Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"

@kateschapira

I wrote a book, LESSONS FROM THE CLIMATE ANXIETY COUNSELING BOOTH: HOW TO LIVE WITH CARE AND PURPOSE IN AN ENDANGERED WORLD. Let me know if you think you could use it for something.

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Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· 1d

My syllabus (for college writing courses) says this & offers a framework for horizontal organizing & collective bargaining to reduce workload. Fellow educators, please feel free to C&P from the alt text <3

(From the "How to Pass This Class" section)

Avoid LLM or “AI” writing tools like ChatGPT. Don’t use them at any stage of your writing for this class. If you’re in this class because you want to get better at writing—whatever “better” means to you—those tools won’t help you learn that. If you’re taking this course to fulfill a requirement for your concentration, you might as well learn what else the course can offer you, and benefit from the feedback your classmates and I are giving—which a LLM cannot do. One set of our readings deals with some of the ethical, aesthetic and labor questions raised by LLMs, and we can use that reading to talk about polemic and position writing as well as to raise counterpoints. If you are tempted to use these tools because you have too much else to do, there is a mechanism for reducing the workload for this course through horizontal organizing and collective bargaining, and it’s outlined below.

(From the "Respect, Power and Access" section)

If you’re having a difficulty with another student, or a difficulty with me that you want to speak to me about privately, please do. But if you’re having a difficulty with the class—with the way the class is structured, or with something that affects many/all students—I encourage you to talk with each other first, and present a shared case or demand to me. Horizontal organizing and collective bargaining are useful skills to develop, both for college and beyond. As noted above, this includes situations where you are tempted to use LLMs to manage workload: I’d rather that we alter the workload together, with intention, to increase the chances of everyone learning something.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· 3d

Revising my Intro to Creative Nonfiction syllabus, which I last taught in Fall 2024, and found this:

A quote from Kate's syllabus:

Tuesday, 11/5
NO CLASS / NO ADDITIONAL HOMEWORK

Thursday, 11/7
IN CLASS:
Brief discussion of the election result, with the understanding that it is likely to come up again, and an invitation to talk further during office hours if you wish.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· 25d

Buy my friend Kah's beautiful work or hire them to draw for you or something www.kahyangni.com/printshop

The artist's hand, holding a print of a brick and neon restaurant, Cafe Cuong. The print feels like you are seeing it on a summer evening and thinking about the banh mi you could be having right now

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Jun 29

This part's especially important to do *before* the heat. That "what do you want me to do if I don't hear from you" is crucial--racialized people or people w/mental illness among their conditions may not be safe with a 911 call, but you want to have *some* plan & you want it agreed-upon beforehand

If you’ve got elders and/or homebound disabled or chronically people in your life, talk with them and make sure they

will have access to air conditioning, drinking water and other cooling methods

know where the closest cooling center is in case the AC fails

will call someone—you, another close person, or EMS—if they start to feel ill. Make a plan to check in at the end of each day and agree on what you will do if you don’t hear from them. (If you are an elder and/or disabled or chronically ill, line up these things for yourself too!)

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· May 9

The letter includes links to the detailed demands & a summary. There's also a rally on May 12, 5:30pm, Providence City Hall steps, to call on the Council to do what it would need to do anyway to meet our city & state's climate goals & enviromental commitments!

Flyer for the May 12, 5:30pm Rally Demanding Justice for the Southside on the City Hall steps, with graphics of hands holding up signs that say South Side Rise Up!, STOP the dumping! Clean the Port of Prov!! and Home Ownership, with logos of the supporting organizations: People's Port Authority, Direct Action for Rights and Equality, the South Providence Neighborhood Association, the Washington Park Neighborhood Association, and the JCP Collective.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· May 9

Sign this letter to stand with South Providence & their demands for a safer, cleaner, & more just, equitable & accountable ProvPort. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

A graphic showing the five major points of South Providence residents' demands for ProvPort and the City of Providence:
1) Governance and Legal Accountability: Who is in charge, and who can be held responsible (Recommendations 1-10)
2) Knowing What's In Our Air, Water and Soil: Measurement, disclosure, and the community's right to know (Recommendations 11-17)
3) Health as the Measure of Success: The crucial metric is whether people are healthier (Recommendations 18-19)
4) Controlling What Comes Next: Preventing the next 30 years from looking like the last 30 (Recommendations 20-26)
5) Community Investment and Alignment: Accountability means repairing harm and investing in resilience (Recommendations 27-31)

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· May 5

Here's what I'm sending the RI Senate Judiciary Committee, urging them to vote S2278 to the Senate floor and shut down the Wyatt. You're welcome to borrow it! Send your testimony to senatejudiciary@rilegislature.gov by 3pm TODAY (Tuesday 5/5) or show up to the State House, Room 313, at 4pm.

I'm writing in support of S2278, the bill to end existing and prohibit new agreements for detention for civil immigration violations.

The practice of incarcerating people for a civil immigration offense--never just and always cruel--has become nightmarishly dangerous and distorted through the lawless practices permitted by the current iterations of enforcement agencies. Most other civil offenses are not de facto punished by prolonged incarceration, maltreatment, and in at least one case, death by neglect (and in cases where they are, it’s equally unsuited to the inciting action, and equally disgraceful). Last year, Wyatt detainees reported medical neglect, inadequate nutrition, cost barriers to communication, and punishment when they advocate for themselves and others.

Over the past two years, we have seen federal agencies purporting to enforce immigration law arrest and/or imprison legal residents and US citizens, as well as arresting and detaining people in a manner that leads to more deaths in and after detention, and to deaths of family members when a caregiver was detained. When people are held in immigration detention, they are overwhelmingly held in dangerous conditions like those at the Wyatt. These are the stories we know about, from people with the courage to speak with journalists and the resources to seek legal recourse—likely a small percentage of the people gravely injured by this escalation of slipshod and violent anti-immigrant policy.

I do not want my home state to assist and abet this process any more. I do not want a death trap like the Wyatt up the road or across the city line; I don’t want my state to build any more death traps for the people who share my home. I urge you to move S2278 to the Senate floor for a vote and end Rhode Island’s participation in an increasingly unjust practice of punitive incarceration for civil offenses.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· May 3

Let's testify to shut down ICE detention in RI this coming Tues, 5/5, 4pm, at the RI State House, Room 313. Written testimony needs to be in by 3pm that day. Send it to senatejudiciary @ rilegislature . gov. In the subject line, put the bill number (S 2278) and that you're in SUPPORT of the bill

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Apr 30

I testified LAST year and here's what I said

When I pick up my friend's kids for the afternoon, I drive on a road that I couldn't possibly build, alongside RIPTA buses that reduce traffic and pollution. We play at a park that I don't have the time or the skills to maintain, pass the clinic where their neighbors on Medicaid can get care I don't know how to provide if there's something wrong, and stop off at the library for a science program that I couldn't run. Other Rhode Islanders--drivers, kids, elders, teens--are doing these things too, alongside us. Public goods are *public.* They benefit us all, and it is right for all of us to pay for them. Because we don't all earn the same amount of money, and some of us have less than we need while others have much, much more, it is fair for those who have much more to pay a larger share.

This is especially true in a time when some of our other ways of paying for public goods are threatened. Cuts to federal science funding threaten the Department of Health and the public health programs they provide. There have been rumors that the current federal administration wants to cut Medicaid, which will leave even more people in our state having to choose between a lack of lifesaving care and the burden of life-ruining medical debt.

Healthy people can work more consistently: their potential to contribute to the public good increases. Safe kids, kids who can run around and play, learn better: their potential to contribute to the public good increases. Elders who are cared for can share what they've learned through long lives: their potential to contribute to the public good increases. This is what Trump and his cronies are afraid of. They don't want public good, but private profit. They don't want people who are active, healthy, educated, because such people are harder to fool and harder to rob.

[There's a little more but the character limit cut me off]

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Apr 17

You've probably seen this a million times, but I love this chart as an evacuation prep tool! Here's the maker's website: www.katy-l-wood.com

Katy L. Wood's evacuation preparedness chart. It can be found on her website, which is linked in the post.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Apr 4

Making some "woo but true" grounding exercises for a community science project that I'm supporting (it's called Waterspeak, it too is in the Port of PVD, & it's going to rule) & here's one I'm happy with

Screenshot of Kate's "woo but true" soil exercise:

Stand with your feet planted firmly on the ground. If you use a wheelchair, walker or cane, feel the pressure of the ground up through your equipment as well/instead. You can close your eyes or stare into space.

Feel how gravity is holding you to the earth. The weight of all the soil, rock, and magma is keeping you here, in this particular place, within all of the universe.

As you shift your weight, know that the pavement, dirt and rock are shifting too, just very slowly. As you breathe, know that the soil is also constantly exchanging molecules and chemicals with the water and the air.

Take one more breath with this knowledge, and return your attention to the people around you.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Apr 4

If you live in PVD & you're like, "wtf is happening in the Port," & "wasn't there just a fire," &, "what about storm surge where all those chemical tanks are," come to CCRI's Liston Campus (1 Hilton St) today 10-2 to talk with people who've been living in the area & organizing to shape its future.

A flyer that says, "ProvPort Master Plan Open House, Saturday April 4th, 10am-2pm, Community College of RI, Liston Campus, 1 Hilton St, Providence. For more information, please visit provportmasterplan.org. Questions? Email tim@designcivic.com. This is a family friendly event. Food and Spanish interpretation services will be available."

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Mar 27

It'll be like this

The Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin's dad assures him that the world used to be in grayscale and that's where black and white photos come from

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Mar 24

There's definitely some front-loading of effort to figure out who will do what, but it pays for itself, as they say. I don't know if @sheeri.org is also in "the Boston area" but this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship

A still from the end of Casablanca, where there is an implication that Louis, the venal cop played by Claude Rains, is going to start fighting the Nazis underground with saloon owner Rick, played by Humphrey Bogart. In the mist! On the tarmac!

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Mar 16

The cover of the picture book Monty by James Stevenson, which shows Monty (an alligator who works as a school bus) and his passengers (Tom the frog, Arthur the rabbit, and Doris the duck) as he ferries them across the river. This book rules and is the source of the concept of alligator vacation, which is when nobody tells alligators what to do.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Mar 3

Sorry but I am going to #AWP26 With Arisa White, Shana Youngdahl & Éireann Lorsung, I'm talking about "The non-coercive rearranging of desire: Teaching Writing Despite 'AI'" on Friday 3/6 at 10:35. You will like it I'm also doing this workshop in Perry Hall later that day

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Jan 27

Today @sethmagaziner.bsky.social 's office responded to my call to denounce & defund ICE with this letter. You've got constituents trying to survive w/o income from detained & deported family members & dads getting kidnapped at school dropoff. Public pressure won't go away until ICE does

A form letter from Rep. Magaziner's office stating: Dear Ms. Schapira,

Thank you for reaching out to my office. We have received your comment and are looking into the issue.

I will take your opinion regarding this issue into consideration as we evaluate legislation this Congress. Please feel free to reach back out to my office if you have any further questions.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Oct 13

I'm tabling at PRONK! today with support for neighbor-to-neighbor disaster planning & adjacent to these great activities and performances. If you're #PVDlocal, come by AS220 (115 Empire St), 11am-4pm! Get a free packet of fun stuff to add to your emergency kits!

A poster in black, green, yellow and red, saying:
Indigenous Peoples' Day Celebratuon
Mon Oct 13th / AS220 Blackbox & Mainstage
11:00am Yoga w/Haus of Glitter
12:00pm Extraordinary Rendition Band
12:30pm Blackout Drum Squad
1:00pm Undertow Brass Band
1:30pm Lao Youth Dance Company
2:00pm The Haus of Glitter Dance Company
2:30pm Raymond Two Hawks
2:45pm Pomham Singers
3:15pm Closing Circle
Free + Family Friendly / Relocated due to rain
pronkfest.org

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Oct 2

There's a march for Gaza in DC, part of an international day of action, this Saturday 10/4, 2pm, starting from Independence & NJ Avenues. Thanks to @51st.news for this & many other action items for DC--I hadn't seen this one shared here yet!

A poster of marchers with Palestinian flags in Washington, DC, calling on people to RISE UP FOR GAZA. International Day of Action, October 4, House of Congress, 2pm, Independence and New Jersey Ave.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Sep 27

And the letter I sent using the links at the beginning of this thread

Today I canceled my personal Microsoft 365 subscription because of Microsoft's continued contracts with Israel's military. While I was glad to see that the company has ceased providing its products to the Israeli army to use for surveillance--surveillance that contributed to the displacement, wounding and death of thousands of Palestinian people--I cannot continue supporting Microsoft until it ends all contracts with the Israeli government.

The UN recently affirmed what Palestinians and international experts have been telling the world for years: Israel's actions in Gaza are genocidal. The second best time to cut ties with the perpetrators of genocide is now.

Sincerely,
Kate Schapira

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Sep 27

Did it

A screenshot stating that my Microsoft 365 subscription will end today. I have ended it because of Microsoft's continued investment in and enabling of genocide in Palestine.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Sep 25

One of my community climate resilience collaborators brought this back recently, from one of our first workshops together, & I thought I'd share it here. This is a good one for metabolizing any kind of deep, hard change through feeling more than one thing at a time.

We know something is going to change. Even if we don’t do any of the things we just said, even if none of the things the town is planning happen, we know that climate change is going to change some things about life here in town. You can’t not think about this stuff now, the flooding, the heat. That’s already a change. And even if we actually make some things better, we were still used to the old things. Even when you leave a bad relationship or a lousy job or a terrible apartment, there’s still the loss of what you wished it could have been. So if you’re willing, you can take a second to say a grateful farewell to what we might have thought the future was going to be, if climate change didn’t intervene. And another second to thank the past for getting us to a place where we can handle change. And yet one more second to give thanks to the present for being the time when we get to be the change, even if we don’t know exactly what form that will take. Close your eyes or stare into space, feel the chair under you. Breathe in the sounds of the people around you, even the ones you don’t agree with or are frustrated with. Breathe out some gratitude for the air you just breathed in, for the ground under your feet, even for the heat of the sun and the power of the water. Breathe in the power of each other. Breathe out gratitude.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Sep 25

Looking like this

Close-up of walnuts outside of their shells, looking like RFK Jr's face

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Sep 6

I don't think they do anything especially freaky but I love cecropia caterpillars because they are both fat and glam

A cecropia moth caterpillar on a twig. They are fat and green with red, blue and yellow knobs! Photo originally by Myron Stoner and posted at the Iowa State University Extension website.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Sep 4

Someone emailed me yesterday for support in setting up a Climate Anxiety Counseling booth & I'm writing my response right now, so this is a reminder to you all that if this is something you feel like trying, I will help you try it

Kate at the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth, a small booth made of turquoise cardboard with yellow lettering that says CLIMATE ANXIETY COUNSELING 5 CENTS: HERE TO LISTEN. She's set up between two other vendors, a potter (her mom) and a painter giving away art buttons (her dad), while a gray-haired person stops to talk with her and a little kid in silver sandals walks by.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Aug 30

Reposting with alt text! Also, you can pick, like, two of these.

Ten Commandments of Defiance:
YOU SHALL
1. Defy tyranny through acts of nonviolent defiance each day
2. Protect education
3. Slow down, obstruct and destroy the machine of fascism
4. Safeguard free speech, independent media and protect journalists (sic)
5. Defend free and fair elections
6. Take to the streets
7. Demand courage from leaders
8. Support and organize unions
9. Create subversive art and random acts of joy
10. Protect anyone targeted by this administration

Then there is a QR code to scan in the bottom right hand corner with the note, "To learn how, scan here."

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Aug 27

A screenshot of a text exchange. One person writes, "i am finally off after 11 hours! i work at an infectious disease lab" followed by, "what about yourself?" Their correspondent replies, "Oh gosh!! Like you make the diseases or are against them?"

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Aug 12

Here's an exercise from my book for recognizing the feeling of "enough," of sufficiency--something discouraged by the economic structures we're both invested & trapped in! Recognizing this feeling can help you distinguish betw the reality of scarcity & the fear of it, & make clearer decisions. (3/3)

TOURING YOUR BLESSINGS

STEP 1: Each person identifies one thing you enjoy or are grateful for that you’re also rich in. (Houseplants, songs memorized, opportunities to cook food you like…)

STEP 2: Spend three minutes luxuriating in and appreciating that thing by envisioning it and enjoying it with your mind’s senses. At the end of the three minutes, thank that thing or activity for being in your life.

STEP 3: Taking turns, do a “show and tell” where each person shows off or describes an example of the thing they enjoy or love, and others show appreciation.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Jun 9

It's also connected to my LLM/"AI" policy!

Do not use LLM or “AI” writing tools like ChatGPT for any part of this course. If you’re in this class because you want to get better at writing—whatever “better” means to you—those tools won’t help you learn that. If you’re taking this course to fulfill a requirement for your concentration, you might as well learn what else the course can offer you, and benefit from the feedback your classmates and I are giving—which a LLM cannot do.
If you don’t think you can write without LLM or generative “AI” tools, this is not the course for you. If you are concerned about completing the work on time, the solution is to ask for an extension or to organize with your classmates (see below) to reduce the workload for all. One of our readings deals with some of the ethical, aesthetic and labor questions raised by LLMs, and we can use that reading to talk about polemic and position writing as well as to raise counterpoints.

Kate Schapira: "Well Put & Generalizable"@kateschapira· Jun 9