When the Power Goes Out? Let’s Build Communities, Not Bunkers

When the power went out in Spain on Monday, how did you feel?

Friends and stranges told me they felt fear, anxiety, “end of world” vibes and other worries. With the world in such uncertainty and upheaval right now, whether in the form of power outages or destructive leaders, such unexpected challenges can lead us to withdraw and retreat out of the desire to protect oneself.

But human history offers all but irrefutable support for the idea that we are most safe when we are in community, caring for each other, supporting one another. We also saw that also on Tuesday: people playing music in the streets, sharing dusty radios, helping each other get food or drink. As the essayist Rebecca Solnit lays out in her beautiful book, Hope in the Dark, one of the beautiful things to emerge out of the most devastating disasters and tumultuous periods of the past decades, from Hurricane Katrina to the Arab Spring, are networks of mutual support.

Besides, being part of a community is just a lot more fun. On that note, I would like to invite you to the beach this weekend.

Our climate group, along with anyone who wants to join us, will gather Saturday morning near L’Estel ferit — the box sculpture on Platja Sant Miquel. Together we have more wisdom and more knowledge than any one of us alone, so bring all your ideas and energy. From such ingredients communities are built. To get us started, we will discuss what each of us is doing in our neighborhoods, communities in the city that others might be interested in, how we would like to deepen our involvement in the days ahead. But that’s just the start. We will create this together, so who knows what it will become? Feel free to bring food or drink to share!

The short version? Let’s talk about building communities, not bunkers. We hope you can join us! And bring a friend — or five!

In case you’re new to this group, we work to bring together English-speaking people in Barcelona and beyond for climate education and action, and also community. We welcome speakers of Catalan, Castellano and anything else, but most of our events are in English because that’s who has historically come to our meetings. We created this group because we could not find any community like it. We range from degrowthers to startup founders, from artists to data scientists. We may not agree on everything, but we all want to move in the same direction. If you do too, you’re welcome to make it your home.