In a small room in lower Manhattan, a group of eight New Yorkers sat in a circle drinking kombucha and sharing their fears about the climate against the backdrop of pounding rain and blaring sirens.

In Champaign, Illinois, a psychotherapist facilitating a meeting for other therapists held up a branch of goldenrod and asked the six participants online to think about their connection to nature.

And in Kansas City, Missouri, a nonprofit that hosts a weekly discussion on Zoom began its session with a spiritual reading and a guided meditation before breaking into groups to discuss topics like the ethics of having children amid a rapidly growing world population and concerns of resource scarcity.

These were all examples of a new grassroots movement called climate cafes. These in-person and online groups are places where people can discuss their sadness, fears, anxieties, and other emotions about the climate crisis.

They’re popping up in cities across the United States — including Los Angeles, Seattle and Boston — and around the world. It’s not clear how many there are, but Rebecca Nestor of the Climate Psychology Alliance, a nonprofit that trains facilitators, said the number of cafes has increased dramatically in the past three years. The group has trained about 350 people to run climate cafes in the US, Canada and Europe, and its North American branch includes 300 doctors in its roster of climate-conscious therapists.

The alliance explores how mental health is affected by ecosystems: extreme weather and disasters; polluted air and water – and how that intersects with other forces, such as racism and income inequality. Psychologists say such groups help people confront the disturbing reality of the climate crisis.

Ms Nestor first organized a climate café in Oxford, Great Britain, in 2018. She said the idea was modeled after the death café, a concept created by a Swiss sociologist, where people gather to talk openly about death to better appreciate their lives. .

Many of the climate cafes are free and open to the public, but some are organized specifically for librarians, therapists and other professionals.

“I can’t follow the story anymore that there is no choice in how this ends.”

Since June 2023, 24-year-old Olivia Ferraro, who works in finance, has organized more than 20 intimate climate cafes in New York City, with between five and 20 attendees. She has also trained online people from around the US and the world – Puerto Rico, Vancouver, England and Australia – who want to facilitate such gatherings in their own communities.

On a recent drizzly, unseasonably warm evening in January — the temperature was 51 degrees and the high was 56 degrees — Ms. Ferraro was preparing for her meeting. She lit her Brooklyn Candle Company Fern + Moss candle, which she has lit before every gathering, and turned on Khruangbin’s chill melodies.

She arranged ten chairs in a circle near a brick wall, placed grapes, sparkling water, plantain chips and other snacks on a table and brought out reusable cups from her mother’s 2016 wedding.

People slowly trickled in from all parts of the city. The crowd was made up of young people, with a few older adults in the mix. Everyone went to a climate café for the first time.

After some small talk, Ms. Ferraro shared the rules for the evening. She explained that it was not intended as a substitute for inpatient care.

Over the course of an hour, attendees described their concerns about their future children and future generations more broadly. They described feeling overwhelmed not only by climate change, but also by the political climate. They described moving back and forth between a sense of hopelessness and a sense of empowerment about the future of the planet.

Sometimes the comments were interrupted by long pauses as attendees absorbed what was being said, just staring at each other or into their laps.

“I can’t stand the narrative anymore that there is no choice about how this ends and that big corporations have complete control over my future,” said Sheila McMenamin, 32, who lives in Brooklyn.

“They don’t have full control, and I refuse to relinquish that,” she said, as other participants hummed in agreement.

A Black woman cried and said it was hard knowing that people of color would be disproportionately affected by climate change, but many didn’t have the time to participate in groups like this.

“I’m outraged that there aren’t more black and brown people in these rooms,” said the woman, Syrah Scott, a mother in her 40s who lives in Queens. She said many people of color were just focused on surviving. “They don’t have the money to worry about this,” she said.

‘I notice that I have difficulty enjoying the outdoors.’

The online climate café for therapists in Illinois started when Kate Mauer rubbed the dried goldenrod stem she picked from her backyard into her hand. The object connected her to the climate crisis, she said, because it was one of many native Illinois flowers she had planted in an effort to restore the natural environment.

But being in her garden began to stir up complex emotions, she said. Although nature had always brought her comfort, now it also made her sad.

“I find myself struggling to enjoy the outdoors because of the constant reminders” of environmental degradation, she said.

That paradox reminded Lauren Bondy, a café participant, of that morning’s fresh snow, and of a black rhino. Mrs Bondy and her son, then 19, had glimpsed one of the last critically endangered species during a holiday in Tanzania years ago.

“I appreciate the beauty of it, but also the rarity and the loss,” said Ms. Bondy, a therapist on Chicago’s North Shore. “We’re all holding it.”

This was not psychotherapy, the counselors at the climate café had said, but rather group catharsis.

Colleen Aziz, a therapist who runs a virtual practice throughout Illinois, said she felt a responsibility to put her professional training into practice, but few patients brought climate issues to their sessions.

“It’s really great to meet clients who are so stable that they are ready and able to look directly at the climate,” Ms. Aziz said after the cafe, “but most of the time it comes down to a privilege.”

‘It’s a battle between generations.’

Other groups are more focused on action.

Around the same time, Ms. Ferraro’s group was formed by Jonathan Kirsch, 32, who works in law and lives in Brooklyn. founded his climate café in November 2022. His group started as a private, informal gathering in his apartment, but is now open to the public, and the group is more focused on translating feelings into action.

On another recent rainy day in January, more than 30 people gathered at Mr. Kirsch’s home apartment in Brooklyn for a climate café. The doorbell rang almost continuously as people plodded up the stairs to the apartment, taking off their wet coats and stacking their umbrellas.

Many at the meeting worked in the climate field, including one man who worked for Extinction Rebellion, the group that disrupted both the US Open and the Met Opera in an effort to shed more light on the climate crisis.

Those present broke into small groups. Although they were frustrated with local, state and national policies, they felt hopeful. They had ideas about how to channel their energy: composting, gardening, propagandizing, clothing swaps and repair circles, pushing for certain legislation, joining book clubs and writing groups, and even going back to school to further their education.

“The truth is this is such a long fight, it’s a fight between generations,” one participant in the large group told me after the smaller discussion groups reconvened. “We must come with a resilient mindset, where we are willing to lose many battles and just know that our presence in the biggest battle will be worth it.”

Do climate cafes work?

Meeting to share climate concerns is not new. Environmentalists have been organizing meetings since the 1970s to discuss how to respond to climate threats. According to Sherrie Bedonie, a social worker and co-founder of the American Indian Community, Native American communities have long come together to lament the loss of land. Native American Counseling and Healing Collective.

Participants have said that coming together to talk openly about their fears offers a kind of lightness.

Sami Aron, 71, a retired software developer, founded Resilient Activist in Kansas City after her son, a climate activist and urban studies graduate student at Berkeley, died by suicide, citing feelings of hopelessness about the changing climate.

Her group’s cafes try to inspire hope, she said.

“The fear, the hopelessness becomes banished in all of us, and that’s why we don’t talk about it because it’s too painful,” Ms Bondy said. “If we can’t heal what we’re all feeling,” she added, “we can’t heal our planet.”

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

The first aid shipment to reach Gaza by sea in almost two decades was fully unloaded on Saturday at a makeshift jetty in the Mediterranean Sea. This marks a milestone in an undertaking that Western officials hope will alleviate mounting food shortages in the enclave.

The vessel, the Open Arms, was towing a barge from Cyprus loaded with around 200 tonnes of rice, flour, lentils and canned tuna, beef and chicken supplied by the charity World Central Kitchen.

José Andrés, the Spanish-American chef who founded the World Central Kitchen, said his team would ship the food by truck, including to northern Gaza, an area gripped by lawlessness and badly damaged by Israeli air strikes.

But the distribution would unfold in the shadow of a series of attacks that killed or injured Palestinians seeking desperately needed food. United Nations aid agencies had to largely suspend deliveries in northern Gaza last month, and the human rights office has documented more than 20 such attacks.

The latest bloodshed occurred late Thursday in Gaza City, where at least 20 people were killed after an aid convoy was attacked. Gaza health officials and the Israeli military traded blame; Many details about what happened remained unclear Saturday.

World Central Kitchen provided few details about its distribution plan, even as it was loading a second supply ship in Cyprus. The Israeli military said in a statement that it had deployed naval and ground forces to secure the area where the supplies were being unloaded, although it remained unclear who would handle the distribution.

“The Open Arms connected a ship filled with nearly 200 tons of food to the WCK-built jetty on the Gaza coast,” the charity said in a statement, referring to a jury-rigged pier that lifted it from rubble off the Gaza coast had built. “All cargo has been unloaded and is being prepared for distribution in Gaza.”

The 200 tons of food delivered by sea is the equivalent of about 10 truckloads, a drop in the bucket compared to the roughly 150 trucks a day currently entering Gaza, according to the United Nations aid agency, UNRWA. And even that is just a fraction of what is needed, aid groups say, to provide Gazans with adequate nutrition.

With the enclave under a near-total blockade after more than five months of Israeli bombardments, the UN has warned that much of the enclave is at risk of famine and has called on Israel to ensure more food and medical care reaches its residents Reach Gaza.

A new report issued UNICEF, the UN agency for children, said on Friday that children in the Gaza Strip are facing rapidly increasing food shortages, with an alarming number suffering from ‘severe wasting’, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition.

About one in 20 children in shelters and health centers in northern Gaza are in this condition, defined as dangerously thin for their height, the report said. It cited screenings conducted by the agency.

The screenings showed that acute malnutrition, which means the body is deprived of essential nutrients, is quite common among children under the age of two in Gaza. In some areas, the number of cases of acute malnutrition has doubled since the last observation in January, the report said.

By comparison, before the war, the rate of acute malnutrition among young children was less than 1 percent, according to UNICEF.

The situation could soon become even more dire. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that Israel plans to press ahead with a ground offensive in Rafah, a southern city where more than half of Gaza’s population is sheltered.

Western officials were hopeful that negotiations on a ceasefire and an exchange of hostages and prisoners would resume in the coming days. Mr Netanyahu planned to soon send an Israeli delegation to Qatar, the site of the mediation efforts.

Hamas has updated its own proposal to no longer demand that Israel immediately agree to a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in return for initiating a hostage and prisoner exchange, according to people familiar with the matter. negotiations. Hamas dropped its demand for a permanent ceasefire and proposed the release of hostages in exchange for a phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of the Gaza Strip and the release of prisoners.

Meanwhile, Israel remains under intense pressure to open more land crossings into Gaza so that aid can be accelerated. Aid officials have emphasized that delivering supplies by sea or air is far less efficient than by truck.

According to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive branch, the Open Arms is the first ship authorized to deliver aid to Gaza since 2005. She described the operation as a pilot project to study the opening of a maritime corridor to supply the area.

The United States is also leading an initiative to establish a temporary floating pier off the coast of Gaza to facilitate the transit of goods. U.S. officials hope the pier will make it possible to deliver two million meals a day to the area’s 2.3 million residents.

World Central Kitchen is preparing to send a second ship of food from the Cypriot port of Larnaca, the charity said, but it was not clear when it would leave. The vessel is equipped with two forklifts and a crane to assist with future maritime deliveries and is expected to carry 240 tons of food, including carrots, canned tuna, chickpeas, corn, rice, flour, oil and salt, as well as more than 250 tons of food. kilo of fresh dates donated by the United Arab Emirates.

Since October, organizers and Palestinian chefs working with World Central Kitchen have served more than 37 million meals in Gaza, the group says.

The charity has also sent aid by truck from its warehouses in Cairo and supplied food for airdrops carried out by Jordan and the United States. On Friday, 23 tonnes of food were dropped in the north, Mr Andres said.

Monika Pronczuk reported from Brussels, and Gaya Gupta And Nicholas Fandos From New York. Raja Abdulrahim contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

Last week, to immediate controversy, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that she would deploy 1,000 members of the National Guard and State Police to patrol the New York City subway system in an effort to help people feel safer. Explaining her reasoning for “Morning Joe,” she said the measure would serve as both a deterrent and a way to “change the psychology around crime in the city.” That psychology tends toward pervasive fear in the aftermath of rare but dramatically violent incidents, such as the recent 3:40 a.m. attack on a train conductor in Brooklyn, who survived a cut to his neck after sticking his head out the window while driving into Rockaway . Avenue station.

“I could show you all the statistics in the world and say ‘you.’ should feel safe’ because the numbers are better,” Ms Hochul said. And essentially they are. Crime on public transport fell in 2023 compared to the previous year, even as ridership increased. Major crimes rose in January before falling in February.

“But you’re the mom on the subway with your baby in the stroller, you’re the parent putting your child on the subway to go to high school, you’re that senior citizen going to a doctor’s appointment,” she continued. ‘If you’re worried? Then I’ll be governor of New York State, and I’m worried about that.”

Of course, there are many reasons for New Yorkers to be concerned, but none of which warrant rapid and sweeping policy responses at the executive order level. The process of applying to the city’s public high schools is hellish, and last year was one of the deadliest on record for cyclists, to name just two examples. But the governor has made clear that changing perceptions about the prevalence of disorder is not her only goal. There is also a political motivation. “I’m going to show that the Democrats are fighting crime,” she also told Joe Scarborough and his team, “so this narrative that the Republicans have created and hijacked the narrative that we’re soft on crime and we’re defunding the police – no .”

It is undoubtedly true that many New Yorkers now worry about taking the subway in ways they did not before the Covid-19 pandemic, even if that concern is not always solely about crime, but rather the inconvenience that they experience when they witness so many people struggling with psychological instability on the trains.

Broad research shows that only 3 to 5 percent of violent acts are due to mental illness. But erratic behavior is highly visible on public transportation, and the death of Michelle Go, who was pushed off a platform and into the path of an oncoming train in Times Square two years ago, changed the mindset of many commuters and caused a terrifying situation. of repetitions. New habits soon formed; it is much more common these days to see people congregating in the middle of a platform, rather than at the edge, while waiting for a train. Ms Go’s attacker was ultimately deemed unfit to stand trial.

Part of Governor Hochul’s plan to calm passengers’ fears — and to lure back those who have given up on the subway altogether — includes additional security cameras and more random bag checks, as police have been doing for nearly two decades. But how that provides relief to someone who fears being thrown in front of a moving subway train by someone who may have schizophrenia, deals with drug addiction and is prone to impulsiveness is not particularly clear.

In sight of Jeffrey W Swanson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke who studies the relationship between violence and mental illness, the idea of ​​deploying the National Guard to the subway not only seems ineffective as a prevention tool among people who don’t necessarily make rational decisions, but would can also lead to prove to be harmful. What could seem like greater security, he noted, could also emphasize the idea that we are “living in a violent dystopia.”

The issue is “not a one-thing problem and a one-thing solution,” Professor Swanson continued. A militaristic presence could have exactly the opposite effect of what the governor intends. “If someone is in the middle of a psychotic episode, they may feel like everyone is out to get them, that they are threatened,” he says. “It could reinforce a false perception of danger.”

Twenty years ago, in the years after September 11, the existential fear that many New Yorkers carried with them on their morning commute was the prospect of a deadly terrorist bombing underground. That this never happened remains both a miracle and the product of an extensive infrastructural response that involved not only the performative presence of more law enforcement officers, but also enormous efforts from multiple government agencies.

The analogy may not be perfect, but the mental health crisis afflicting the city—a problem that is partly, but in no way entirely, responsible for the subway’s reduced ridership—could be addressed in a similar way. More “homeless services and mental health care” on the streets, in shelters and prisons and transit centers would be a more rational solution, as Avram Bornstein, professor of anthropology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, put it. “Although it would be largely invisible, in a direct sense, to the average person,” he said.