To Share or Not to Share? Dilemmas of Collective Action in a “Me-First” Society

I had spoken about the water arrangement before, (in the post The Tragedy of The Western Society on the Commons), in how as soon as we got here we reverted back to the privatization, choosing to have the majority of our individual allotments of water given to the individual instead of into the communal pot, which would cause us to have to share more. Well, at this point each of us had thirty gallons racked up in our individual storage.  We had done such a good job at conserving we were going to be able to stay longer, but the large individual allotments meant we would potentially run out of the communal water but not individual water. I decided to try to bring up the idea of going back to 2 gallons of water for communal and two gallons of individual water. I knew it was a gamble because last time I brought it up, emotions ran high and I felt that people were upset with me. But I thought it was important to address because it felt even more significant in the larger context. The World and especially the States, failed to agree upon global binding commitments of reducing their pollution/consumption, largely in part because the rich, white, powerful men of the world did not want to share with the rest of the world. Here was our chance as a group of 8 women, half of us from either other countries or races other than white, and many of us queer, to show how it could be different. Or so I thought…

It was more difficult than I thought, adding to the pressure was the fact that the day prior, one of our comrades had gotten mild heat stroke and had to go to town for help and still was not present with us the next day. First, I suggested that we move to the 2/2 allotment putting equal to ourselves and the commons, but then someone brought up that really the issue was storage, that some people (like myself) were sitting on over fifty gallons. Uncontrollably, I blurted out my first immediate thought, “hey that’s not fair to the people who have been saving more than others”. At that point, I had taken only two showers three weeks in, while people who didn’t have a lot in storage were taking showers every three days. “Everyone doesn’t lose equally with that proposal”. What I didn’t realize was this was again another example of us replicating a societal issue, as in terms of water I was the richest person there and I didn’t want a “tax” that would take from richest. Reflecting on this was surprising, I spent my teenage years fighting for a tax on the rich, how come when it affected me I had a visceral reaction? I too felt like I “earned” this water surplus, that I “worked hard for these 50 gallons” not recognizing we didn’t all have the same water needs.  Then someone brought up, how about we erase the storage completely and go to 2/2 allotment, this one I agreed with. However, the group still had an uneasiness about that proposal, so I suggested that we keep ten gallons in storage and move to 2/2 allotment. With only five days left of our proposed month stay, ten gallons in storage would allow us to technically have four gallons in the personal allotment and two in communal every day. What was crazy to me was that this still was not a motivator for the majority of the group. We voted on this proposal, four said yes, four said no. We never talked about ties and what we would do in that situation, so in political terms, I guess you could say the “proposal died on the floor”. I didn’t have the energy to bring it back up, I could already tell I was pissing people off and did not want to use up the rest of my social capital in the last week so I let it go.

What was interesting to me though was that the last proposal I had suggested would have given people actually more gallons per day technically, but that was still not enough to motivate people to share. What this told me was that the issue was not really having enough water but having control over your own personal water. Perhaps, it was a thing about people not liking change and that we only had a few days left, all valid points. But I would argue the situation on this planet in the current trajectory means we do not have a lot of time left either unless we all change. At first I was really disappointed, but after talking to a friend, he kind of convinced me that maybe what this shows is that if the proposal to share water is disconcerting for eight politically “woke” and socially conscious women, maybe preventing the forced need to share can be a motivator for people to change their behavior. I guess what I am saying I learned is that it is easier to change individual behavior then cultural norms, like it may be easier to get people to save their greywater then it would be to get people to share their water with their community.

He Came To Drain the Swamp but instead, He Drained the Aquifers

 

Some of you have been wondering how exactly we got to this point – exiled within this country with no legal access to potable water. Some part of the story can be traced back to our neighbors here in the Mojave – Cadiz, Inc.

If you remember, it really felt like the end of the world after Trump got elected. At first, most Americans acted in a rational way, mass mobilization as a response. But after awhile, people got desensitized; they stopped showing up and they stopped paying attention. Circumstances gradually got worse in many sectors, especially regarding environmental stewardship, but as people adjusted to “the new normal” the decline was able to happen without protest or mass response.

A pivotal point in this downslide can be traced back to the Cadiz aquifer system. For ten years prior to the 2016 election, the federal government acted rationally to protect desert water resources – continuing turn down the prospective water scheme (which claimed ownership over an ancient aquifer in the Mojave desert proposing to redirect it with many miles of pipeline in order to supply Southern California’s insatiable thirst). The Cadiz, Inc. project set a number of precedents including the beginning of the privatization of water, as a claim was made that the “owner” of the water was a private company called Cadiz, Inc. who bought land above the aquifer. They would, in turn, sell this water to a public Metropolitan Water District in Orange County, CA. SoCal’s increasing population, development, and overconsumption even during years of drought left it operating in a state of scarcity indefinitely, looking for new water sources to fill swimming pools and keep lawns and golf courses green.

The Cadiz, Inc. project required an investment of over $150 million dollars to build a 43-mile underground pipe from the Cadiz aquifer in the Mojave desert to the Colorado Aqueduct, after which it will merge with water headed to the coastal cities. Cadiz had no prior experience building infrastructure yet was contracted to build this underground piping that would supply entire municipalities. The founder of Cadiz was a British man named Keith Brackpool “who came to the U.S. after pleading guilty to criminal charges relating to securities trading in Britain”.  However, Brackpool had friends in high places that allowed this horrible plan to continue even after scientists and locals organized to stop it; namely the former Governor of California, Gray Davis, people on the California Public Utilities Commission and even the Secretary of the Interior.

As scientists had been arguing for years, the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery, and Storage Project was not ecologically feasible. They started drawing 50,000 acre-feet a year (equivalent to ~16.25 billion gallons a year or put in another way Cadiz pumped “enough water from the desert to fill the Rose Bowl to the brim, and then drain it all away, 194 times a year”. However, USGS stated that Cadiz had overestimated the aquifer’s recharge capacity (how quickly the water fills back up the aquifer) by 15x. Instead of the supposed 32,000 acre-feet a year rate Cadiz claimed was safely available to extract through regular recharge; the recharge rate was closer to 5,000 acre-feet a year. If the science had been able to be presented and taken seriously – the project never would have passed an environmental review.

This then became the lynchpin of the project, for those who were against it, all they needed to do was get the government to conduct a thorough environmental impact review (EIR) of the project and that would be the death of this nonsensical boondoggle. Under President Obama, and with the support of CA Senator Dianne Feinstein, it seemed like this project was killed off, but as soon as Trump got into office he accelerated this project to number 15 on his list of 50 national infrastructure investment priorities. The project’s fate, and the fate of this fragile desert ecosystem was sealed. When one of Cadiz’s CEO’s former employees became nominated as Deputy Secretary of the Interior, it further demonstrated the power of political influence, as the Deputy stripped California BLM of its authority, allowing BLM administrators in Washington DC to wave away all regulations and environmental review, green lighting our current disastrous state.

Immediately, the project relocated enough water to supply 100,000 houses or 400,000 people, allowing Southern Californians to continue to grow past their means; developing larger cities in a land that could not sustainably supply more people with water and that would be threatened as soon as this water source dried up. As was suspected, which is why the Council for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit, within a few years we started seeing damages to the Mojave Desert ecosystem. The pools of water Cadiz, Inc. had categorized as “wasteful”, were islands of oasis for migratory birds, reptiles, raptors, and Bighorn sheep. When these dried up, so did these desert populations that relied on them. Sacred Native American sites like the Old Women Mountains were also severely and irreversibly damaged by the draining of the aquifer system. Most immediately apparent was the desiccation of the Bonanza Spring, which “fed a half-mile corridor with towering willows and cottonwoods”. This spring was supporting much of the desert wildlife, so when it dried up vegetation and animals perished. As had been suspected but not confirmed, Bonanza Spring, a spring that had existed for hundreds of years, even before they started keeping records, was fed through the aquifer as well. The saddest part is once this ancient spring dried up there was no going back, “Once a spring dries up, the hydrological connectivity is broken, the soils deflate and the spring cannot be re-established” (Anderson, 2017). But this was just the tip of the iceberg.

Once this project had been approved it set the precedent that water underneath private property belonged to the surface property owner, allowing corporations to privatize a natural resource – making quick millions while killing off the regional ecosystems that have developed and been stewarded for millennia. As the Mojave desert dried up, the Joshua Tree communities began to be affected. Though the majority of aquifers they relied on were in Joshua Tree National Park, after two years of Trump’s military-heavy and ecologically light budget, the USA was in the type of debt that banks didn’t want to loan to and the price of the dollar fell sharply. Desperate, Trump did what any cutthroat capitalist would do: privatize government to “balance the budget” while still ignoring that 75% of the budget was spent on the military for guns and bombs. Schools, prisons, post offices, and parks were a few of the many things that became privatized. When the National Parks went up for bid to private corporations it was mining and water companies that bid highest to get at the minerals and other natural resources that were being conserved by the Parks. This blew open the floodgates, creating an open season for drilling, mining and exploiting the planet. The aquifers under the Joshua Tree National Park were some of the first to vanish, since, without increased conservation efforts, coastal Southern California was insatiably thirsty.

With groundwater depletion now the order of the day, ecological chaos ensued, ecosystems crashed and the flora and fauna that had once brought over 2 million visitors to Joshua Tree National Park were devastated, their populations falling below recovery.  Even worse is that the aquifers in the San Andreas fault that dried increased the plate tectonic activity and the risk of earthquakes. Thus we find ourselves in this spreading state of financial, ecological and physical instability.

In just a few years, the actions of a greedy government and short-term profiteers, which ignored the ecological wisdom of the scientists and Native people, had ruined the desert ecosystems and communities of Southern California.

Now what will we do?

 

Editor’s Note:

This is science-based fiction, all the facts presented here are real and the outcomes of the future though have not happened yet are plausible realities based on these facts presented and the trajectory we are on. The facts come from credible sources (that are linked directly in the article) as well as interviews with the following experts: lleene Anderson, Senior Scientist/Public Lands Deserts Director at Center for Biological Diversity, and officers of the scientific resource division in Joshua Tree National Park, whose names will not appear as the new Federal government doesn’t allow them to talk about climate change with the public.

Deepening the Inequalities

I have stumbled upon a café in walking distance from where we are staying. Water costs $10 a bottle and gas is $20 a gallon, so I can’t afford anything inside.  I went inside because there was AC, but the person at the resister was not about to let me stay inside first because I could not afford anything at the store. It was 111 degrees outside but he said to buy something or leave. Desperate I offered to barter with him, I said I could help since only one person works at a time. He accepted and I have now access to AC in exchange for stocking the gas station, manning the register and pumping gas, I even helped them repaint their sign. It is not a bad gig and the four workers have really opened up to me, sometimes when they are in a good mood they even let me eat the tasty snacks that I have not had access to since I got here.

However, I am lucky they must have seen something in me to allow me to stay, they have not been as friendly to other poor people. This one man that was some sort of traveler, but was traveling on foot in 110-degree weather, came inside to get water. There is no running water in the café, so the only water available is $10 a bottle. He could not afford the $10 water, yet when he came in he already looked so thirsty and beat red from the heat, they told him to get out.  This is the type of heartless individualistic behavior the society has fallen into. I felt so bad I spared some of my rationed water with him, it was not enough to get him across the desert on foot but hopefully, it could hold him over for at least another day.

Tourists, mostly from Europe, all of them from the Global North tour on motorcycles and tour buses on Route 66, stopping by the cafe. These rich white people have so much excess wealth they act like we are not in the middle of a drought, they seem to be completely detached from the rest of the world, which is suffering from a global freshwater shortage. They prance in this wretched parched place like it is not an unbearable unhospitable desert, I guess with unlimited resources to spend on gas and water, it is not to them. It is clear they all feel that the world is their oyster, after all, why else would you travel across the world to see a desert that has run out of water? Their voyeuristic behavior was sickening to me, they take pictures of the lack of running water and the state of desolateness that the end of freshwater brought us. Almost all of them buy multiple water bottles all priced at $10 a bottle, it doesn’t seem to faze them when I ring them up at the register for over $100 in water alone, most of them just slide their cards full of endless cash without evening waiting for the total.

These rich kids who waste water (I find myself collecting their water bottles since they leave a swig in each) are only a product of the system they were raised in, it is this system I wanted to touch on. The system of colonization facilitated the Global North coming into the Global South and stealing their resources. These resources, most of them minerals and fossil fuels, were used to build up the Global North in what they called “development”, as if the countries in the Global South who were robbed of their resources to industrialize, were like children and “undeveloped”.  Now, these stolen resources are coming back to the Global South from the North, in the shape of climate change to kill us first. Why is it that we in the Global South, who are least responsible for climate change are most affected by the Global North’s behavior? Because of the Global North’s development, they have the infrastructure that protects them and allows them to adapt and mitigate climate change. But in the Global South, we never saw reparations for colonization or climate change, so we are left defenseless and deserted in our own homeland. 1/3 of us including myself were displaced, there is just simply not enough resources left in our own countries to survive, but the Global North doesn’t care. The Global North is happy to see us wither and rot away in our own countries as they build walls and change laws to make sure that we will won’t have sanctuary in their countries even though they owe it to us for ruining our own countries.

So I can’t help but feel a bit jaded when these European tourists come in and spend 100s of dollars of water and gas like money doesn’t matter. Their money probably came from minerals or land that they took from my country or another country in the Global South, and I am sitting here displaced from my country, my existence made illegal and my family having been scattered across the world in search of water.  Climate change is a product of colonization, globalization, and capitalism, and as such it has worsened inequalities along the lines of the societal hierarchies these systems created (race, nation-state, gender, class). Solutions that are meant to address climate change that fails to address these systems will only continue to perpetuate the caste systems they created.

Effects of a Linear Economic System on a Finite Planet

 

Under the capitalist system, we measure progress through the accumulation of capital. Be it land, money or resources, they all come from the planet, a finite resource. This economic system and mode of production are linear. A linear economic system is a ‘take, make, dispose’ model of production. After the product is consumed, it simply accumulates and collects.

 

This means we create materials out of the earth and consume them, using the planet up until it is useless to us. Most products have to be replaced every one to five years, and once the product is broken or no longer useful to us, it gets thrown into a landfill, this repeats creating endless wastelands globally.

If we are ever going to get out of this mess, at the very least we need a closed loop economic system. The products that we make need to be reused again and our economic system needs to admit that the planet is finite. At the very least, our climate treaties should admit that even infinite “green” growth in the market is not possible on a finite planet, the Paris Climate Accord failed to mention any limits to growth.

Water Is Life

 

Today is the sixth anniversary of when Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord sealing the fate of living in our current world of climate change, catastrophe, and covfefe. We should have seen it coming when it was not even enough of a repercussion for the US to lose Germany as their ally, the USA continued to behave roguishly, acting as a bad neighbor to the rest of the world.

Even before this there were signs we did not value the commons we shared of clean water or air. In 2016, First Nations people of Standing Rock joined by what grew to be thousands of Indigenous people and allies from across the world came together to protest the Dakota Access pipeline. After the military attacked the civilians, they pushed the pipeline through without a proper environmental review. This would be a hallmark of the Trump administration, doing away with environmental reviews so we could not even be prepared for the disaster to come. The Dakota Access Pipeline would be built under the Missouri River, which later connects to the Mississippi river, together they make the third largest river system in the world. Trump called for “open season” for the oil and gas industry in America, unleashing the consequences we struggle with today. One of the worst was in North Dakota, after the Sioux people tried to warn us when they put their bodies on the line at Standing Rock. The Bakken oil fields that were getting fracked in North Dakota caused small earthquakes, affecting the river bed in Missouri cracking the Dakota Access pipeline, which laid underground. It was a slow leak and it flowed underground to the Missipissi river and the many tributaries connected to the Missouri river, poisoning Middle America’s water supply. This left  17 million people without water. The Mid West, the area of America largely responsible for electing Trump, so afraid of letting refugees in, were made refugees in their own country. Massive displacement and unemployment ripped through the middle of America, as farmers could no longer keep up the bread belt of America, once its fresh source of water was compromised.

This could have been avoided, if we had listened to the indigenous people when they spoke the wisdom that “water is life” as they were attacked by dogs and shot with water cannons in freezing temperatures. In Trump’s speech explaining why he pulled out of the Paris Climate Treaty, he said he didn’t want to “disadvantage” Americans (ironically the most advantaged people in the world). So instead of “disadvantaging” Americans with clean air and water, he rubber-stamped the oil and gas projects that took away Americans clean water supply. On this day, we reflect on what could have been if we had listened at Standing Rock and held ourselves accountable to the Paris Climate Accord. Alas, we went the wrong way.

Is Anarchy the Answer?

 

Anarchy is a very misunderstood concept, much of that has to do with the way it is often played out in America, this libertarian style every man for himself and people can do whatever they want type of chaos that is often associated with anarchy. However, it functions much different outside of the USA, for example in Spain there are cooperatives using an anarchist style of leadership or in Mexico with the Zapatistas, an indigenous group self-organizing themselves for survival.  Anarchy really boils down to not having hierarchies, it is about rules coming from within, it is about self-governance, self-organizing and non-hierarchal leadership. It is essentially the system we have created here at Drylab, with no leaders and a push for consensus in decision making.

Yesterday we had a conversation with the group about the hierarchies that emerged from amongst us, the divisions were pretty natural, those that were older, had more experience with the area started taking charge and having more influence over decision making. It is nothing different than what naturally arises in society. However, we all agreed we did not want to have ascribed leaders or hierarchies and that we would work to prevent them, and though many of us were unaware at the time we were subscribing to the core anarchist principles, no hierarchies or leaders.

Hierarchy naturally exists in nature, we see it in plant communities with dominating plant species that shape the ecosystem (ex: Douglas Tree forests) and in the animal communities (ex: wolf packs) However, the same argument can be made for nonhierarchal leadership such as flocks of birds and bacteria, so both systems are natural. We the “New Agers”, the people of this generation seem to be naturally inclined towards nonhierarchal method of organizing. From Arab Spring to Occupy Wall St, and then Black Lives Matter, worldwide we see this style of organizing, of direct democracy with no leaders, where the people come together, it is the zeitgeist of the age. But as with the movements named, this style of organizing tends to fizzle out, although State suppression is often the cause, accountability also plays a factor. To bring it back to our own experience at Drylab, the artists desire for no structure but then we find the same few people stepping up to do dishes or cook. I am not even sure how we can make sure everyone does the dishes or cooks the same amount of times, when there is no schedule to make sure a different person does it each day. Is this a limitation due to my scientific training or evidence that some amount of structure is needed? I have yet to figure that out.

The other issue that arises, and that has before in other non-hierarchal leadership models I have been apart of, it takes a lot of time. If there are no leaders or rather everyone is a leader, everyone makes decisions. When we first arrived at Drylab, we attempted this model, every hour there was a question that required the whole group to come together to discuss how we should move forward. Of course, this was because we had just arrived and hadn’t set any protocols or made any agreements. Eventually, we decided to let each person take leadership on projects/roles they were interested in, giving them the agency to decide for themselves and then consult the group if needed. This has worked well.

However, not everyone has the same amount of time, capacity or patience to contribute to self-organizing. Some people are more naturally inclined to like to take leadership, while others pull back because decision making brings them stress. Perhaps the issue is that we are attempting to push for equality when equity is needed. Equality calls for everyone to be the same, equity recognizes not everyone is cut from the same cloth so we all need different things/amounts to get us to equality. Equality erases diversity and differences, equity accounts for them to create an equal situation. But what does that mean in terms of decision making? Do the people who do more work, get to have more say? For example, shouldn’t the person who is cooking get to decide what goes on the grocery list? If I am the one who must pump out water for the village, shouldn’t I be more influential in the decision making of when it gets pumped since I am required to be present?  And what happens when one person is doing the majority of the work on a project, but when decision making comes up, all the absentees in the workforce come to make decisions? How do we address free riders who want to decide what gets to happen but not do any of the work to make it happen? This has yet to be a problem at Drylab, but these are the complications that arise with this model. Though I am still committed to non-hierarchal organizing, issues around accountability are the largest issue I struggle with, one that I hope to learn more about by doing collective action with these women.

Earthship Construction with Alternative Soil-Building Methods

 

Today we started making the earthship side of the outhouse. We filled as many bottles as we could with plastic bags and sand from the ground.  This actually took the longest and required help from the whole group of eight of us to fill bottles for days. Earthships traditionally use cement but we wanted to use something greener since cement creation creates so much pollution. We wanted a sustainable material we could source locally. BCC: taught us how to make a type of building material made from sand and clay we found in the desert. The method she used was a hybrid between rammed earth, which uses more pressure and less clay and water, and Adobe which uses less pressure but more clay and water. Rammed earth would use 70% sand and 30% clay, where Adobe would use all clay and lots of water. Our sand was very dry so we decided to use about 50% clay and 50% sand.

We sourced the sand and clay locally, in order to find out the right type of material we tested it using a sedimentation test. We reused an old honey jar filling it up with half of the dirt we wanted to test it with. We filled the other half with water, shook it for a minute and then let it settle. The different layers of the soil will settle based on weight after a few hours (works best if you leave it for 12 hours but if the sand is heavier that is not necessary). Based on how the dirt settled tells you what type it is. The clay will sit on the top and then silt and then an organic layer (if there is one), soil, sand and then gravel.

Based off this we used sand and clay to make the building material. We split the sand and clay 50/50, and added only a little water so it was damp, not wet. To tell if the soil is at a good amount of moisture, we squeezed it together and saw if it held. We layered the plastic water bottles using the bottles like bricks with the earth like cement. We started with a layer of earth on the ground and built it up, laying the plastic bottles on top of each other with earth in between. Then we used a mallet to press the earth between the bottles, this had to be gently but firmly since because we used old plastic bottles they were brittle from being out in the sun and could crack. Also, the gentle part cannot be stressed enough, the first time we finished I was pressing it too hard and not putting enough earth between each one, and my whole side collapsed and we had to start over on that side! We also found that it helps if you only do a row or two at a time and let it dry in between. The wet earth doesn’t hold very well until it dries.

It was super awesome to be able to source this project completely out of manmade and natural materials found in the desert. It felt like it was a way of stepping lightly on the land we are living on.

 

The Tragedy of Western Society on the Commons

5/25/23

When we had arrived, we learned about Elinor Ostrom’s work from Severin, he even left us with a poster of her design principles. Ostrom was a scholar who did research on common pool resources like fisheries, pastures and more relevant to us, water. The standard doctrine of managing common pool resources was that either the State needed to come in and regulate it or you introduce the market and you privatize everything. There was even this famous parable that taught about the tragedy of the commons would arise if people were left to their own devices, everyone would just use up all the resources, and they claimed the only way to stop this was through government intervention or privatization. This the issue we have run into in 2023, when access to water, which is a human right, becomes privatized and only given to the highest bidders. Adding privatization to the water crisis, created more misuse not less, with the richest people hoarding water increasing the scarcity of the common pool resource. However, Ostrom argued that market based “solutions” or government intervention was not the only way. She argued that if people were allowed to organize themselves on the ground, they could actually come up with better management strategies then the market or state could. She observed this in many countries across the world, through her examples were mostly in the Global South. Her observations led her to come up with the 10 design principles, which were basically the patterns that she found in all successful cases of self-organization of resources. Her work was quite influential and ended up winning her a Nobel prize in economics for disproving the tragedy of the commons.

I, however, am not convinced these principles can work in the Global North or any Western society. In the Global South, our culture is different, people take care of each other and look out for one another. In the village, every neighbor knows each other’s name but in apartment complexes in the West, people share walls and do not even know each other’s name! Just about all common pool resources in the United States are managed by the government, even issues that in other countries that are addressed on a village scale are taken all the way up to courts to manage, take for example California’s groundwater (more to come on this tomorrow). But it is not just an issue of lack of familiarity, rather it is an issue of culture. Western society socializes people to be cut throat and competitive, it rewards individualistic behavior. All of the most “successful” business people have backstabbed their partners to get to the top (Ex: Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple). This is the type of behavior our society rewards. It is not just that we don’t know how to work together anymore, it is also that we do not trust each other. We have been abused by our peers so much we can’t turn our backs on each other.  It is not that I am blaming individuals but rather pointing out the sick society that we are all a product of.

Which brings me to the group I am living with here, where we are managing a variety of common pool resources, but I will focus on water. It is funny how no matter how small a group is we create microcosms of society. For example, though no official leaders and no men, the people who take charge and come up with the most decisions are either the older ones or more masculine and/or dominant ones, just like society. This is just one example, but here is another.  Originally, the plan was to do two gallons of communal water and two gallons of individual water, and out of the communal water we would take showers, wash ourselves and our clothes. However, on the first day, we immediately reverted back to what we know, the privatization model, changing it so that we got three gallons of water individually, and one gallon communally. This way showers and laundry would come out of your own budget not communal, communal was reserved for cooking and washing dishes. At first, I did not recognize what we had just done there, but then we started running out of communal water. Realizing that we needed to share better, especially when we are racking up between ten to twenty gallons in our water storage bank, I suggested we go back to the original model. There was a lot of resistance to this, people offered to make a one-time donation of a few gallons to the communal pot to create communal ice, but they did not want to regularly donate to the communal pot. This reminded me of the USA’s failing healthcare system, which crashed because no one wanted to donate regularly to the communal pot of health insurance to make sure everyone is okay, instead they would rather just take care of themselves. I do not blame these women for reverting back to how they have been socialized, they probably did this for their own protection, because it is the nice people who get used and abused in this society. This is what their Western society taught them, that everyone must behave in the “me first” fashion to make it in this country, this is why the country ran out of water because no one wanted to share and why we have no communal water left to do dishes with.

Turning Waste Into Food

5/24/23

It was another 110-degree day and no magic shower from the water tower came down so we stayed inside. We wanted to go grocery shopping but it was just too hot so we decided to try to see what we could make and barter for food with, with the passerbys at the nearest post.

I started looking at what we could make with the trash we are producing and trash left littered across the desert. The most abundant types of litter are plastic bags and plastic water bottles so we found a way to weave the plastic bags, creating plarn (plastic bag yarn), and melt the plastic water bottles into beads. The process was long and tenuous, melting the plastic bottles caused fumes so we had to go outside and face the 110-degree heat. I was not too excited about that. However, we managed to make a lot of art to barter with.

As luck would have it, we struck a deal with three travelers passing by, managing to barter our art for all sorts of food that we have not had access to since we got here, including cheese, smoked salmon, chocolate, and coffee! I only partook in the cheese and salmon, though I ended up paying for it later, getting stomach aches from the processed food. Here we are feeling like we are missing out on something but in reality, the food we can’t get out here is the food we should avoid anyways to stay healthy…Well some of it, I really miss mangos, coconuts, and avocados.

The Great Green Waste

 

5/23/23

Today was really hard, it hit 108 degrees and we all struggled to survive with two weak AC units in the trailer between the eight of us and a limited quantity of ice.  We are going to have to get used to this because with climate change, the new normal is around 120 F degrees for the summer. What was worse was we tried exploring the Mojave desert today, and we got to about the sand dunes and started collapsing, some people made it to the top of the dunes but most of us only got to the base. The amount of energy it expended to move our feet in the sand was incredible, we all got weak and tired quickly. As we continued to explore we stumbled upon a government building, it was closed for the day but it looked like it still operated. It appeared to be a train station or some sort of post. What was most notable was the grass, the grass was not only green, but it had been watered, and there were trees over the grass providing shade.

We immediately flocked to the grass wanting to bask in its cooling effect. The combined effect of the shade from the trees and the wet grass brought the temperature a net ten degrees cooler. I, however, was not impressed by this grass, which was clearly a display of the power and privilege over us all by the government. We are living in a town that was abandoned because of the lack of drinking water, we have been put on a strict ration of four gallons of water a day, people around the world are dying from the lack of water and this government thinks it’s okay to waste probably 100 gallons a week if not more on some grass! It was this wasteful behavior that got us in this problem, and this green grass in the desert doesn’t just happen by wasting water, you have to add all sorts of chemicals to keep it alive. There are the pesticides to kill the weeds, the emissions burned to keep the grass cut, and then the fertilizer (more fossil fuel products) to keep it unnaturally green, all for this unnatural man made product called lawns. But the rest of our group loved it, even I enjoyed the shade and feel asleep on the grass. Still, lawns make me mad, they are such a sign of Western privilege, having the ability to waste resources to keep something alive that is unnecessary and the worst part is the really rich people do not even sit on their lawns they just make it green for people to stare at, but then they tell you not to step on the lawn as they waste water that could be used to feed my people back home. I understand the cooling effect lawns have the ability to create, I still do not think it’s worth the lawnmowing emissions, fertilizers and pesticides it takes to create this facade of an oasis in the desert, when humans probably shouldn’t be living here in the first place.

When we got back to our place I was exhausted, the heat made me lethargic and weak, I could not even do anything. I retreated to my room and tried to rig up an old AC unit we found, it sucked so much power it turned off everyone else’s fan so that did not work either. Exhausted and out of ideas, I fell back into my bed and sat there too tired to even swat the flies that landed on me. I fell asleep but kept waking up because it was so hot and stuffy, at one point I took one of the limited pieces of ice and rubbed it all over me and then tried to go back to bed. It was awful. I was too hot, tired and weak to move, I couldn’t even get out of the bed for lunch, I was not even hungry until 8:30pm again when the sun went back down.  I am not sure this place was ever made for people to live in. Indigenous people like the Mojave people may have found ways to survive in the desert without water, but Western society should never have been permitted to live in the desert. Not when they want to bring their lawns and pools with them.