Beyond Hope

We are living through a long emergency - a near-continuous train of pandemics, heatwaves, droughts, resource wars and other climate-driven disasters. Beyond Hope explores the idea of local power as a response to climate-driven disasters. From the astonishingly effective Occupy Sandy disaster-recovery effort in 2012, and the neighborhood-based mutual aid groups that sustained many during COVID lockdowns, to the large-scale, self-organised polities of municipalist Spain and Kurdish Rojava, the author uses examples of disaster recovery efforts, mutual aid groups and self-organised polities to argue that local power can be a means of developing individual and collective power and a way to thrive in the face of catastrophe. The book suggests that rethinking local power can be a bulwark against despair and help communities come together in a coherent way of life.