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6 min read 08

UofWinds 406, Week 8 2025: Climate Change is a Crisis We Can Only Solve Together, Building the Union, The man who discovered media codes and how to resist them


Good morning. I'm writing this newsletter, properly for a change, at a desk and in my chair. I can almost type comfortably here with my coffee at hand, but there is the matter of the other cat (the one who never bothers me when I write on the sofa) who is now on the table, beside my laptop, tail lashing over the keyboard as I try to ignore her. As I type, she will occasionally direct her gaze to the box of cat toys perched high a top of the bookshelf. It took me a while to learn that where a cat directs their attention is itself also a form of communication for others.

Not unlike this newsletter.

Climate Change is a Crisis We Can Only Solve Together

These are strange days. Yesterday I talked to several people who felt a palpable relief that Team Canada had won a hockey game against the United States late Thursday night. The morning after said game, I was at the physiotherapist clinic for a couple of hours, during which I counted three women wearing bright red Team Canada jerseys. On Facebook, the few friends and neighbours I know who still post there were almost all sharing which brands and labels are Canadian owned.

I've not yet seen a suggestion that we should take this moment to learn to speak French or Anishinaabemowin as a means to strengthen our collective solidarity.

It all brings to mind a story by Naomi Klein told from some years ago from an essay called, Climate Change Is a Crisis We Can Only Solve Together:

A story: When I was 26, I went to Indonesia and the Philippines to do research for my first book, No Logo. I had a simple goal: to meet the workers making the clothes and electronics that my friends and I purchased. And I did. I spent evenings on concrete floors in squalid dorm rooms where teenage girls­—sweet and giggly—­spent their scarce nonworking hours. Eight or even 10 to a room. They told me stories about not being able to leave their machines to pee. About bosses who hit. About not having enough money to buy dried fish to go with their rice.

They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”

So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?

It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.

These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”

I would like to use this newsletter to direct attention to alternatives that an individual can do, in response to change with the world.

Building the Union


Last newsletter, I shared the story of Jen Wang that told of how her L.A. PTA group was transformed into a mutual aid group for the families of her school. I found her story particularly powerful because it was entirely practical. The work came out of an immediate need that was met by a group of people who volunteered and gave so much, out of care for the families in their community.

This week, I want to share another story that helped me understand how organizing can work in practice. The story is told by Hannah Srajer who is interviewed on the podcast, The Dig. In this admittedly long interview, she explains how and why the Connecticut Tenants Union (CTTU) is build and run by applying the labor organizing model most notably espoused by the late Jane McAlevey (see UofWinds 171). Srajer makes a strong case that member supported models are both necessary and able to make real wins against landlords and holding companies and to hold them account to provide decent living conditions.

The man who discovered media codes and how to resist them


Previously on The Dig podcast were two episodes dedicated to a man named Stuart Hall. I didn't listen to these episodes because I had never heard of the man before. And then a couple of weeks later, I followed a recommendation from the newsletter Sentiers, to subscribe to Annalee Newitz's The Hypothesis to take advantage of a series of essays "based on an introductory media studies course taught in the spring of 2024 at the University of San Francisco".

Her second essay is about the work of Stuart Hall: The man who discovered media codes and how to resist them.

In my last newsletter, I introduced you to the field of media studies. Today you’re reading the second in my series of letters about how to analyze the media during a communications crisis. We’re going to dive into the history of modern media studies, and talk about one of the founders of the field.

Stuart Hall’s work transformed our understanding of media because he did something revolutionary: he focused on the power of audiences, rather than creators.

Newitz essay on the Hall's work on encoding and decoding media is a clear, strong signal. She explains how, unlike the espousing of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, Hall's work tells us that the medium is not just the message – the receivers of mass media (that's us) are also essential. We can accept media, we can oppose media, and we can negotiate with media. And how we receive media will depend on who we are.

No receiver is exactly the same, and therefore the meaning of every message changes depending on who receives it.

In other words, there is no clean sender→message→receiver flow. Instead, receivers will always mangle, distort, ignore, and repurpose the message. Plus, the message is not neutral; it emerges from powerful social systems and discourses that shape its encoding.

The important thing is that Hall’s model describes how we, the audience, have the power to change the meaning of the stories we receive. By analyzing the codes in our media, we gain control over meaning itself.

At the end of essay, Newitz gives us a set of questions we might want to ask if we want to do our own media studies exercise. If you want to play along at home, I would suggest that you use the same example that I tried: Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance, which I think is a great example of media that demands to be decoded in order to be understood. For a couple of examples of such decoding, see this 8 minute TikTok or read, The subversive genius of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance.

Last fortnight's question

Do you have any recommendations for any books, classes, websites, or any other resources that could support a group of volunteers who want to better prepared to respond in an emergency situation in their neighbourhood?

K: this is maybe a bit cliche but I just read emergent strategy by adrienne marie brown and i really think it would be a great place to start when thinking about creating community and structures that practice the values we want to see in the world.

🤾🏽‍♀️ : Some Actions That Are Not Protesting or Voting

This fortnight's question


Please share any resources that you've found helpful with 1) installing solar 2) installing a heat pump and/or 3) general home maintenance.

Answer below or use the UofWinds friction-free survey form.

Member discussion