Red Harris

The end of the protections enshrined by Roe v. Wade appears imminent. After 49 years of precedent, the Supreme Court is poised to roll back the constitutional right to abortion. In the coming weeks, the ruling will be officially issued by the highest court in America, leading to a spate of drastic abortion bans across broad swathes of America. While Roe is already effectively dead and has been since the Texas abortion ban last summer, the official end of a national right to abortion will have grave consequences.

For most people not plugged into geopolitical affairs, the news about the Russo-Ukrainian War may have slowed down on the timeline. With an initial blitz running headfirst into a brick wall of resistance and operational failure, the fronts have stagnated into a grinding slog, as Russia’s military looks to lick its wounds and consolidate hold over the territory it now occupies. Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has become a media darling and a living symbol of liberal democracy to millions of people.

Heavy moon full and fat shines bright in the pre-dawn, stars surrounding it made dull by its splendor. No light pollution, no cities nearby to blast photons skyward and ruin the illusion of pristine wilderness. Deciduous trees stand vigilant and block peripherals like porous walls. It is the moon, it is the night, it is the forest, the unseasonable warmth for autumn is expected. In the summer it is unbearable, in the winter it is uncanny, but right now it feels natural.

It’s true, a lot of us love true crime. We love the mystery, we love the stakes, and perhaps most of all, we are utterly captivated by the depths of depravity people seem capable of. You may be one of those people that can’t get enough analysis of some really nasty folks. You may also have run out of satisfying podcasts in that subject area. You may simply be interested in hearing about horrible people.

The world is fucked, and that’s okay. This is the core thematic message of Desert, a long-form manifesto covering climate collapse and its meaning for the Anarchist movement. Written by an anonymous ecologically inclined anarchist, Desert prefaces itself by almost immediately asking the reader the question, “what if we don’t win?” It’s a hard prospect to think about, much less seriously engage with, but Desert doesn’t shy away from it. The text makes a convincing point for thinking about it; after all, lots of people come into the movement full of revolutionary ambition and zeal, dead-set on toppling the hegemonic power structures of our world and/or saving the environment from said power structures, only to burn out and give up in disillusionment.

I remember the first episode of Revolutionary Left Radio that I listened to. It was released on May 31, 2020, six days after the murder of George Floyd, entitled “America on Fire.” It is 38 minutes of white- hot revolutionary anger spit like fire from the mouth of Brett O’Shea, the host of the show, who primarily conducts interviews with radicals from a global range of backgrounds and interests, engaged in every struggle being waged by the international left today: from Wobblies in the US to Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Naxalite militants in India.