A.E. - After Empire
When We're Liberated from the Land of the Free
Dear Community,
I won’t share another exhaustive list of our latest unprecedented events or rage against the machine much in this letter. Like everywhere else, temperatures are rising and where I live - that is, a temperate rainforest - was under a heat advisory warning this week. On July 5th, there was smoke in the air. It is too damn hot, and politically and socially it is heating up everywhere.
Case in point: another fascist was shot this weekend. Whether it was a legitimate assassination attempt or staged to stoke the fires of his cultbase, it doesn’t matter. If you’d like to read deeper reflections on this moment in history, I highly recommend
’s recent newsletter or that of . Both writers point out the plain truth I’ll echo here: Millions of lives around the world are being destroyed because of monsters like Trump, and US imperialism will march on with or without him.Our planet is being burned, and we are being farmed and/or killed by the same small, greedy, monstrous group of wealthy people who just stop. The system will continue until we all die or we stop it.
In this issue of seedgiver, I want to discuss something we all fight for: life after empire. A time when our grandchildren’s grandchildren will split our present reality and their future not with B.C. or A.D. or C.E. but A.E. - After Empire.
I want us to talk about the world we will build together.
Not so long ago, the idea of buying a house was unheard of. When people needed shelter, they built it. No middleman impeded this human necessity - no realtors, no predatory construction companies, no zoning laws - and people lived in community-raised houses made from materials sourced nearby, their homes adapted to their environment.
Homelessness did not exist on Turtle Island until 1492. Coast Salish people built permanent cedar longhouses that sheltered several families during winter. Before colonizers’ mass slaughter of buffalo, Indigenous peoples across the Plains used buffalo respectfully to build their homes and other parts of their lives. Every step of building a hogan is treated with careful care, prayer, and intention by the Navajo people.
Community-built houses, adapted to environment and culture, exist today in brick and mortar and in language. The Kachch District in Gujarat hails the Architecture without Architects: bhonga, circular housing made from surrounding natural materials that have resisted Gujarat’s high earthquake propensity for over 200 years. In France, housewarming parties are still called pendaison de crémaillère - hanging of the chimney hook - as a nod to the last step when a community built a home and everyone involved was invited to dine together. The collective act of barn raising still lingers in rural communities in North America.
We have historical and living context for future homes. Their existence, however, hinges on detaching housing from capitalism and putting community at the center.
Today’s housing market is feudalism’s ugly grandchild, raised by Mother Manifest Destiny and Father Robber Baron. Now we witness the emergence of a sicker, impossibly greedier descendant in the form of hedge funds scooping up entire neighborhoods and corporations preying on people’s homes after natural disasters. This manufactured housing crisis is shaking the foundations of life everywhere.
After Empire, housing will be built by community for community.
Our homes will be built with natural materials responsibly sourced from our environment. Solar glass made from compost will make up our windows, and solar panels will shade community gardens and canals. Community apiaries will house our beloved pollinators which will allow local food forests to burst with life. Native wildflowers will bloom at every corner, and there won’t be so many allergies as we will have diversified our trees. There will be little need for cars with FREE, responsive public transit available on every corner. Cyclists will ride freely and safely. Planes powered by renewable energy will be completely safe but trains will be the preference. Boats will float across the risen seas and create a whole new ecosystem of communities.
We’ll have brought back porch sitting, complete with the iced tea, and and everyone knows their neighbors. Green spaces will be the expectation and with the addition of free, community-based healthcare and resources, crime will be reduced.
And our children will finally be safe.
After Empire, all the children in the world will be our children to love and care for.
allowed to ride bikes and visit local creeks under the watchful care of a village. Families are supported. There are thriving childcare cooperatives with nature schooling and culturally responsive curriculums. Schools will center on social-emotional learning and childhood development, expanding on children’s beautiful, natural curiosity. They will be mentored by treasured elders as intergenerational living will have taken root everywhere.
Teachers will have full classroom support and respect, making our children’s education a shared responsibility. Students will see themselves and their family members in their educators. No longer will a student’s chosen academic pursuit hinge on viable job opportunities or result in crushing lifelong debts.
After Empire, pregnancy will be respected as a choice, and people who choose to birth will be honored during pregnancy, labor, and postpartum.
Abortion care will be cherished, and birthing people will have complete, informed choices on how they give birth and where. They will not fear racist medical systems or worry about medical bills.
Midwives will be available anywhere and honored in our communities, trusted to practice the full spectrum of birthing cultural traditions. Doulas are available to everyone and no one gives birth alone.
Health insurance companies will be abolished. Preventative care will convert into holistic, full body care and wellness will be a way of life rather than a lifestyle brand. Dental care will be actual healthcare rather than mislabeled as cosmetic, and glasses and every disability aid will be free.
Disabled people will finally be free to marry whoever, whenever, they want and receive full support. Our community buildings will be wholly accessible, and masks will not be political statements because we value each other’s well-being.
After Empire, food will be abundant and freely available to everyone.
Sacred lands will be returned to their Indigenous stewards from time immemorial. Our descendants will live in relation with the land and seas, farmers prized as caretakers and guardians of our nutrition.
Pollutants and chemicals will be banned. Our soils will be healed, nourished by community compost programs, and valued for what our earth grows rather than oil buried underneath. Food forests will flourish, and foraging will be a communal celebration of the changing seasons.
“The natural world is up to a lot of things, and we are natural. So anything that’s happening out there can happen in us… We can coexist. We can be symbiotic. We can collaborate.”
adrienne maree brown
Permaculture will abound. A snack will be as simple as picking a fruit while walking around your neighborhood. We’ll bake together, gifting each bread and trading it for honey or quilts. Instead of restaurants, there will be community meals where we eat and laugh together.
No one will ever go hungry again. Indeed, why should hunger have ever existed when there’s enough for all of us?
After Empire, art will be everywhere for everyone.
There will be no more advertisements harassing us to buy something at every step or enticing hungry, marginalized people to vote for more empty promises. Billboards will be banned everywhere so we can see the beauty of our home. There will be murals on every street, celebrating beloved community members and our cultures. Art scenes will thrive. We will learn of events from word of mouth and community bulletins. Coffeehouses and libraries thrive; accessible community centers will teach and cultivate. Poets will be heralded as prophets and movie sets will be safe places to work.
Our clothing will fit all of our bodies. Each piece will be a form of artwork and expression rather than mass production. Mending circles will be places of community, and everyone will be clothed. Quilts will fill blanket chests and gallery walls alike.
After Empire, houses of worship will be safe from terrorist individuals and terrorizing states. Worshippers of the divine will pray in beloved community.
After Empire, we will not live in fear of police violence. Justice will be restorative, and it will come hand in hand with resources. The masses incarcerated will be free.
After Empire, lovers will hold hands and kiss in public without fear.
After Empire, the surveillance state will have long since collapsed and we will look after us.
After Empire, borders will be a page in history books and we will move freely amongst each other. Families will never be separated again.
After Empire, survivors will be believed the first time. Patterns of abuse will be broken before they get a chance to form across decades. Predators will not be hidden by money or power, as we will have dismantled their ivory towers.
After Empire, education will be fully democratized. Peer-reviewed journals will be available to all learners, and the gates to knowledge will be flung open.
After Empire, dancing will be a celebration - not a reason to shoot someone. Not a reason to imprison them.
After Empire, our children will go to school without fear. We will rely on each other to protect them, not a mythical “good guy with a gun.”
After Empire, data will be sacred. Data will be decolonized and free from hoarding in energy-sucking data centers.
After Empire, science is for tending our world and exploring our universe and ourselves. Not colonizing the fucking moon.
After Empire, we will have stopped these cycles of oppression and hate. We will have disrupted the supply chains, crashed the markets, looted the shell companies, and smashed the monuments to evil. Poverty will cease to exist, and humans will not be capitalized on.
After Empire, we will be liberated.
We are the future ancestors that will bring After Empire.
We cannot build a better world by using the same pieces of our unequal past.
- Karim Wafa-Al Hussaini
Mutual Aid for San Carlos Tribal Members
The above video was recorded by Anthony Bush, a San Carlos Apache Tribe member. Source.
While we labor and organize for an 1 A.E., we must hold each other and care for our community as we face this oligarch-sponsored climate crisis. We are all affected by heat advisory warnings and floods, and our relatives in frontline communities bear the harshest of this new climate reality.
Last week, brush fires and flash floods swept across our neighbors in the southwest. The Watch Fire has hit over 2,000 acres in eastern Arizona, and the San Carlos Apache Tribe declared a state of emergency.
“We have endured fires before, but the human scale of this one is particularly devastating,” said San Carlos Apache Tribe Chairman Terry Rambler. “Unfortunately, multiple families lost homes. It was horrible all the way around. I have received reports of families leaving with nothing, elders having no transportation, kids running with no shoes.
“We have never experienced anything like this.”
Thankfully, no one died; there were a few injuries. However, the San Carlos Apache Tribe is a nation of some 15,000 members with a majority living on and stewarding 1.8 million acres of sacred land. The Watch Fire destroyed at least 13 homes, leaving 75 people with only the clothes on their backs. Mass mutual aid from neighbors in nearby tribal nations, eastern Arizona, and even New Mexico have rallied around the San Carlos Apache Tribe but recovery and rebuilding will understandably be a long process.
The San Carlos Apache Tribe Emergency Response Commission has reported they are at full capacity for any in-kind items. What will help most right now is monetary donations.
To support families displaced by the Watch Fire, the San Carlos Apache Tribe has provided details on how you can donate via wire or ACH transfer.
If you’re a confused zillennial like me who has never done a wire transfer, a few GoFundMe have started popping up. This one has been shared by NDN Girls Book Club, a trustworthy group of Indigenous baddies promoting literacy in Indian Country who have relationships with folks in the area.
Invitation for Reciprocity
Thank you to everyone who has subscribed to seedgiver this past month, especially given the sudden shift from “this is my writing, I guess, read please?” to something more. But seedgiver will never amount to more than one person writing their thoughts if it is not shared and reciprocated.
I want to hear from you.
Send me your celebrations, your truths, your grief and anger, what you’re grateful for, and what you fight for. I want to hear about what is going on in your neighborhood and how you’re organizing to take care of each other.
seedgiver is here for storytelling and sharing art. It’s for geeking out over scientific wonders and celebrating solutions. It is also hopefully a source of support. If you have a call for action or mutual aid request you would like amplified, seedgiver is a place to share it.