It’s Christmas break and everyone is tired of everything, including the town they live in, so Kiran’s band goes on tour with a group of others. The band is called Geophagia, which is the medical term for people who eat dirt. They stop in Portland on a blustery night when the rain is coming down sideways and play late at the Twilight Cafe, about the only place of its size that still has a decent stage and hasn’t been turned into apartments yet.
The cafe is in a part of town that will probably never turn up in a Portlandia episode. It’s in the section of southeast Portland between the nouveau-riche high towers, ever encroaching from the west, and the area to the east that seems an homage to the car culture of old—cinder-block buildings smattered along a defunct highway, the too-many lanes a pedestrian terror, lined with Burger Kings and Taco Bells and other places with parking lots.
Inside, the Twilight is a place of hardiness and endurance. Of tall boys and appendicitis, face tattoos and banjos. It is red-and-black-painted with black upholstery, a black-painted bar and stools. Behind the bar is a collection of televisions. One of them is playing a weird movie, another an underwater documentary, sports on a third, and the fourth broadcasts what is happening on the stage to the bar patrons marooned on the wrong side of a wall in between. The place is shaped like an L, and it is packed. People with short bangs, denim jackets, knit caps and beards, fuzzy scarves. Almost everyone is wearing some shade of black plus patches, spikes, sometimes chains. A guy with a green knit bandana sticks out, adorably, like a deer in a hunting vest. Somehow everyone is both impressively young and impressively youthful, and the show encapsulates everything young people ought to be worried about.
Kiran is on stage when I arrive, act three of six, playing the mandolin and singing while their partner plays drums in black lipstick. A singer in a leather skirt alternates between an accordion and a melodica. There’s a stand-up bass, a guitar, a violin. And everybody is wearing a dark-colored T-shirt. Behind them, the mural on the wall is a simple black-and-white spiral, one that looks not like the 2D paint that it is but like a tube that falls endlessly inward, like it might swallow the band and concertgoers along with it. The concrete floor in front of the stage is full of people. So many they are spilling into the handful of booths at the bend in the L; and the sound booth, which is tucked into a corner not far from the stage, is dangerously mobbed with dancers. Above my head, Kiran’s image is being miniaturized in a cell phone while it records, the backdrop spiral a halo recast in purple stage light. They’re singing to a tune that moves between an accordion waltz and a string riff, with a soaring violin that will soon end in screaming.
We are nonsensical mindless identical
The way things are going soon all will be lost
I don’t need to be hopeful for the future
Standing here watching all this refuse floating by
Kiran has just returned from Switzerland, where they met with the ecumenical patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church and spoke at the World Council of Churches in Geneva. These are the kinds of things Kiran is invited to do because of the lawsuit. There’s a photo of this meeting on Facebook, Kiran in a gray suit, at attention to the robed high priest, “the pope of the East,” Kiran calls him. Right now, this recent meeting seems supremely ironic, since Kiran is looking quite secular—hedonistic, even—in more usual clothes: a studded black denim jacket with a Subhumans patch on the back, black jeans, and long belt with a chain.
The United Church of Christ (UCC), for which Kiran was an emissary abroad, has long embraced this dual ethos. Kiran’s mother used to be a minister in the church in Eugene, where the UCC teaches that Earth is a God-given home, a thing to love and to steward. That the church embraces this idea helps explain how Kiran’s deep commitment to the environment was fomented young. Kiran thinks not enough people know about the UCC and in another conversation told me: “Basically, everything everyone thinks is bad about American churches, they’re doing the polar opposite.” Nonpracticing though Kiran is, the UCC is still a touchstone: good people who do good work, if not in the grassroots way that Kiran most relates to, the way that is all around us tonight. This scene at the Twilight, it is another kind of religion.
The band wraps up and Kiran takes a seat next to me on a stool. It’s briefly quiet between acts, while Kiran tells me that worry is dimming the glow of the tour.
When Kiran first got the text that their deposition was canceled nine weeks ago, the feeling was only relief. Life at the time was a binding itinerary of classes and exams at the University of Washington, the pending deposition, and shifts at work. Kiran desperately needed a weekend off. But now that school is out, the nothingness of it is making for nerves. The deposition still has not happened, and no one has heard from the Ninth Circuit about what, if anything, comes next. And while tour is a nice distraction and it’s a relief that Kiran can go from town to town—Tacoma, Olympia, Grants Pass, Eureka, Oakland, Eugene—in this folk-punk bubble in which everyone thinks alike, feeling amazed that the bubble is everywhere, there is also anxiety that the case has stalled. Kiran is not sure what it means, or if it means something bad. There is a conference call with the communications team soon, and meanwhile Kiran is “trying to chill.” This week is to be a week without email. Kiran forgot to turn on the autoresponder but their partner says it’s okay to take a break. Forget about it.
A man with a face tattoo is on stage now, playing a banjo and alternating feet between a tambourine and a bass drum made from a suitcase. There is a guitar player on the man’s left, and both are adding vocals so throat searing it seems laryngitis is perhaps the best outcome. The room is full of sore throats anyway. The bartender—who proudly claims he has only ever missed one day of work, and only after five days of ignoring what turned out to be appendicitis—is attentive to the winter colds. He has a simple syrup made from ginger and honey and is serving splendid hot toddies, actually troubling himself to warm the whiskey and the mugs.
Kiran is driving tonight and not drinking, partaking of the culture instead. A feature filmmaker recently suggested that Kiran could play themselves in a film, and Kiran is kind of okay with that. The thought of this film is settling the other nerves about the stalled court proceedings. It signals that despite the cancelation of trial, the case is holding the media gaze, at least for now, and gives Kiran hope that the Juliana mission is not over, even if the case is done. There is still momentum, and the Juliana twenty-one are still building attention for the climate movement. If the vehicle for that message turns out to be a feature film instead of a courtroom spectacle, it is not the hoped-for outcome but it is also not the end. Just another platform, another way to spread the word, Kiran says.
The Window-Smashing Job Creators, a band that will be more widely known within the year, takes the stage. Their lyrics include motifs about things like wanting to read Karl Marx in an Applebee’s and then burn it down. And about how you cannot change the world unless you are willing to talk to people you don’t know. Or about how there is no left, and other politically fretful ideas that at one point cause someone in the audience to shout out “Bernie!” and a number of others to thrash around—half mosh pit, half square dance. The saxophonist is playing through a ski mask and the bass player is wearing a red bandanna like an Antifa. One moment there is a quick guitar riff that sounds like a nod to the fifties, then a cover of a Beastie Boys song that used to be about only wanting girls but is now about only wanting bread. There are unflattering lyrics about the Portland police interspersed with clapping, and a guy in a Santa hat moves along the rim of the dance floor, happily clapping along.
For the last two songs, the Job Creators invite a fiddle player named Lightnin’ Luke, who climbs the stage in a navy button-down, a black sport coat, black jeans, and a black fedora. He is bearded and very on his game. With an accompanist of sorts, whose name I do not catch, the duo becomes the last act. The guy who isn’t Lightnin’ Luke plays a bass kick drum and a tambourine, plus a steel guitar and a kazoo with a weird little speaker on it that makes it all look very steampunk. Kiran is off dancing then, finishing the night.
This is a tiny club. Tomorrow it will be home to another few bands playing another tiny show. But these kinds of grassroots movements in music, the ones that pull from the world with a force that starts to resonate, they are the ones that rear up. Like Nirvana. Like the rise of nineties punk. And if not, what then?
Julia Olson’s words from October come back to me, from the day the trial didn’t happen, when she spoke passionately from the courthouse steps, promising that if the courts would not hear the youth on climate change, “I will be with you in the streets.” If Kiran can’t settle for a feature film while the trial gets farther away, can’t settle for an opportunity to just spread the message however they can, what next? If we see them in the streets, burning the proverbial Applebee’s, will we be surprised?
———
Within days, Juliana stalls out for real. The details are legal ones, again head-spinningly technical, but the gist is that on December 26 the Ninth Circuit grants the interlocutory appeal offered by Judge Aiken the month before. Essentially, what this means is that the Ninth Circuit will decide if the Juliana case should get a trial at all, after reviewing the government’s arguments that the case should be dismissed. The effect is that Juliana v. United States flatlines until a hearing that’s ultimately set for June 2019, six months away. And while the Ninth Circuit could move quickly from there, the change also gives the US Supreme Court a pretrial opportunity to weigh in. If that happens, it will mean the trial could begin as late as early 2022. And with posttrial appeals in the mix, it also means that the Juliana plaintiffs could be six years from the finish line, or halfway to the IPCC deadline for taking action to halt climate change.
For a while, things are just quiet. And the possibility of this spectacle drawing national attention to climate change seems to be over. Without the trial to feed the zeitgeist, the imminent end to a habitable planet seems to have a tough time pulling rank in the long list of things to worry about in America. Increasing violence, rising radical nationalism, not to mention the day-to-day tangle the young are having with the cost of student loans, of housing, of working three jobs and wondering where it is all headed, these are the things commanding the conversation. Though Democrats set a House agenda to include climate change, and talk of a Green New Deal is picking up steam, it’s hard to know whether the glacial pace of governance will be faster than the actual melting of the glaciers, about which the news is daily getting worse.
This new round of waiting, it’s something Aji Piper has been doing for years. A plaintiff in the Juliana case, Aji was a state-level plaintiff in the Washington litigation too. And in the state case, Foster v. Washington Department of Ecology, the kids won, sort of. A judge didn’t force a new clean air plan to cap and regulate greenhouse gases. But she told the state to complete a clean air rule that had been stalled. Predictably, the rule did little to reduce emissions later. Plus it was largely overturned by another court. So the plaintiffs sued again in February 2018 in a case that was dismissed. Now an appeal is pending. Which is why Our Children’s Trust has been so keen to involve the press and public in its work, and build coalitions with activist groups—because its leaders recognize how key public pressure is to seeing the government actually do what the courts order. Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark civil rights case that desegregated schools, wasn’t much different. It was successful because people were in the streets. There was unrest. Society demanded the government heed the court.
Aji Piper has long wanted similar action on climate. Something bigger than the court. He told me as much on a walk in Lincoln Park in Seattle not long before, while I struggled to keep up with both his lengthy strides and the way he strings creative thoughts together, sometimes in non sequiturs. Aji is unique in many ways, maybe chiefly in his ability to preserve a kind of life aesthetic that eludes even diligent people. He is bored by social media, disdains the unyielding dopamine quest of likes and faves. He likes authenticity. Workmanship. Originality. What is new, inspirational, genuine draws him in. In this conversation, Aji easily reminds me of a young Abbie Hoffman, and not for the big hair. But because Aji spends a lot of time thinking about where performance and activism converge, and how they best make for tangible results.
Here’s the story that inspires Aji the most, he says, walking through the maple leaves, fog lifting off Puget Sound below: the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) Toronto 2009 Nixon campaign. And no, not that Nixon.
It was an advocacy campaign that, through a series of public spectacles, steeped a city in intrigue. It began with a simple poster. No branding, a plain design. Just: “Please help us Mrs. Nixon.” Activists had earlier forged a partnership with a local garbage union in Toronto, promising to strike with union workers if they would leave the poster alone. The union agreed. So RAN blanketed the town. Organizers covered walls and transformer boxes, light posts, and everywhere else until the city could not get away from this poster.
It was a campaign of mystery. Of theater. Because few could identify who Mrs. Nixon was, it entranced Toronto. She was not a politician. Not a well-placed executive. She was not a public figure at whom people could readily point. So the draw was not the plea, but the question: Who is she?
Activists dropped banners over highways when the traffic was thick. As people sat in their cars and waited, “Please help us Mrs. Nixon” would unfurl overhead along with the dial frequency of a pirated radio station. When drivers tuned in, there were stories from people who lived downriver from the tar sands, people who talked about mining’s effect on their water and their lives. RAN also had people riding the elevators in the office building of the Royal Bank of Canada, stealthily distributing flyers and creating buzz. “Please help us Mrs. Nixon.”
The rough contours of the ask were visible enough—tar sands, bad—but the target, Mrs. Nixon, kept curiosity stoked for weeks. After a month of provocation, the reveal was this: two Indigenous women climbed the flagpoles outside the Royal Bank of Canada, then dropped a banner between the Canadian and the provincial flags. It read “Please help us Mrs Nixon.com.” And on the website, a video described $2.3 billion in tar sands investments from the Royal Bank of Canada over two years. The video also described RAN’s ask: that the public urge the Royal Bank to phase out tar sand investments.
More than three thousand people clicked through the site to write twelve thousand emails to bank executives, enough that insiders later said the effort crashed the bank’s servers. Ultimately, the campaign forced a two-year inquiry into the legal risks associated with tar sand investments for Royal Bank shareholders. Mrs. Nixon turned out to be the wife of Gordon Nixon, the bank’s CEO. She was a committed environmentalist.
“It’s intensely creative. That’s something you don’t see all the time,” Aji says, smiling, wistful, deep dimples in his cheeks.
Through the park’s trees and greens, he wonders aloud what similar thing can be done to urge climate drawdown. Can he gather enough people to stomp, register an earthquake on the Richter scale? It happened once at a Seattle Seahawks game. Whatever it is, he knows it isn’t a march. Isn’t something that has been done before. “For, like, fifty years people have been chaining themselves to things, standing in front of things, blocking things, marching and yelling with signs. It’s time for something a little more shocking,” he says.
It’s not that he thinks Juliana v. United States won’t be the thing that stops the clock on climate change. Won’t still be the galvanizing force this nation needs. But any time between now and then? It’s time wasted, time in which something else is bound to happen.
———
After this news from the Ninth Circuit, Kiran’s music follows a trajectory of punk. Which is to say that what started out with acoustic instruments, rebellious in its message, becomes rebellious in an aesthetic sense too.
Maybe this would have happened anyway. After all, Kiran says the first band that caught their attention was called Crass. It was the first band, at least by Kiran’s standards, to play what can be described as anarchic punk. The band lived in a commune. Talked seriously about politics. Went to protests. And left a legacy that was as much word and deed as it was sound. So while Kiran has listened to that punk icon the Sex Pistols, and knows that the origins of folk punk date back to guys like Woodie Guthrie and Bob Dylan and Utah Phillips, Kiran’s own punk life started with the punk that got harder and louder until that point in the nineties when punk almost sounded like metal, when it started to lose some of the force of the lyric that first drew Kiran in, then turned back to folk punk.
That’s what Geophagia is. Folk punk. A few steps away from straight folk, which today is a long way from Woodie Guthrie, played by people who are not all that political anymore, maybe because of the commercial success of their sound. But not terribly long after the show at the Twilight, Geophagia will take a break. Maybe a permanent break. And Kiran will join a new band called Pickax with some of the same people and start playing music that sounds like all of them seem to feel. The mandolin is no more. It is hardcore punk all the way—and powerviolence. “Just drums, guitar, bass. Distortion turned all the way up. I don’t get to sing anymore, I just scream. And we play a hell of a lot faster than we ever did before,” Kiran says.
They start trying to figure out how to write protest songs. Start doing benefit shows, one to stop pipelines from crossing Indigenous lands in Canada, and another for Rojava in northeastern Syria, the stateless feminist society that fit millions into an ecologically sustainable system.
Kiran acknowledges that this shift is “going alongside the shift in the way that I’m feeling about the movement.” This pent-up energy that comes from the environmental angst, it flows with an increasing call for response, for action, urging people to join the front lines.