"I don’t want to spend my whole life fighting, I want to be able to say, this is the country we want and I’ll have it now."

In Pursuit of a Just Recovery

1. Over footage of abandoned water bottles, we hear Lale’s voice again: “On the same day when Trump arrived, 160 people died while he was throwing paper towels. There’s no respect for what happened... Hurricane survivors made it because of other survivors.” In the face of government failure, what is the knowledge that frontline communities uniquely hold when meeting disaster? How does the “survivors-helping-survivors” framework rewrite the narrative of victimhood?
2. In Bartolo, we watch a small group rescuing a school shuttered and abandoned by the government and making plans to meet various community members’ needs. One woman describes the process, “We began to dream, talk to people and transform the classrooms. We are living socialism in our daily lives. The hurricane has brought us towards a society where the common denominator is the common good.” How and where have you seen similar mutual aid efforts emerge during other disasters, such as the COVID-19 pandemic? Why and how are communitydriven and institutionally-autonomous responses often powerful experiences?
3. Where in LANDFALL do we see adrienne marie brown’s “pleasure activism” concept illustrated—thinking of politics and political action as a holistic day-today experience that prioritizes the feeling of joy. Why and how is it important for communities to build and share their own spaces that cater to the needs of the group, rather than play to the pressure and influence of outside forces?
4. Thinking back to the principles of creative placemaking as a guide, in your opinion, what are the ingredients to building a “just recovery” after a local, national, or global disaster? Consider the COVID-19 global pandemic that caused widespread illness, death and financial disaster—colliding with other social and political upheavals, such as rampant and murderous police brutality, and the climate catastrophe of raging West Coast wildfires. What parallels exist between the people’s response to the pandemic and its surrounding conditions, and the people’s response to the Post-María disaster documented in LANDFALL? What can be learned from Puerto Rico’s resistance movement that can be applied to recovering from the pandemic moving forward?

Engage and Create: Designing A People's Utopian Protest

In contrast to the crypto-colonialist vision of utopia, another scene in LANDFALL shows friends communing over food and drink, discussing personal ideas of utopia and hope. One local Puerto Rican woman names her personal hope and vision of utopia post-María as being able to feel free, to walk into the street without fear of being mugged, or be harmed by a man, to not worry how to pay bills, to not be faced with another friend leaving the island to survive.

This vision of utopia values freedom, liberation, connection, safety, love, solidarity and community abundance— all concepts visually and physically manifested on the dance floor towards the close of the film.

adrienne marie brown, the author who coined the term “pleasure activism,” has expressed awe at activists in Puerto Rico who baked the experience of pleasure, community, mutual aid and art into the design of resistance. On The MATRIARCHitects podcast, adrienne recalls a protest schedule from Puerto Rico that included diverse activities such as group cycling, bedtime story reading, grinding dance parties, yoga and meditation, human chain, 5k run and a mini-concert for kids.

In your group, loosely begin to envision your version of a people’s utopian protest, inspired by the creative, joyful activism— highlighted in this article— of the Puerto Rican resistance movement using the following steps:

1. Define the cause you are rallying for or against. The more specific to you, or your community— tied together by location, identity, shared values, lived experience, etc., the better.
2. Determine the values that you bring to the ultimate vision you are fighting for.
3. Under each value, brainstorm a list of activities that make you feel this way in daily life. For example: love might be illustrated by exchanging texts of gratitude with friends Liberation by dancing under headphones. Community abundance by gardening in a public setting.
4. Create an original protest schedule designed to mobilize people to join your fight by building the utopian vision—the pleasure, the joy, the love, the community safety, the creativity—into the planned actions. Imagine your perfect day of resistance: what does it include?