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Colonialists did what colonialists do. They came, they claimed, they took what they wanted and they moved on. They left behind pieces of their sunken ships, and the new names they gave these old places — the same places Hawaiians had frequented for hundreds of years before Westerners arrived, places for which they had their own names, preserved in chants passed down through generations.

But the times are changing with a movement to restore the original names of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which since 2006 have been protected as part of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

It began from the ground up, according to Randy Kosaki, the monument’s deputy superintendent for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A handful of Native Hawaiian scientists started using the original Hawaiian names for these islands in their research papers, and it’s caught on.

Now, federal agencies like NOAA print maps with both Hawaiian and Western names. Pearl and Hermes Atoll is also labeled as Manawai, French Frigate Shoals as Lalo, Necker as Mokumanamana.

On NOAA’s most recent research expedition to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the mix of scientists from Hawaiʻi and the mainland almost exclusively used the Hawaiian names when discussing where they were diving and surveying the reefs. That wasn’t the case on trips even a few years earlier.

It’s a tale as old as time: underfund social institutions until they can barely function; gut the social institutions tasked with our care and well-being such as health care, housing and education; and then while the public is reeling and looking for someone to blame for their suffering, privatize. These highly strategic political choices designed to sow fear, hatred, and confusion have a body count in the hallways of our hospitals and in city encampments. The compounding crises we face have far surpassed their tipping point.

Historically, unions have fought for the strength of our social institutions and public services in tandem with bettering working conditions for their members. With the climate crisis and living affordability crisis, labour unions more than ever need to intervene in the current trends of privatization and the unchecked billions lining the pockets of billionaires.

One solution being tabled by tax fairness organizations and social movements alike is an excess profits and wealth tax, which would bring billions in private profits back into the public purse. A second concurrent solution is federally regulating Canadian banks which would clamp down on the continued funding of destructive industries (like fossil fuels) and incentivize investments in climate safe and socially supportive industries.

“The combination of accelerating clean energy growth and moderating power demand growth promises to bend China’s emissions down further from the current plateau,” Myllyvirta said in a post.

That’s despite coal- and gas-fired power capacity additions of 54GW in 2024, a slight decline from the prior year.

Myllyvirta said energy capacity additions tend to accelerate towards the end of each year, which means last year’s new installations will only fully show up in generation statistics from 2025.

“So the record additions in the end of 2024 are highly relevant for the 2025 emission trend,” Myllyvirta said.

Close to half of the experts surveyed by CREA last year said China’s carbon dioxide emissions had probably already peaked, or would do so in 2025, thanks in large part to its unprecedented wind and solar boom.

However, it’s still too soon to call the top. China’s fossil fuel power plants generated 1.5% more electricity in 2024 than the previous year, per the National Bureau of Statistics. This indicates that electricity consumption continued to grow faster than clean energy output.

Now, Blue Lake Rancheria is set to greatly expand its microgrid system through the Tribal Energy Resilience and Sovereignty project, a $177 million initiative that will add 20,000 kilowatts of solar capacity and will connect Blue Lake to the land of three other communities — comprising Hoopa, Yurok and Karuk Indians — with a 142-mile-long distribution circuit to increase regional resiliency between the tribes. Moreover, the expanded grid system will enable staff to choose between five priority levels for energy usage, allowing the operators to turn off non-essential power during outages — which will in turn allow the system to operate indefinitely during extended emergencies. Altogether, the expanded microgrid will “radically expand” the capacity of microgrids to “provide energy reliability in high-risk locations,” says Schatz Center director Arne Jacobson. “These tribes are already leading the field in dam removal, healthy fire on the land, middle and last-mile telecommunications access, and renewable energy systems deployment — and will now support development of what we hope will be a game-changing climate resilience solution.”

In expanding its microgrid capacity, Blue Lake Rancheria is not alone. Across the United States, communities, hospitals, companies and more are turning to microgrids to expand stable and clean electric power — for reliability, affordability and flexibility — to new frontiers. According to the Department of Energy, there are some 1,100 active microgrid installations in the U.S., with new installations planned everywhere from Maine to Hawaii. These installations boast a total generating capacity of over five million kilowatts — a 170 percent increase from a decade ago — and over two million kilowatt-hours of storage capacity.

So what would a fragmented America look like?

Likely similar to America’s early days that repeated itself during the pandemic where the most powerful states were functionally regional authorities. California is the fifth-largest economy in the world. Texas is ninth, bigger than Canada, while New York is eleventh, just ahead of Russia. Florida is the sixteenth largest economy in the world, just behind Mexico, while Illinois is twentieth, just behind Saudi Arabia. Like with the Virginian slave economy of old, smaller states around them would be pulled in by the gravitational force of this power, forming regional governing coalitions along natural economic and social interests.

This splintering doesn’t need a decisive moment where the United States of America all of a sudden is not–it can just be the accelerating result of the degradation of our system we have been watching unfold in real time, as state governments step in to fill the growing void left by the federal government, and one day we all wake up and realize that California is functionally the Western states’ federal government.

But it could be driven by a decisive moment where the American system irrevocably breaks in some way. Imagine a future where California tries to do something really ambitious to try to fight an exceedingly destructive climate crisis, and the Supreme Court tells them they cannot do it. Say California invokes James Madison’s belief, supported by all Supreme Courts before the Roberts Court, that states can defy the Court, and they decide that it’s more important to stop the flames from enveloping their state than to adhere to the partisan whims of a corrupt institution which awarded itself God-like power in the 19th century to functionally declare slavery legal and spark a Civil War. What happens if the fifth-largest economy in the world just goes ahead and does it anyway? Does the Supreme Court send in the army? How does this work?

The nonprofit organization now overseeing global Little Free Libraries finds the nonbook knockoffs “fun and flattering,” communications director Margret Aldrich says in an email. (She also notes “Little Free Library” is a trademarked name, requiring permission if used for money or “in an organized way.”)

Some libraries stress fundamental needs: A recently established Little Free Failure of Capitalism in South Seattle provides feminine products, soap, chargers, even Narcan. A Columbia City Little Free Pantry established by personal chef Molly Harmon grew into a statewide network for neighbors supporting neighbors.

Others are about the little things: Yarn. Jigsaw puzzles and children’s toys. Keychains (one keychain library in Hillman City has a TikTok account delighting 8,000+ followers). A Little Free Nerd Library holds Rubik’s Cubes and comic books.

Regardless of where each library falls on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they stand on common ground. “There’s a line from [Khalil] Gibran: ‘Work is love made visible,’ ” Little Library Guy says in a phone call. “That’s what they’re doing. They’re showing that they love the community by doing something for them.”

The LA Tenants Union has released a series of demands for the city to address the disaster by implementing a rent freeze and eviction moratorium. The union also asked for the city to “seize vacant units, Airbnbs, and hotels” to reserve for people experiencing homelessness, saying, “Everyone deserves housing, throughout the state of emergency and beyond.”

In addition, a coalition of over 70 tenant unions, social justice organizations and community groups sent a letter to Los Angeles County elected officials with demands for tenant protections, including “swift enforcement of anti-price gouging laws.” The letter calls for a pause on all active evictions during the ongoing emergency; a prohibition on new eviction cases; good cause protections; a ban on algorithmic price fixing; and new rental assistance programs to pay rents, as many people across the county have lost work due to the fire.

[...]rather than studying the world as it is in an empirical sense, identifying problems, and proposing solutions, Trumpism starts with “solutions” consistent with its racist and xenophobic worldview—extrapolated from slogans like “Make America Great Again,” “Build the Wall,” “Drain the Swamp”—and then goes in search of “real” problems to justify their implementation.

The press and Democratic Party have, unfortunately, gamely played along—denouncing Trumpism’s false statements of fact but largely conceding the underlying “problems” as worthy policy debates. For example, outlets like the Atlantic and New York Times insist on pretending that gender nonconformity among children is a serious “problem” worthy of national political debate when less than 0.1 percent of U.S. minors take gender-affirming medication.

The same goes for immigration. Mainstream newspapers and cable outlets have largely narrated as a “crisis” the Biden administration’s mismanagement of a dysfunctional asylum process—dysfunction, worth noting, that was deliberately sown by Republican governors to justify their racist anti-migrant policies. This crisis framing has been readily adopted by “Blue State” Democrats like New York City mayor Eric Adams and New York governor Kathy Hochul to obfuscate their own mismanagement of the issue.

Journalists, as Stuart Hall and his collaborators once argued, are “secondary definers.” Their commitment to “objectivity” means that they can’t weigh in on matters of public policy directly. Instead, they rely upon experts and public officials as “primary definers.” “Effectively, the primary definition sets the limit for all subsequent discussions by framing the what the problem is,” Hall and colleagues wrote.

The team behind Queerly Beloved were not the only people with the idea to throw a big gay wedding, once the election news broke. In late November, the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library in Ohio hosted “Legally Wed,” a marriage protection information session, which drew a crowd of 500, including ten couples who were married right then and there. Charis Books & More in Decatur, Georgia hosted an entire day of gay weddings on Jan. 19. A number of Rochester, NY Unitarian churches threw a Big Gay Wedding Day earlier this month. And in Iowa, Chaplain Anitta Milloro with lesbians of Iowa has created a resource similar to Michelle’s connecting couples who want to tie the knot before Jan. 20 with vendors willing to provide free services.

And the history of mass queer weddings goes back before the advent of legal gay marriage in the U.S. itself, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. In 2004, then-mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newsom started granting marriage licenses to gay couples, prompting queers from all over the state and even the country to descend on the city and stand in a line that wrapped around City Hall, braving the rain for the chance to get a marriage certificate. That same year, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage, following the state Supreme Court’s decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health.

Queers have always been good at celebrating, even when things look pretty dark. Michelle says that while the impending inauguration may have been the impetus behind the event, the celebration was so much more than its context.