The Response

In this bonus episode, Bob Stilger recounts his experience in Japan following the triple disaster of 2011 and shares how one community that was completely wiped away by the Tsunami, took the opportunity to truly build back better from the ground up. Bob Stilger is the founder of New Stories and author of the book, "AfterNow: When We Cannot See the Future, Where Do We Begin?" Episode credits: Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn Series producer: Robert Raymond Theme Music: "Meet you on the other side" by Cultivate Beats The Response from Shareable.net, is a documentary film, book, and podcast series exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters. Let us know what you think of the show: info@shareable.net

Last week we participated in a panel discussion during the Regenerative Communities Summit where we talked about how Crisis can be a Catalyst for Transformation. This episode features a recording of the second half of that event. We've decided to omit the presentations that were delivered by each panelist, so there are a few times when you'll hear references to what was presented earlier. If you would like to watch the entire event, you can access the recording by registering for the summit at TransitionUS.org. The speakers in this episode have been addressing the challenges, crises, and disasters we're currently facing while finding new and innovative ways to not only respond but to open new opportunities and to use the times we are living in as a way to build better, more resilient communities. Featured Speakers: Jul Bystrova, co-founder of the Inner Resilience Network and Director of the Eomega/Era of Care project John Liu, catalyzed the creation of The Ecosystem Restoration Camps movement which has grown to nearly 50 camps in 6 continents Elaine Miller-Karas, Co-Founder and Director of Innovation of the Trauma Resource Institute and author of the book, "Building Resilience to Trauma: the Trauma and Community Resiliency Models" (2015). Bob Stilger, founder of NewStories and author of the book, "AfterNow: When We Cannot See the Future, Where Do We Begin?" Episode credits: Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn Series producer: Robert Raymond Theme Music: "Meet you on the other side" by Cultivate Beats The Response from Shareable.net, is a documentary film, book, and podcast series exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters. Let us know what you think of the show: info@shareable.net

The Response is officially back for a 4th season. Over the next few months, we'll be increasing the frequency of the show and releasing new episodes at least every other week. We've already got a number of exciting interviews and roundtable discussions lined up. We also encourage you to watch our award-winning 30-minute micro-budget documentary film on Youtube: "The Response: How Puerto Ricans Are Restoring Power to the People." For the 9th audio documentary episode of The Response, we're going to focus on an issue that isn't talked about hardly enough: energy poverty. When temperatures rise to the point where they become dangerous, what happens to people who can't escape the heat? The transcript is available here: shareable.net/heatwaves-and-energy-poverty-in-the-mediterranean The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters Episode credits: Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn Series producer (+ research and scriptwriting for this episode): Robert Raymond Theme Music: "Meet you on the other side" by Cultivate Beats Additional music: Belong, Fugazi, and Chris Zabriskie original artwork was created by Kane Lynch This episode features: Eleni Myrivili, Chief Heat Officer for the City of Athens (the first person to hold this title – recently featured in New York Times). Lidija Živčič is the senior expert at the FOCUS Association for Sustainable Development and a coordinator at EmpowerMed. Mònica Guiteras, a member of the Alliance Against Energy Poverty in Catalonia, and Engineers Without Borders. Martha Myers, energy poverty campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe and the coordinator of the Right to Energy Coalition. Narrated by Tom Llewellyn.

The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters with host Tom Llewellyn. Today is the four-year anniversary of when Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico causing what is largely considered to be the worst disaster to happen in the US or its colonies. To mark the occasion, we're making our film, "The Response: How Puerto Ricans Are Restoring Power to the People," available for all to see. Please follow the link in the episode notes to watch it on shareable's Youtube channel. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/-RVTpDSE9H0 For this bonus episode, we're featuring the audio from an interview that film director Juan Carlos Dávila and producer Tom Llewellyn did on Free Speech TV's Just Solutions last week.

After taking a long Summer break, The Response is back for a fourth season, well kinda. We're officially kicking things off at the end of the month with an audio documentary focused on European Heatwaves and how their impact is exacerbated by energy poverty. But for the next two weeks, we'll be returning our focus to Puerto Rico. Monday, September 20th marks the four-year anniversary of when Hurricane Maria slammed into the island causing thousands of deaths, and knocking out power for almost an entire year, leading to what many consider to be the worst disaster in US History. In this episode, we talk to environmental sociologist Marla Perez Lugo. We discuss her experience during Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico's power supply and energy grid before and after the storm and the multitude of issues caused by precarious resilience. The Response with Tom Llewellyn is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters Episode credits: Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn Series producer: Robert Raymond Theme Music: "Meet you on the other side" by Cultivate Beats

For the past decade, communities across the state have faced severe challenges on multiple fronts - from extreme fires and flooding to earthquakes and the COVID-19 pandemic. But how have they responded and what community resilience strategies have proved most successful? In this episode of The Response, we explore some of the answers to these questions with two guest speakers Lisa Beyer is an Urban Water Infrastructure Manage at World Resources Institute. As part of that role, she is responsible for developing and scaling financially innovative, environmentally sustainable municipal water management solutions in cities across the country. And Greg Kochanowski is a licensed architect, an aspiring landscape architect, and educator in the State of California. His new book, The Wild, explores the urban periphery of Los Angeles, where the city meets the mountains, a landscape inherently vulnerable to wildfire, and its secondary and tertiary effects, including flash floods and debris flows. The Response is a podcast series from Shareable.net exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters Episode credits: Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn Series producer: Robert Raymond Theme Music: "Meet you on the other side" by Cultivate Beats *This episode features the audio recording from a webinar that was co-hosted by American Institute of Architects San Francisco (AIASF) and Center for Architecture and Design. As a result, here are several references to images that were shared by our presenters. The video recording of this talk can be accessed by becoming a member of AIASF.

In the latest episode of The Response Podcast, Chad Rittenberry discusses the community-led response to Winter Storm Uri in Austin Texas earlier this year. What began with a simple Facebook post offering free firewood to friends and family in and around Austin, Texas snowballed until he found himself organizing the National Guard to distribute water in the pink vests previously worn by street medics at Black Lives Matter protests last Summer. He shares his perspective on what worked, what really didn't work, and how local organizers plan to be even more prepared for when the next disaster strikes. Episode credits: Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn Series producer: Robert Raymond Theme Music: "Meet you on the other side" by Cultivate Beats

As of now, the majority of the global population has been impacted by the pandemic for more than a year. For the first time in a century, pretty much everyone on the planet has experienced the same disaster at the same time. And while most of us have had our daily lives disrupted in significant, and in many cases catastrophic, ways, there has also been an incredible outpouring of support for one another. With the daily case count continuing at a high rate in many countries, now is a good time to pause and ask the question: what have we learned from dealing with the pandemic over the past year. On March 16th, we partnered with Idealist to host a public presentation and discussion based on our free ebook, "Lessons from the First Wave: Resilience in the Age of COVID-19." In addition to the extended talk delivered by The Response host Tom Llewellyn at the beginning of the episode, you'll hear short presentations from two mutual aid organizers from Idealist's global network, Liam Elkind, the co-founder of Invisible Hands in New York City, and Shila Jassal coordinator of Mutual Aid Road Reps - Let's Get Chatty Service in Medway, UK, before we open it up for a discussion with the live audience moderated by Carol Walton, a Community Organizer at Idealist, who co-hosted this session with us. Episode credits: Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn Series producer: Robert Raymond Theme Music: "Meet you on the other side" by Cultivate Beats

New TED Talk from The Response host Tom Llewellyn is out now: "Building Collective Resilience in the Wake of Disaster" Watch it here: https://youtu.be/-SamQq9-wTg I've been told that I never get tired of giving people bad news, so here we go. The impacts of climate change are already being felt. This is no longer just a challenge that future generations are going to have to face. It's ours now. According to a recent report from the UN, in the past 20 years, there were over 7,000 major disaster events causing 1.2 million deaths, affecting more than 4 billion people, and resulting in almost three trillion dollars in global economic losses. Strikingly, the number of climate-related disasters nearly doubled from the previous two decades. Last year we hit the hottest global temperatures on record, saw the first Giga fire (burning over 1 million acres in Northern California), and even had a Zombie Storm in the Atlantic! The questions now are: How bad is the climate going to get? How quickly can it get better? And what are we going to do in the meantime? I don't know about the first two questions, but I've seen a number of things that might just hold some answers to the last one. That's just a short excerpt from the TED Talk. Despite all this bad news, disasters can have a silver lining. Time after time, remarkable communities rise up after natural, social, or political disasters, revealing the core of our humanity and providing a glimpse at how we might respond in the face of even bigger challenges. And after you watch the talk, please leave questions and share your stories of collective resilience in the comment section. We'll be back in a few weeks with a new episode.

Last weekend, mutual aid organizers from all over the world gathered together for the Solidarity Summit. Hosted by Humans United for Mutual Aid Networks (or HUMANS), the virtual event took place in order to build skills, relationships, and momentum while benefiting local work. During the Summit, we co-hosted a 2-part session which began with a screening of "The Response: How Puerto Ricans Are Restoring Power to the People" before transitioning into a live recording of The Response Podcast. Today we're bringing you the audio from that event which featured several organizers from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (or MAD Relief), a grassroots disaster relief network based on the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and autonomous direct action. Rather than focussing on the nitty-gritty, of how MAD Relief is successfully organizing with a non-hierarchical decentralized structure, this conversation illustrated 4 of the many stories of what the work actually looks like on the ground. Featured Speakers: Rain: co-founder/co-coordinator of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief focused on sustainable disaster response and rebuilding – Louisiana (transplanted from Florida) mostly responding to events in the Gulf South/SE states Vanessa Bolin: Richmond Indigenous Society, Community Roots Garden, madr, and The Eyes Wide Open Project – Occupied Virginia on traditional Pamunky Territory Siren Saricca: founder of the Michigan mutual aid coalition, a service that delivers groceries to seniors – Detroit MI Tyler Norman (co-host): mutual aid disaster relief – Wisconsin Episode credits: Host and executive producer: Tom Llewellyn Series producer: Robert Raymond Theme Music: "Meet you on the other side" by Cultivate Beats The Response from Shareable.net, is a documentary film, book, and podcast series exploring how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters. Find out more information about Mutual Aid Disaster Relief at mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/ Check out the work of Humans United for Mutual Aid Networks by visiting mutualaidnetwork.org