The Flood

Image by Joel Rosenburg

Issue 3

Letter from the Editors

2019-06-02

“This essential report reminds each of us of the obvious truth: the present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity. Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently.”
– Audrey Azoulay, Director-General, UNESCO on a recent UN biodiversity assessment

“A person without culture is like a human being without land”
– Jon Bul-Dau, Sudanese Refugee

Silvia Federici in her Brooklyn apartment. Photo courtesy of the authors.

Those Who Die Never Really Die

A Conversation with Silvia Federici

By Nathan Albright \ Katrina Albright \ 2019-06-02

Silvia Federici is an Italian-born writer, scholar, and activist, and among the most influential voices in the Marxist-Feminist tradition. From co-founding the Wages for Housework Campaign of the 1970s, to documenting the International Monetary Fund’s destructive impact on African commons while she taught in Nigeria in the 1980s, her work has always exposed the effects of capitalist enclosures on women. Her widely read book Caliban and the Witch examines the relationship between early capitalist enclosures and witch hunts in Europe...

Fr. Berrigan speaking in 1966 at the first Meal of Reconciliation at St. Mark’s on the Bowery in Manhattan. Photo by Jim Forest.

Away from Apartheid

A Previously Unreleased Letter from Fr. Daniel Berrigan

By Eric Martin \ 2019-06-02

The letter below comes from the Jesuit priest and poet Daniel Berrigan in 1965, three years before he became famous for pouring napalm on draft files and burning them with a Catholic group that became known as the Catonsville Nine. Berrigan had for several years been trying to immerse himself...

Women from the feminist organization The Center for Women’s Studies -- Honduras (pictured above) have been a significant force in the post-coup resistance. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Solidarity After The Coup

A Review of Dana Frank's The Long Honduran Night

By Joe Parziale \ 2019-06-02

Until recently, Honduras produced few refugees and asylum seekers compared to the countries with which it shares eastern and northern borders – El Salvador and Guatemala, respectively; the three nations make up what is often called the Northern Triangle. That began to change dramatically...

Jean Fouquet, from The Right Hand of God Protecting the Faithful Against the Demons, cropped. Image Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Can Christianity Survive Its Cathedrals?

Reflections on the Notre Dame Fire

By Colleen Shaddox \ 2019-06-02

“Maybe it’s a sign,” I thought, as Notre Dame burned. I question whether the Roman Catholic Church, my church, should associate itself with such things while there are people without a safe place to call home. In less than a day, billionaires and corporations pledged $600 million to rebuild Notre...

Catholic Workers occupying the Enbridge pipe yard storage facility, April 2018; Image courtesy of fournecessity.org

No Trespassing

A Profile of the Four Necessity Valve Turners

By Jeannine M. Pitas \ 2019-06-02

As the weather gets more and more unpredictable, as glaciers vanish and sea levels rise, climate activists around the world are sounding the alarm, warning that we are not responding quickly enough. After nearly a year of prayerful reflection and discernment, Michele Naar-Obed, Daniel Yildirim, Brenna Cussen-Anglada and Allyson Polman...

A friend of the author posts pictures of her garden to social media. The chili plants the gardener grows in the US remind her of her father living in a refugee camp. Image courtesy of the author.

Cultivating Memory

The Politics and Poetics of Gardening in Exile

By Terese V. Gagnon \ 2019-06-02

Plants can serve as portals to re-open connections – or to create new connections – to different places, times and socialites. This holds true on both a personal and collective level. Scholars have observed this phenomenon across multiple continents (Aistara 2014; Archembault 2016; Gold & Gujar 2002; Jordan 2015; Nazarea...

The author (right) performing a wedding with other clergy members in Tijuana. Photo courtesy of the author.

From Violence to Violence

Accompanying Asylum Seekers at the US Border

By Reverend Smash \ 2019-06-02

The corridor was very long. I had learned that these corridors, where those traveling by foot line up to reach the U.S. border, are very long in Tijuana. Some, like the one at Otay Mesa, are straight and narrow, while others wind in circles, climbing higher and higher to cut...

Clare Island, Co. Mayo, Ireland. Photo courtesy of the author.

home/land

A Meditation on Nativity and Globalization

By Megan Townsend \ 2019-06-02

I spent most of the summer of 2018 in Ireland. In 2007, when I had last been there, I was eleven years old, and made the trip with my céilí band to compete in an international music competition called the Fleadh Cheoil. Then, I would have said I had a good idea of who I was and where I came from. The following eleven years would lead me through adolescence and young adulthood and I would question my stability in those identities, most of all my idea of where I...

Sister Rhonda Miska (left) and Sister Alison McCrary (right) are part of a new generation of Catholic Sisters devoting their lives to social justice. Left photo courtesy of Jacky Romo, right photo courtesy of the author.

Vows of Passionate Witness

A Profile of Two Young Catholic Sisters

By Jeannine M. Pitas \ 2019-06-02

In the 1950's, when the United States was entering the height of its political and economic power and a strong conservative social hegemony was being established, a few individuals resisted the dominant structure by becoming Beatniks. Jack Kerouac restlessly hitch-hiking across the continent, Allen Ginsberg railing against McCarthyism, or Diane...

Children look at a memorial for the victims of atrocities carried out by the Guatemalan Army in and around the village of Rio Negro. Photo courtesy of Renata Avila, Flickr.

Well Founded Fears

The New York Times and the War on Central America

By Joe Parziale \ 2019-06-02

“When there’s terror in a place like Guatemala, people flee. They come to the U.S. That’s where a lot of the undocumented immigrants originated from. And then Americans complain. Well, you know, if you go and burn down your neighbor’s house, don’t complain when, as they run from the flames,...

Exxon's offshore oil platform “Troll,” the world's largest freestanding concrete structure (pictured above), was specially designed to withstand extreme weather. At the time of its construction, Exxon was funnelling millions of dollars into campaigns to deny global warming. Image courtesy of creative commons.

Paying for Inaction

A Brief History of Fossil Fuel PR and Global Warming

By Nathan Albright \ 2019-06-02

In October of 2018, major media outlets ran apocalyptic headlines including "Planet Has Only Until 2030 to Stem Catastrophic Climate Change," "We Have 12 Years to Limit Climate Change Catastrophe, Warns UN,"and "Terrifying Climate Change Warning: We Only Have 12 Years Until We're Doomed." The articles (from CNN, The Guardian, and Fox News, respectively) refer to the latest special report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) looking at the disastrous effects of a 1.5 degree C increase in global temperature from pre-industrial levels, a threshold that it predicts...