Birthdays can be weird. How to celebrate when things are amiss? Stolen Summers: The Next 250, an action-driven art installation and storytelling event held in front of the U.S. Capitol on the eve of America’s 250th birthday, offered a nuanced way to observe the milestone.
“People who have lived through floods, fires, extreme heat, and other weather disasters are the fastest growing population in this country, and those families need support,” said Chris Kocher, co-founder of the nonprofit Extreme Weather Survivors, to open the event.
Stolen Summers showcased 250 stories of extreme weather hardship and recovery from all 50 states. To create the exhibit, Extreme Weather Survivors, which offers trauma-informed support programming for people who’ve endured unnatural weather extremes, connected survivors from its growing network to artists who helped tell their stories in a deeply personal and evocative way. The idea was to illustrate—with paint, photography, collage, pen and ink, graphic design—what we all know to be true: Disasters don’t end when news coverage ends. Recovery can take years or decades.
Tell Congress: Support Mental Wellness Resources for Communities Facing Weather Disasters
A call to action was built in: America’s next 250 years must include government that supports communities and families devastated by not just escalating climate-fueled extreme weather events but also the trauma, financial hardship, housing instability, and insurance fights that go with them.
Surrounded by stunning artwork, survivors, including storytellers, poets, artists, actors, and musicians, took to a stage to share their experiences. Speakers included Tekesha Ann Martinez, a poet and former mayor of Hagerstown, Maryland, who reminded us, “Hope is an action we can take.” Attendees heard from a couple celebrating their 43rd wedding anniversary when the Eaton fire destroyed their home in Altadena, from Georgia Bishop, who lost her best friend in the devastating flooding in Texas last year, from a teen who lost her family home to a wildfire, and from Moms’ volunteer Amy Dishion, who lost her husband to a hike in unholy summertime Phoenix heat.
Maybe two dozen stories were shared over an hour and half, including dramatic readings of true tales of climate-supercharged wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and their aftermath by a group of actors that featured Arian Moayed of Succession and Wendell Pierce of The Wire. One of the last stories shared came from Moms’ former intern, Aidan Goldberg, whose brother collapsed on a run in 100-plus degree Tucson heat.
“Simon was rushed to the local hospital, where the emergency department … managed to keep him tethered to life,” Aidan said. “He had multiple organ system failures, a stroke, third-degree burns.” After three and a half months and the threat of hospice care, Simon woke up, but according to Aidan, “the heat has left its mark on all of us.”
The collection of stories told at Stolen Summers—all as heart-wrenching and empowering as Aidan’s—taken together, shared and reshared, are crucial in helping communities and families remember and heal. They are also, as Representative Eric Sorensen, Congress’ lone meteorologist, said during the program, “key to creating change” we want to see in the next 250 years.
Tell Congress: Support Mental Wellness Resources for Communities Facing Weather Disasters