driven chaos, a quiet revolution has been slowly taking place on the island. What began as an impromptu community kitchen meant to help feed survivors in the town of Caguas has since grown into an island-wide network of mutual aid centers with the ultimate aim of restoring power — both electric and civic — to the people. We'll hear from many of those involved in these centers and find out why they are growing so quickly and what they are doing to begin addressing both the acute and chronic disasters that Puerto Ricans are facing today.

For more visit TheResponsePodcast.org

Executive Producer/Host: Tom Llewellyn

Producer/Writer: Robert Raymond

Field Producer: Juan Carlos Dávila

Music: Vladi (feat. Skew.One) and Papel Machete

The idea of Land Back — a growing movement to return occupied land to the Indigenous people that it rightfully belongs to, often exists as a metaphor for us. It can feel like the discussion around land theft and genocide by settler-colonists in the United States is often limited to land acknowledgments or statements of solidarity — both of which are important. But what about the most important element in these discussions — actually giving the land back? 

Today on the show, we’ve brought on David Cobb, a ‘people’s lawyer,’ self-proclaimed revolutionary, and advancement manager for the Wiyot Tribe’s Dishgamu Humboldt Community Land Trust in Northern California.

Who are the Wiyot tribe and what is their history on the land we call Humboldt County? What is the ongoing response to the attempted genocide of this Indigenous community which took place almost two hundred years ago — a horrifying and all-too-common event in the history of the settler colony which is the United States? And how has the city of Eureka worked with the Wiyot tribe to rematriate land — to actually enact the practice and policy of land back, taking it from a metaphor to a reality?

These are just some of the questions we’ll explore in this conversation. And along the way, we’ll touch on community land trusts, the global push for a social and solidarity economy, the People’s Network for Land and Liberation, the reality of end-stage capitalism, and how you can identify and support the Indigenous peoples on the land you inhabit today.  

Resources:

• Dishgamu Humboldt Community Land Trust
• Native Land Digital (find out whose ancestral tribal lands you are living in)
• The Honor Tax Project
• Legal Tools for Land Return (from Sustainable Economies Law Center)
• How to give the land back (Shareable)

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

The Response is published by Shareable.

This week, we’re bringing you the first installment of a new series that we'll occasionally produce: Disaster Dispatches. Each dispatch focuses on a specific disaster and will feature a short conversation with someone within or near a specific disaster zone who can provide insight into how things look on the ground and, in many cases, share first-hand accounts of the response.

First up, we have Meena Palaniappan joining us once again, this time to talk about the recent 5.6 magnitude earthquake that struck the city of Cianjur, which is in the West Java region of Indonesia, on Nov 21st.

Meena Palaniappan is the Founder and CEO of Atma Connect. She's an Ashoka Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, and awardee of the Million Lives Club. Since 2014, Meena has led Atma Connect to become a globally recognized technology company focused on helping vulnerable people connect, neighbor-to-neighbor, by sharing practical information and solutions, taking collective action, and building community resilience.

AtmaConnect built and deploys AtmaGo, a neighborhood-level mobile app in Indonesia and Puerto Rico for users to share real-time information and solutions to better prepare for disasters, improve their access to basic needs, and address chronic vulnerabilities. AtmaGo has reached over 10 million people in Indonesia and Puerto Rico.

Make sure to check out our full-length interview with Meena, where we take a deep dive into her work with Atma Connect more broadly.

Episode credits:

• Host and editor: Robert Raymond
• Presenter and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

For the past couple of years, the City of Atlanta, George, has been pushing forward a project nicknamed “Cop City” — a tactical training compound featuring a mock city which has been referred to as a kind of war base where police will learn military-style maneuvers. The 90 million dollar compound would be built on somewhere between 60 and 300 acres of forest in Atlanta — a space known as the Weelaunee Forest, one of the largest urban forests in the country. 

As a result of this controversial and extremely unpopular development, a grassroots response has taken shape to stop “Cop City.” One of the responses has been by those known as forest protectors, forest defenders, or tree dwellers — activists who have camped out in the forest hoping to stop the clearcutting, bulldozing, and destruction of the forest from happening. On January 18th, one of these forest protectors, known by their forest name “Tortuguita,” or “Little Turtle” was killed by police during a raid in the forest. 

This killing has launched the story of “Cop City” — and the grassroots movement fighting against it — into national and even international headlines. In this episode of The Response we’ve brought on two individuals who are part of that movement to break things down for us. 

Jesse Pratt López is a photographer, documentarian, and organizer involved in the stop cop city movement based in Atlanta. Nolan Huber-Rhoades is a community journalist and filmmaker currently working on a documentary on “Cop City” who has also been covering the events since April of 2021. 

What are the forces behind “Copy City”? What has the community response looked like — not just to the development itself but also to the brutal police response which has terrorized those protecting the forest? And how does the Stop Cop City movement bring together police abolition, climate change, land back, surveillance capitalism, and the right to protest all in one place? We explore all of these questions and more in this episode with Jesse and Nolan.

Resources:

• The Atlanta Solidarity Fund
• GoFundMe for Family of Manuel "Tortuguita" Páez Terán
• Food not bombs Atlanta
• Community Movement Builders
• Defend the Atlanta Forest
• Little Turtle's War published by Bitter Southerner

You can find Jesse Pratt López on Twitter and Instgram & Nolan Huber-Rhoades on Twitter and Instagram.

Episode credits:

• Host, producer, and editor: Robert Raymond
• Presenter and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net.

Today on the show we’ve brought on Andy C. from Poor Prole’s Almanac to talk about a wide range of fascinating topics — from agroecology and sound ecological practices regarding the growing of food and the stewardship of land, to native seed bombing and other forms of mutual aid and disaster preparation, to the difference between right-wing prepperism and left-wing prepperism, to why building collective power and resilience is the best way to ensure that we not only survive the slow but inevitable societal collapses that have already begun — but to thrive through them and build a better world out of the ashes of the old. 

Resources:

• Poor Prole's Almanac on Instagram and Twitter

Episode credits:

• Host, producer, and editor: Robert Raymond
• Presenter and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net.

Last week, the skies over much of the east coast of the United States were orange, red, and almost entirely blacked out in some regions. Smoke from wildfires raging up north in Canada blew down to engulf many major U.S. cities in an apocalyptic glow that left New York City with the worst air quality in the world.

For those of us in California, seeing the apocalyptic images from the east coast going viral brought us back to the many times over the last decade that we experienced the same thing — wildfires raging from northern parts of the state like the Camp Fire in Butte County that completely incinerated the town of Paradise, or the fires in southern California, or Sonoma County, or the Santa Cruz Mountains — there’s too many to really keep track of.

Here in California, one of the many impacts of wildfires that we know all too well has been the loss of power — of electricity. PG&E, the scandal-ridden investor-owned electric utility that operates much of northern California’s grid, has not only been found guilty in the last several years for some of California’s most destructive wildfires. The company has also come under scrutiny for its implementation of rolling blackouts during wildfires, which it claims it does to protect dry landscapes from power lines that could overheat and spark deadly fires. PG&E’s power lines are notoriously poorly maintained and downed trees around power lines have been the direct cause of some of the most deadly and destructive wildfires in California’s history.

These massive power shut-offs have led to all sorts of auxiliary disasters over the years and have left millions of Californians without power during some of our most vulnerable times — amidst scorching heat wages and raging wildfires.

In this context, the People Power Battery Collective in the Bay Area launched a program to provide backup power during emergencies and increase the general understanding of energy access, consumption, and needs. On today’s show, we’ve brought on People Power Battery Collective members Kansas, Crystal, and Yasir to talk about their project in the context of climate-fueled disasters and community mutual aid.

Today’s episode is part of a new series we’re launching called “How-to-Respond” — where we’ll go deeper into the mechanics of community-led disaster response and mutual aid initiatives so that folks can replicate and adapt these efforts in other communities.  

This ongoing series is a part of Shareable’s overall programmatic transition to a renewed focus on empowering people and communities to move from the point of inspiration to action. This week, we’re launching SolidarityWorks, a new program designed to “Empower Communities for Collective Liberation.” Over the coming years, we’ll join forces with a broad range of partners to create localized social infrastructure initiatives packed with creative solutions, tools for solidarity, and a deep embrace of the communities we collaborate with.

The first example of this program is actually the People Power Battery Collective. After working with them a couple of years ago on a how-to guide so other groups could adapt their model, we’ll now be partnering with them on a free course to directly support more communities to create battery collectives of their own.

Resources:

• People Power Battery Collective
• People Power Solar
• SolidarityWorks
• Emergency Battery Collective Learning & Action Cohort

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in extending our reach and broadening our audience.

The Response is published by Shareable.

The third episode of The Response travels to Northern California to provide a unique perspective on the topics of climate change and immigration. We put the focus on last year’s Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa, California — the state’s most destructive fire to date — and how it impacted the undocumented community. We explore how, in the face of ICE raids, labor violations, a housing crisis, and climate-fueled wildfires, the broader community is coming together to stand in solidarity with those who are being forced into the shadows.

California’s climate-fueled drought has left the state in an extremely precarious condition and has led to an unprecedented number of wildfires that are burning hotter, faster, and ever more acreage. The largest wildfire in the state’s recorded history was the Mendocino Complex Fire, which scorched well over four-hundred thousand acres during the Summer of 2018. And the second largest fire in California burned just a year before that. As California Governor Jerry Brown says, “Since civilization emerged 10,000 years ago, we haven’t had this kind of heat condition, and it’s going to continue getting worse.”

We’ve already reached a one degree celsius increase in average global temperatures, and we may be on track for four by the end of the century. As the reality of an increasingly chaotic climate begins to settle in, it must be viewed through a lens of social, economic, and political circumstances as well. What does the growing threat of climate-fueled disasters mean for the most vulnerable among us?

For more visit TheResponsePodcast.org

Executive Producer/Host: Tom Llewellyn

Producer/Writer: Robert Raymond

Field Producers: Ninna Gaensler-Debbs and Robert Raymond

Music: Chris Zabriskie and Lanterns

Voice Over Narration: Luisa Cardoza

Update:

Three years ago this week, an avoidable fire ripped through a London public housing apartment resulting in 72 deaths, most of which were people of color. 

Today, we’re reposting this episode of The Response from 2019 because it covers a prime example of how structural racism has permeated many aspects of society around the globe. 

Racism doesn’t stop with a discriminatory (in)justice system. It rears its ugly head in reduced quality of education, health care, access to finance, salaries, housing… the list goes on.  

Be sure to listen to the end (or scroll down to the bottom of the transcript) for a short update on where things stand in this evolving story.

The Response revisits a disaster that has its roots in inequality, austerity, and institutional racism. On June 14, 2017, a fire started in a 24-story public housing apartment building in West London called Grenfell Tower. The fire raged all night and reduced the building to a shell. Seventy-two people lost their lives, making the Grenfell Fire the United Kingdom’s deadliest disaster since World War II (up until the COVID-19 Pandemic).

Through the voices of survivors, their families, and others who were impacted, the episode examines the events that led up to the Grenfell Tower fire and explores how the community has responded. What has the healing process looked like for survivors and the bereaved? How has the community come together to increase its resilience while simultaneously fighting for justice and accountability? And what is being done to ensure that something like this never, ever happens again? 

While you may not see it, a large and rapidly growing wave of volunteering, mutual aid, and resource sharing is sweeping the globe. Instead of panicking, many people are defining this moment through their warmth, bravery, diligence, generosity, and creativity. 

This is the #PeoplesCOVID19Response!

We’re in an 'all hands on deck' moment. There’s not a second to lose. Working together, we can continue to help save lives and reduce suffering.

On the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, Shareable and Free Speech TV (FSTV) will host a special online simulcast of the film which will immediately be followed by a panel discussion about community-led disaster response, collective resilience, and mutual aid.

Register for this free event to secure your spot at the screening and panel discussion.

The panel after the film will be hosted by The Response producer Tom Llewellyn and will feature Susan Silber (NorCal Resilience Network), Tré Vasquez (Movement Generation), Juan C. Dávila (“The Response” film director), and Christine Nieves (co-founder of Proyecto Apoyo Mutuo Mariana).

Where to watch on TV:

The special will air on Free Speech TV (DISH 9415, DIRECTV 348, and stream on Roku, Apple TV, Sling TV, and at freespeech.org). 

Today, we’re cross posting "A Roundtable on Palestine-Israel" from our friends at The Fire These Times podcast as a bonus episode for listeners of The Response.

The Fire These Times Co-hosts, Joey Ayoub and Daniel Voskoboynik are joined by Dana El Kurd, Orly Noy, and Yair Wallach to think through this moment, process their grief together, and articulate alternative visions for both peoples.

After listening to several inflammatory takes for the past month, this was exactly the conversation that we needed to be a fly on the wall for. We hope you learn or feel something new while listening as well.

Resources:

Medical Aid for Palestinians | Adalah | Al-Shabaka | Gisha | Hamleh | Hamoked | The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel | Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Centre (JLAC) | MIFTAH: The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy | Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) | Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) | Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) | Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC)

Episode credits:

Presented, hosted, and co-produced by Tom Llewellyn

Edited by Robert Raymond

Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

The Response is published by Shareable.

Summer might be over for us in the Northern Hemisphere — but things are still heating up in the US labor movement. A ground-swell of labor action continues to heave and crack the crust which had been slowly hardening on the surface of the radical fires dormant under neoliberalism.

The latest news in the ongoing strike wave comes out of the United Auto Workers Union, where workers at a number of plants have walked out and are engaging in a historic “stand-up” strike — fighting for better wages and better working conditions.

To talk about the strike, the labor movement more broadly, and the current state of the class war between workers and capital, we’ve brought on Teddy Ostrow, a labor and economics journalist and host of the podcast Upsurge.

In this conversation Teddy talks about what it’s been like out on the UAW picket lines, the revitalization and re-radicalization of the labor movement, where the labor movement in the United States is headed, and much more.

Resources:

• The Upsurge Podcast
• When Auto Workers Stand Up, Here's How to Stand with Them, Labor Notes

Episode credits:

• Hosted, edited, and produced by Robert Raymond
• Presented, edited, and co-produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

The Response is published by Shareable.

This week on The Response podcast, we’re bringing you a round table discussion with Lydia Violet Harutoonian from the Music As Medicine Project, Don Hall from Transition US, and Ryan Rising from Permaculture Action Network.

While the conversation covered a lot of ground, we focussed on some of the core components of thriving resilient communities, the solidarity economy, and several pathways to move through the multiple crises we're facing as a global community.

This episode was produced in partnership with Thriving Resilient Communities Collaboratory. 

TRCC is a US-based network of regional and national leaders who use systemic and collaborative approaches to help communities become more thriving and resilient.

You can learn more about TRCC, all of the organizations involved in the program, and make a tax-deductible donation to support the entire cohort by visiting: thrivingresilience.org/get-involved

Additional information about Don Hall and Transition US can be found at transitionus.org and learn more about their regenerative approach to preparedness and resilience at readytogether.net.

Music As Medicine has an online school where you can find accessible support groups, facilitator trainings, and workshops with folks like Joanna Macy, Leah Song, Adrienne maree brown, and Lydia Violet herself. Find out more information at musicasmedicineproject.org

Ryan Rising and Permaculture Action Network can be found online at PermacultureAction.org or @PermacultureAction on Facebook and instagram. Visit their website to learn more about the Just Transition Mapping Project or to sign up for future action days in your region.

• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Series Producer: Robert Raymond
• The Sketchnote was created by Elizabeth Niarhos @lizar_tristry
• Thank you to this week’s guests and Thriving Resilient Communities Collaboratory
• Theme Song: Cultivate Beats

Additional songs sung by Lydia Violet Harutoonian included a rendition of the traditional, “I'm Gonna Do What the Spirit Says” and her version of MaMuse’s “We Shall Be Known” which you’ll hear at the end of the credits.

The Response is a project of Shareable, a nonprofit media outlet, action network, and consultancy promoting people-powered solutions for the common good. 

Visit Shareable.net to find our full coverage of The People’s COVID-19 Response, to find all of our episodes, and for special bonus content like our free ebook.

Support for this project has been provided by the Threshold, Shift, Guerrilla, Clif Bar Family, and Abundant Earth foundations, Shareable’s sponsors including Tipalti, MyTurn, and NearMe, and tax-deductible donations from listeners like you. 

And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, to hear more stories like this. 

Nearly 20 years ago, The Response host Tom Llewellyn was fortunate to experience Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove’s Voices of a People’s History of the United States live at the Berkeley Community Theater. 

In 2018, after we finished our first set of audio documentaries for The Response, it was clear that the personal stories shared with us by those on the front lines of climate, political, and social disasters should also be brought to the stage. 

And so, in homage, we have called these live performances, Voices of The Response. 

We’re still developing the full performance, but we were invited to workshop excerpts at 

the Oregon Country Fair last year. With the support of Eric Brahman, we worked with local spoken word artists to perform unique pieces each day of the festival during the Storytelling Smorgasbord. 

Today you’ll hear the recordings from that event, including stories related to previous California wildfires. 

Resources:

• Mutual Aid Los Angeles Network
• Mutual Aid 101 Learning Series
• Audio documentaries:
  • "The impact of Northern California fires on the undocumented community"
  • "Radical approaches to disaster relief in New York"
  • “Reimagining Paradise in an Age of climate disruption”
• Donate to The Response

Episode credits:

• Hosted and executive produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Produced and edited by Paige Kelly
• Stories in this week’s episode written by Robert Raymond
• Stories in this episode were read by Shachar Efrati, Jen Hernandez, Tom Llewellyn, Jeany Snider, David Snider, Eric Brahman, and Shachar Efrati.
• A special thanks to Tzula for playing the harp during the performances
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

All across the globe, temperatures are rising, and thanks to the most recent report published by the International Panel on Climate Change and recent U.N. projections, we know that even if we do make sweeping cuts to emissions, we’re still on course for a catastrophic temperature rise of 2.7 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. That means, the record-breaking floods, droughts, storms, wildfires, and heatwaves we’re currently seeing, or for many of us, directly experiencing, are just the beginning. Global warming is not just some distant thing to worry about in the future — it’s here. Right now.

Although cataclysmic events like hurricanes and wildfires tend to monopolize most of the headlines on climate change, as paltry as it is to begin with, climate news coverage hardly ever focuses on the less flashy impacts. Things like heatwaves, for example, might draw some attention if they’re record-shattering — but oftentimes, the impacts of long-lasting higher temperatures are not covered in any depth by mainstream news outlets.

In this episode of The Response, we’re going to focus on an issue that isn’t talked about hardly enough: energy poverty. When temperatures rise to the point where they become dangerous, what happens to people who can’t escape the heat? As temperatures continue to soar and extreme heatwaves become the norm, a lack of resources to stay cool — so, having access to things like air conditioning, for example, — is a huge issue across the world. This is especially true in southern Europe, a region that experienced a series of record-breaking, climate-fueled heatwaves this past summer.

Episode credits:

• Written, produced, and edited by Robert Raymond
• Narrated by Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats
• Additional music by Belong, Fugazi, and Chris Zabriskie
• Cover illustration by Kane Lynch

This episode features:

• Eleni Myrivili, Chief Heat Officer for the City of Athens (the first person to hold this title – recently featured in New York Times).
• Lidija Živčič is the senior expert at the FOCUS Association for Sustainable Development and a coordinator at EmpowerMed.
• Mònica Guiteras, a member of the Alliance Against Energy Poverty in Catalonia, and Engineers Without Borders.  
• Martha Myers, energy poverty campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe and the coordinator of the Right to Energy Coalition.

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

The Response is published by Shareable.

How do we respond to natural disasters? What comes to mind? Large relief organizations like the American Red Cross? Or perhaps the Federal Emergency and Management Agency? Well, those images are certainly part of the story—but they’re not the whole story. In our new podcast series, The Response, we aim to share a perspective that isn’t extensively covered in the mainstream media. Specifically, we ask the question: how do communities come together in the aftermath of disasters—often in the face of inadequate official response—to take care of each other?

In the first episode of this series, we answer that question by taking a deep dive into the Rockaway Peninsula in New York City, to explore how, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, a grassroots network of activists and volunteers emerged to coordinate one of the most effective relief efforts in the city. The group became known as Occupy Sandy, and in this episode, we hear the personal narratives of three New Yorkers who were thrown into this spontaneous relief effort. We’ll explore how, in the midst of the unfolding catastrophe, unlikely friendships were formed, deep bonds were cultivated, and a perhaps dormant side of New York City was awakened — one based on collectivity, mutual aid, and solidarity.

For more visit TheResponsePodcast.org

Host/Executive Producer: Tom Llewellyn

Producer/Writer: Robert Raymond

Field Producer: Paige Ruane

Music: Chris Zabriskie, Pele, and Lanterns

The Response is officially back for a 4th season. Over the next few months, we’ll be increasing the frequency of the show and releasing new episodes at least every other week. We’ve already got a number of exciting interviews and roundtable discussions lined up.

We also encourage you to watch our award-winning 30-minute micro-budget documentary film on Youtube: “The Response: How Puerto Ricans Are Restoring Power to the People."

For the 9th audio documentary episode of The Response, we’re going to focus on an issue that isn’t talked about hardly enough: energy poverty. When temperatures rise to the point where they become dangerous, what happens to people who can’t escape the heat?

The transcript is available here: shareable.net/heatwaves-and-energy-poverty-in-the-mediterranean

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

Episode credits:

• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Series producer (+ research and scriptwriting for this episode): Robert Raymond
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats
• Additional music: Belong, Fugazi, and Chris Zabriskie
• original artwork was created by Kane Lynch

This episode features:

• Eleni Myrivili, Chief Heat Officer for the City of Athens (the first person to hold this title – recently featured in New York Times).
• Lidija Živčič is the senior expert at the FOCUS Association for Sustainable Development and a coordinator at EmpowerMed.
• Mònica Guiteras, a member of the Alliance Against Energy Poverty in Catalonia, and Engineers Without Borders.  
• Martha Myers, energy poverty campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe and the coordinator of the Right to Energy Coalition.
• Narrated by Tom Llewellyn.

In the latest episode of The Response Podcast, Chad Rittenberry discusses the community-led response to Winter Storm Uri in Austin Texas earlier this year.

What began with a simple Facebook post offering free firewood to friends and family in and around Austin, Texas snowballed until he found himself organizing the National Guard to distribute water in the pink vests previously worn by street medics at Black Lives Matter protests last Summer.

He shares his perspective on what worked, what really didn’t work, and how local organizers plan to be even more prepared for when the next disaster strikes.

Episode credits:

Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn

Series producer: Robert Raymond

Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Today on the show, we’ve brought on Genean from Common Humanity Collective — a mutual aid organization based out of California’s Bay Area.

When the pandemic began in 2020, it felt like there was a huge spike in mutual aid efforts — in fact we did an entire series of episodes on many of the community-led responses to COVID that year including an audio documentary that highlighted the work done by a local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, in Chico, California.

But where are things now? What have mutual aid organizations, and the left more broadly, learned from the last couple of years? How do we continue to make sure that the mutual in mutual aid remains a central pillar of our efforts? And how can we politicize our work within the communities we’re engaging with? 

We explore these pressing questions in this week’s interview — along with a lot other stuff on mutual aid and ways to plug in.

Episode credits:

• Host and editor: Robert Raymond
• Presenter and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Additional Resources:

Check out Common Humanity Collective and get more information on their air purifier build coming up on December 17th and their mask build on January 22nd on their website. And make sure to follow them on Twitter, Instagram, and on Mastadon.

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

In the first of this 2-part series of The Response, we take a deep dive into how communities are responding to the growing abortion access crisis in the United States, sharing the stories of those impacted and highlighting a number of radical grassroots, mutual aid, and solidaristic efforts aimed at helping people access abortion in the places where it's currently outlawed or restricted. 

Abortion access has always been limited here in the United States, but since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June of this year and the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision held that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion — things have gotten dramatically worse — especially in parts of the southern United States, the Great Plains, and parts of the midwest. 

In the face of trigger laws banning and criminalizing abortion in many states — as well as state-sanctioned harassment and targeted campaigns against people seeking abortions — the centuries-old movement for reproductive rights and justice has only grown and strengthened.

Episode credits:

• Series producer and writer: Robert Raymond
• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats
• Additional music: Chris Zabriskie, Do Make Say Think, and Pele
  
• Original artwork was created by Bethan Mure

This series features:

• Julie Amaon: Family medicine physician and the medical director for Just the Pill
• Jenice Fountain: Executive Director of Yellowhammer Fund
• Gulf South Plan B: Mutual Aid organization that distributes free emergency contraception in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi 
• Angel Jones: Recipient of medical abortion pills
• Laurie Roberts: Executive Director of Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund

Lists of Abortion Funds by state/region:

https://abortionfunds.org/

https://apiaryps.org/pso-list

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters with host Tom Llewellyn.

Today is the four-year anniversary of when Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico causing what is largely considered to be the worst disaster to happen in the US or its colonies. 

To mark the occasion, we’re making our film, “The Response: How Puerto Ricans Are Restoring Power to the People,” available for all to see. Please follow the link in the episode notes to watch it on shareable’s Youtube channel.

Watch it here: https://youtu.be/-RVTpDSE9H0

For this bonus episode, we’re featuring the audio from an interview that film director Juan Carlos Dávila and producer Tom Llewellyn did on Free Speech TV’s Just Solutions last week.

Can we navigate a Just Transition through COVID-19 and the climate crisis? 

Today, we’ll dig into that question and more with Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan from Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project. 

Michelle was a founding co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance and recently published an article outlining the 10 reasons why the time for Permanently Organized Communities is now.

Learn more about Michelle (and her work) at www.movementgeneration.org

This is the first episode of a special series documenting the People’s COVID-19 Response; the rapidly growing wave of volunteering, mutual aid, and resource sharing that's sweeping the globe. 

While you may not see it, countless thousands are rising to the occasion at the speed and scale that’s needed right now – and building lasting power at the same time. 

Going beyond simply analyzing the dynamics of the 2017 Tubbs Fire and Undocufund, the interview explores the broader issues faced by the undocumented community in California, as well as the importance of organizing and community empowerment when it comes to minimizing the effects of not just environmental disasters—but economic, social, and racial injustices as well.

Today on the show we’ve brought on Jesse Barnett, a musician and a co-founder of All Power Books in L.A.

All Power Books is more than a bookstore: it’s a volunteer-run community space that offers a wide range of programs, from a free store with food, cleaning supplies, and menstrual products; to a free community clinic; to music classes, poetry readings, and reading groups; sewing and repair workshops; film screenings, bike repairs, the list goes on. 

We spoke with Jesse about the origins of All Power Books, the importance of mutual aid and building connections with neighbors, why the left can feel so divisive sometimes — and how to avoid it — the economic and political realities of Los Angeles, and a whole lot much more.

Resources:

• All Power Books' website, Twitter, and Instagram
• Jesse Barnett on Instagram
• Stick to your Guns

Episode credits:

• Host, producer, and editor: Robert Raymond
• Executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net.

Today on the show, we’ve brought on Douglas Rushkoff to talk about his new book, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires.

Douglas is Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at Queens/CUNY and a research fellow at the Institute for the Future. Named one of the world’s ten most influential intellectuals by MIT, he hosts the Team Human podcast and has written many award-winning books including: Team Human, based on his podcast, as well as the bestsellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus. 

He coined such concepts as “viral media,” “screenagers,” and “social currency,” and has been a leading voice for applying digital media toward social and economic justice. 

In this interview we explore the strange, dark expressions of AI futurism and tech utopianism growing within the billionaire class. Island bunkers, missions to mars, the Metaverse and the impulse to escape in the face of looming climate and social collapse. These are the fantasies of the rich and powerful, but there is an alternative path for humanity, one anchored in mutual aid, disaster collectivism, and human interdependence. We’ll explore all of this and more in this episode.

Episode credits:

• Host and exectutive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Presenter and editor: Robert Raymond
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

But Next Time: "Higher Ground"

In this bonus episode, Bob Stilger recounts his experience in Japan following the triple disaster of 2011 and shares how one community that was completely wiped away by the Tsunami, took the opportunity to truly build back better from the ground up.

Bob Stilger is the founder of New Stories and author of the book, “AfterNow: When We Cannot See the Future, Where Do We Begin?”

Episode credits:

Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn

Series producer: Robert Raymond

Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

The Response from Shareable.net, is a documentary film, book, and podcast series exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters.

Let us know what you think of the show: info@shareable.net

For our final episode of The Response this year, we interviewed three mutual aid organizers from Orlando, FL, Hartford, CT, and Bvlbancha (aka New Orleans, LA).

• Gabbie Barnes is the founder of FREE HART Closet, a worker-owner at the People's Saturday School, a mutual aid organizer, and a Library of Things Fellow.
• Rachel Kinbar is an organizer with Central Florida Mutual Aid, Orlando DSA, the operations director for Beautiful Trouble, and is a participant in both the Emergency Battery Network Co-Lab and a Library of Things Fellow.
• Ida Aronson is an active member of the United Houma Nation and organizes with Bvlbancha Collective, Imagine Water Works, and Bvlbancha Radio among other mutual aid projects, and was a participant in the Emergency Battery Network Co-Lab.

While they each are working on several unique projects, they are connected by their dedication to their communities and their participation in our SolidarityWorks program.

Together, we discuss the current threats to their communities, both political and environmental, the ways they are collaborating with others to develop community-led solutions, and how they find joy in their life and work despite the many challenges they face.

We’re in the middle of our end-of-year fundraiser and could really use your support. If you appreciate this show and are in a position to donate, please contribute today: www.shareable.net/donate.

Check out the resources below to learn more about all of their projects:

• SolidarityWorks
• Emergency Battery Network Toolkit
• Mutual Aid Hartford (MAH)
• FREE HART Closet
• The People's Saturday School
• Central Florida Mutual Aid
• Beautiful Trouble
• Bvlbancha Collective
• Bvlbancha Radio
• Imagine Water Works
• How To Set Up An Open Mesh Network in Your Neighborhood
• Meet Freifunk, the German group that aims to provide free internet to all
• "The Food Conspiracy Cookbook"
• Urban Recipe (Food Distribution Co-op)

Episode credits:

• Hosted and produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Edited by Robert Raymond
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

In this documentary episode, we take a deep dive into how communities are responding to the growing abortion access crisis in the United States, sharing the stories of those impacted and highlighting a number of radical grassroots, mutual aid, and solidaristic efforts aimed at helping people access abortion in the places where it's currently outlawed or restricted. 

Abortion access has always been limited here in the United States, but since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June of 2022 and the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision held that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion, things have gotten dramatically worse.

In the face of trigger laws banning and criminalizing abortion in many states — as well as state-sanctioned harassment and targeted campaigns against people seeking abortions — the centuries-old movement for reproductive rights and justice has only grown and strengthened.

This is a special re-release of this episode for International Women's Day. The episode was originally published as two separate parts but we have combined those two parts into one continuous episode.

Episode credits:

• Series producer and writer: Robert Raymond
• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats
• Additional music: Chris Zabriskie, Do Make Say Think, and Pele
  
• Original artwork was created by Bethan Mure

This series features:

• Julie Amaon: Family medicine physician and the medical director for Just the Pill
• Jenice Fountain: Executive Director of Yellowhammer Fund
• Gulf South Plan B: Mutual Aid organization that distributes free emergency contraception in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi 
• Angel Jones: Recipient of medical abortion pills
• Laurie Roberts: Executive Director of Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund

In this age of climate disruption and record shattering mega-fires, hurricanes, and the many other disasters wrecking havoc around the world, how do you rebuild from scratch? 

Allen Myers grew up in the town of Paradise, CA and like thousands of others, lost his childhood home to the Camp Fire when it burned through 153,336 acres of the Sierra Foothills on November 8th, 2018.

Despite its name, Paradise had been afflicted by deep poverty and opioid addiction for years before the fire — it is also located in a very high danger area that regularly experiences wildfires. So, perhaps a more relevant rebuilding question is, how do you rebuild a town better than it was before? Not just recreating the old systems and structures that weren't working for most people in the first place, but rebuilding with more resilience, equity, and humanity?

After the initial fire recovery was completed, Allen set out to find answers to those questions; visiting the small town of Onagawa on Japan’s Tōhoku coast. 

Seven years earlier, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake sent a 45-foot high tsunami crashing into the eastern coast of Japan, washing away several towns in the process, including Onagawa. While many of the surrounding towns have been slow to rebuild and have had a difficult time getting residents to move back, Onagawa has taken a unique path through a participatory process which has been incredibly successful.

In the final episode of season two of The Response, we follow Allen’s journey and explore the lessons he brought home from Onagawa and the rebuilding efforts in Paradise. It serves as a unique window into how residents are working together to build a new vision for what comes next, while fighting against the forces pulling them back towards the status quo.

On this episode of The Response, we get to the heart of reproductive justice with Rafa Kidvai, the director of the Repro Legal Defense Fund at If/When/How. The RLDF champions the rights and freedoms of people criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes, offers bail support, and stands as a bastion for strong defenses in the face of criminalization, spanning from miscarriages to self-managed abortions. 

Rafa shares insights into the organization's holistic approach, emphasizing the critical support they provide through litigation, a helpline for those fearing criminalization, and ensuring clients receive the best possible defense. 

Join us as we explore interconnected struggles, the challenges of surveillance, and the power of community in the fight for reproductive justice.

Resources:

• If/When/How
• Repro Legal Defense Fund
• No Body Criminalized Podcast
• How to Become a Lawyer without Going to Law School

Episode credits:

• Co-hosted and executive produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Co-hosted, produced, and edited by Paige Kelly
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

Today on the show, we’ve brought on Prem Thakker, a journalist with The New Republic who has been reporting on East Palestine, Ohio. Prem’s recent piece is titled: “Life After the Ohio Train Derailment: Trouble Breathing, Dying Animals, and Saying Goodbye.”

In this episode, we’ll bring you up to date on everything happening in the aftermath of the February 3rd train derailment — from the health concerns and experiences of the residents of East Palestine, to Norfolk Southern’s bungled and oftentimes horrifying response, to what coverage of the event has looked like and why so many politicians have remained silent on the issue for so long, and to the small glimmers of hope that disasters like this can present in terms of building community strength and solidarity.

Resources:

• "Life After the Ohio Train Derailment: Trouble Breathing, Dying Animals, and Saying Goodbye," The New Republic
• "The Conspiracy of the Ohio Train Derailment Is Right in Front of Us," The New Republic
• "Trump, Who Deregulated the Railroad Industry, Lies to the People of Ohio in His Visit," The New Republic
• "Death Plume" Tweet by Robert Raymond and the response to the "fact-check" by USA Today.

Episode credits:

• Host, producer, and editor: Robert Raymond
• Executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net.

On this week’s show, we’ll be turning our focus towards the Solidarity Economy and what is meant by 'Resist & Build'.

Joining us for this conversation is Emily Kawano, Co-Director of the Wellspring Cooperative Corporation and Coordinator of the United States Solidarity Economy Network, Matthew Slaats, co-director of the Solidarity Research Center and the founder of the Virginia Solidarity Economy Network, and Edget Betru, an attorney who is on the boards of Community Movement Builders and the Organization for Human Rights and Democracy in Atlanta.

Together, we unpack what 'Resist & Build' looks like in practice, discuss the necessity of cross-movement dialogue and collaboration, and explore pathways for scaling up (and arguably, more importantly, scaling out) the solidarity economy.

Resources:

• Resist & Build
• US Solidarity Economy Network
• Virginia Solidarity Economy Network
• Community Movement Builders
• Organization for Human Rights and Democracy
• People’s Network for Land and Liberation
• Wellspring Cooperative Corporation
• Solidarity Research Center
• Stop Cop City Solidarity
• The Response: Stop Cop City with Jesse Pratt López & Nolan Huber-Rhoades

Episode credits:

Produced and hosted by Tom Llewellyn

Edited by Robert Raymond.

Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

The Response is published by Shareable.

When discussing climate change these days, it’s no longer suitable to simply imagine its impacts on “future generations.” It’s also not exactly appropriate to imagine the result of climate change as being some kind of apocalyptic, end-of-the-world scenario. Climate change is happening right now, and its impacts are going to absolutely devastate some communities while leaving others relatively intact. 

In this extended interview, Series Producer Robert Raymond spoke with Dr. Samantha Montano, an Assistant Professor of Emergency Management & Disaster Science at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Dr. Montano’s research focuses on a wide scope of topics within the field of emergency management, including community organizing, emergent groups (particularly during recovery), preparedness for recovery, and disaster volunteerism.

In this documentary episode of The Response Podcast, we take a deep dive into the work being done by the Chico chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. Their mutual aid work in response to the coronavirus pandemic is just a microcosm of the whole country, from major cities to rural communities, where DSA and other, similar organizations have been stepping in to fill many of the gaps left by the local, state, and federal response.

Episode credits:

• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Senior producer, field production, and scriptwriter: Robert Raymond
• Script editors: Courtney Pankrat, Tom Llewellyn, and Neal Gorenflo. 
• The graphic art created for this episode by Kane Lynch was inspired by photos taken by Brittany White. 
• Information gathering and fact-checking: Addison and Alex (Chico DSA)
• A special thank you to all the volunteers at Chico DSA, and to those who are living at Bird Street and Comanche Creek Greenway for letting us into their homes.
• Music by:
• Pele
• Strongboi
• Ada Lea

The Response revisits a disaster that has its roots in inequality, austerity, and institutional racism. On June 14, 2017, a fire started in a 24-story public housing apartment building in West London called Grenfell Tower. The fire raged all night and reduced the building to a shell. Seventy-two people lost their lives, making the Grenfell Fire the United Kingdom’s deadliest disaster since World War II.

Through the voices of survivors, their families, and others who were impacted, the episode examines the events that led up to the Grenfell Tower fire and explores how the community has responded. What has the healing process looked like for survivors and the bereaved? How has the community come together to increase its resilience while simultaneously fighting for justice and accountability? And what is being done to ensure that something like this never, ever happens again? 

After taking a long Summer break, The Response is back for a fourth season, well kinda. We’re officially kicking things off at the end of the month with an audio documentary focused on European Heatwaves and how their impact is exacerbated by energy poverty.

But for the next two weeks, we’ll be returning our focus to Puerto Rico. 

Monday, September 20th marks the four-year anniversary of when Hurricane Maria slammed into the island causing thousands of deaths, and knocking out power for almost an entire year, leading to what many consider to be the worst disaster in US History.

In this episode, we talk to environmental sociologist Marla Perez Lugo. We discuss her experience during Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico’s power supply and energy grid before and after the storm and the multitude of issues caused by precarious resilience.

The Response with Tom Llewellyn is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters

Episode credits:

• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Series producer: Robert Raymond
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

An in depth interview with Paris’s Chief Resilience Officer, Sebastian Maire, about what that city has been doing in order to build resilience in the face of the climate crisis.

The conversation covers the six main resilience challenges in Paris, their three-tiered approach to meeting those challenges, and how they are empowering the residents to directly participate — and in many cases, lead the process.

Along the way, we discuss the 100 Resilient Cities program, community fridges, the role of social cohesion, and his views on the inextricable link between climate change and economic inequality.

This weekend marks the beginning of COP26. After being delayed for nearly a year because of COVID, diplomats, scientists, corporate lobbyists, NGOs, students, demonstrators, corporations, heads of state, and many, many other invited and uninvited guests are already making their way to Glasgow Scotland for what has been projected to be the most consequential U.N. climate change conference since the Paris Agreement was struck in 2015.

Earlier this week, the Arkbound Foundation published a new anthology, "Climate Adaptation: Accounts of Resilience, Self-Sufficiency and Systems Change." This episode features a discussion I hosted with three of the book's co-authors.

Featuring:

Morgan Phillips is UK co-director of the Glacier Trust, head of insight at Global Action Plan, and author of “Great Adaptations: In the Shadow of a Climate Crisis” (UK)

Carol Manetta is Executive Director of Reap Goodness (USA)

Ashish Kothari is the founder-member of Kalpavriksh, co-coordinator of Vikalp Sangam, and a co-editor/author of several books including “Churning the Earth” and Pluriverse: A Post- Development Dictionary (India)

Episode credits:

Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn

Series producer: Robert Raymond

Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

The Response from Shareable.net, is a documentary film, book, and podcast series exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters.

Let us know what you think of the show: info@shareable.net

In the first episode of our second season, The Response travels to Mexico City and puts the focus on the 2017 Puebla Earthquake — a magnitude 7.1 quake that toppled over forty buildings, caused over 350 deaths, and injured thousands. Specifically, we explore the significance of information flows by telling the story of a very unique initiative that arose in the wake of the earthquake.

In the aftermath of a disaster, information can mean the difference between life and death. After the earthquake hit in Mexico City, it wasn’t just buildings that collapsed, the normal lines of communication that connect the city did as well. It was in this dangerous state of confusion and chaos that a group of friends using WhatsApp to share information ended up creating what later became known as Verificado19s, a spontaneous, grassroots initiative that consisted of a vast network of volunteers that traveled throughout the city to gather and verify information. 

A groundswell of grassroots action emerged in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. At first, hidden beneath the surface, the community-led response grew rapidly in scope and scale; often forming spontaneously by individuals and groups who recognized the immediate needs of those around them.

It’s become such a widespread trend that the term “mutual aid” has increasingly become mainstream as local newspapers, CNN, and even Teen Vogue have published stories about it.

The glaring lack of leadership by some authorities put the burden of crisis response on ordinary people — and they’re continuing to rise to the challenge.

Community organizers have formed thousands of mutual aid groups, makers are developing open-source medical equipment, restaurants are serving free meals to front-line medical workers, and much, much more.

As the daily case count is rising once again, now is the time to take stock of everything we’ve learned from dealing with the pandemic over the past year.

To aid in that task, we’ve pulled together the best of our recent reporting into a new book.

Today we're pleased to release “Lessons from the First Wave: Resilience in the Age of COVID-19.”

The free book features 25 case studies, interviews, and how-to guides that showcase some of the most effective community-led responses to this global crisis.

Topics include: 

• Ways to share during the pandemicNavigating multiple disasters during the pandemic
• Community wealth building
• The many ways libraries have stepped up to serve their communities (and how yours can too)
• Fostering community connection to reduce loneliness
• How to start a local mutual aid network (and a mutual aid fund too)
• And much more!

On this episode of The Response we’ve brought on Joey Ayoub, a Geneva-based writer, researcher, activist, and host of The Fire These Times podcast, which asks the questions: How do we build the new in the shell of the old? How do we tackle global warming and its associated crises? How do we build bonds across nation-states and groups? How do we make it easier to imagine the end of capitalism than the end of the world?

Resources:

• The Fire These Times on Patreon and Substack.

Episode credits:

• Host, producer, and editor: Robert Raymond
• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Make sure to follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net.

Last weekend, mutual aid organizers from all over the world gathered together for the Solidarity Summit. Hosted by Humans United for Mutual Aid Networks (or HUMANS), the virtual event took place in order to build skills, relationships, and momentum while benefiting local work.

During the Summit, we co-hosted a 2-part session which began with a screening of “The Response: How Puerto Ricans Are Restoring Power to the People” before transitioning into a live recording of The Response Podcast. 

Today we’re bringing you the audio from that event which featured several organizers from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (or MAD Relief), a grassroots disaster relief network based on the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and autonomous direct action. 

Rather than focussing on the nitty-gritty, of how MAD Relief is successfully organizing with a non-hierarchical decentralized structure, this conversation illustrated 4 of the many stories of what the work actually looks like on the ground. 

Featured Speakers:

• Rain: co-founder/co-coordinator of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief focused on sustainable disaster response and rebuilding – Louisiana (transplanted from Florida) mostly responding to events in the Gulf South/SE states
• Vanessa Bolin: Richmond Indigenous Society, Community Roots Garden, madr, and The Eyes Wide Open Project – Occupied Virginia on traditional Pamunky Territory 
• Siren Saricca: founder of the Michigan mutual aid coalition, a service that delivers groceries to seniors – Detroit MI
• Tyler Norman (co-host): mutual aid disaster relief – Wisconsin 

Episode credits:

• Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn
• Series producer: Robert Raymond
• Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

The Response from Shareable.net, is a documentary film, book, and podcast series exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters.

Find out more information about Mutual Aid Disaster Relief at mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/

Check out the work of Humans United for Mutual Aid Networks by visiting mutualaidnetwork.org

On this episode of The Response, we're joined by Arvind Dilawar, an independent journalist who has recently written a piece for Shareable about the union supplying Palestinian journalists with safety gear amid the ongoing Israeli genocide.

His articles, interviews, and essays on everything from the spacesuits of the future to love in the time of visas have appeared in The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Daily Beast, and elsewhere. He was also formerly a columnist at Pacific Standard.

In the following conversation, Arvind illuminates the dire situation in Gaza and the challenges journalists face amid the turmoil. Arvind reports back on his conversations with journalists on the ground in the West Bank and shares the story of the protective equipment library that has been set up by the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate (PJS) to provide journalists with the essential tools they need.

Arvind also highlights how journalists face increasing repression for covering Palestine, both in the US and abroad, and the impact of media censorship and biased narratives on the perception of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, particularly among Western outlets. Join us as we uncover the crucial role of independent journalism in times of crisis and how we can collectively support those documenting the reality of the frontlines.

Resources:

• Life-Saving lending library: Union supplies Palestinian journalists with safety gear amid ongoing Israeli genocide
• If you would like to support journalists in Gaza so that they can continue their work, please make a contribution to the IFJ’s International Safety Fund with the comment “For the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.”

Episode credits:

• Co-hosted and executive produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Co-hosted, produced, and edited by Paige Kelly
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing episodes from BUT NEXT TIME, a limited-run podcast that spotlights powerful stories of community-led disaster prevention and recovery. 

Sounds familiar, right? 

BUT NEXT TIME answers one vital question: how can we ensure that next time will be different?

On today’s show, we’re featuring a conversation I had with BUT NEXT TIME co-hosts Chrishelle Palay & Rose Arrieta and senior producer Leah Mahan to get a better understanding of why they produced this series, their storytelling process, and what they’re hoping listeners will take away from it.

Starting next week, we’ll be sharing full episodes of their show.

The Response is an award-winning documentary film, book, and podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters with host Tom Llewellyn. 

Episode credits:

Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn

Series producer: Robert Raymond

Theme Music: “Meet you on the other side” by Cultivate Beats

Let us know what you think of the show: info@shareable.net

Today on the show we’ve brought on Lee Shevek, an anarchist, writer, and domestic violence researcher.

Pride Month is just around the corner and we thought it would be a good time to take a deep dive into the reactionary politics side of this show — namely, the attacks from the right wing and from the state against our transgender comrades.

States like Texas, Florida, and Missouri are on the frontlines of this politicized aggression, which is being waged by the forces of right-wing reaction, but is often accomplished with the complicity, and sometimes even with the approval, from more liberal-leaning state and media institutions.

In this episode, we investigate the state of anti-trans and transphobic reaction in the United States more broadly and explore how trans communities and their allies are responding.We also get into what anarchism teaches us about these struggles — specifically, what we can learn from this political philosophy about trans issues and gender issues more broadly, and why it’s more important than ever for anarchists and those on the left to support trans people in their struggle for liberation from reactionary forces.

Resources:

• Lee Shevek's writing on Medium (Butch Anarchy)
• Lee Shevek on Twitter and Instagram

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in extending our reach and broadening our audience.

The Response is published by Shareable.