Alex Honnold Must Be Stopped

When I worked at a climbing gym in 2012, we used to do screenings of the Reel Rock film tour. We'd hang a giant screen from the overhanging wall and throw the series up with a projector. I remember the first Reel Rock I ever worked featured an Alex Honnold film Honnold 3.0.

It was a short time after the viral 60 Minutes special featuring his terrifying solo of El Cap and the film fleshed out a lot of those details. Watching the film, one thing was clear: this dude makes soloing look cool as hell. After the screening, no less than half a dozen climbers started immediately trying to solo the slab wall. People were coming into the gym to buy books about free climbing (which of course probably disappointed them) citing Honnold as inspiration. Among the climbing community there exists a meme wherein any time you mention to a non-climber that you climb they immediately ask if you've A) seen the movie Free Solo and B) ever soloed. This is barely a joke. 

This isn't to say that the attractiveness of soloing portrayed in many of the films featuring them is going to necessarily bring in an influx of people to the activity. That free soloing has grown in popularity is a difficult thing to measure. It's not as though there are regular Gallup Poles conducted of the climbing community. 

The argument is instead that there is this attempt to legitimize free soloing as the "next level" in a rapidly commercialized sport. It's getting to the point where, seemingly, climbers are as strong and as good as they're going to get and the sport needs a new height to reach toward. Things like riskiness or sketchiness have long been a new way to push yourself in climbing beyond what everyone else is doing. So the question is whether or not the sport should include free-soloing on a list of legitimate activities that you are in no threat of losing sponsorship over.

The idea is that when feats of strength are no longer capable of producing interesting, often sponsor-worthy content you can also increase what I call the Probability of Death Factor. Every extreme sport has some version of this. Mountain biking has Red Bull Rampage, downriver kayaking has crazy river runs, backcountry downhill sports...exist, heck even backpacking has some treacherous options. All of these sports create a multiplier in the probability of death and for better or worse make the sport more interesting.

People love to point out when defending free soloing that there is already a probability of death factor in climbing, alpinism, base jumping, and other climbing adjacent sports. This creates a necessary ask; what is an acceptable probability of death factor for any given sport? We can certainly agree that a guaranteed probability of death is a no-brainer, this is literally just suicide and no one is landing sponsorships or cool documentaries for this (I hope). 

Free soloing does not have a guaranteed death probability. Marc Leclerc, the featured climber in the movie the Alpinist, died (uh...spoiler alert) not from his solo ascent, but in an avalanche on his rap down, which would have happened had he soloed the whole climb up or not. Other notable soloists have died in rappelling accidents or base jumping accidents. Obviously, Alex Honold and other lesser-known solo climbers are still alive. 

So what makes free soloing any more unacceptable than the other dangerous corners of other extreme sports, or even just...climbing? It's actually pretty simple, it's not whether the activity guarantees death since any successfully completed activity would guarantee you live, it's whether failure does. When you fail in many of these extreme sports - you don't land right, you fall, you fall out of your kayak, you trip, you bail etc - there is a chance you will die, but failure does not necessarily mean death. What we're actually measuring is the death probability factor in failure, which in free soloing is as near to100% as one can get. 

Imagine if every NASCAR crash meant invariable death or if every loser in an MMA fight was killed on the spot. There are very few legitimate sports in which failure means death almost 100% of the time. To be clear a lot more people might watch a sport as a result of this and it may even promote a widespread interest in the less dangerous pursuits, but this only serves to more rapidly increase the profit motive and subsequent participation (and therefore the death) in the activity. This is why the push to legitimize an activity with a 100% death probability rate in failure is irresponsible.

The larger climbing community and - most importantly - the industry sponsors that prop these athletes up should wholly reject this push and move to immediately delegitimize free soloing. Alex Honnold should not have sponsors, no one who regularly does publicized soloing should. We also need to stop making movies glorifying the practice as some sort of spiritual journey that allows socially awkward narcissists to become beloved ambassadors of the sport. 

Why We "Defend Rashida"

 

Rashida Tlaib is up for re-election in a new district in Michigan this year. It's a great time to reflect on what it means more generally to have a democratic socialist in congress and why "Defend Rashida" has become so important to Detroit DSA. 

When determining the value in any elected official the first thing you should start with is what that elected position actually does. For a member of congress it's clear; they vote on legislation, they propose (and ideally pass) legislation, they sit on committees, and they participate in hearings. There are a lot of other things a congressional office might do, constituency work and the like, but those are the four big pillars. 

Some folks in Detroit DSA will point out that Rashida has never said explicitly that she is a socialist and defined what that term means to her. This might be largely true, but she has never shied away from the term, allowing herself to be identified that way by a large number of outlets. She is also an open member of the org and talks about it, something other endorsed and wannabe-endorsed candidates haven't quite committed to. 

Whenever a Democratic Socialists of America chapter makes the decision to endorse they expect their values to be bannered to the seats of power. This includes not only the day-to-day exercise of that power but also the media appearances and national spotlight that comes with it. This helps grow the power of the organization more broadly, gives a voice to members, and helps advance the Democratic Socialist agenda.

What does it look like when a Detroit DSA member brings socialist values to the four pillars of legislating on the national level? It looks a lot like what Rashida Tlaib does. 

Voting on Legislation

Rashida mostly votes with her party, this can be good or bad for a variety of reasons. However, her stand-out votes are what set her apart from the blind partisans and show her commitment to socialist values. 

Tlaib was one of 3 'nay' votes on the COPS Counseling Act - prioritizing counseling for police officers as some sort of reform - which was tastelessly introduced just one month after Derek Chauvin was put on trial. She has voted against defense funding bills including the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 and the infamous Emergency Resupply for IRON DOME Act of 2021 (with fellow DSA Member Alexandria Ocasio Cortez offering merely a 'present' vote). In a sense, she votes exactly how Democratic Socialists would want a representative to vote.

Proposing/Passing Legislation

Rashida has been a primary sponsor of 2 enacted bills and has proposed 41 total. If two doesn't sound like a lot, consider how few bills are ever enacted and that Tlaib is still a very early legislator. There are some legislators who serve long careers and only pass a handful of bills. 

Tlaib was the primary sponsor of the H.R. 9050 Amendment  (previously known as the BOOST act) that provided additional recovery in the form of $2000 tax credits + $600 for every additional child (yes, this was the $2000 check that you got). The other bill she proposed that was enacted was the Payee Fraud Prevention Act which prohibits those who receive payments for minors or people with disabilities from embezzling funds through a loophole. Many more bills she submitted were designed around public health, consumer protection, standing against facial recognition technology, establishing things like water as a human right, and public banking.

Sitting on Committees 

Rashida Tlaib sits on 3 committees; House Committee on Financial Services, House Committee on Natural Resources, and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. These committees are responsible for issues like banking, housing, insurance, regulation, energy production, mining, oceans, and government accountability. Rashida's presence in these committees allows her to bring socialist values to an important spate of issues. 

In these committees, Rashida gets to participate in hearings (which we'll cover more in the next section) and advocate for legislation. Listen to the language she extolls in advocating for her environmental justice bill, it's absolutely brimming with the spirit of Democratic Socialism.

Sitting on Hearings:

Legislators sit on hearings on important issues either in their committees or the general chamber depending on where the committee is called. The idea is for representatives of the public to ask tough questions of stakeholders in any given issue on behalf of their constituency. To see why having a socialist in these hearings is important one simply needs to watch Rashida at work.

Rashida Tlaib on civil asset forfeiture: 

Here is Rashida going in on a hedge fund CEO in a Financial Services committee meeting:

(start at 2:26)

Rashida asking the census bureau director about the lack of Middle-Eastern/North African representation on the form:

In large part thanks to her political stances Rashida Tlaib is constantly under attack. Whether it's challenges mounted by Duggan-backed establishment candidates or the racist trolling at the mere mention of her name on social media. She's even received death threats.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/rashida-tlaib-democratic-socialism-palestine-israel-michigan

It's clear Rashida sees the DSA as a family, she has spoken at a large number of Metro-Detroit DSA events, even skipped the opening night of the Auto-show in 2019 to protest the closure of the GM plants impacting workers led by the organization. 

It's equally as important for Metro-Detroit DSA to live up to its end of the partnership and "Defend Rashida" every chance we get.  

The Annoying Liberal Discourse on Guns

 A few weeks ago Oxford Michigan, a small town adjacent to my community, was rocked by a school shooting. The incidence was the largest school shooting since 2018. The details of what happened can be poured over in a number of stories. Regardless of how the actual tragedy takes place what happens afterward is clockwork. 

 Pundits, politicians, and commentators of all stripes come out of their respective corners to duke it out over The Gun Question. It's hardly blameworthy to want to prevent mass shootings, especially those that occur in schools and victimize young people. However, the discussions regarding solutions are, like every conversation revolving around a deeply systemic issue, annoying as shit. 

The conservative, pro-gun stance is obviously unserious about preventing future gun violence. The Wayne Thibbideau line of argumentation - that more guns would in theory prevent mass shootings - is a defacto pro-gun violence argument. Gun violence plaguing communities across the country would be acceptable as long as all the parties involved were armed. 

But while the conservative mind lacks in solutions to random acts of gun violence their counterpoints to liberal stances on gun control can actually ring true. Namely, that gun criminalization will not prevent gun violence and there is no guarantee that proposed gun legislation would prevent any given incidence of violence. 

This of course is the risk liberal politicians and pundits take when they stake the imperative to a given tragedy. Nothing embodies the politician's fallacy more than gun violence: "we have to do something about x, y is something, therefore y is doing something about x". This is to say nothing of the efficacy of the laws themselves. I support things like red flag laws or permit laws because they have been shown to reduce murders and suicides (which I generally think there should be less of), but neither of these laws would have prevented the Oxford shooting. 

The rationalization is very similar to the body camera debate in my mind. I support making police officers wear body cameras, I support making them turn on those cameras when they interact with the public, I support making it a crime to cover up the camera in such interactions. This does not mean that body cameras are an effective measure of preventing police violence. Citing the need for more body cameras after a high-profile police brutality case is just as tone-deaf as citing the need for red flag laws after a high-profile school shooting.

The worse inclination is to criminalize guns, something Bloomberg's anti-gun legislation outfit is known for. Unlike permit laws, red flag laws, or laws that generally scale back the distribution of firearms this legislation aims at criminalizing gun ownership itself. This has a war on drugs effect where there is very little curbing violence or gun use, but there is intrusive police interaction that of course disproportionately falls on communities of color. I oppose banning lots of things for this exact reason, including abortion.
The leftist podcast Citation Needed has an excellent episode on this phenomenon. 

Ultimately if liberal politicians and pundits want to claim that they're interested in preventing the next Oxford (which was the next Marjory Stoneman Douglas, which was the next Marshall County, etc) they should focus on systemic measures. Things that vastly reduce the number of firearms produced and proliferated in this country. Whether you support such policies or not, you have to admit they'd at least mean we're taking the problem seriously.