Dear Crisis — Metacrisis Salons & Events in NYC

About Dear Crisis

Dear Crisis is a community based in New York City for people who refuse to navigate the metacrisis alone. The metacrisis refers to the interconnected web of global challenges — climate change, political polarization, institutional decay, economic inequality, loneliness, and the erosion of trust — that define our era. Rather than treating these as separate problems, Dear Crisis brings people together in person to make sense of it all, build meaningful relationships, and take collective action.

Founded by Benjamin Von Wong and a growing network of collaborators, Dear Crisis hosts monthly Metacrisis Salons in Brooklyn, creative incubators called The Creationship, and community-generated gatherings. We believe the antidote to overwhelm is not more information — it's meaningful relationship. We believe that when people come together in the same room, crisis becomes a starting point rather than an endpoint.

Dear Crisis is not an organization. It's not a brand. It's a community of people in New York City who showed up.

What is the Metacrisis?

The metacrisis is a term used to describe the interconnected nature of the many crises facing humanity today. Unlike individual challenges like climate change, economic inequality, or political polarization, the metacrisis recognizes that these problems share root causes — extractive economic systems, institutional decay, epistemic breakdown, and the erosion of social trust. The metacrisis framework, developed by thinkers like Daniel Schmachtenberger, suggests that solving any one crisis in isolation is insufficient. Instead, we need to address the underlying patterns that generate crises: coordination failures, misaligned incentives, and the breakdown of collective sensemaking. Dear Crisis offers a space in New York City to explore these interconnected challenges together, in person, through salons, creative incubators, and community gatherings.

Closely related is the polycrisis — historian Adam Tooze's term for multiple global crises colliding and amplifying one another — and the permacrisis, the feeling that emergency has become the permanent weather. People arrive at Dear Crisis searching for many things: polycrisis events, a metacrisis meetup, a climate anxiety community, systems thinking conversations, an intellectual salon in Brooklyn, preparedness workshops in NYC. They stay because of the people in the room.

Metacrisis Salons in Brooklyn

Monthly gatherings to make sense of the metacrisis together. Each month picks a thread — climate stabilization, polarization, capitalism, artificial intelligence, democracy, empire — and pulls on it together. Two speakers bring the spark, breakout groups bring the depth. ~65 attendees, $15, Brooklyn, food included. Past recaps cover the full conversation: speakers, standout insights, poll-tracked shifts in how the room thought before and after.

Resiliency Action Labs — community resilience workshops in Brooklyn

Hands-on workshops for building a neighborhood that takes care of itself. Past labs: off-grid communication with Meshtastic mesh radios taught by Signals Rising; Two Weeks, No Grid — mapping fourteen days of household preparedness without power, water, or internet; Rooftop Reciprocity — turning a bare Brooklyn rooftop into food and pollinator habitat. Climate resilience, mutual aid skills, and preparedness with neighbors instead of bunkers. Full recaps at dearcrisis.com/salons.

The Creationship in New York City

A Sunday creative incubator for people who'd rather build the next world than doomscroll this one. Pitch an idea. Find your team. Make something real by sundown. Free, team-based building sprints in the East Village.

Upcoming Dear Crisis events in New York City

Join the Dear Crisis Community in NYC

Dear Crisis is based in New York City. Attend a Metacrisis Salon in Brooklyn or a The Creationship session in the East Village — RSVP through luma.com/dearcrisis. To host an event, speak at a salon, or collaborate, use the contact form on dearcrisis.com or email hi@vonwong.com.

Brooklyn, New York.Lightning Lofts

Dear Crisis

A New York community refusing to navigate the metacrisis alone.

Action Labs. Workshops. Salons. Field Trips.

A Monthly Salon Series Draws New Yorkers to Face the Metacrisis Together

Once a month in a Bushwick loft, a rotating cast of thinkers and a room of curious minds gather to navigate feelings of collapse, and what actions might be taken to avoid them.

From the Metacrisis Desk, Bushwick

Sixty-five people packed into a Brooklyn living room for a Metacrisis Salon
Salon #10 - 65 amazing humans.

New York City is the best city in the world. Endless activity around every corner, vying for your attention: the best events, parties, music, restaurants. But where do you go to sit in community amid the fear of a collapsing civilization?

Society has somehow normalized doom-scrolling anxiety-inducing headlines alone, and paying money to distract ourselves from these challenges by partying together. This community is built to do the opposite.

The Calendar

Everyday people, scientists, philanthropists, bestselling authors, AI safety engineers, climate-grief therapists, movement organizers, urban gardeners, founders, artists, and at least one guy who performed on an iceberg in the Arctic. Come as you are.

Latest dispatchMetacrisis Salon No. 12: How We Build Power→
Small groups huddled over election-crisis scenarios at Metacrisis Salon No. 12
The war games, Salon No. 12.
Hands-on mesh radio setup at Resiliency Action Lab No. 2
Off-grid communications, Action Lab No. 2.
A breakout circle in conversation at Metacrisis Salon No. 11
Tiny pigeon. Big Mic. Salon No. 11.

From the Archives

Resiliency Action Lab No. 4 · Jul 27, 2026

Strategy & Power

Organizer Allison King opens the Practical Radicals playbook: six sources of power, seven organizing strategies, and the inside/outside game behind a live transit campaign. Then the room war-games three ways a bus campaign dies.

Metacrisis Salon No. 12 · Jul 18, 2026

How We Build Power

Stephanie Luce

Labor strategist Stephanie Luce on how underdogs actually build power: seven strategies, a long-term agenda, and organized people as the lever. The night closed with war games, three election-crisis scenarios stress-tested by the room.

Resiliency Action Lab No. 3 · Jun 28, 2026

Rooftop Reciprocity

A bare Brooklyn rooftop became food, medicine, and pollinator habitat in an afternoon. A hands-on lab on growing resilience into the city, one corner at a time.

Metacrisis Salon No. 11 · Jun 6, 2026

How we build an Ecocivilization

Jeremy Lent

The system extracts and accelerates because that is what it was built to do. A night on what an ecocivilization would look like, and how you grow one inside the shell of the old.

Resiliency Action Lab No. 2 · Jun 25, 2026

Off-Grid Comms with Signals Rising

Spike · Signals Rising

When blackouts or overloaded towers take the grid down, the people who can still communicate are the ones who practiced. Hands-on with Meshtastic mesh radios and a four-layer comms plan.

Metacrisis Salon No. 10 · May 16, 2026

Is Climate Stabilization Still Possible?

Kelly Erhart

We already engineer the climate by accident, in the dirtiest possible way. A night on whether to do it consciously: the science, the risks, and the governance it would demand.

Resiliency Action Lab No. 1 · Jun 23, 2026

Two Weeks, No Grid

Could your household last fourteen days without power, water, or internet? Neighbors mapped the full plan together, from water storage to rice math to backup comms.

Metacrisis Salon No. 9 · Apr 18, 2026

Is Empire Collapsing?

Luke Kemp · Samantha Sweetwater

Humans are an egalitarian species that keeps building cages, and AI is the newest one. A night on how empires form, how they fall, and what that means for this one.

Metacrisis Salon No. 8 · Feb 21, 2026

Disconnection & Polarization

Emily Graham · Shia Levitt

America is not divided on issues so much as locked in contempt. A night on the perception gap, why we misjudge the other side, and what it takes to talk across the divide.

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Letters

From our speakers

The people who came to share. And chose to stay.

Stephanie Luce · Author, Practical Radicals
“I didn't know what to expect when I was invited to speak at the MetaCrisis salon, but I'm so glad I accepted the opportunity. This is a unique space of passionate and creative people working to learn new ideas and apply them to real life practice.”
Jeremy Lent · Author, Ecocivilization
“I've been doing book-launch events all week — but this is something very different. This is a real community thing happening, people actually working out how to build the world we want. And I love it.”
Kelly Erhart · Director, Outlier Projects
“It's rare to have the opportunity to speak to a group about not just the technicalities behind the moment we're facing (when it comes to climate change in specific, or the meta crisis in general) — but also to be able to anchor into and explore these topics from the heart and body, and with community. I was so impressed by the level of engagement of the audience, and was grateful to have the opportunity to gather and build new stories together.”
Shia Levitt · News Ambassadors
“Being part of a community of people grappling with the hard questions together — not just what's broken, but how to fix it — is exactly what the world needs more of.”
Luke Kemp · Author, Goliath's Curse
“If we avoid catastrophe it will be because of groups like Dear Crisis. A group which brings people together to understand and tackle the biggest risks of our time. It's a grassroots space, an intellectual refuge, and most importantly a community.”
Samantha Sweetwater · Author, True Human
“Electric, affirming, and disarmingly fun. The Metacrisis Salon blends depth education, embodied practice, and community — a critical recipe for resilience at any scale. Relieving and inspiring in equal measure.”
Michael Mezzatesta · Economics & climate storyteller
“In an era of growing hopelessness and despair, Dear Crisis offers something radically different: connection, solidarity, and inspiration to imagine something better. 10/10 would speak here again.”
Raman Frey · Founder, Good People Dinners
“So many contexts where we discuss things genuinely going badly in the world carry a tone of sadness or defeat. Dear Crisis gatherings are a celebration, where a bold community makes sense of our world and finds purpose collectively in reimagining our future. These parties aren't just fun ways to meet wide awake new friends; they're where flourishing new civilizations are most likely to be born.”

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Want to host an event, speak at a salon, or collaborate? Drop us a line.

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