The Response

How do we live in an age of disaster? That's the provocation put forth in the new book "Compassion in Crisis." With engaging prompts, concise checklists, and heartfelt guidance, co-authors Kailea Loften and Kate Weiner lead readers in building and sustaining durable mutual aid networks for rapid response in the face of disaster while underscoring preparedness as a constant, communal practice.  Res...

For 25 years, NewStories has been supporting communities that have faced the unimaginable, total loss from disaster—those who don't want to rebuild the old normal, but are ready to co-create something that affirms life, reciprocity, and interdependence.  They call this approach, Re-Storying Disaster. After a quarter century of working with communities impacted by disaster, they have found that tru...

On March 4, 2026, the Ithaca Common Council in Ithaca, New York, U.S., voted to non-renew its contract with Flock Safety. Flock, among other things, is a vendor of fixed-location automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems. You may have seen them pop up in your city or county in the past couple of years, as they have become a popular surveillance tool for many law enforcement agencies. And while...

On November 20, 2025, we hosted activist, organizer, and writer Dean Spade to lead a Mutual Aid 101 session about navigating conflict. So many of our mutual aid groups and solidarity economy projects are dealing with burnout, conflict, and the pressure of doing real care work with limited capacity. We currently find ourselves in a particularly " horrible f#ck*ng moment in the history of humans," t...

When floods, fires, freezes, or other extreme weather rip through our communities, the fallout goes far beyond damaged homes and downed power lines. As we've established on The Response Podcast , the climate crisis touches everyone—especially women and gender-diverse people—yet sexual and reproductive health rarely makes the checklist. Stores, pharmacies, and clinics close or run out of supplies....

On October 21, 2025 Shareable and the Tool Library Alliance hosted a crossover event of the Mutual Aid 101 Learning Series and Library of Things Co-Lab for " Tool Libraries, Mutual Aid & Community-Led Disaster Response ."  A panel of practitioners from tool libraries and mutual aid groups discussed the intersection of resource sharing and mutual aid. This session featured a particular focus on the...

In this episode of The Response, we hear from Jordan Seaberry, co-director of the US Dept of Arts and Culture (USDAC). In addition to being a working artist and a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, he has built a career as a grassroots organizer and legislative advocate, helping to pass multiple criminal justice reform milestones, including probation reform, the Unshackling Pregnant P...

The Response is back after a two-month hiatus. For today's show, we resumed our interview format and welcomed two of the seven co-founders of Survival Bloc , Daisy Carter and Aracely Jimenez-Hudis. Survival Bloc is a BIPOC-led network of leaders, movement organizations, and grassroots groups building power and community alternatives to survive the climate crisis. Survival Bloc recently released a...

We're back with the fifth installment in our Mutual Aid 101 mini-series. This episode is going to be a little different from what we've shared before. Rather than extended presentations, you'll hear six 5-10 minute "Rad Talks" covering examples of mutual aid in action.    We welcomed Sanae Lahgazi Alaoui from Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund ; Alexa Baiano and Rain from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief ; V...

Today, we're sharing excerpts from Shareable's Mutual Aid 101 Learning Series ' third session. Elijah Baucom of Everyday Security & UC Berkeley Cybersecurity Clinic discusses security for mutual aid groups before Sarah Philips of Fight for the Future shares the current state of mutual aid financial surveillance and privacy tech. The third speaker from Session 3, Erika Sato from Sustainable Economi...

We're back with the third installment in our Mutual Aid 101 Learning Series. Today, we're sharing the audio from the second half of Mutual Aid 101 Session 2, featuring Julian Rose from the New Economy Coalition and EndState ATL.  Julian will start with a 25-minute presentation about power dynamics and how to work with others before addressing questions submitted by the live audience.  Resources: N...

We're back with the second installment in our Mutual Aid 101 Learning Series.    Today, we're sharing the audio from the half of Session 2, and will be joined by Stephanie Rearick , to discuss how to start and build momentum for a new, or (re)newed mutual aid group. She's a longtime organizer and advocate for cooperative economies, and the founder of the international Humans United for Mutual Aid...

Last week, we were blown away by the 2,200 people who registered for our new Mutual Aid 101 Series.    We were fortunate to have Dean Spade, organizer, teacher, and the author of " Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next) " and " Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together " lead the first session.   Dean dropped some serious kn...

Nearly 20 years ago, The Response host Tom Llewellyn was fortunate to experience Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's Voices of a People's History of the United States live at the Berkeley Community Theater.  In 2018, after we finished our first set of audio documentaries for The Response, it was clear that the personal stories shared with us by those on the front lines of climate, political, and soci...

In this episode of The Response, we explore a devastating and ongoing story of environmental disaster, Indigenous resistance, and corporate exploitation in Brazil. This powerful installment brings listeners face-to-face with the catastrophic failures of Vale, a multinational mining corporation, and the resilient efforts of the Kamakã Mongoió people to protect their sacred land and water. The episo...

On this episode of The Response, we're joined by author and organizer Andrew Lee. In his book Defying Displacement: Urban Recomposition and Social War , Andrew writes about how gentrification is often seen as inevitable or automatic and an "economic, social plan."  In that sense, the resulting displacement of people from their homes and communities is, in essence, a planned disaster. Andrew brings...

On this episode of The Response, we're joined by Arvind Dilawar, an independent journalist who has recently written a piece for Shareable about the union supplying Palestinian journalists with safety gear amid the ongoing Israeli genocide. His articles, interviews, and essays on everything from the spacesuits of the future to love in the time of visas have appeared in The New York Times , Time Mag...

On this episode of The Response, we get to the heart of reproductive justice with Rafa Kidvai, the director of the Repro Legal Defense Fund at If/When/How. The RLDF champions the rights and freedoms of people criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes, offers bail support, and stands as a bastion for strong defenses in the face of criminalization, spanning from miscarriages to self-managed abortion...

For our first episode of 2024, we interviewed noted disasterologist and previous guest, Dr. Samantha Montano. We discuss the impact of climate change on disasters and the need for better disaster management and planning. We also explore the difference between emergencies, disasters, and catastrophes. And highlight the importance of community involvement in all stages of disaster management. We'll...

For our final episode of The Response this year, we interviewed three mutual aid organizers from Orlando, FL, Hartford, CT, and Bvlbancha (aka New Orleans, LA). Gabbie Barnes is the founder of FREE HART Closet, a worker-owner at the People's Saturday School, a mutual aid organizer, and a Library of Things Fellow. Rachel Kinbar is an organizer with Central Florida Mutual Aid, Orlando DSA, the opera...

On this week's show, we'll be turning our focus towards the Solidarity Economy and what is meant by 'Resist & Build'.   Joining us for this conversation is Emily Kawano, Co-Director of the Wellspring Cooperative Corporation and Coordinator of the United States Solidarity Economy Network, Matthew Slaats, co-director of the Solidarity Research Center and the founder of the Virginia Solidarity Econom...

On today's show we brought on Mohamed Shehk, Campaigns Director for Critical Resistance and member of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center here in the Bay Area.  In this conversation we talk about some of the recent actions taking place to support the struggle for Palestinian liberation, including recent actions aimed at stopping military cargo intended for Israel from leaving docks in Oakland...

Today, we're cross posting "A Roundtable on Palestine-Israel" from our friends at The Fire These Times podcast as a bonus episode for listeners of The Response.   The Fire These Times Co-hosts, Joey Ayoub and Daniel Voskoboynik are joined by Dana El Kurd, Orly Noy, and Yair Wallach to think through this moment, process their grief together, and articulate alternative visions for both peoples.   Af...

After a statement about the war in Palestine, we're in conversation with Stephanie Rearick, a founder, and Director of the Madison Mutual Aid Network Cooperative and Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks, or HUMANS for short, which is a new type of networked cooperative 'creating means for everyone to discover and succeed in work they want to do, with the support of their community'.   Stephanie ta...

Summer might be over for us in the Northern Hemisphere — but things are still heating up in the US labor movement. A ground-swell of labor action continues to heave and crack the crust which had been slowly hardening on the surface of the radical fires dormant under neoliberalism. The latest news in the ongoing strike wave comes out of the United Auto Workers Union, where workers at a number of pl...