US Daily Life Is Changing & We'd Be Wise To Act Like It
Activities & Priorities Need To Change To Deal With What's Unfolding
Denial Is Counterproductive
People do funny things in disasters… because they are disasters. Denial that there is a disaster is the number one tricky thing people do.
Not admitting there’s a disaster keeps people from making decisions that could be helpful as the disaster unfolds.
We’re in a disaster.
It doesn’t look like a disaster. The basic forms and structures are in place. The buildings are there. Kids are (mostly) still going to school — except for some from families worried about getting deported. Grocery stores look essentially the same as they have for a few years, except for the egg sections (bird flu).
The interstates work. There’s gas at gas stations. The lights are on. The internet works. TVs work. Ads are running all over the place like as if everything is normal. Jobs (mostly) exist still — except for a whole lot of federal government employees, federal contractors, and grant-dependent positions in everything from nonprofits to research to academia. But a lot of jobs still exist. The economy’s still ticking, although there’s a lot of not-hushed talk about a possible recession.
And so on.
There are not big fields of rubble, like as if a hurricane just wiped out a whole section of a state. There aren’t (new) burned-up communities stretching on for miles… yet (federal cuts to employees and facilities are reducing wildland firefighting capabilities nationwide even as we speak). There aren’t miles of debris on curbs in front of houses where everything was flooded.
It’s still a disaster, though, even if it doesn’t yet look like a disaster.
I’m not being melodramatic.
You can’t cut federal programs, services, staff, capabilities, contracts, and facilities with no regard at all for the critical national and mission essential functions of the federal government and not expect disaster.
You can’t do all that to the federal government in general and not expect spectacular cascading effects.
We don’t know yet what the specifics will look like, partly because it was hard to get your head around everything the federal government did before all of this in the third-largest country on earth.
We don’t know what the national and mission essential functions (NEFs and NMEFs) of the government were before the Trump administration because that stuff is protected sensitive internal government information, but now at least some of those functions have been degraded, unfunded, unstaffed, “deleted,” or otherwise eroded and we don’t know to what extent.
Will it be airplanes falling out of the sky? Will it be communities getting hit by tornadoes because there’s no more watch-and-warning capability at the National Weather Service? Will it be a silent bird flu pandemic that creeps up on us as the Trump administration hides scientific and public health data? Will it be increased starvation and homelessness, untracked by the federal government and not reported on because it’s too hard to track? Will it be widespread economic damage, worse than the 2008 recession? Could it be like the Great Depression? Will it be the decimation of people-funded programs like Social Security, that we’ve all been promised will be available as we paid into it? Will our cellphones and financial transactions stop working because the government’s position, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems are unstaffed?
I mean I could go on. The lists of possibilities are huge. There’s even more scary stuff than what I put on the list, but I’m not writing this post to be terrifying.
I’m writing this post because we should start acting like we’re in a disaster.
It’s not serving us to be going around acting like everything is normal, when it clearly isn’t and when normal isn’t coming back.
We Can Change Our Priorities & Activities
What this means is that we should maybe reconsider our priorities about what we’re doing in our day-to-day life. We can also do some triage on what’s critical and essential in our own lives.
Lots of people have started — especially many who are the most vulnerable. People have put more security and risk mitigation in place, moved, changed jobs, hidden information, or whatever. Lots of folks are “prepping” in case of supply chain interruptions, reduced food production/availability, or infrastructure disruptions.
But we need to be making more changes to our day-to-day lives.
Do we need to have our kids in a million sports activities, when we’re not sure if the US economy will be crashing this year? Could we reprioritize things we’re doing with our free time to help us put more things in place to deal with the disruptions coming for our own lives, or to our communities? Could we volunteer more?
Could we spend our time on more civic engagement stuff that will help us, our neighbors, and our communities to push back on what’s happening, to hold things together, or to help people deal with the mess?
Could we re-point the existing groups that we’re in to think about shifting their focus and priorities to better deal with what’s coming our way? Or to deal with pushing back on the changes? Or to help hold institutions and infrastructure together in the places where we live?
The lists go on.
We Can Have Conversations
The main point of this post is: How can we do our daily lives differently in this time of instability?
Talk to your people. Ask them to talk to their people.
Think about the priorities and activities you could change.
Think about how you’re spending your time, and how you could do it differently.
This is hard stuff to talk about. It’s likely to get harder not easier. Although to be fair, as things are more obviously disastrous sometimes certain decisions clarify pretty fast.
Also to be fair — we’re better at navigating disasters if we can get a little bit ahead of them before they wipe out the things, places, supplies, and communities where we live and upon which we rely.
If there are things we can do now to help make all that less bad, we could be getting on it. Like now.
Start with a group in a livingroom or a coffee shop or at a bar or whatever. Do some assessing. Make some plans. This stuff doesn’t have to be complicated, but getting going on some actions will help.
You can also join some of our Zooms, in which we’re talking about some of this stuff.
In this Wednesday’s weekly zoom we’ll be talking about group gardening options, in ways that people might not usually consider.
In next Wednesday’s weekly zoom we’ll be talking civic engagement in general about basically the stuff in this post — what can we be doing locally? That will tie to our civic action guide, and idea lists.
The security Zoom is for people active in pushback, pressure campaigns, or civic engagement work looking to mitigate risk.
This nonprofit can speak to or work with groups on this stuff — we’re here to help. Holler, at team@shiftthecountry.com or book a call to talk.
Take care and be safe out there. Pass this along if it resonates. And drop us some financial support if you’re able. This work is a service, and it needs funding.
Onward and forward.
Vanessa Burnett is the Founder of Shift the Country, an unusual nonprofit promoting creative, widespread civic engagement to navigate instability, to build resilience, to drive public pressure, and to coordinate in bigger ways. Vanessa is a former homeland security professional with 25+ years experience in resilience, big disasters, wildland fire, critical infrastructure, emergency management, land management, continuity of operations, public communication, and disaster information sharing. Email to team@shiftthecountry.com. Links are here on Linktree.