The Environment is everything we live inside.
When most of us hear the word environment, we think about the planet.
So do we.
But we think the definition is much bigger.
The environment is the climate we breathe.
It is the information we consume.
The justice and injustice we receive.
The healthcare we can access.
The neighborhoods we inhabit.
The economic systems we’re trapped inside.
The culture that shapes what we believe is normal, possible, acceptable or inevitable.
We’ve become very good at treating these things as separate problems.
Climate belongs over here.
Housing over there.
Healthcare somewhere else.
Justice in another conversation.
Information, economics, education, culture all neatly divided into different categories, agencies, headlines and charitable causes.
But human beings don’t experience life that way.
We experience all of it at once.
The neighborhood we grow up in affects the schools we attend. The information we consume affects what we believe. What we believe affects how we vote, behave, spend, fear, trust and act. Our economic circumstances affect our healthcare, housing, opportunity and even how long we live. The climate affects all of us but not equally.
These aren’t unrelated causes. They’re elements determining human life.
That idea became THE 13.
THE 13 is a nonprofit movement built around a simple premise:
If we want to change the world around us, we first have to change the way we see it.
At the center of THE 13 is an original graphic novel about Caleb a social-justice lawyer who happens to be a monkey.
Yes. A monkey.
Caleb is successful, intelligent, about to become a father and increasingly disturbed by the contradictions surrounding him. His work places him directly inside systems capable of helping people and harming them.
Then something happens in his own life that makes it impossible for him to continue seeing those systems separately.
His outrage becomes something else. A way of seeing.
That story is the beginning.
Around it, we are building an ecosystem of art, storytelling, experiences and direct support for organizations already doing extraordinary work.
THE 13 will support thirteen carefully selected charitable organizations working across the environments that shape human life. Our sister gallery, FRENETK, directs 13% of each sale to THE 13. The graphic novel unfolds through thirteen chapters. And thirteen distinct environments form the architecture beneath everything we are building.
Why thirteen? We’ll get to that.
For now, this is enough: The world has no shortage of problems. It may have a shortage of ways to see how deeply connected they are.
Welcome to THE 13.
