thenation--2020-04-22--How Poetry Can Bear Witness to Crisis and Revolution

In poet Carolyn Forché ’ s memoir of her multiple trips to El Salvador in the late 1970s and early ’ 80s , What You Have Heard Is True , which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2019 , she quotes 18th century Spanish painter Francisco Goya ’ s “ Yo lo vi ” ( I saw it ) , which accompanies his series of sketches “ The Disasters of War.
” The quote is a neat encapsulation of Forché ’ s oeuvre as a poet , anthologist , memoirist , and witness to political revolution and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Forché writes , “ and this , and also this.
” It ’ s what she ’ s been writing in her poetry ( the title of the memoir comes from the first line of her famous poem “ The Colonel ” ) since the 1970s .
Her poetry not only is sometimes hauntingly beautiful but also can be painful , pointing out to the world a moment of oppression or violence .
She has written of the “ consequences ” of poems , of poems “ as trace , poem as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they point to something—imperceptible nuance or the psychic toll of indescribable suffering—we haven ’ t seen or can barely believe.1 Forché ’ s most lauded early works were inspired by her travel to pre–civil war El Salvador , where she bore witness to violence , atrocity , and fear : Broken bottles embedded in walls to “ scoop the kneecaps from a man ’ s legs or cut his hands to lace.
” After returning to the United States , she wrote up evidence of what she witnessed and toured the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interventionism .
( At some points in the 1980s , US aid to El Salvador—most of it destined for ruthless and murderous armed forces—was over a million dollars a day . )
In later poems she continued exploring the same themes of oppression and violence , from Lebanon to the Holocaust to the atomic bomb .
As an anthologist , she developed the concept of poetry as witness , or poetry in extremis , collecting international poets ’ work responding to the 20th century ’ s many unprecedented upheavals , starting with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ War .
She expanded that collection with another anthology , exploring English language poetry of witness from 1500 to 2001.2 Now in Forché ’ s latest book of poems—her first in 17 years—In the Lateness of the World , the “ it ” she has seen seems to have expanded beyond singular events and moments .
Her new poems are more reflective and broader in scope , as if she has gained a higher vantage point .
The poems seem elegies less of individual moments than of life itself.3 Forché wrote the memoir @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and they tug and lean on each other .
“ Part of my soul went into my memoir , and another part went into the poetry book , ” she told me .
“ In the memoir , I was reliving a past self .
I was inhabiting the woman I once was .
In the poetry book , I ’ m the woman I am now.
” In the nearly two decades it took to produce both works , she survived cancer—an experience she has called “ terrifying and illuminating.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as they explore landscapes of migrations and mourning and the creation of tenuous spaces of refuge throughout the world .
And like the rest of her poetry , they have a broad range , from Greece to El Salvador to Hangzhou.4 Her work here is anchored to place and , at the same time , placeless .
Take the beguiling and mesmeric opening poem , “ Museum of Stones , ” which begins:5 We are unfixed here to time or to place ; we are nowhere , but we are in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pebbles , and stones are far from concepts , metaphors , or abstractions .
The specificity almost takes on an animism , a beating element that Forché captures in a crescendoing , rhythmic drama , spiked with occasional shards of human agency:7 These traces of humanity are traces of violence as well .
The collapsing of the fallen bells and the blown bridges into a single poem is a different approach : a survey rather than an autopsy .
The poem ends with the “ hope that this assemblage of rubble ” —this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ taken together , would become / a shrine or holy place , an ossuary , immovable and sacred.
” 9 Though there is a timeless quality to Forché ’ s latest book of poems , plunking from one global crisis to another , the book is also explicitly of the now .
In “ The Boatman , ” one the most explicitly localizable of her poems , a taxi driver tells of when he was one of the 31 souls in a raft “ in the gray sick of sea.
” They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Europe , fearing death by drowning and being sent to “ camp misery ” or “ camp remain here.
” Few turns of phrase capture the choice between Scylla and Charybdis facing today ’ s refugees fleeing Afghanistan , Syria , Iraq , the Democratic Republic of the Congo , and Honduras , among other places .
It is classic Forché .
Are the abstractions of “ misery ” and “ remain here ” real places ?
Of course they are.10 Forché and I connected by phone in late March , a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book of poems .
We spoke about the coronavirus precautions we were taking , then veered into politics and poetry and ended by talking about cooking .
She gave me a one-pot pasta recipe—browned mushrooms in cream—and a couple of days later , I made it .
The following is an edited excerpt from our conversation.11 John Washington : You write in the last poem of In the Lateness of the World about the “ arrival of what has been , ” which seems like a neat encapsulation of the art of memoir @ @ @ @ @ @ @ oeuvre , of haunting—the past and people of the past appearing in ghostly forms in your work .
Would you say these poems are in some way haunted as well ?
13 Carolyn Forché : Yes , they are , not by ghosts in the supernatural sense but by presences , apparitions of memory , traces of the past still legible in the natural and built worlds , by silences , ruins , regions no longer inhabited , even regions of mind .
You are right in saying that I am more interested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the present than I am in the past itself , which is irrecoverable .
The past itself can neither be remembered nor restored.14 JW : Staying on the ghostly track for a moment , is haunting a metaphor or perhaps just a simple description of what happens after a disaster ?
Your gaze seems pulled to existential disasters , not only in the anthology Against Forgetting but in your own poetry .
15 CF : It is not a metaphor and , in fact , resists becoming figural .
We do not live @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aftermath of all that happened , all that remains with us , that scars and craters our memory , our consciousness , our vision of the world .
I was born just after the Second World War and grew up in its silences and slow disclosures .
The war ended , but the arms were not laid down .
War flared again in our souls and in the world .
Wislawa Szymborska wrote , “ War will no longer be declared / but only continued / and the shadow of eternal armament / @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pull of disaster as a centripetal force for as long as I can remember .
This is the ground of Against Forgetting , and my awareness of this goes back to earliest childhood and has only become more acute with time.16 JW : Your experience , as well as that for plenty of other Americans , in El Salvador—or at least their consciousness of El Salvador—in the 1980s and 1990s was a politicizing or even radicalizing force .
17 CF : It was .
During the period of the war , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anti-intervention work , the sanctuary movement , Witness for Peace.18 JW : But are Americans reacting differently today to the situation and politics in Central America ?
There is another exodus of refugees , but it doesn ’ t seem to be mobilizing the same spirit of political solidarity.19 CF : My experience in the early days of organizing on behalf of El Salvador is that many people had already been politicized during the Vietnam War , which had only ended in 1975 , so by 1980 they had been , in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ volcano .
They had been marching and active against the war , and there was a lack of focus for their efforts , and Central America gave that back to them .
So the solidarity movements grew like mushrooms all over the country .
I thought it was going to be really challenging to persuade North Americans to be concerned , but it was not at all .
I went to 49 states , and everywhere I went , communities were so immediately active that it was shocking to me .
I think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Vietnam.20 And I think now the problem is you had that radicalization and politicization that happened during the war in El Salvador and during the contra war against Nicaragua , but that ’ s now 35 , 40 years ago .
So there was a long period in between the present moment for refugees at our border and that movement that was organized 40 years ago .
People were very active at the airports when the [ travel ] ban first went into effect , but there ’ s been a really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ –Border Patrol lockdown .
This administration lets no one in , no one out , so there ’ s very little that activists can do other than appeal to moral conscience , appeal to the public to pressure the Congress .
But as long as we have this White House , it ’ s going to be very difficult to effect any change through US American institutions of governance .
We have these thousands of children and tens of thousands of adults in detention , and our government is not even willing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We saw the first case in New Jersey of someone in ICE detention infected with the coronavirus just recently.22 CF : I don ’ t know how aware US Americans are of the vast network of US detention centers .
We tend to imagine them along the borders in Texas , but if you look at a map of detention centers , there ’ s a detention center near you , is what I would say .
I think this pandemic has overwhelmed everyone in so many respects .
I don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forgotten .
I don ’ t have any answers regarding activation of political organizing and solidarity work at this time , because I ’ m not sure , in an era of shelter in place and social distancing , it ’ s going to be very easy .
We can ’ t go out on the streets en masse and protest .
There ’ s so much we can ’ t do.23 I ’ m not saying it was easy to organize prior to the pandemic .
There was an element of frustration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be efficacious , what could be done , other than initially bringing this into the eye , the idea of shocking people about the circumstances in the detention centers and the activities of ICE agents in our cities and towns and also the assault on sanctuary cities by the federal government .
There ’ s a kind of rolling confusion that this administration has specialized in .
If you can ’ t see that you have any collective strength politically to influence your legislative representatives , then I ’ m not sure what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a limit to what people are willing to give up and risk on behalf of others .
And I ’ m not judging that .
I ’ m just pointing it out .
Everyone has their own limit .
In El Salvador , I met many people who had no limit .
They would die for other people .
Many people would die for other people .
And that was what , when I came back to the United States for the last time , that was the commitment , that was the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would have to live the rest of my life without .
That sounds too melodramatic .
I knew that I wasn ’ t going to be experiencing that as vividly as before.26 JW : There ’ s a difference between what you were seeing in El Salvador and the situation in the United States .
Though for parts of the population , maybe it ’ s not all that different .
27 CF : We ’ re a very different country , but repression is repression .
And we haven ’ t had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suffering—yet .
But I have glimpsed the seeds of it in various moments .
I glimpse it with ICE SWAT teams entering houses.28 JW : I want to talk more about your poetry , but I have a couple of other big-picture political questions .
29 JW : One of the things we began discussing today is about taking people into your home and the danger of doing so during a pandemic .
One of the false narratives and insidious clichés , throughout history , with refugees and migrants , is that they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racist and untrue , and it has always been .
The people stepping off the boats in Ellis Island were seen the same way .
They were doused for lice .
My own great-grandfather was turned away for a sore on his leg .
I have news for people who regard migrants that way : Their great grandparents were also regarded that way .
We simply have to continue a relentless counternarrative that is anti-racist and scientific and compassionate and empathic .
We have to cultivate our collective empathy .
The contagion of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more harmful to us in the long run than anything else , because it will have no bounds .
If we lose our empathy , we lose our empathy for everyone .
And we isolate and atomize our society until it dries up , until it has nothing left.32 JW : I bet people tell you their stories occasionally about how they came to your poetry .
I ’ m going to tell you mine briefly .
I was camping on Mount Lemmon , outside Tucson , Arizona , the first time I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a friend recited the entire poem “ The Colonel , ” and I was floored and flabbergasted by what I heard.33 CF : It ’ s lovely for me to imagine a campfire and that poem being recited .
That ’ s very moving.34 JW : It was moving for all of us .
A line from that poem is the title of your memoir , What You Have Heard Is True .
There ’ s something in that phrase that responds to a doubt .
There ’ s an assumption that you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assurance that what that person has heard is true .
And that doubt or the desire to quell that doubt interests me a lot .
35 CF : That ’ s it .
That ’ s very important .
The US government was denying what we were saying .
Therefore , we were thought to be either exaggerating or lying .
And whenever I was talking about the most horrific things I had seen in El Salvador , people would ask me , “ Well , is that true ?
Or are you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things ?
” We were confronted with doubt at every turn in the United States.36 One of the things that I learned in working out the idea of poetry of witness , which studies poetry written in the aftermath of extremity : There were many qualities and gestures that these poems had in common , and one of them—and this was all over the world in the 20th century , you find this gesture in Polish poetry , in poetry of the Holocaust— [ was ] the gesture of the appeal to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and I began to notice this gesture , and then I realized that I myself had done it in “ The Colonel.
” This gesture is a fear that no one will believe you .
This gesture is “ How do I say this in such a way that it can be taken in by another ?
How do I find the words ?
” 37 JW : That appeal comes across so clearly in your memoir and in your earlier books of poems , especially The Country Between Us and The Angel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be a difference in In the Lateness of the World .
Did you take a different approach to your poems in this book ?
38 CF : It has a different atmosphere , doesn ’ t it ?
It was written alongside the memoir , so I think all of that anxiety about being believed was worked out in the writing of the memoir .
The book of poems is more elegiac .
It ’ s a book of remembrance , and it ’ s a book of warning , I think .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s a book of having come to terms , a book about having found an inner peace .
Part of my soul went into my memoir , and another part went into the poetry book .
Because I had survived cancer during the writing of both books , I think that what I came to in the survival was a quietude that is manifest in the poetry book .
In the memoir , I was reliving a past self .
I was inhabiting the woman I once was .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the woman I am now.39 JW : I agree that it ’ s not a dark book , but you don ’ t hold back , and you do go to some of today ’ s places or moments of extremity.40 CF : Oh , yeah , it ’ s true , it ’ s true .
The book is about extremity .
It ’ s about death .
It ’ s about collective humanity .
I don ’ t choose what to write when I ’ m writing poetry .
I move @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I write , and I work out of that .
I didn ’ t hold back .
There are a couple of poems that are as difficult in my mind that are as difficult as “ The Colonel.
” So it ’ s not held back .
It could be accused , as The Country Between Us was , as being political , as Americans mean that term.41 Americans mean that term as anything ideologically oppositional or uncomfortable .
They do not mean organized political activity , action .
They mean the views @ @ @ @ @ @ @ challenging the belief systems of the reader .
I had to learn what the US meant by that term “ political ” when it was applied pejoratively about my work .
And that ’ s the only explanation I came to .
Because in El Salvador , for instance , if you ’ re political , you go to meetings .
You take risks .
You organize .
I wasn ’ t political in that sense .
I didn ’ t belong to any political party or group or organization.42 JW : This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot about as well , that the political writer is relegated into being exactly that , a political writer .
43 CF : Here in the US , it ’ s used to taint the work .
To imagine that the work has designs upon us .
That it ’ s not pure .
That it ’ s not written as a literary work of art but that it ’ s infected or tainted with message .
And in the United States there ’ s also the fiction that there ’ s nonpolitical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that somehow there ’ s this little hermetically sealed egg that the poet writes within , uninfluenced by any events , by his or her time , outside of anything but this hopelessly solipsistic self .
But I think that ’ s changing .
That notion is breaking down .
If you take a look at the young poets publishing very exciting work in the United States , they are very rarely dismissed as being political .
I think they are dismissed for their identities .
There ’ s an element in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , this work is just read because this person is from this or that group , ” which is another way of dismissing .
But “ the political ” isn ’ t a pejorative term anymore .
It ’ s an expectation that the most exciting work being done will be informed by awareness , part of which is political awareness.44 JW : Do you worry about making suffering too beautiful ?
What is the relationship in poetry between beauty and violence ?
Do they lend something to each other ?
What becomes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its memory when it is ghastly and violent but its recording is lyrical and beautiful ?
45 CF : I ’ m very much against the anesthetization of violence .
I work hard not to beautify the ghastly .
For this , the language must be pared , must be cold , in Chekhov ’ s sense .
It is a difficult thing to know when what one has erred in this sense .
For me , it is a matter of not embellishing , dramatizing , of not lighting an unnecessary fire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What are you reading or writing when we ’ re all holed up right now ?
47 CF : I ’ m keeping a notebook , but I find myself unable to write in this moment .
I ’ m really trying to cope with worry and concern for certain others , and I don ’ t have the tranquility of mind to write .
Perhaps other writers do .
I ’ m also teaching online , for Georgetown University .
That ’ s much more challenging for me than teaching in person @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much presence has mattered to my pedagogy , and I ’ m deprived of that , so I ’ ve had to compensate for lack of presence .
So there ’ s a lot of that.48 I ’ m also going through the museum of my life .
Because I can ’ t leave the house , I ’ ve decided to finally organize things and get rid of things .
And that is a strange experience , because with photographs or old notebooks , it ’ s an excavation of memory and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lived and how much one has seen and how many people are gone .
I ’ m in the fragmentary museum of my life.49

In poet Carolyn Forché’s memoir of her multiple trips to El Salvador in the late 1970s and early ’80s, What You Have Heard Is True, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2019, she quotes 18th century Spanish painter Francisco Goya’s “Yo lo vi” (I saw it), which accompanies his series of sketches “The Disasters of War.” The quote is a neat encapsulation of Forché’s oeuvre as a poet, anthologist, memoirist, and witness to political revolution and upheaval. “I saw it,” Forché writes, “and this, and also this.” It’s what she’s been writing in her poetry (the title of the memoir comes from the first line of her famous poem “The Colonel”) since the 1970s. Her poetry not only is sometimes hauntingly beautiful but also can be painful, pointing out to the world a moment of oppression or violence. She has written of the “consequences” of poems, of poems “as trace, poem as evidence.” Her poems are necessary in that they point to something—imperceptible nuance or the psychic toll of indescribable suffering—we haven’t seen or can barely believe.1
Forché’s most lauded early works were inspired by her travel to pre–civil war El Salvador, where she bore witness to violence, atrocity, and fear: Broken bottles embedded in walls to “scoop the kneecaps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace.” After returning to the United States, she wrote up evidence of what she witnessed and toured the country to educate Americans about the consequences of interventionism. (At some points in the 1980s, US aid to El Salvador—most of it destined for ruthless and murderous armed forces—was over a million dollars a day.) In later poems she continued exploring the same themes of oppression and violence, from Lebanon to the Holocaust to the atomic bomb. As an anthologist, she developed the concept of poetry as witness, or poetry in extremis, collecting international poets’ work responding to the 20th century’s many unprecedented upheavals, starting with the Armenian genocide and going through the Bosnian War. She expanded that collection with another anthology, exploring English language poetry of witness from 1500 to 2001.2
Now in Forché’s latest book of poems—her first in 17 years—In the Lateness of the World, the “it” she has seen seems to have expanded beyond singular events and moments. Her new poems are more reflective and broader in scope, as if she has gained a higher vantage point. The poems seem elegies less of individual moments than of life itself.3
Forché wrote the memoir and the new book of poems simultaneously, and they tug and lean on each other. “Part of my soul went into my memoir, and another part went into the poetry book,” she told me. “In the memoir, I was reliving a past self. I was inhabiting the woman I once was. In the poetry book, I’m the woman I am now.” In the nearly two decades it took to produce both works, she survived cancer—an experience she has called “terrifying and illuminating.” But the new poems hardly seem autobiographical, as they explore landscapes of migrations and mourning and the creation of tenuous spaces of refuge throughout the world. And like the rest of her poetry, they have a broad range, from Greece to El Salvador to Hangzhou.4
Her work here is anchored to place and, at the same time, placeless. Take the beguiling and mesmeric opening poem, “Museum of Stones,” which begins:5 Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
These are your stones, assembled in matchbox and tin,
collected from roadside, culvert, and viaduct,
battlefield, threshing floor, basilica, abattoir—
stones, loosened by tanks in the streets,
from a city whose earliest map was drawn in ink on linen,
schoolyard stones in the hand of a corpse,
pebble from Baudelaire’s oui,6
We are unfixed here to time or to place; we are nowhere, but we are in a meticulously particular nowhere. The rocks, pebbles, and stones are far from concepts, metaphors, or abstractions. The specificity almost takes on an animism, a beating element that Forché captures in a crescendoing, rhythmic drama, spiked with occasional shards of human agency:7
stones where the bells had fallen, where the bridges were blown,
those that had flown through windows, weighted petitions,
feldspar, rose quartz, blue schist, gneiss, and chert8
These traces of humanity are traces of violence as well. The collapsing of the fallen bells and the blown bridges into a single poem is a different approach: a survey rather than an autopsy. The poem ends with the “hope that this assemblage of rubble”—this beautiful and frightening litany of dead matter—“taken together, would become / a shrine or holy place, an ossuary, immovable and sacred.”9
Though there is a timeless quality to Forché’s latest book of poems, plunking from one global crisis to another, the book is also explicitly of the now. In “The Boatman,” one the most explicitly localizable of her poems, a taxi driver tells of when he was one of the 31 souls in a raft “in the gray sick of sea.” They are Afghan refugees crossing the Mediterranean to Europe, fearing death by drowning and being sent to “camp misery” or “camp remain here.” Few turns of phrase capture the choice between Scylla and Charybdis facing today’s refugees fleeing Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Honduras, among other places. It is classic Forché. Are the abstractions of “misery” and “remain here” real places? Of course they are.10
Forché and I connected by phone in late March, a few weeks after the publication of her new book of poems. We spoke about the coronavirus precautions we were taking, then veered into politics and poetry and ended by talking about cooking. She gave me a one-pot pasta recipe—browned mushrooms in cream—and a couple of days later, I made it. The following is an edited excerpt from our conversation.11
—John Washington12
John Washington: You write in the last poem of In the Lateness of the World about the “arrival of what has been,” which seems like a neat encapsulation of the art of memoir. You also write, throughout your oeuvre, of haunting—the past and people of the past appearing in ghostly forms in your work. Would you say these poems are in some way haunted as well? 13
Carolyn Forché: Yes, they are, not by ghosts in the supernatural sense but by presences, apparitions of memory, traces of the past still legible in the natural and built worlds, by silences, ruins, regions no longer inhabited, even regions of mind. You are right in saying that I am more interested in the presence of the past in the present than I am in the past itself, which is irrecoverable. The past itself can neither be remembered nor restored.14
JW: Staying on the ghostly track for a moment, is haunting a metaphor or perhaps just a simple description of what happens after a disaster? Your gaze seems pulled to existential disasters, not only in the anthology Against Forgetting but in your own poetry. 15
CF: It is not a metaphor and, in fact, resists becoming figural. We do not live after atrocity or trauma but in the aftermath of all that happened, all that remains with us, that scars and craters our memory, our consciousness, our vision of the world. I was born just after the Second World War and grew up in its silences and slow disclosures. The war ended, but the arms were not laid down. War flared again in our souls and in the world. Wislawa Szymborska wrote, “War will no longer be declared / but only continued / and the shadow of eternal armament / darken the heavens.” I have felt the pull of disaster as a centripetal force for as long as I can remember. This is the ground of Against Forgetting, and my awareness of this goes back to earliest childhood and has only become more acute with time.16
JW: Your experience, as well as that for plenty of other Americans, in El Salvador—or at least their consciousness of El Salvador—in the 1980s and 1990s was a politicizing or even radicalizing force. 17 Current Issue View our current issue
CF: It was. During the period of the war, a lot of them got involved in the anti-intervention work, the sanctuary movement, Witness for Peace.18
JW: But are Americans reacting differently today to the situation and politics in Central America? There is another exodus of refugees, but it doesn’t seem to be mobilizing the same spirit of political solidarity.19
CF: My experience in the early days of organizing on behalf of El Salvador is that many people had already been politicized during the Vietnam War, which had only ended in 1975, so by 1980 they had been, in a way, quiet, like a sleeping volcano. They had been marching and active against the war, and there was a lack of focus for their efforts, and Central America gave that back to them. So the solidarity movements grew like mushrooms all over the country. I thought it was going to be really challenging to persuade North Americans to be concerned, but it was not at all. I went to 49 states, and everywhere I went, communities were so immediately active that it was shocking to me. I think some of that came in the aftermath of Vietnam.20
And I think now the problem is you had that radicalization and politicization that happened during the war in El Salvador and during the contra war against Nicaragua, but that’s now 35, 40 years ago. So there was a long period in between the present moment for refugees at our border and that movement that was organized 40 years ago. People were very active at the airports when the [travel] ban first went into effect, but there’s been a really effective [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]–Border Patrol lockdown. This administration lets no one in, no one out, so there’s very little that activists can do other than appeal to moral conscience, appeal to the public to pressure the Congress. But as long as we have this White House, it’s going to be very difficult to effect any change through US American institutions of governance. We have these thousands of children and tens of thousands of adults in detention, and our government is not even willing to release them during a pandemic.21
JW: We saw the first case in New Jersey of someone in ICE detention infected with the coronavirus just recently.22
CF: I don’t know how aware US Americans are of the vast network of US detention centers. We tend to imagine them along the borders in Texas, but if you look at a map of detention centers, there’s a detention center near you, is what I would say. I think this pandemic has overwhelmed everyone in so many respects. I don’t want these children in detention to be forgotten. I don’t have any answers regarding activation of political organizing and solidarity work at this time, because I’m not sure, in an era of shelter in place and social distancing, it’s going to be very easy. We can’t go out on the streets en masse and protest. There’s so much we can’t do.23
I’m not saying it was easy to organize prior to the pandemic. There was an element of frustration. No one exactly knew how to be efficacious, what could be done, other than initially bringing this into the eye, the idea of shocking people about the circumstances in the detention centers and the activities of ICE agents in our cities and towns and also the assault on sanctuary cities by the federal government. There’s a kind of rolling confusion that this administration has specialized in. If you can’t see that you have any collective strength politically to influence your legislative representatives, then I’m not sure what to do.24
JW: What does work?25
CF: There’s a limit to what people are willing to give up and risk on behalf of others. And I’m not judging that. I’m just pointing it out. Everyone has their own limit. In El Salvador, I met many people who had no limit. They would die for other people. Many people would die for other people. And that was what, when I came back to the United States for the last time, that was the commitment, that was the love of humanity that I felt I would have to live the rest of my life without. That sounds too melodramatic. I knew that I wasn’t going to be experiencing that as vividly as before.26
JW: There’s a difference between what you were seeing in El Salvador and the situation in the United States. Though for parts of the population, maybe it’s not all that different. 27
CF: We’re a very different country, but repression is repression. And we haven’t had the kind of repression that Salvadorans were suffering—yet. But I have glimpsed the seeds of it in various moments. I glimpse it with ICE SWAT teams entering houses.28
JW: I want to talk more about your poetry, but I have a couple of other big-picture political questions. 29
CF: I’m not a sage, John.30
JW: One of the things we began discussing today is about taking people into your home and the danger of doing so during a pandemic. One of the false narratives and insidious clichés, throughout history, with refugees and migrants, is that they bring disease.31
CF: That’s racist and untrue, and it has always been. The people stepping off the boats in Ellis Island were seen the same way. They were doused for lice. My own great-grandfather was turned away for a sore on his leg. I have news for people who regard migrants that way: Their great grandparents were also regarded that way. We simply have to continue a relentless counternarrative that is anti-racist and scientific and compassionate and empathic. We have to cultivate our collective empathy. The contagion of lack of empathy is going to be more harmful to us in the long run than anything else, because it will have no bounds. If we lose our empathy, we lose our empathy for everyone. And we isolate and atomize our society until it dries up, until it has nothing left.32
JW: I bet people tell you their stories occasionally about how they came to your poetry. I’m going to tell you mine briefly. I was camping on Mount Lemmon, outside Tucson, Arizona, the first time I heard any of your poetry, and a friend recited the entire poem “The Colonel,” and I was floored and flabbergasted by what I heard.33
CF: It’s lovely for me to imagine a campfire and that poem being recited. That’s very moving.34
JW: It was moving for all of us. A line from that poem is the title of your memoir, What You Have Heard Is True. There’s something in that phrase that responds to a doubt. There’s an assumption that you’re speaking to someone who needs assurance that what that person has heard is true. And that doubt or the desire to quell that doubt interests me a lot. 35
CF: That’s it. That’s very important. The US government was denying what we were saying. Therefore, we were thought to be either exaggerating or lying. And whenever I was talking about the most horrific things I had seen in El Salvador, people would ask me, “Well, is that true? Or are you just a writer or a poet embellishing things?” We were confronted with doubt at every turn in the United States.36
One of the things that I learned in working out the idea of poetry of witness, which studies poetry written in the aftermath of extremity: There were many qualities and gestures that these poems had in common, and one of them—and this was all over the world in the 20th century, you find this gesture in Polish poetry, in poetry of the Holocaust—[was] the gesture of the appeal to be believed. That opens many poems, and I began to notice this gesture, and then I realized that I myself had done it in “The Colonel.” This gesture is a fear that no one will believe you. This gesture is “How do I say this in such a way that it can be taken in by another? How do I find the words?”37
JW: That appeal comes across so clearly in your memoir and in your earlier books of poems, especially The Country Between Us and The Angel of History, but there seems to be a difference in In the Lateness of the World. Did you take a different approach to your poems in this book?38
CF: It has a different atmosphere, doesn’t it? It was written alongside the memoir, so I think all of that anxiety about being believed was worked out in the writing of the memoir. The book of poems is more elegiac. It’s a book of remembrance, and it’s a book of warning, I think. It’s not a dark book. It’s a book of having come to terms, a book about having found an inner peace. Part of my soul went into my memoir, and another part went into the poetry book. Because I had survived cancer during the writing of both books, I think that what I came to in the survival was a quietude that is manifest in the poetry book. In the memoir, I was reliving a past self. I was inhabiting the woman I once was. In the poetry book, I’m the woman I am now.39
JW: I agree that it’s not a dark book, but you don’t hold back, and you do go to some of today’s places or moments of extremity.40
CF: Oh, yeah, it’s true, it’s true. The book is about extremity. It’s about death. It’s about collective humanity. I don’t choose what to write when I’m writing poetry. I move into a certain region of mind when I write, and I work out of that. I didn’t hold back. There are a couple of poems that are as difficult in my mind as “The Colonel.” So it’s not held back. It could be accused, as The Country Between Us was, as being political, as Americans mean that term.41
Americans mean that term as anything ideologically oppositional or uncomfortable. They do not mean organized political activity, action. They mean the views or sentiments expressed are creating discomfort or challenging the belief systems of the reader. I had to learn what the US meant by that term “political” when it was applied pejoratively about my work. And that’s the only explanation I came to. Because in El Salvador, for instance, if you’re political, you go to meetings. You take risks. You organize. I wasn’t political in that sense. I didn’t belong to any political party or group or organization.42
JW: This is something I’ve thought a lot about as well, that the political writer is relegated into being exactly that, a political writer. 43
CF: Here in the US, it’s used to taint the work. To imagine that the work has designs upon us. That it’s not pure. That it’s not written as a literary work of art but that it’s infected or tainted with message. And in the United States there’s also the fiction that there’s nonpolitical or apolitical work. In other words, that somehow there’s this little hermetically sealed egg that the poet writes within, uninfluenced by any events, by his or her time, outside of anything but this hopelessly solipsistic self. But I think that’s changing. That notion is breaking down. If you take a look at the young poets publishing very exciting work in the United States, they are very rarely dismissed as being political. I think they are dismissed for their identities. There’s an element in literary culture that says, “Oh, this work is just read because this person is from this or that group,” which is another way of dismissing. But “the political” isn’t a pejorative term anymore. It’s an expectation that the most exciting work being done will be informed by awareness, part of which is political awareness.44
JW: Do you worry about making suffering too beautiful? What is the relationship in poetry between beauty and violence? Do they lend something to each other? What becomes of the truth of an event or its memory when it is ghastly and violent but its recording is lyrical and beautiful?45
CF: I’m very much against the aestheticization of violence. I work hard not to beautify the ghastly. For this, the language must be pared, must be cold, in Chekhov’s sense. It is a difficult thing to know when what one has erred in this sense. For me, it is a matter of not embellishing, dramatizing, of not lighting an unnecessary fire beneath the already sufficient words.46
JW: What are you reading or writing when we’re all holed up right now?47
CF: I’m keeping a notebook, but I find myself unable to write in this moment. I’m really trying to cope with worry and concern for certain others, and I don’t have the tranquility of mind to write. Perhaps other writers do. I’m also teaching online, for Georgetown University. That’s much more challenging for me than teaching in person, and I’ve realized how much presence has mattered to my pedagogy, and I’m deprived of that, so I’ve had to compensate for lack of presence. So there’s a lot of that.48
I’m also going through the museum of my life. Because I can’t leave the house, I’ve decided to finally organize things and get rid of things. And that is a strange experience, because with photographs or old notebooks, it’s an excavation of memory and a realization of how long one has lived and how much one has seen and how many people are gone. I’m in the fragmentary museum of my life.49


thenation--2020-04-22--Brazil’s Bolsonaro Is Bonkers—but There’s a Method to His Madness

Just as in Donald Trump ’ s United States , the mayhem of mixed messages is crippling Brazil at this moment , as the novel coronavirus has expanded from the first outbreaks among frequent fliers in Rio ’ s plush South Zone and its now empty beaches to the densely populated favelas in the mountains beyond .
Like the US president , Jair Bolsonaro has raged against the quarantine implemented by his own government and has just dismissed his level-headed health minister , Luiz Henrique Mandetta .
A few days after the first shutdown measures were announced in São Paulo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ encouraging his supporters to attend a mass rally on March 15 , filling part of the megalopolis ’ s wide Avenida Paulista in support of Bolsonaro and against Congress .
Covid-19 is just a gripezinha ( sniffle ) , he insists , while heading a campaign on social media to reopen the economy under the slogan “ Brazil can not close.
” On Sunday , he headed a second small rally in the capital of Brasília , where social distancing was replaced by manic jostling to get close to the president , along @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to get people back to work .
Bolsonaro has dismissed as “ hysteria ” the lockdown measures , implemented swiftly in Brazil despite the president ’ s rhetoric .
“ Let ’ s face the virus like men , not kids , ” he urged , as he visited a Brasília street market last month .
Perhaps the only head of state able to out-Trump Trump in sheer recklessness and social-networked delirium , Bolsonaro has mobilized his three loyal sons , two of them members of Congress , to help peddle conspiracy theories @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chloroquine .
Ironically , Bolsonaro , 66 , was lucky to escape infection on March 7 , when he attended a neoconservative get-together hosted by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach , after which several members of the Brazilian delegation came down with severe symptoms .
The terrifying implications of such a cavalier approach to the pandemic in a country with a stretched health care system and vast slum cities where social isolation , and even the routine precaution of washing hands , is an impossible challenge , soon forced the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Trumpian script—announced that he would reverse the lockdowns in São Paulo , Rio , and other cities , the Supreme Court reiterated that under Brazil ’ s federal system , it is state and city authorities who decide such matters .
Leaders of both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies supported Mandetta , while governors like João Doria in São Paulo and Wilson Witzel in Rio—allies of Bolsonaro in the presidential elections of 2018—maintained the city lockdowns .
Justice minister and super judge Sérgio Moro , who led the “ car wash @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lula da Silva to nine years in prison , dared to defy the president whom he had helped into power .
Argentina Is Showing the World What a Humane Covid-19 Response Looks Like Why Glenn Greenwald ’ s Prosecution Is an Outrage The other super minister in the Bolsonaro government , billionaire financier Paulo Guedes , whose global investment funds are now staring into the abyss , also seemed skeptical of Bolsonaro ’ s antics , despite his concern that the lockdowns and a pandemic-driven 5 percent drop in GDP this year ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plans to privatize the Brazilian economy .
Pots and pans were banged from the balconies of locked-down apartment blocks in middle-class districts of Rio and São Paulo in protest against Bolsonaro , just as they had been five or six years before against the soon-to-be-impeached President Dilma Rousseff .
Like Trump ’ s health adviser Anthony Fauci , also a doctor , Mandetta had emerged as a voice of reason , with better ratings in the polls than Bolsonaro ’ s , and appeared to have cleverly outmaneuvered the president .
At least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Even the armed forces—well represented in the Bolsonaro cabinet—seemed prepared to intervene against the madness of President Jair , despite the Bolsonaristas ’ calls for military action in favor of the president .
A report in DefesaNet , an online media outlet used by the military to get its message out , said that effective control of the government ’ s strategy on Covid-19 had devolved to the chief of staff , Gen. Walter Souza Braga Netto .
“ The president will thus be able to behave democratically as if he did not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explained DefesaNet , a contorted phrase that perfectly captures the Brazilian establishment and military ’ s paternal approach to Bolsonaro ’ s childish outbursts .
When Mandetta was confirmed in his post after Bolsonaro ’ s initial threats to oust him , many concluded that the lunatic had been removed from control of the asylum , or at least the intensive-care ward .
“ The general feeling here is that Bolsonaro is a puppet , ” remarked an employee early last week at the country ’ s state development bank , BNDES , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ global economic crisis in 2009 will be sorely missed this time , after Guedes ’ s decision to downsize it .
But the removal of Mandetta , and Bolsonaro ’ s paranoid appeal to his base Friday to help him fight off an alleged coup attempt orchestrated by Doria in São Paulo and Rodrigo Maia , the head of the Chamber of Deputies , suggest an alternate reading .
Could the president glimpse opportunity in the chaos ?
“ There is method in the madness , ” explained the anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Elite da Tropa , a gripping 2006 account of police brutality and extreme-right-wing death squads in Rio ’ s favelas that was turned into two blockbuster films , Elite Squad and Elite Squad 2 .
Soares , whose latest book , O Brasil e Seu Duplo ( Brazil and Its Duplicate ) , explores the origins of Bolsonaro and Brazilian neofascism , says Covid-19 will either stop the Bolsonaro project in its tracks or accelerate its progress .
“ Bolsonaro has been advised to deny the threat of the pandemic , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of himself , in part because he ’ s mimicking Trump .
But his authority has diminished , and he ’ s in danger of becoming a lame-duck president only a year into his term.
” But the president has a plan .
Behaving , as the generals suggested , “ as if he did not belong to his own government , ” Bolsonaro may be able to escape the blame for the devastating economic crisis now unfolding .
A brutal recession triggered , as elsewhere , by the pandemic , comes after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic , 60 million Brazilians had fallen back into poverty ( defined as earning less than $ 5 a day ) after the advances of the Lula years .
“ The plan is to transfer responsibility and accuse the others for allowing the tremendous crisis which we are going to encounter , ” said Soares .
The worsening social conditions will undoubtedly create fertile ground for Bolsonaro ’ s bid to capitalize on discontent .
A survey cited by piauí magazine found that 72 percent of Brazilians have enough savings to cushion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entering serious hardship , and 32 percent already report problems buying essential goods like food .
“ We are staying in , but food is scarce , and without work there is no money , ” said a mother of two who lives in the enormous Rio favela of Rocinha , where at least 50,000 inhabitants are packed into the hillside above Ipanema and Leblon .
“ Practically everybody in the favela works in the informal economy , so the lockdown doesn ’ t really apply here ; businesses are open but close @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there is little information , ” said Macarrao , a rapper from Cinco Bocas , a favela in the North Zone of Rio , whose daughter has Covid-19 .
“ She got treatment fairly quickly , ” he added .
This may not be the case now .
Epidemiologists at five important institutes in Brazil forecast recently that the health system could reach the point of collapse by late April .
The Bolsonaro government has guaranteed a basic monthly income of 600 reales ( $ 112 ) to those with no income , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and long lines of people—practicing scant social distancing—have waited outside the public savings bank Caixa Econômica , only to discover that their transfer has not arrived .
In any case , $ 4 a day is a pittance , and Guedes seems reluctant to take any other measures to soften the blow for Brazil ’ s poor , even though he has passed tax cuts for business .
There is a logical link to Guedes ’ s neoliberal stance , as millions descend into poverty and hunger , and Bolsonaro ’ s populist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the governors of the two big cities : Both governors are potential rivals for the next presidential elections , and Bolsonaro will use his media to pinpoint them as responsible for the hardship .
While registered cases of the coronavirus in Brazil are 40,000 , the real figure is probably over 10 times that , as indicated by the current unnaturally high mortality rate .
According to official data , by the end of last week some 2,600 people had died from the virus—low compared with Europe and the United States , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And Brazil ’ s intensive care units are fast approaching capacity , just as they have in Europe .
Manaus , the Amazon metropolis where the reports of contagion in the indigenous territories make harrowing reading , is already at 100 percent capacity and is transferring patients to other sites .
A survey by the University of Pelotas in Rio Grande do Sul , in the south of the country , estimates that there are at least seven times more cases than the official figures suggest .
Bolsonaro will try to build @ @ @ @ @ @ @ among evangelicals and people in the orbit of the police and military .
Evangelicals have been another element of the Covid-19 denial , but they are fired by conviction rather than nonchalance .
Edir Macedo , the billionaire pastor whose TV networks are used by Bolsonaro in preference to the establishment Rede Globo , said the WHO ’ s warnings on Covid-19 were the “ work of Satan.
” “ Our position from the first moment has been to keep the churches open , because God will defeat the virus , ” said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Rio working-class district of Duque de Caxias last week .
Days later , God had spoken , and Reis was hospitalized with Covid-19 .
The tactic may be working .
Bolsonaro appears to have maintained support in the pandemic , despite the pot banging and international horror at his stance .
A poll by Datafolha last week showed that 36 percent of Brazilians believe his management of the health crisis is “ good or great , ” slightly more support than before the pandemic .
And 52 percent say he ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crisis .
There may even be a second phase to Bolsonaro ’ s strategy of leveraging Covid-19 to stay in power , said Soares .
“ Building on the contradictions of his own government and the coming crisis in the health system and the economy , Bolsonaro may be hoping for some kind of a social explosion in the streets , ” he said .
“ That would create the conditions for a state of emergency and the end of democratic institutions that are still blocking the path of Bolsonaro ’ s basic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in power of his family.
” The call for a coup against Congress—pitched , at Sunday ’ s rally , at more extremist elements in the armed forces—may be a first step in this direction .
By first denouncing an alleged coup plot against his own presidency , allegedly planned by Congress and the big-city governors , and then calling for military action in his defense , “ Bolsonaro is following the example of many authoritarian presidents , starting with Hitler in 1933 , ” writes Nabil Bonduki , former São Paulo culture @ @ @ @ @ @ @ de S.Paulo .
“ The allegation of an attempted coup is thus the pretext for a coup planned by the president himself.
” The idea might sound fanciful , and as paranoid as Bolsonaro ’ s own rhetoric .
But the former army captain was a reluctant recruit to democratic politics even before the devastating arrival of Covid-19 .
Bolsonaro ’ s close links to right-wing militias made up of former military police and firemen , which run whole swaths of the West Zone of Rio , may help .
“ The militias @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family , and now they are becoming more ideological , part of a Bolsonarist movement .
They could help in a coup if he wants that , ” said Soares .
The militia Escritório do Crime ( the Crime Office ) is known to be implicated in the assassination of left-wing Rio city councilor Marielle Franco over two years ago .
To square the circle of fascism and Covid-19 , reports are just out that the militias in Itanhangá and Rio das Pedras , adjacent to the kitsch beach resort of Barra da @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its base , are forcing businesses to stay open during the lockdown so they can continue to charge for protection .

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Just as in Donald Trump’s United States, the mayhem of mixed messages is crippling Brazil at this moment, as the novel coronavirus has expanded from the first outbreaks among frequent fliers in Rio’s plush South Zone and its now empty beaches to the densely populated favelas in the mountains beyond.
Like the US president, Jair Bolsonaro has raged against the quarantine implemented by his own government and has just dismissed his level-headed health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta. A few days after the first shutdown measures were announced in São Paulo, the president blatantly defied them by encouraging his supporters to attend a mass rally on March 15, filling part of the megalopolis’s wide Avenida Paulista in support of Bolsonaro and against Congress. Covid-19 is just a gripezinha (sniffle), he insists, while heading a campaign on social media to reopen the economy under the slogan “Brazil cannot close.” On Sunday, he headed a second small rally in the capital of Brasília, where social distancing was replaced by manic jostling to get close to the president, along with chants demanding that the army intervene to get people back to work.
Bolsonaro has dismissed as “hysteria” the lockdown measures, implemented swiftly in Brazil despite the president’s rhetoric. “Let’s face the virus like men, not kids,” he urged, as he visited a Brasília street market last month. Perhaps the only head of state able to out-Trump Trump in sheer recklessness and social-networked delirium, Bolsonaro has mobilized his three loyal sons, two of them members of Congress, to help peddle conspiracy theories concerning China and snake-oil remedies such as chloroquine. Ironically, Bolsonaro, 66, was lucky to escape infection on March 7, when he attended a neoconservative get-together hosted by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, after which several members of the Brazilian delegation came down with severe symptoms.
The terrifying implications of such a cavalier approach to the pandemic in a country with a stretched health care system and vast slum cities where social isolation, and even the routine precaution of washing hands, is an impossible challenge, soon forced the Brazilian establishment into action. When Bolsonaro—following the Trumpian script—announced that he would reverse the lockdowns in São Paulo, Rio, and other cities, the Supreme Court reiterated that under Brazil’s federal system, it is state and city authorities who decide such matters. Leaders of both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies supported Mandetta, while governors like João Doria in São Paulo and Wilson Witzel in Rio—allies of Bolsonaro in the presidential elections of 2018—maintained the city lockdowns. Justice minister and super judge Sérgio Moro, who led the “car wash” anti-corruption probe and sentenced former president Lula da Silva to nine years in prison, dared to defy the president whom he had helped into power. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Related Articles Argentina Is Showing the World What a Humane Covid-19 Response Looks Like Jacob Sugarman Why Glenn Greenwald’s Prosecution Is an Outrage Ken Klippenstein
The other super minister in the Bolsonaro government, billionaire financier Paulo Guedes, whose global investment funds are now staring into the abyss, also seemed skeptical of Bolsonaro’s antics, despite his concern that the lockdowns and a pandemic-driven 5 percent drop in GDP this year (an IMF forecast) might scupper his plans to privatize the Brazilian economy. Pots and pans were banged from the balconies of locked-down apartment blocks in middle-class districts of Rio and São Paulo in protest against Bolsonaro, just as they had been five or six years before against the soon-to-be-impeached President Dilma Rousseff. Like Trump’s health adviser Anthony Fauci, also a doctor, Mandetta had emerged as a voice of reason, with better ratings in the polls than Bolsonaro’s, and appeared to have cleverly outmaneuvered the president. At least, until his dismissal last week.
Even the armed forces—well represented in the Bolsonaro cabinet—seemed prepared to intervene against the madness of President Jair, despite the Bolsonaristas’ calls for military action in favor of the president. A report in DefesaNet, an online media outlet used by the military to get its message out, said that effective control of the government’s strategy on Covid-19 had devolved to the chief of staff, Gen. Walter Souza Braga Netto. “The president will thus be able to behave democratically as if he did not belong to his own government,” explained DefesaNet, a contorted phrase that perfectly captures the Brazilian establishment and military’s paternal approach to Bolsonaro’s childish outbursts.
When Mandetta was confirmed in his post after Bolsonaro’s initial threats to oust him, many concluded that the lunatic had been removed from control of the asylum, or at least the intensive care ward. “The general feeling here is that Bolsonaro is a puppet,” remarked an employee early last week at the country’s state development bank, BNDES, whose role in successfully fending off the global economic crisis in 2009 will be sorely missed this time, after Guedes’s decision to downsize it. But the removal of Mandetta, and Bolsonaro’s paranoid appeal to his base Friday to help him fight off an alleged coup attempt orchestrated by Doria in São Paulo and Rodrigo Maia, the head of the Chamber of Deputies, suggest an alternate reading. Could the president glimpse opportunity in the chaos? Current Issue View our current issue
“There is method in the madness,” explained the anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares in an interview. Soares is co-author of Elite da Tropa, a gripping 2006 account of police brutality and extreme-right-wing death squads in Rio’s favelas that was turned into two blockbuster films, Elite Squad and Elite Squad 2. Soares, whose latest book, O Brasil e Seu Duplo (Brazil and Its Duplicate), explores the origins of Bolsonaro and Brazilian neofascism, says Covid-19 will either stop the Bolsonaro project in its tracks or accelerate its progress. “Bolsonaro has been advised to deny the threat of the pandemic,” said Soares. “He feels sure of himself, in part because he’s mimicking Trump. But his authority has diminished, and he’s in danger of becoming a lame-duck president only a year into his term.”
But the president has a plan. Behaving, as the generals suggested, “as if he did not belong to his own government,” Bolsonaro may be able to escape the blame for the devastating economic crisis now unfolding. A brutal recession triggered, as elsewhere, by the pandemic, comes after seven years of stagnation. Even before the pandemic, 60 million Brazilians had fallen back into poverty (defined as earning less than $5 a day) after the advances of the Lula years. “The plan is to transfer responsibility and accuse the others for allowing the tremendous crisis which we are going to encounter,” said Soares.
The worsening social conditions will undoubtedly create fertile ground for Bolsonaro’s bid to capitalize on discontent. A survey cited by piauí magazine found that 72 percent of Brazilians have enough savings to cushion lost earnings for just one week before entering serious hardship, and 32 percent already report problems buying essential goods like food. “We are staying in, but food is scarce, and without work there is no money,” said a mother of two who lives in the enormous Rio favela of Rocinha, where at least 50,000 inhabitants are packed into the hillside above Ipanema and Leblon. “Practically everybody in the favela works in the informal economy, so the lockdown doesn’t really apply here; businesses are open but close earlier. People are wearing masks; there is little information,” said Macarrao, a rapper from Cinco Bocas, a favela in the North Zone of Rio, whose daughter has Covid-19. “She got treatment fairly quickly,” he added. This may not be the case now. Epidemiologists at five important institutes in Brazil forecast recently that the health system could reach the point of collapse by late April.
The Bolsonaro government has guaranteed a basic monthly income of 600 reales ($112) to those with no income, but the electronic application has failed, and long lines of people—practicing scant social distancing—have waited outside the public savings bank Caixa Econômica, only to discover that their transfer has not arrived. In any case, $4 a day is a pittance, and Guedes seems reluctant to take any other measures to soften the blow for Brazil’s poor, even though he has passed tax cuts for business. There is a logical link to Guedes’s neoliberal stance, as millions descend into poverty and hunger, and Bolsonaro’s populist plan to blame it all on Mandetta and the governors of the two big cities: Both governors are potential rivals for the next presidential elections, and Bolsonaro will use his media to pinpoint them as responsible for the hardship.
While registered cases of the coronavirus in Brazil are 40,000, the real figure is probably over 10 times that, as indicated by the current unnaturally high mortality rate. According to official data, by the end of last week some 2,600 people had died from the virus—low compared with Europe and the United States, but Brazil is late in the curve. And Brazil’s intensive care units are fast approaching capacity, just as they have in Europe. Manaus, the Amazon metropolis where the reports of contagion in the indigenous territories make harrowing reading, is already at 100 percent capacity and is transferring patients to other sites. A survey by the University of Pelotas in Rio Grande do Sul, in the south of the country, estimates that there are at least seven times more cases than the official figures suggest.
Bolsonaro will try to build a strategy from his base of support among evangelicals and people in the orbit of the police and military. Evangelicals have been another element of the Covid-19 denial, but they are fired by conviction rather than nonchalance. Edir Macedo, the billionaire pastor whose TV networks are used by Bolsonaro in preference to the establishment Rede Globo, said the WHO’s warnings on Covid-19 were the “work of Satan.” “Our position from the first moment has been to keep the churches open, because God will defeat the virus,” said Washington Reis, the evangelical mayor of the Rio working-class district of Duque de Caxias last week. Days later, God had spoken, and Reis was hospitalized with Covid-19. The tactic may be working. Bolsonaro appears to have maintained support in the pandemic, despite the pot banging and international horror at his stance. A poll by Datafolha last week showed that 36 percent of Brazilians believe his management of the health crisis is “good or great,” slightly more support than before the pandemic. And 52 percent say he’s capable of leading the country through the crisis.
There may even be a second phase to Bolsonaro’s strategy of leveraging Covid-19 to stay in power, said Soares. “Building on the contradictions of his own government and the coming crisis in the health system and the economy, Bolsonaro may be hoping for some kind of a social explosion in the streets,” he said. “That would create the conditions for a state of emergency and the end of democratic institutions that are still blocking the path of Bolsonaro’s basic project: a dictatorship and the perpetuation in power of his family.”
The call for a coup against Congress—pitched, at Sunday’s rally, at more extremist elements in the armed forces—may be a first step in this direction. By first denouncing an alleged coup plot against his own presidency, allegedly planned by Congress and the big-city governors, and then calling for military action in his defense, “Bolsonaro is following the example of many authoritarian presidents, starting with Hitler in 1933,” writes Nabil Bonduki, former São Paulo culture secretary, in an article in Folha de S.Paulo. “The allegation of an attempted coup is thus the pretext for a coup planned by the president himself.” The idea might sound fanciful, and as paranoid as Bolsonaro’s own rhetoric. But the former army captain was a reluctant recruit to democratic politics even before the devastating arrival of Covid-19.
Bolsonaro’s close links to right-wing militias made up of former military police and firemen, which run whole swaths of the West Zone of Rio, may help. “The militias have always been close to the Bolsonaro family, and now they are becoming more ideological, part of a Bolsonarist movement. They could help in a coup if he wants that,” said Soares. The militia Escritório do Crime (the Crime Office) is known to be implicated in the assassination of left-wing Rio city councillor Marielle Franco over two years ago. To square the circle of fascism and Covid-19, reports are just out that the militias in Itanhangá and Rio das Pedras, adjacent to the kitsch beach resort of Barra da Tijuca, where the Bolsonaro family has its base, are forcing businesses to stay open during the lockdown so they can continue to charge for protection.


thenation--2020-04-22--Scenes From a Pandemic: 4

Scenes From a Pandemic: 4

Hurdle Mills , North Carolina—Linda Leach wears a mask as much for the pollen that ’ s whipping through the air as for the coronavirus .
Sticking her head out her pickup truck window , she checks the progress in the shed on the farm she owns with husband Stanley Hughes .
Something Is Happening Here is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind , a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind , who from 1982–94 was the magazine ’ s chief political writer and analyst .
Gloved and intent , Gabrielle Eitienne and Gerald Harris pull apart tangles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ piles , determining what ’ s what by smell and sight : cilantro , oregano , sage , mint .
Soon , the scent in the Pine Knot Farms shed is an olfactory cocktail , as Hughes peels an orange and the wind picks up , blowing empty boxes off the truck bed a few steps away .
Those boxes will soon each hold a dozen fresh eggs and Pine Knot ’ s trademark sweet potatoes , then gradually fill up with the vegetables of this in-between season : kale , mustard greens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ broad as fans—the bounty from five farms , ready for pickup .
What ’ s happening here is a new community-supported agriculture ( CSA ) service , the Tall Grass Food Box , featuring the produce of black farmers around the state ’ s Triangle region .
It was an idea among friends , who hustled to organize the CSA in about a week and a half as the coronavirus crisis hit : Eitienne , a cook and cultural preservationist ; Harris , a university administrator interested in food sovereignty ; and Derrick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Black August , a showcase for black food producers , business , and creativity held annually in Durham .
“ We were asking ourselves , Who ’ s taking care of black farmers ?
How can we support them ?
” says Harris .
Leach and Hughes didn ’ t blink when asked to participate .
Sitting in the couple ’ s gleaming kitchen , Hughes estimates that 50 percent of their sales comes from farmers markets , now disallowed under North Carolina ’ s stay-at-home order .
Something Is Happening Here More @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in survival .
It ’ s a rare “ century farm , ” acreage bought in 1912 by Hughes ’ s grandfather .
As Hughes puts it , “ I ’ ve been farming as long as I ’ ve been black ” —all of his 71 years .
Pine Knot is among the best-known small farms in North Carolina , and the first black-owned one in the state to be certified organic , in 1996—when few farmers of any race earned the designation .
Hughes became one of the country ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his collards a national treasure in 2003 , and his sweet potatoes draw competitors ’ envy .
“ Everybody wants to know how he cures his sweet potatoes , ” says Leach with an emphatic nod , speaking of the process that makes the vegetables storable for months .
“ He won ’ t tell it to anybody—except for me.
” Pine Knot ’ s longevity is also unusual in a state where black land dispossession is a century-long and ongoing tale .
Hurdle Mills was once dotted with African American homesteads .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 30 minutes from Durham , I saw more than a few rural-gentrifying McMansions .
“ You can hardly find a black full-time farmer here for the next 10 miles , ” says Hughes .
As we speak on a sunny day , rain has delayed spring planting by two weeks .
That ’ s not an insurmountable problem , and workers are now “ cutting the land , ” prepping the fields .
Hughes epitomizes the farmer as working-class scientist .
He reels off the soil sugar levels tobacco needs to thrive , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the orange Beauregards in a supermarket near you , and the price a 40-pound box of his favorite tubers is fetching ( about $ 30 ) .
Leach handles paying the bills and other business matters .
Together , they ’ re always looking for new revenue streams .
Eitienne is thrilled that the Tall Grass Food Box will contain Pine Knot ’ s Murasaki white sweet potatoes .
If people talked about sweet potatoes like they talk about wine , the Murasakis would be described as having “ notes of brown sugar.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ hard times .
Eitienne shares her favorite sweet potato soup recipe : “ I ’ ll soften up some leeks with butter , maybe some carrots .
Then I put in the boiled sweet potatoes , or I ’ ll roast them depending on how much time I have .
I ’ ll puree and thin it out with beef stock .
And then I ’ ll finish it with a little good olive oil or chive oil .
Maybe I ’ ll use wild yard chives or some fresh thyme.
” Leach @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Use the Murasakis and a packet of instant vanilla pudding to hold it together .
Imparting that knowledge , she smiles at Beasley , Etienne , and Harris , lined up in front of her .
“ I appreciate what you ’ re doing , ” Leach says .
“ I ’ m looking at millionaires now , and you ’ re going to do it with black farmers.
” The CSA sold 30-odd boxes in its inaugural week , and there ’ s room to expand .
Beasley defines success in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ current crisis as an opportunity beyond accumulation : making sure black farmers are visible , paying them fair retail prices upfront , getting fresh produce to people , helping consumers think outside grocery stores , creating new markets that are friendly and beneficial to both producers and customers of color .
“ There ’ s enough for all of us , ” he says .
“ Oh , there ’ s enough for all , ” agrees Leach .
And shouldn ’ t black farmers and small businesses have a bigger share ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she says .
“ Everybody can get a slice of the pie .
The sweet potato pie.
” Something Is Happening Here is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind , offering scenes from a pandemic—a series of dispatches from Kopkind ’ s far-flung network of participants , advisers , guests , and friends .
Edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski , it will appear weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org .

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service. For that reason, this article, and all of our coronavirus coverage, is now free. Please subscribe to support our writers and staff, and stay healthy.
H urdle M ills, N.C. —Linda Leach wears a mask as much for the pollen that’s whipping through the air as for the coronavirus. Sticking her head out her pickup truck window, she checks the progress in the shed on the farm she owns with husband Stanley Hughes. Something Is Happening Here is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind, a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind, who from 1982–94 was the magazine’s chief political writer and analyst.
Gloved and intent, Gabrielle Eitienne and Gerald Harris pull apart tangles of herbs. They sort them into piles, determining what’s what by smell and sight: cilantro, oregano, sage, mint. Soon, the scent in the Pine Knot Farms shed is an olfactory cocktail, as Hughes peels an orange and the wind picks up, blowing empty boxes off the truck bed a few steps away. Those boxes will soon each hold a dozen fresh eggs and Pine Knot’s trademark sweet potatoes, then gradually fill up with the vegetables of this in-between season: kale, mustard greens, bundles of collards, leaves as broad as fans—the bounty from five farms, ready for pickup.
What’s happening here is a new community-supported agriculture (CSA) service, the Tall Grass Food Box, featuring the produce of black farmers around the state’s Triangle region. It was an idea among friends, who hustled to organize the CSA in about a week and a half as the coronavirus crisis hit: Eitienne, a cook and cultural preservationist; Harris, a university administrator interested in food sovereignty; and Derrick Beasley, an artist and cofounder of Black August, a showcase for black food producers, business, and creativity held annually in Durham. “We were asking ourselves, Who’s taking care of black farmers? How can we support them?” says Harris.
Leach and Hughes didn’t blink when asked to participate. Sitting in the couple’s gleaming kitchen, Hughes estimates that 50 percent of their sales comes from farmers markets, now disallowed under North Carolina’s stay-at-home order. Something Is Happening Here Untethered, or The Year of Living Virtually Patricia J. Williams The Art of the Meal Mary Lewis Maybe We Shouldn’t Go Back to Normal Bri M.
But Pine Knot specializes in survival. It’s a rare “century farm,” acreage bought in 1912 by Hughes’s grandfather. As Hughes puts it, “I’ve been farming as long as I’ve been black”—all of his 71 years. Pine Knot is among the best-known small farms in North Carolina, and the first black-owned one in the state to be certified organic, in 1996—when few farmers of any race earned the designation. Hughes became one of the country’s pioneers of organic tobacco. Gourmet proclaimed his collards a national treasure in 2003, and his sweet potatoes draw competitors’ envy.
“Everybody wants to know how he cures his sweet potatoes,” says Leach with an emphatic nod, speaking of the process that makes the vegetables storable for months. “He won’t tell it to anybody—except for me.”
Pine Knot’s longevity is also unusual in a state where black land dispossession is a century-long and ongoing tale. Hurdle Mills was once dotted with African American homesteads. Driving the verdant route there, about 30 minutes from Durham, I saw more than a few rural-gentrifying McMansions. “You can hardly find a black full-time farmer here for the next 10 miles,” says Hughes. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Current Issue View our current issue
As we speak on a sunny day, rain has delayed spring planting by two weeks. That’s not an insurmountable problem, and workers are now “cutting the land,” prepping the fields.
Hughes epitomizes the farmer as working-class scientist. He reels off the soil sugar levels tobacco needs to thrive, the names of sweet potato varieties beyond the orange Beauregards in a supermarket near you, and the price a 40-pound box of his favorite tubers is fetching (about $30). Leach handles paying the bills and other business matters. Together, they’re always looking for new revenue streams.
Eitienne is thrilled that the Tall Grass Food Box will contain Pine Knot’s Murasaki white sweet potatoes. If people talked about sweet potatoes like they talk about wine, the Murasakis would be described as having “notes of brown sugar.”
Food can comfort and connect in hard times. Eitienne shares her favorite sweet potato soup recipe: “I’ll soften up some leeks with butter, maybe some carrots. Then I put in the boiled sweet potatoes, or I’ll roast them depending on how much time I have. I’ll puree and thin it out with beef stock. And then I’ll finish it with a little good olive oil or chive oil. Maybe I’ll use wild yard chives or some fresh thyme.”
Leach shares her tip for sweet potato pie: Use the Murasakis and a packet of instant vanilla pudding to hold it together. Imparting that knowledge, she smiles at Beasley, Etienne, and Harris, lined up in front of her. “I appreciate what you’re doing,” Leach says. “I’m looking at millionaires now, and you’re going to do it with black farmers.”
The CSA sold 30-odd boxes in its inaugural week, and there’s room to expand. Beasley defines success in material and community terms, and the current crisis as an opportunity beyond accumulation: making sure black farmers are visible, paying them fair retail prices upfront, getting fresh produce to people, helping consumers think outside grocery stores, creating new markets that are friendly and beneficial to both producers and customers of color. “There’s enough for all of us,” he says.
“Oh, there’s enough for all,” agrees Leach. And shouldn’t black farmers and small businesses have a bigger share? The Lord wants us to speak success, she says. “Everybody can get a slice of the pie. The sweet potato pie.”
Something Is Happening Here is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind, offering scenes from a pandemic—a series of dispatches from Kopkind’s far-flung network of participants, advisers, guests, and friends. Edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski, it will appear weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org.


thenation--2020-04-22--Can Psychedelics Treat Climate Grief?

Can Psychedelics Treat Climate Grief?

This story was originally co-published by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation as part of Covering Climate Now , a global journalistic collaboration to strengthen coverage of the climate story .
The dread that many people are feeling these days about the coronavirus is nothing new to those acquainted with climate grief .
As terrible as the virus is , the heat waves , droughts , fires , and floods driven by an overheated planet have killed many more people .
And if current trends persist , the death toll will increase exponentially through the end of the century .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , grief is understandable .
In his best-selling book How to Change Your Mind , journalist Michael Pollan reports that 80 percent of terminally ill patients in clinical trials at Johns Hopkins and New York universities felt less anxiety and depression after taking psychedelic drugs .
Mark Hertsgaard , environment correspondent for The Nation and author of HOT : Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth , interviewed Pollan about whether those same drugs might also benefit people struggling not with their own death as much as the death of loved ones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we know it .
The interview has been edited for length and clarity .
Mark Hertsgaard : Let ’ s be clear—in those clinical trials , terminally ill patients took psychedelic drugs under close medical supervision , right ?
But the results sound remarkable .
Michael Pollan : Yes .
Most of them had remarkable journeys that reset their thinking about death in many ways , removing their fear completely .
And in most cases their depressions lifted .
MH : Do those experiences and your other research suggest that psychedelic drugs can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Coronavirus Has Lessons for Journalists Covering the Climate Crisis Organizing on the Coasts Won ’ t Save the Planet More in this series MP : The first person I talked to about this was Rachael Petersen , an environmentalist .
She worked at the World Resources Institute developing software that allows you to watch fires around the world in real-time to see whether deals to protect lands , specifically in the Amazon , were being honored or not .
This was incredibly depressing work .
She watched the earth burn in real @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a serious depression .
She received psychedelic therapy , and while it was not a panacea , she felt it helped her , allowed her to reset and continue to do this difficult work .
MH : How did that reset happen ?
MP : I can ’ t speak for her , but one of the things psychedelics can do is [ help ] people find more hope in their circumstances .
After these experiences , they tend to feel less isolated and more connected—more connected to other people , to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made her realize that there were a cohort of people like herself who ’ d been working on this issue a long time .
They ’ ve seen us go backwards under the Trump administration , and they ’ re incredibly discouraged to the point of despair .
To call it an antidote is perhaps a bit strong , but having an experience like this may help them deal with their depression .
MH : If “ antidote ” is too strong , would “ treatment ” be a better word ?
MP @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a potential treatment .
Does it fix the environmental crisis ?
No .
But keeping these people mentally healthy is very important to all of us .
This could shift their thinking in ways that allow them to go on doing really hard work that they might otherwise give up on in despair .
I think the challenge is to organize a study , take a group of people who struggle with climate grief , and see if this could indeed help them sustain their commitment .
MH : But climate grief is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facing a terminal diagnosis .
Climate grief is not necessarily about your own death but more about the death of the world around you—a kind of collective , civilizational death .
MP : Yeah , and here ’ s what the parallels break down a little bit because part of what psychedelic therapy seems to do for individuals is reconcile them to death .
And that sort of acceptance is the last thing you want in a climate activist !
MH : Are psychedelics relevant to climate grief in any other ways ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ not so much to activists as to all of us .
Researchers at Imperial College London found that a single experience on psychedelics , specifically psilocybin , changes measures of what is called “ nature connectedness ” —the extent to which you feel you are a part of nature .
In people who had a single psilocybin journey scores of “ nature connectedness ” went up consistently and fairly dramatically .
This rings true to me and to many of the people I ’ ve interviewed .
You are less likely to objectify @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high-dose psychedelic experience often shrinks the ego .
The ego typically perceives the world as if there ’ s a single subject—you—while everything else is an object .
This sort of egotism , I think , is at the heart of our environmental crisis—our ability to objectify nature and see ourselves as standing outside of it .
Once you objectify something , it becomes a thing you can use for your own purposes , that you can exploit .
So , to the extent the psychedelic experience seems to bring down these walls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sense of connection , it has—at least theoretically—the potential to shift consciousness around the environment .
And God knows we need that .
MH : You ’ re a parent .
I ’ m a parent ; my daughter just turned 15 .
A big part of my climate grief relates to the future she ’ s going to inherit .
And not just her but the countless other kids around the world in her generation .
Can psychedelics be helpful to parents dealing with climate grief ?
MP : I think potentially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extent that many years of doing this work has dug a certain groove in your mind .
There ’ s a beautiful metaphor one of the neuroscientists working on psychedelic research in London offered me .
Think of your mind as a hill covered in snow , and your thoughts are sleds going down that hill .
The more rides on those sleds over time , the deeper become the grooves .
After a while , there ’ s no other way to go down the hill but in those grooves .
Think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fills all the grooves , allowing you to take a new path down the hill .
MH : I ’ ve covered climate change as a journalist for 30 years , and when people ask , I always say that the only solution to climate grief for me is taking action—doing something to make me feel I ’ m having an effect on this .
Taking action is clearly a climate solution .
Are psychedelic drugs , in a different way , also a climate solution ?
MP : No , I wouldn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think they could be a climate tool , to help us fight the battle , keep up our morale .
I think the action we take around our food choices—giving up meat , for example—is more certain to have a positive effect than taking psychedelics… .
But what ’ s exciting and new is that we ’ re coming to recognize psychedelics ’ therapeutic value .
We face existential crises on the order of someone facing a terminal diagnosis .
And the fact that psychedelics can help those people is reason enough to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more collective sense of existential dread .

This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
The dread that many people are feeling these days about the coronavirus is nothing new to those acquainted with climate grief. As terrible as the virus is, the heat waves, droughts, fires, and floods driven by an overheated planet have killed many more people. And if current trends persist, the death toll will increase exponentially through the end of the century. In the face of so much loss, grief is understandable.
In his best-selling book How to Change Your Mind, journalist Michael Pollan reports that 80 percent of terminally ill patients in clinical trials at Johns Hopkins and New York universities felt less anxiety and depression after taking psychedelic drugs. Mark Hertsgaard, environment correspondent for The Nation and author of HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, interviewed Pollan about whether those same drugs might also benefit people struggling not with their own death as much as the death of loved ones, future generations, and civilization as we know it. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Mark Hertsgaard: Let’s be clear—in those clinical trials, terminally ill patients took psychedelic drugs under close medical supervision, right? But the results sound remarkable.
Michael Pollan: Yes. Most of them had remarkable journeys that reset their thinking about death in many ways, removing their fear completely. And in most cases their depressions lifted.
MH: Do those experiences and your other research suggest that psychedelic drugs can be an antidote to climate grief? Covering Climate Now How to Stop the Spread of Climate Disinformation Erika Seiber and Michael Khoo A Soundtrack for the Climate Emergency Mark Hertsgaard Can Gen Z Save the Midterms for Democrats? Mark Hertsgaard
MP: The first person I talked to about this was Rachael Petersen, an environmentalist. She worked at the World Resources Institute developing software that allows you to watch deforestation and fires around the world in real-time to see whether deals to protect lands, specifically in the Amazon, were being honored or not. This was incredibly depressing work. She watched the earth burn in real time and as a result entered into a serious depression. She received psychedelic therapy, and while it was not a panacea, she felt it helped her, allowed her to reset and continue to do this difficult work. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
MH: How did that reset happen?
MP: I can’t speak for her, but one of the things psychedelics can do is [help] people find more hope in their circumstances. After these experiences, they tend to feel less isolated and more connected—more connected to other people, to the community, and to nature. It made her realize that there were a cohort of people like herself who’d been working on this issue a long time. They’ve seen us go backwards under the Trump administration, and they’re incredibly discouraged to the point of despair. To call it an antidote is perhaps a bit strong, but having an experience like this may help them deal with their depression.
MH: If “antidote” is too strong, would “treatment” be a better word?
MP: Yeah, I think it is a potential treatment. Does it fix the environmental crisis? No. But keeping these people mentally healthy is very important to all of us. This could shift their thinking in ways that allow them to go on doing really hard work that they might otherwise give up on in despair. I think the challenge is to organize a study, take a group of people who struggle with climate grief, and see if this could indeed help them sustain their commitment.
MH: But climate grief is different in important ways from an individual facing a terminal diagnosis. Climate grief is not necessarily about your own death but more about the death of the world around you—a kind of collective, civilizational death.
MP: Yeah, and here’s what the parallels break down a little bit because part of what psychedelic therapy seems to do for individuals is reconcile them to death. And that sort of acceptance is the last thing you want in a climate activist!
MH: Are psychedelics relevant to climate grief in any other ways?
MP: Yes, and this applies not so much to activists as to all of us. Researchers at Imperial College London found that a single experience on psychedelics, specifically psilocybin, changes measures of what is called “nature connectedness”—the extent to which you feel you are a part of nature. In people who had a single psilocybin journey scores of “nature connectedness” went up consistently and fairly dramatically.
This rings true to me and to many of the people I’ve interviewed. You are less likely to objectify nature after a psychedelic experience. A high-dose psychedelic experience often shrinks the ego. The ego typically perceives the world as if there’s a single subject—you—while everything else is an object. This sort of egotism, I think, is at the heart of our environmental crisis—our ability to objectify nature and see ourselves as standing outside of it. Once you objectify something, it becomes a thing you can use for your own purposes, that you can exploit. So, to the extent the psychedelic experience seems to bring down these walls of ego and open up this powerful sense of connection, it has—at least theoretically—the potential to shift consciousness around the environment. And God knows we need that.
MH: You’re a parent. I’m a parent; my daughter just turned 15. A big part of my climate grief relates to the future she’s going to inherit. And not just her but the countless other kids around the world in her generation. Can psychedelics be helpful to parents dealing with climate grief?
MP: I think potentially [it can], to the extent that many years of doing this work has dug a certain groove in your mind. There’s a beautiful metaphor one of the neuroscientists working on psychedelic research in London offered me. Think of your mind as a hill covered in snow, and your thoughts are sleds going down that hill. The more rides on those sleds over time, the deeper become the grooves. After a while, there’s no other way to go down the hill but in those grooves. Think of psychedelics as a fresh snowfall that fills all the grooves, allowing you to take a new path down the hill.
MH: I’ve covered climate change as a journalist for 30 years, and when people ask, I always say that the only solution to climate grief for me is taking action—doing something to make me feel I’m having an effect on this. Taking action is clearly a climate solution. Are psychedelic drugs, in a different way, also a climate solution?
MP: No, I wouldn’t go that far. I think they could be a climate tool, to help us fight the battle, keep up our morale. I think the action we take around our food choices—giving up meat, for example—is more certain to have a positive effect than taking psychedelics…. But what’s exciting and new is that we’re coming to recognize psychedelics’ therapeutic value. We face existential crises on the order of someone facing a terminal diagnosis. And the fact that psychedelics can help those people is reason enough to explore their relevance for people facing that more collective sense of existential dread.