 And so it just kept going, we just, all kinds of subject matters, like money, money talks, we've got a number of dialogues around economics. Back in the early 90s, just trying to understand how money works, for example. So there was a lot, I would say for the first ten years, a lot of the dialogues were about identifying the things that were getting stuck in our throat. Like, what is this? And then, because I think I went to the World Social Forum in 2004, and it kind of revolutionized me in terms of all the amazing things that are actually happening, that are way ahead of addressing, of identifying the problem, that are in fact really taking on some of these issues in the most creative and inspiring ways. And so the dialogues began to change to be looking at what is actually happening around the issues that are stuck in our throat. And so here we are in 2015, our 21st year, and doing now a series on climate change and speaking of things that get stuck in your throat. And I would, first of all, last of all, like to thank our panel, and especially I would like to thank Anna, my entire family, who was the curator of all of these. It's brought such a stellar group of people who are creating the future and thinking about the future and articulating the future in relation to climate change. So, I give you three of them. We recently launched a new museum called the Natural History Museum, which makes it a point to highlight the system of political and economic forces shaping nature. And so when we talk about climate change, we talk about the role of the fossil fuel while we talk about climate justice and collective responses to climate change. So, we're thrilled to be a part of this series and provided this exhibition that translates the Foundry Theater's motivation or inspiration for this series, Naomi Klein's book, This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs. the Climate. So, afterwards maybe take a look at some of Naomi Klein's quotes that help to contextualize the event. But I'm so thrilled to be here with UJ and Paulina, and I'm going to just launch right into it and ask Bella to introduce yourselves, but maybe to sort of expand on that introduction by telling us a little bit about what in your own life and work has led you to engage in social justice movements and to what degree or in what way the environmentalism and climate justice in actual work. Oh, okay. I'm sorry, I may not be able to project all the way to the back, but I'll try my best. Well, my name is Vijay Prashad and I am a teacher, I write, I'm also a Marxist. As you said, we were sitting back there, a horror, a horror, actually I'm the worst at that, because I'm also a communist, because it's the worst thing in the world. And so, my interest has always been in the fate of not the planet, not humanity, not really civilization, but the class question. You know, why is it that working class people, peasants, industrial workers, manufacturing workers, workers who fish off coastal regions, people who struggle to find work, who now we know as the precarious, why is it that the mass of working people have found in their own practice in lives over the last 35, 40 years, that existence has become even more difficult now, despite the fact that it has been difficult under the regime of capitalism for a long time. But there's been an intensified difficulty and this has led to wars, it has led to displacement, it has led to immense amounts of violence. So my interest in the question of the environment isn't from a standpoint of the planet or anything like that, it's really from the standpoint of, you know, the majority of the world's people who do most of the world's labor and have the least of the world's power. My name is Folina Helmed-Nazis and I'm joining you all from Atlanta, Georgia. I work with an organization called Southern Nursery on New Browns. Yes. And we're a Southern regional gay-lizing, buying trans organization that works at the intersection of racial and economic justice and gender and sexual liberation. So a lot of my work definitely focuses around engaging LGBT people around this question of what is our shared destiny and sort of where we're going together. And I myself, my, I'm originally from Mexico, I grew up in Mexico to have as well. And then my parents, you know, after the North America free trade agreement, well, basically every generation of my family. As far back as we can remember, we're farm workers in both sides of my family, especially from the coastal region of Mexico that I work from. And after that happened, my parents lost their small business and my father trekked across the US-Mexico border to go to North Carolina to work there as a farm worker for a year and brought the rest of my family over from Mexico. So my earliest memories of becoming politicized were very much in the context of what was happening in farm-working communities in North Carolina with the use of Latino immigration coming into the Southeast. And just being that, like, absolutely come up to this expression of class instead of who's seen as disposable and who's seen as, you know, just, yeah, just like labor, that it's okay, but like, you know, at the time in North Carolina there were very few almost non-existent regulations around farm-working and around, like, even exposure to pesticides. So it's very common, for example, at the time that like, irrigation sort of things would happen over the field that people were still working on and people would not be able to leave the field. And then our people were going home generationally, sick with cancer, or people were going home to die more and more. And it just, like, it was like a huge kind of wake-up call, like, you know, when my father was like beginning to get sick around some of the stuff when he was being exposed to different pesticides. And he actually was the first person in his family who went to college. And he was one of the people who was like asking all kinds of questions, like, what actually happened to him. From an earlier memory, you remember being like, oh, okay, I see what's happening. Like the land of opportunity for, like, some of us, and then, like, the land of, like, death for many of us, right? And I think that there was, like, something also just about, like, being from that kind of farm-working, like, family, I've always liked knowing that our people have, like, studied the stars. Thought people have studied the sun, they've studied, like, of every sign of what actually supported life and what gave us life, you know? And I think that there was, like, a way also, like, that, like, historically, like, as part of, like, understanding of, like, the Mexican Revolution too, and, like, around, like, land reformations that felt very important as a central value, that, like, the land belongs to the people that work in it, and ultimately, like, one of the ones that bear the consequences and bear the front, right, are most of the environmental destruction. So, my work, I feel like, and it's valid. So, like, it's, in some ways, also rooted around land, because you have such a strong sense of place, you know, and around, sort of, like, who does the land belong to and, like, how do we also make it sustainable for people to remain there, and I think it's been sort of coming back full circle, to actually think about those kinds of issues, because it is kind of a question of collective circle at this point, around, like, what are we actually willing to do for each other to transform what actually have really applied to it? So, this is the third in the Dialogue series, and the first one, we were taking a look at the scale of the body in relation to climate change, and in the second, the scale of the community. And tonight, we're looking at the scale of the nation's state. So, I think it's interesting that I'm very excited to talk to both of you about it, because I think you bring a really interesting perspective to the discussion. In particular, with the work with Song, it's a formation of people that have come together around identity, yet understanding how identity and self-determination relate to struggles that connect to decisions made by the nation's state, and sort of struggling with the relationship between your identity and an association with America. So, I want to sort of jump into a series of questions about the nation's state as the vehicle for addressing climate change. It's been a sort of de facto vehicle. So, mainstream environmentalists or big green NGOs have very much focused their energy and attention on the nation's state in advocating for national policies. So, I would like to ask for you to comment on that. What you think about that is the predominant approach that affects it. Should we be thinking about something else? You don't have to put the line. She was looking straight at it. No, I think I love this question. I love this question because I'm thinking about this from a variety of different ways. One of them is also just a question of individual sovereignty. Where are we actually... What are some of the decisions that we're making in terms of trying to even address some of our social problems that either put us closer into the binding of empire or take us closer to liberation and individual sovereignty or actually acknowledging sort of like some of the historical... I feel like historical sort of periods of time that actually accompanied us more and more dependent systems that actually benefit from our suffering. And I think that there's a lot of ways in which the state absolutely oftentimes kind of hits you more suffering. And in the South, it's just so hard to separate the wealth of what's happening. We talk about all the time we go to beautiful places in the South like Trost and South Carolina where you're like, this is such a beautiful city. It's so magnificent. It's so... All this colonial designs and then you're like, of course, because it was a slain port city and all of this wealth and beauty was built on the back of slavery, right? And something that there's always been sort of like this like an authentic relationship in terms of like... that the opera said, well, like it's happening at somebody's expense. And so to me like the question of like nation-state oftentimes that comes back to this lack of imagination almost around what else is possible. Like what are all of the other formations and ways that like our people have some... you know, from America, all the different ways are like kinship networks. And in some way, it's all thought of itself as a kinship network in the beginning. Other kinship networks are saying, we do have shared identity. And this is also at the time that the primarily gay and lesbian movement was saying, why are we talking about globalization? This is not a lesbian issue. This is not a gay issue. Why are we talking about economics? This has nothing to do with my gay marriage, right? And actually us pushing our people to be like, well, actually, let's talk about that, right? Like how does state benefits from all of our benefits come, you know, happening through cobalthood? And do we want to keep sort of replaying the same sort of dynamics in the same sort of, I don't know, almost like constricted choices around our lives? And there's like a way that like the nation-state question has to come to the detriment of like what actually really powerful local organizing is happening where people are redefining like their accountability to land, their accountability to each other. And actually wanting to sort of make up a different kind of social safety than that oftentimes in the country. We're in such a cultural war right now around whether there should even be a social safety act. So it's like we're putting all of our solutions in this like safety net that like there's some active movement to constantly undermine and kind of putting everything on that one plate. I don't know, I don't know about y'all. I think about organizing. That's kind of a guerrilla fight. All strategies all the time. See what sort of happens and what stays. And I think that like there's something about like actually if you're willing to think from an international perspective that just cracks us open in a different way, you know. You know, one of the nice things about Naomi Klein's book, which I was very happy about reading was the slogan. You know, you read a book and books are interesting and Naomi has an incredible way of synthesizing immense amount of information and you know, analysis. But you've got to have a slogan. And the slogan that you remember is climate versus capitalism. It's a choice. It's like growth in Luxembourg. Civilization or barbarism. Socialism or barbarism was Luxembourg's thing. Great slogan. I think bringing the word capitalism and the analysis of capitalism into the discussion about climate is essential. I mean, what's happened is I don't, I believe that there's no such thing as a state. Different states have different class configurations. It depends who's controlling and driving the agenda in the state. So, you know, you're going to need to have an international set of negotiations for climate. That has to be taking place. Other scales, different kinds of things have to happen. But there has to be an international form of negotiation. The problem is that there are states in the planet that are so heavily important to the forces of capitalism, to what we call the white mosaic, that they suffocate any dial. And they throw this soil, very distilting dust into the media. Where they talk about, for instance, where the poor countries, developing countries, don't want to meet obligations. We meet obligations because, of course, America is the best country in the world. And we all, we're going to get rid of plastic bags. And we're going to recycle bottles. And, you know, we're going to put solar panels up in our charts in South Carolina. Beautiful downtown, ready to be disguised. So we won't ruin the facade. We're better people than anybody else in the planet. The Chinese are the worst people. So there's this sort of jingoistic language that the 1% of the capital that will sprinkle through the media to disrupt any attempt at having a serious dialogue about the fact that the property classes simply do not want to change the direction of social development. I'm going to give you a silly example. You know, I live in Western Massachusetts. For now, much longer months of the year, it's freezing cold. Everybody, including me, has a house which we heat. You know, we live in an apartment or a house with your heat. So that means your apartment is fighting against subzero temperature outside. And then we buy these obscenely large refrigerators. We sit inside our kitchens, which keep things cold against the heating that we're doing to fight against the cold outside. And in the refrigerator, we have a freezer box which is intensifying cold to freeze things against the heat against the cold. And then inside the freezer box, there's a heating coil to prevent the freezer box from freezing over. This civilization that we all participate in is insane. And yet we believe that some Chinese person or an Indian person are the problem because we recycle our bodies. So what's happened, I think, I believe, to reimagining these issues is that we are utterly complicit in the fact that Obama goes to Copenhagen and says that I'm going to cut a deal, but it will be on our terms. Which means that capitalism cannot be disrupted. And I think what Naomi has done, at least to open this conversation, is to say, actually, it's a choice. Van Jones is wrong. There is no green-job solution. There is no capitalist solution to the climate problem. In fact, capitalism is the problem. And I mean, it's a huge thing to see, because it sounds like... Oh my God. Okay, I thought it was okay and easy to fix the warming problem. You know, we could do that. We can't fix the capitalism problem. In other words, this scale-up problem, which is what the whole planet seems easily to fix, then this social problem of corruption and theft, which we feel immobilized from fixing. Which I find it means that we have lost our minds. Because we actually think that these... You know, there are new concepts in the economy. Anthropo-morphosome. Anthropo-morphosome. Anthroposome. Why do we need new terms when actually older terms make sense? Those new terms obfuscate the fact that the problem here is we've organized our social system so badly that our culture has become reliant on the social system. So we cannot imagine having a box in which we put meat, close the box, and put it in the outside. It's unimaginable. So culturally, we are wedded to a social system that is dominated by a very small number of people, and we feel we can't change that. That's extraordinary. Edward Abbey said capitalism is the ideology of the cancer cell, unlimited growth in a finite system. I am thinking about, both of you brought up this issue directly, I think, about how with climate change, there's such vast asymmetry in the burden of responsibility and the burden of impact. And that plays out at the community scale. That's what we call the climate justice movement in the United States today. But it certainly also plays out the scale of the nation state and the global scale. And so that's going to be a question about the global south, this instruction of the global south. You, Jan, you've written a lot about this. What are some of the mainstream understandings of the global south, and how should we think differently about the global south? Why might that be important for climate justice? That's a huge issue, and it's a very important issue. I think one of the problems that we face is we decontextualize tragedies in the south. And I think I'll use the term south generously to include the American south and the south in the U.S. North and etc. There's a decontextualization. So for instance, I'll give you an example, not journey directly, in Ebola epidemic case, in West Africa. And suddenly, you know, Americans, you know, we always learn our geography through tragedy, either who were bombing or if there's some place where the Marines need to go. But there's an Ebola tragedy sent in the Marines. What? You know, these kids don't know how to spell it in Liberia. Send in the Marines. But these kids who don't know how to spell it in America send in the Marines, because they want to bring troops and send them into classrooms. I don't know if you saw that. Anyway, it's decontextualized. Why is there an epidemic of Ebola in West Africa? All the countries which had an outbreak of Ebola suffered from IMF International Monetary Fund strictures during the debt crisis. But they were told that if you want a bridge grant to carry you through your debt crisis, you're going to have to cut back on state spending. The two arenas they cut back were health and education. So they, in the 1980s and 90s, Liberia, Sierra Leone, officially destroyed their health sector. And then 20 years later there's an Ebola epidemic and they're sitting back and saying it's Africa because they're black. That's why they have diseases. They're not like us, you see. By the way, the French believed this in 1832 when the cholera came from Asia. The French said, we are Democrats. Democracies addicted to cholera. The cholera wiped out Paris. They didn't prepare for the war. They thought cholera is a despotic disease. These ideas are alive in the world today. Ebola has a disease of Africa. It's not a disease of Africa. It's a disease of the emigration of public health. If you don't finance public health, you're going to get a disease. If you're not going to allow farmers in Mexico to grow corn, they're going to come not to it because they have no choice. You destroy your ability for them to farm. So the geography of the understanding of the global is how they decontextualize. We only see tragedy. Then you see these people as victims. And then you say, we have to raise charity to help them because, you know, they just can't help themselves. So we don't actually see people as people. That means that when there are people struggling to get on a boat or some Mediterranean, we just see them as tragedy. Not as narrative. Because if you see them as narrative, not as tragedy, you are part of the story. Because then we get indicated because then it's about trade policy internationally. Then it's about what the IMF and the World Bank do. Then it's about arms sales to Central Africa to protect the ability of big multinationals from bringing out diamonds, from bringing out quartet, et cetera. We don't want narratives. Narratives make us indicate. One of the things that is the great fortune of living in the global north is that you can believe your life is a great and everybody else is just tragic. I think that we have to change. Their lives are like tragedy. It's part of the narrative just as all lives are part of the narrative. Okay, but to hear what you have to say, but also I want to ask you to read that in the political education work that you do, you connect the global issues always to the global context. I think that's very exciting. Yeah, I was thinking about this question of the global stuff and the, kind of in the nationalist imagination, too, like this. It is so easy to be U.S. that's right. In so many ways. Because I was like, literally, the U.S., like the global stuff is like 157 out of like 184 of like recognized nation states in the world. Right? So you're talking about like the large majority of nation states that actually, to me, like also has to do with like the ongoing sort of struggle around like self-governance for people of color. That it is like, there is ultimate to me like a white supremacist lens under which a lot of this like, even the environmental crisis has to be applied. Because it's like, no, no, no, the assumption is like, yes, and then the developed nations industrial nations have no accountability or like a reduced kind of accountability because of the infrastructure that oftentimes like, that what we'll have has to respond to this kind of crisis. And there's just, I know that that's part of also kind of driving us a little bit now. It's kind of like the, almost like, like the mindset, you know, of like, what's happening, like around some of it, that I think that there is like a way that it comes home to roots and like a racial justice movement here in the U.S. as well. And I think that like, for someone, we came to this question around like, how do you address, like, how do you talk about these issues intersectionally and how do you address them intersectionally without ending up? I don't know how many people have been to like, strategy meetings or even like, mapping some, you know, like community trying to assess what's happening and then you come out with like a list of priority of issues and it's like, no less than like 30 things. Anybody? Maybe it's just me like, I go to organizing meetings and we like, come up with like a longer list of issues and people are like, we need to address, you know, international military policy in order to be able to address what's happening at the U.S. and Mexico border right and how militarized it's gotten. And so all of these things are like, you know, are like huge issues and we have like, we just like have like a human necessity to like, try to understand them from a humane level and so one of the ways that we sort of talk about that is intersectionality is that we talk about it in the context of sort of like, what are some of the things that we are all affected by and then what are some things that people have to really like, are shared survival and so one of the ways that we talk about that is sort of this like poor sort of, this sort of poor lens on their sort of, what are issues around related to land, body, work and spirit. And literally like, spirit and like the widest sort of manifestation, not like the Holy Spirit. But literally like how is like our personal spiritual resiliency around some of this issue because oftentimes like that's what informs the tenor of our responses. And so there is like a way that like we do like quite a bit of like the mapping that we do in the region around land is so much around this question of autonomy and this question of self-determination and do we have a right as people to have self-determined lives? What does that actually look like on a map scale? You know, both like at the local level but also as a nation sort of, you know, like a power. But there's this issues and that oftentimes like again like comes back to this question of not just racial justice but like literally like sovereignty. Like what kind of sovereignty and how are we going to also actualize? Like even our idea of citizenship in this country I come out of this with because you know I'm organizing I come out of immigrant rights work and so much in some ways of like the trap of like the immigrant rights movement right now is this question of like once we get citizenship everything will be okay. And I'm like really? Like talk to black folks in the south about what citizenship makes like and then we can have a real conversation about how far we think that the system of take is right which is actually like in some way like being able to practice conversation up and up like what is our relationship? What kind of relations do we have here to do that? And I think for someone it's been a question of moving absolutely beyond identity because there is a way that and I think that this is the kind of how we learn things at a price. It's like constant also struggle to work against our own scarcity and our own sort of idea that like somebody else has to be starving in order for us to have a steak dinner you know or like somebody else has to do with that in order for us to come here and I think that there is like a way that it has there is like a way that it's not just because I used to think about it as kind of like what is that about human nature that sometimes like we're like a little bit you know like we're a little bit of like haters like so that's for like we're the best and like that's the thing that I'm like I love sports I'm a very competitive person I'm a huge like women sports fan and just to watch it like someone like with my own competitive edge it's kind of like well how much is that it's about like us flexing it's like people that have been oppressed and come out like histories of oppression and being like yes actually yes and like we're sort of like our seven generation plan you know that a lot of we know like that's part of the neoliberal agenda right like you know that's part of the like the rights agenda like we are where we are because they have a 20 generations plan to kind of you know put us in the place that we're at we were actually considering whether or not like people will have clean drinking water you know and I think that like there's like a way that we do have to have some historical accountability particularly for white people in this country I feel like there's a different conversation in time around like what's actually this conversation of political this whole conversation around it was like how do you feel like the conversation on that people are like well the next president is going to be the one that fixes it the next great big leader and I'm like this is actually all these decisions are getting made at the local and state level at least in the south too like in terms of like who has access to the water aquifires you know the like meet between like Tennessee, Georgia Tennessee and Georgia and like who actually gets who actually gets writers you know the rights to the water and Atlanta's like one of the biggest cities in the south where I did that Atlanta's like hello we bring the most money so who do you think is going to get that water you know and I think like it's going to happen more and more like the water wars are going to come home like in a different way and more and more we're seeing that in California we're seeing that in the southwest playing out on a way that I think is going to make a lot of this very uncomfortable around our decisions around governance and around like what do we really believe like it's actually here to change that I'm going to ask a follow-up question to that because you know I've been thinking a lot about how we understand the land and our relationship to resources you know the primary push at the nation level around climate change has been the carbon markets the creation of the new market right, monopying an element thinking you know that we've done so much with the definition of capitalism right and so it's like you could hit that understanding of nature as something to be carved up, commodified, privatized sold off to the highest bidder against an understanding of nature already as a commons for all of us for generations to come yet how does that drive the discourse on sovereignty so you know is there a tension between the conference and sovereignty particularly because I think sovereignty is an issue that comes up when you're especially when you're doing it in the first nation communities and so I'm wondering how to reconcile that I mean I think a lot of us come from different cultural values where like even the ownership of the land is suspect why should people own land when we're here for one generation I mean a hundred years if you're really really lucky right and I think that like there is like that to me is like what I go back to when I think about a business it's like do we actually have the right to like own land as a different people like or the community's own land you know and like for example like this like how it's getting I mean it's one of the sharpest ways that I think it gets contrasted too like with the Israeli and Palestine conflict and it's like who historically like you know like who does the land actually belong to and the sort of idea of ownership and at that time it feels like the source I see of that is that we will always see in this constant fight around who holds ownership over what we own you know and I think like there is like a way to be stopped and the sovereignty isn't about what all of these people would say on this but I feel like like for my people the question isn't about like are we really going to send everybody back you know like back to Europe is that what's going to happen I'm going to have like mass deportations effect like what was the end game here no we're just on a practical level right like what's the end game here and to me I'm like we've come too far along like as a as a people as a continent to pretend that like our people are not blended and we do not have common ancestry to me the real question is like our own historical states right and what are we going to actually like and then that's not to me like the environmental justice we're getting in and racial justice would feel like such spiritual prophecy it's either like do you want to live or don't you because it's about to get more real down here and it's about to get more hostile and we're seeing that there and all of our cities we're seeing that really out across all of our cities right now that people that this story could have been oppressed said no more and if you're ready we're going to have a conversation even around environmental justice you know because there's been so much more direct and point to this around some of the sort of I feel like consequences of some of that so for me like there is like a question around like what's our end term what's it about and for me I'm like I absolutely feel like we're kind of all in coexists I think the question is cool we'll make it to that um yep so you brought up it's about to get more real so you know I think some of the sectors that have been thinking about this and planning around over a very long time are the military the pentagon the army et cetera and that we're seeing now we have extreme climate related events often militaristic responses rather than humanitarian ones case in point Katrina um so I'm interested in the connections between militarization climate disaster preparedness and climate change you know we could speak about all of that oh yeah well by the way unfortunately the term humanitarianism has become a military as well yes so I think we lost that term you know the great president Obama you know is a ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power great name is basically subordinates the humanitarianism from our side and you know conducted it but anyway point point this is a tough issue because on the one side um the small number of people who believe and by the way this is partly to do with climate and partly to do with the social catastrophe because we've seen this preparedness happen for the social catastrophe as well you know gated communities uh freeways that basically dive into underground parking lots you can take elevators have a helicopters that fly from the Hamptons to a top of a the Goldman Sachs building you know you don't have your descent you don't meet the riffraff you know the paranoia of Tom Wolf's book which opens with a car getting off from the wrong exit and a flat tile and this white couple from you know Westchester somewhere is suddenly confronted by darkness and you know the fear of paranoia of the class that fears the social consequences of the social catastrophe they've been planning for the catastrophe over generations it's the social catastrophe hence codes against what slaves can do you can only walk here you can only do that you can't come near me if you come near me your head has to be down you know power has planned for catastrophe and all that so this is part of a long process but what's interesting is the reason I say this is that in all previous instantiation of its preparedness it has been shown to be useless it has no idea how to actually hold back the flood you know these are fantasies of power I read the preparedness study by the pendulum it's absurd it's a little game it would make a great video game you know you jump in and you see the water really what did you do in Iraq you bombed the shit out of that country you sent you occupied it and people were happy and you pacified your country no it didn't work it failed if it failed in Iraq it's going to fail when you parachute in to steal the actual fire somewhere because you know these people are going to shoot at you they're going to blow their bodies up in your face so actually it's the idea that all of them in a sense is historic but power doesn't have a future what power has is not a future but an endless present it wants to maintain the present forever we have a future we need to articulate the politics of the future they don't actually have imagination they want to create the status quo forever that's not an imagination so I don't even give them the credibility of planning what they are trying to do is to lengthen a disaster but we have to save the planet and I think we are so scared of being aggressive with the items we are so caught in this defensive posture that we have to critique power critique power you know what I can take power yes but we must also supersede our critique should not end the last chapter of a book is depressing no and we are all going to die you know popular culture is ahead of what do you like to think I don't know how many of you saw Godzilla I'm the only one you and me okay we are both fine the United States government cannot deal with this creature that it's discovered Godzilla has to come and save America come on you see it you know what I mean Godzilla comes from the deep and beats down this character that eats nuclear weapons so we fire nuclear weapons and it gets stronger but it's Godzilla that saves the planet so Americans can't even save the planet I was watching the Avengers the Avengers can't save the planet they want to go back in time to redo history because it's just screwed up so popular culture recognizes that power doesn't know how to fix things it needs Godzilla it needs a time machine you know why are we so cruel and not confident in our ideas they don't have any answers we have answers we should declare them fully and her book The Shocked After just like so helped to kind of clarify kind of demystify a lot of the things like yes somebody who grew up on the southeast like Clay Steed constantly playing now some disaster capital and then you wait for the right woman you wait for the next environmental assassin which we obviously also have kind of feeding but you know this like sort of environmental disasters happen and then you just you just use that as a way to clean in some ways the political slate and the social slate and to me I'm like the function of FEMA in and of itself as an agent has been around population control we know that that's an historical sort of like rudeness in some ways of the federal agency that spoke was to like kind of in the context of like emergency preparedness but also very much around population control around like there are actually like I mean you can and I'm a and I'm a dork so I like this kind of stuff and you know and also some of this like the only client like at home research like has uncovered right like not just a sort of idea that like I think sometimes like my own like sci-fi brain I'm like they're not really they're not really government like concentration right I don't know and there are right we know that there are but when Katrina happened it was all too easy it was all too easy to round up people that have lost everything and put them in a place and then get to sort of clear the city for the new way of course you know and that's what happened like and that's what happened of course and like we saw that play out and we're seeing that play out over and over again and it's always been to me I'm like I actually believe that there is a positive role for government I'm not all the way out like the government has no role no hands should I'm not there I'm aware like I pay taxes and I believe in the common good and I believe in social safety and I believe that there actually is a positive role for government and though like there is like we just have to be honest like have not been made in order for those for that emergency preparedness to work in the best way of most of us of poor people you know like the fact that like to this very day you know like there's media depicting you know like what is happening during environmental disasters like people of color are breaking into stores to get food for their babies and their lures right and then like white folks are like breaking into stores and they're survivors you know they're survivors they're like they're the resilient ones and I think that like we just cannot you know like there is a way that like a lot of these institutions have set themselves up to prioritize what actually what wellness looks like what safety looks like through the context of white supremacy that it has been always like been designed to play into the into the application of like the white panic you know or like sort of designed to play into the into the sort of idea of like we're neutral this is a neutral plan that works for everybody when we know that has actually happened and so to me like there is like a constant and it is it's hard people look out where Nepal is on the on the map only one of the doctors does that and like what is that what is that what is that like that triggers in us who like that we're also like I don't know like there's something about in the and I don't think it's an American thing but I think that like we have become a little bit of like disaster junkies because we're looking for something else outside of ourselves in some ways so like it was compassion or it was empathy or people ask me all the time of like what really happens when you're like trans in a rural community I'm like what do you think happened what do you think happened you know like no like real talk like how much do we have to know about people's like you know like how much do we have to know in detail almost you know like about what our people are experiencing in order for us to actually create mass skill solutions to address that problem I feel like we're still in kind of a social political space where it's like no show me the blood show me the pain show me the like hardship it's called self-determination it's called our people are struggling and you either are for my self-determination or you're not you don't need to know what's happening on the market you don't need to know like what my gender is actually is to I believe in your self-determination and you believe in mine and what are we going to do to actually like make that happen and like there's like a wave of like that there is like the last point of crisis is such a perfect step because it takes us back to like a raw human kind of survival emotion and in some ways like that's when like it's also beautiful and it's saying no we went through a huge environmental crisis and no we will still not be Monsanto's like 6,000 seats because we know that it's going to destroy our environment and what we did and the aftermath of that huge earthquake when everybody was like oh my god they're in such suffering it's so horrible and Monsanto's was like well we're going to we're going to make sure that you're all fed and they're like thank you but nothing right and then like that was such a powerful not just symbolic but a way that they also reclaimed humanity to be like and I was like and at the end of the day like we will not see your suicide scenes because we know that like it's going to be a part of the life and there's like a way that like how do we have that like that kind of long term vision even in moments of crisis you know it's our love to like that's my constant question that's an organizer it's like even in our like worst moments of life like we actually can turn to each other and make choices that are for like you know about our true survival and when do we actually know how they're evolving because people are coming from a different different mindset of knowing that they can actually like there's something about class mobility in the US that just like makes us believe that if your neighborhood goes down if your house gets foreclosed you can always move on to the next day you can always move on to the next day you can always move on to your next job in a way that like I know my people don't feel that way about they're like we're not leaving better for our people so this better get addressed this better change that I think as like people living in the US live in class mobility under the times that we've had still there's a hard thing to address in terms of the priorities of the class from you from the environment to justice movement right you bring up the answer because I mean then I like that thing you mentioned about this kind of vicarious pleasure in disaster and that goes at different levels you know I've thought about that particularly because there's a what people seem to what we truck in in a way it's not like a weather channel syndrome but what we seem to truck in is accumulation of distress you know you collect stories of distress but we don't have a theory and you know absent the theory of why things are happening you know why is the theory useful the theory is useful because the theory will allow you to think about action it will empower you theory will empower you to understand why things are happening no and it's a theory so it's provisional it has to change as conditions change the theory empowers you to understand why something is and how you can create a strategy to make it better if you don't have a theory that accumulation of distress is disempowerment it makes it impossible to understand yourself as a part of the struggle because you wait down where the burdens of the world and I meet people like they talk about something and people come and say I just feel so depressed I don't listen to the news I don't read the newspaper I don't want to know what's happening in the world you know how do you read the newspaper every day you know and that strikes me I don't blame anybody for it but it's because as a as a space in the world we've lost you know through McCarthyism through all these politics from above we've lost people on the left we've lost the capacity to have a theory you know Tony Kushner is an amazing part in the interest in America which was not in the movie called Maristroica where the oldest Bolshevik in the world and the Derubiujic or something like that goes up on the to the plan of the supreme Soviet in 1985 and he says he's blind and he's got a stick and he says you people you don't have a theory you're abandoning a theory if you have a theory if you went up to the mountaintop and you were able to see clearly I would follow you these blind eyes would see that mountaintop which is provided by your theory and then he says my favorite line is this you even snakes my little serpents when they shed a skin you grow a new one we don't have a theory without a theory you disempower yourself and I think that's a huge loss so you know when people say I know that people would embrace them but disdain them it's not people's fault that you don't have a theory it's that in this country and in much of the West the thing to political theory is that what's substituted for it is capitalism the academic theory which actually doesn't explain why the disaster and stuff like that it's a whole different situation so I want to come back to that before I take this militarization question you brought up crisis and I think about the metaphor of the lobster in the pot of water you know where it gets hotter and hotter or maybe it's a frog or a frog thank you because lobsters can't talk right depends on what kind of lobster imagine it as lobster when it's gone we need a lobster for the theory so you know I think that in talking about crisis there's the twin crises and the economic crisis and the climate crisis that converged and that there's still this sort of depth by a thousand huts that are metaphorical frog is experiencing that is manifesting social unrest as you know pointing out in our communities but it's not just the fortification of our military but of our police as well and I feel like we're actually you know climate change is here it's happening but we're actually in the sort of early days of recognizing its manifestations because that its manifestations are actually the exacerbation of that which is already happening in our communities it's like this scaling up of that and and and it seems that the response is at a local level but you know kind of kind of like the least I'm wondering to get to social movements there's a connection between black lives matters and climate justice and that if climate activists should be thinking about their relationships with black lives not I feel like there's a connection to it and still something that's particularly deeper and deeper I should say that one of the people who started the black lives matter movement like I said her partner is also on the board of salt so there's also a lot of both like I feel like we get to benefit greatly like from their work and it's also been they have put out such a strong social political call that like so many of our members and our skin and our political family have responded to and I feel like some of that has actually been yet to actually like not being like not being usual around issues so not just white supremacy but also like the unapologetically black and I know that in the south like the backbone of the environmental justice movement is like the black community but then because of the honesty like the generosity of like so many black communities that a lot of these issues have gained a lot of traction in the south because people have actually been willing to talk about like what happened and sort of into what's happening around farming issues also related to black farmers in the south like that were some of the first people who began to also bring the alarm around like the loss of land by the sort of like the growing of communities in the south basically a different level of conversation but I would say that at the national level like I've just been hearing more and more like also even like Seattle's Seattle has like a new kind of pool kind of like an environmental justice program that's funded by the city to literally look at like racial economic justice this is inside of the way that the city is addressing issues of environmental sort of impact to the community and actually looking at it and we've known historically the like you know communities of color and or even like some of the whole sort of toxic sites right but like where it's sort of things have planned around the city of the crisis where like not just people of color but in working class communities like that right and so like there's and that analysis has been out there like people know that that's you know like most of the facts I have actually been to like deeper the racial being impacted and then who should actually dictate federal agenda and priorities and that's just the way that I feel like the tone that the black and smart movement has set around like again being unapologetically pro-black that actually does not to the detriment of a broader base of racial justice movement and to actually stand for the leadership of people of color I think this has changed the tenor of the conversation because there was like this great report as well that was released not that long ago which I think is like the 20 C report basically looked at a scan of like the largest and really like just asked asked all of environmental justice organizations to submit sort of information around like who is in your leadership how much money is in your organization actually and just looked at like there's still a huge disparity and also the leadership of all of these organizations and the majority of the people the paid people who do this work have paid capacity not that aren't just one of these work but in like organizational planning backing who actually have an influence on federal strategy so there's like a way that also like the environmental movement is like talking out of both sides of this mouth is like we're addressing and we're addressing it and like we actually are not reflective still of like most of the local sort of not receptive you know like who's giving some of the biggest fight back at the local level and I think that that tension has been on earth in a different way that actually has a different platform almost to step into so to me I'm like there's like a way that the Black Lives Women has actually the idea of movements being linked firstly any movement for dignity and justice is linked at that level but let's go to a different level there are these catastrophes that have been taking place you know in our lifetime in the decades past and responses by the advanced industrial countries have all been military responses so there's a crisis of migrants on the Mediterranean well as bomb the boats you know that was the European Union's suggestion but we won't hear the people who bomb the boats when they enter before they how are you going to do that when you're bombing in Libya but who cares Libya we've bombed in Libya it's like a playground for bombing so that's a military solution to what to a climate war and trade set of disasters what is Syria what is happening in Syria between 2005 and 2010 there was an enormous drought along the Euphrates land at that time the UN rapporteur for food what's his name on Libya they shoot anyway he made a very important statement to the security council saying this drought this is long before the uprising has pushed 3 million Syrians into extreme bombing this war that broke out in Syria is not a sectarian war alone it's also a private war you know masses of people came to Damascus completely disinclined into Aleppo and the country was destroyed in so you get Syrian refugees crossing the like a train who else do you get you get West Africa migrants coming from 6 countries interesting 3 of those countries their heads of government in 2003 wrote an op-ed in the New York Times called your cordon subsidies are killing us that was the headline they are trade refugees they are coming to Libya trying to get through now these are not just people who want you know our freedoms you know George Bushman I miss you every day you gave me the best lines you were the best person to despise and liberals were confused Democrats and the White House were planning liberals that totally confused you of course they all were with you and we were marching against this war that war Democrats you know whatever anyway why are they coming? they're coming because there are determined social policies that have destroyed their ability to survive and then the answer to that is kill them build a wall make them fill the mediterranean with crocodiles and have pikemen stand at the shores of Italy to push the boats away it's medieval but it's not medieval it's totally modern it's a seriogram it's the wall it's the guys you know minute band all these responses are militaristic it returns to the real thing I was saying that you know people who control these states have no clue you know I mean I interact with some of them and some of them as a journalist I go to them I ask simple questions they don't give a crap about the mediterranean problems they know the discourse of you guys but what's much more important for them is they come to power because in their own communities they're unable to deliver jobs so they run on so-called social issues immigration abortion homosexuality etc and therefore their policymaking is hamstrung by the fact they're not even delivering for their own people they deliver a crooked imagination for sections of their own population and then take it out on people who are getting destroyed because of the global architecture so in that sense these movements are utterly linked because the fact that they have no answer for poverty and furlough and for the fact that people who suffer from mental health problems are walking out on the streets I mean a lot of people kill for the police because the police are the wrong people to deal with them I don't want to blame the cops because they're totally untrained you know what? we should have cars that are painted with different colours with social workers if this was a real humane society it would have 9-1-1 and 8-1-1 so social workers should have this and I can recognize you are suffering from this I know it I'm not so move away from me move away from me this person is not trained to deal with that person so we failed Ferguson for an international trade policy that failed Mali you shoot the person in Ferguson you shoot the person from Mali it's the same system so in that sense you know it's unbelievable that we can when we make those charts in those meeting hundreds of things and everybody feels disempowered I can't do all these things prison is what prison is that's 31 so many things well I'm coming back to the point I made earlier if you see there's a theoretical linkage between these issues then there's something that we can understand that we can move an agenda against it's not that I have to work on this that's the individualization of politics I need to work on this issue that is collect all the issues we don't work on issues we don't work on changing the structure we have the theory of the structure so I'm not interested in this or that issue I'm not interested in all situations of indignity so we have to not only fight against you know the structure we have to fight against this individualization that's happening where there's this kind of thinking or issue with these politics and you know okay fine if you want to clear your radical you want to change the world what are you doing today what have you done today I delivered 50 cans of soup to somebody what you did was important but don't let your approach to the world in fact everybody you know I'm not minimizing what you've done what everybody does in that issue is important somebody wants to only work on abolition of prisons that's great but listen to a theory as well this is not a zero something I think that's the way I consider the linkage well there's a precept in organizing organizing organized folks where they're at right so especially if people are personally affected by something that's a point of entrain to experiences and political education that can you know do some understanding around some of these intersections so this is a related question to the previous one but I'd love for you to talk a bit about immigration going back to the level of the nation state you know our responses are not just manifesting in militaristic or policing ways but also with the levers of legislation and it seems that a current fight around immigration is sending the state for having a deal with climate refugees in the future and in fact how we are we are yet this has been a discussion that has not really been unlocked within the climate movement and so I'm interested in that does song talk much about immigration and how it works not just with this climate but we do quite a bit of our work it's around what we call so queer immigration which is definitely associated with immigration and really around the question of even orders into the LGBT community as a question of like what are we actually doing what is our relationship to nation state and what are the solutions that we're actually bringing to the table again with the sort of idea that everything often times like everything is related to our survival so what are we willing to actually put in place to actually better understand it in a way that you're also talking about and also like what is even like a what do we even think like has a chance at winning sort of how we're moving out of like symbolic things of saying like yes I'm going to put a sticker I love the earth on the back of my car and then that's going to politicize other people to change all their habits like not really let's actually talk about sort of the scale of solution to meet the scale of the problem and so for us like we definitely like talk about immigration both because the South East as you all know the rest of the country but in a very particular way a huge growth around immigration in the social and political context has just like mobilized so much of the white sentiments from the civil rights movement that was very focused on the undermining and the destruction of the black women has now sort of brought its focus to also including immigrant people particularly immigrant people of color and so there's like a way that like you just can't do racial justice you can't do racial justice work in the South so the anti-black racism and actually like the possibility of and we think about it in terms of like unity fights like part of our role in the South Basis to continue to support unity fights that actually are about what is in the messages of all of our communities and then actually acknowledge that there need to do need to be autonomous spaces where black folks are getting to create a craft of blackness strategies immigrant people are getting to sort of think about hope and strategize about like what is it actually like really a non-citizenship that I was sort of talking about earlier and I agree that most of the people that come here it's like this idea that you want to come here for what because you walk this way or like the American way of life or being like thoroughly like thrown to the wind for your survival and I just think it's so fascinating like the modern anti-immigrant movement doesn't ask itself the question of what are you going to do when you're starving I don't think you're going to stay where you're at I don't believe that when people are starving they don't have a way to make a living and then we see that so much with the sort of question of like why in some ways people have such a longing for why we have such scarcity or sense of scarcity and I think this plays a sort of anti-immigrant into the motivations of the anti-immigrant right sort of conservative movement that this lack of a sense of place instead of this idea of the difference almost between place and placement versus where you belong and I think that there is this interesting way in which like what I want to say to people oftentimes is we're not here to take anything away from anybody and let's be real but California and Texas like baby you're in Mexico land so this whole invasion of Mexico into the US is fascinating to them because in some ways it is sort of tipping that historical thing around this sort of fear that you were talking about the fear of the slave upright the fear of like you know like the Indian people and that to me is like part of what is so strategic around them some valid thing like they know they're like their sort of things on fire and that's one of the things that I think that there is this like underlying that is literally just also about poverty and poverty and about abject also just like their life I lived in East Tennessee for several years when I was working at the finance research and education center it was very hard to tell the difference between the global south and Appalachia which is majority white so it's also very very poor very under-resourced like I had young people that came through my youth organizing program who were white, Appalachian like 5th, 6th, 7th generation like they lived in the valleys and the collars and the mountains and like literally like 10 generations trying to find out poverty and still have that ability you know so I just also think like in terms of like even how the imminent rights like what becomes possible in this country when you're actually like no no we're all getting like like there's a way that we all have the boot on our neck like what is that boot and like what are we wanting to do to kind of like to actually like to fight them like the question to me about immigration like that's like such a like a like like a question because they're like well you just got here like you just got here and I'm still like struggling like I'm still starting and my little brother just killed himself because he couldn't find it I mean like all the stories like what's also happening in Appalachia and like so many other parts of the south that are not just happening to communities of color like it's so painful and it's such a in some ways it's such a sort of the consequence of like we're using typical media that we're all affected by the same things you know it's like sort of constant political fight we're voting against our own best life interest because we're so unwilling for others to have something that we don't feel like we have ourselves yet you know and it's just like this question of like we do some of us like really are I think like building different some of us I think are fighting for two very different realities and that's I think like the political struggle sometimes around immigration to me that it actually is about like no there's a historical tipping that's happening right now around this become a majority of people in the color country and that's what the panic is really about it's about a political majority that really will tip things in a different way what do you have to say but I'm going to layer on an additional question it's kind of a I need question but it's like I've asked about community policing where you should profile black lives matter it's now about immigration and Naomi Klein in her book this changes everything sort of suggested that climate change changes everything because it's no longer about single issue politics right in order to resolve this massive issue we have to enterivate and dismantle capitalism and so you've said you know we need a theory you can't play this being a whack-a-mole in single issue politics yet if we're to directly address immigration we're going to trade the cultural wars which misses systems right and um so I'm just wondering you know we're not talking about climate when we talk about immigration should we we're not talking about climate when we talk about what does matters should we is it in fact a thing that allows us to straighten it here great question so this is where I disagree with Naomi Klein's that I don't think climate is the catastrophe because I think that's an anthropocentric approach to issues we have to deal with if we are taking a human-centered approach poverty is the greatest catastrophe of our time you know people are dying and watching children die in front of their eyes they're not waiting for the flag to come to drown them you know millions of people are suffering now in India half the population is 700 million Indians living in deprivation that's a catastrophe now so I don't like to play the game of what is the more important I think these are there is a problem we're facing which has got many faces and you know your thing is correct okay now the question you asked about immigration there's an interesting issue I agree with you you have to debate the right sense the terms of the debate in this country I'm glad the liberals have an answer there's no left answer the liberal answer is correct the answer which is that no immigrants come and they benefit they work hard they consume etc they're forming a path to citizenship that's the liberal horizon let's to get to a left horizon that's what you want it's interesting they created your opinion of basically Anglo-Saxon countries first and they said no free movement of currency no free movement of business because there are trade barriers but free movement of population so your friends will come to England that's cool because basically they're all the same people the problem of free movement became when they included Eastern Europe suddenly in England they said we want a free movement of people the Cameron government is pressured by UKIP, the United Kingdom in the part of this party on the planet too many Polish people so many racists running around here they can have jobs so there's a great video you can watch of these Polish rappers Polish red rappers in red suits they hear you know where you get a job you grab your car in these fluorescent tracks it's a really funny critique of racism in the United States when NAFTA happened it was like the EU it was the opposite of the EU it was trade barriers disappeared currency barriers sort of disappeared but free movement not allowed because of the Mexico problem if there was no Mexico the United States and Canada may have said ok and as it is if you've driven across this border unless you look like a terrorist you just drive through I love driving through it I have a friend who always does not this border because they're looking for us they're not looking for illegal immigrants they're looking for terrorists so be careful so we have opposite history of the EU and left position in America is open borders there is no other position there is no path to service initiative and you know during the health care debate even we sat back and said ok we just care and whatever no universal health care not in a single way by the way thanks for fucking rich and give me all health care I don't want to pay into the bill let the rich pay for my health care ok that's the way it should be so you know we surrendered the position to the liberals so on climate and climate refugees it's a very similar issue you know the ideal of a refugee was mentioned in 1950 that was a totally anti-communist convention it suggested that people from the unfree world if they come to the free world they should be welcomed and given residence that was the language of the 1951 definition of refugee a refugee is somebody who comes from the unfree world to the free world so they're welcome well that's ending this treaty needs to be renegotiated there needs to be a new refugee treaty there need to be trade policy refugees you know I don't like them economic refugees they're not economic refugees they're refugees of international trade policies they don't want to come to your and work as a janitor or whatever they want to farm in Mali but trade policies is made impossible US cotton subsidies is made impossible your subsidies are killing us so they're trade refugees they're climate refugees there are refugees from corrosive social policies people say I don't want to I'm a homosexual I don't want to live in that country they should have free movement to go anywhere I don't mean they need to come to the west which is no paradise for homosexuals people transgenders they may want to go somewhere else they may want to go I don't know where maybe now Cuba is the daughter of a cow cashier God knows the point is that bring movement of people you cannot allow a society free movement of capital at least in this North America union without free movement of people so one good piece of writing that Milton Friedman did was that they say you hold on house fire is brilliant freedom to argue that home buying is antithetical to freedom home buying more ownership you should rent if you lose a job you'll find another place if you bought a house let's say you live in Songlin, New York and there's a big chemical factor and you're a working class person and you buy a house the factory closes down the home value is all designed below the mortgage you can't sell your house you're trapped you're from there you're stuck so we should rethink the idea of home but that's antithetical to American aspiration because the only way to have retirement is buying a home and building equity and then selling it and retiring so you know there are huge issues in the refugee issue the refugee today discussion but in the United States there is no left position unless you carve out a discreet position you'll always be standing next to the liberal defending them see, why does a right win so often? is that you have the moderate right then you have the hard right the hard right defines the issues the moderate right translates it to the public in the other side of the equation the liberals set the agenda and then the left says we have no choice but to support them so where should we look for solutions? are there political, social movement movements or social movements here in the U.S. or are there scenes that climate activists should come to? I think that there's some really some really great things that are happening internationally that I think we can all learn from like we were talking about earlier about the landless peoples movement both in Brazil and in other parts of the world where people, you know actually have also been displaced in their own countries because of environmental degradation and also just like social and political problems that have continued to sort of place poor people and indigenous people as a sort of cross-section all the other sort of economic devastation, etc that to me I can just crack open this question too of like what is the role of the landless peoples movement in Brazil and it's so powerful to see all of these people put to this question of like what does state accountability look like when it's so much of your citizenship you know or so your citizenship right is connected to whether or not you're owning life right and the fact that people who are not in the class are seen as like you know not just disposable but it's like in the U.S. it's like what most of us would say like homeless people that it's like a huge sort of like social stigma place on people that can't afford to live themselves with the assumption that the rest of us are not willing to do anything to sort of collectivize our survival so I think that there is just like seeing some of the stuff that's happening I think just like even for myself like you can do such a test then around like what else is possible and seeing so many people actually being like it's not just because we have a share of a billion identity it's because there literally is an ancestral question of like what's going to like how we're going to address like all of our ancestors have made all of the sacrifices roles to be here like what are we going to do with that sort of set of problems in our nation that's been really good I would say that like to me it's also just like such a I don't know it's been so powerful also to see that like it actually has been like the farmers all around the world have been the ones bringing the alarm around global capital and some of the strange policies but like the people that actually are deeply most deeply connected on like a direct level to like what's actually to that note like you can only so what you see it's always something there for me like around people being like these straight policies are so complicated we can't even explain them in a political indication like session unless it's like three hours long and I'm like really because people all around the world are getting buck about the fact that somebody else that they have like somebody from another land from another you know like international global trade companies are trying to tell you how you should feed your children because for them for love is starting there it started with what's on where do I get to see come next year you know and I think that like there is like this interesting like not just interesting but it's like this fascinating like just changed around it to that to me like it's historical and it's been built and I think that there's a way that technology and sort of you know the social sort of you know the way that like social media has really changed like the application of what's happening that you see for example from the from the Tapa Pista movement in Mexico the like the visibility of what the Tapa Pistas were trying to do they knew that they needed more political cover to actually take on Mexico like the Mexican government sort of you know in a more sort of in a way that like made the like they were not no longer willing to comply with sort of the Mexican agenda for indigenous people in Oaxaca and they knew like they needed political cover to do that and they decided to go sort of wide but to me is correct right and that like and just like beginning to not just sort of like learning from the act there are sort of ideology annoying that like for them like it actually is also about this this question of whether or not like some of the stuff is going to happen inside of non-Papas whether it's going to be determined type of decisions literally they actually have to oftentimes like be a different level of social and political struggle to carve out autonomy for communities and sometimes like that's where it has to start to like elbow out some room to be like no actually we're going to pull down this hill so you come talk with us if you want to you know and that I think in Mexico it just crack open a different question in Mexico when people were like hold up what are we really willing to do in order to have this one flat land you know and like my family you know even my folks were like hold up like people are taking to the streets and it's like armed against the Mexican government because it actually is also about this civilizing like the legacy of the Mexican Revolution which is like a land reform movement that was very much sort of put it also like this idea of like will this will we enter into another like five generation cycle of being on armies you know like and are we willing to do that and I think that there's just like a way that there is like a different it feels like a different political moment like around this question because of some ways of life I don't know if it's like the the visibility of information or like the internet or like the ways of like a lot of armed women just like having a different sort of tipping point that to me just like has yeah like there is so much to learn from you know I can give you a series of movements that are interesting and good but let's send that aside you know basically every country gets its own fascism and it has to struggle in its own way and I think you know too often people in the United States look somewhere else and say you know it's China now Cuba savers Java has savers from Bush in wave America they were hate me there's this feeling that we get but every country has to do its own thing and you know Marx has a great line in capital great says the white laborer will not be liberated unless the worker in the black scheme is emancipated that's a really interesting insight from 1867 you know the reconstruction is on you know what the boys will later call the great general strike is going to take place in America incredible period I mean the country has a serious problem in the question of lack of dignity and humanity provided to people living in slavery and their descendants whether descendants of those who are enslaved or they look like that doesn't matter there's a deep problem of humiliation of populations you know I'm one of those I mean if there are dignity fights that are blocking solidarity the dignity fights have to be taken up the most important issue now is state repression against mainly poor people of color that's the main issue if you want to unblock liberation, banality in America that's where we go through it's not just the focus these are uprisings every city has its struggle every city has its organization but somehow those are seen as black organizations or Puerto Rican organizations or poor people's organizations but those are the doorways to emancipation that is where we have to go through until there's a series of building power in those communities concurrently there has to be work done and this is also happening among people who don't feel the other end of a police officer's gun but in other words to liberate people from their own anxieties this is the road in America we can't deal with climate we cannot deal with issues jobless I'm not a big champion of the minimum wage fight I don't think it's actually a progressive because it leaves a big capital off the road it fits low wage workers against small businesses and big capital sits back and waits for the small business to close down and then shows up with a model because your mom and pop store couldn't take the age the structure is wrong we need more social wages more goods and services for free anyway that means the doorways to emancipation is there in America the struggle in Brazil is different the struggle in India is different we cannot replicate it the problems here are separate the issue is that it's exciting to see things like Sweden get excited but not in the same environment you meet a 60th generation graduate they'll say why are people not so happy then it doesn't power speaking you say that to people why your generation is useless now I feel like shit thanks for that because in your generation you were all so progressive that you ended up reducing what did you give us as an inheritance you gave us a democratic party which is useless you had such a great era in the same way people look up board and say wow they're doing great work they're real persons I think that's totally disempowering everybody every country has its own problems look for your own doors and I think this current upsurge is very very positive the issue is really institutionalized we destroy it I mean I agree you had said mentioned about anarchism when movements like social democracy Marxism except that we destroy it there's an enormous opening for anarchism and anarchism isn't the stereotype I don't care about anything break building it's also a serious philosophy but the conversation between anarchism and Marxism is more important to my mind than one or the other in this country that conversation is a deep one they can learn from each other they must learn from each other but you need to institutionalize your teams so in Ferguson a digital organization Black Lives Matter is not just a slogan it's a cry for help it's a cry for justice and it's an organization so you've got to build things and I think they always say when there's a disaster the people in part take advantage of it we don't take advantage of disaster because the disaster doesn't happen it's ongoing and we're doing nothing about it so how can we think about what you think scale with community based solutions or mobilizing outskins around the global this is part of the what Maxis means so much about this question around voters that ultimately like nation states are accountable and in so many ways like Tether and their political power on corporate interests which are international corporate interests in a way that like has really in some ways like ours because it's a little power in a really different way and so I think about all the ways sometimes like this conversation even around developing countries sometimes there are actually deals for both of them to be polluteers and so it's not even like one country being interested is that there's corporate deals that have been made by their nation states to the detriment of their people and it's often times so I think that like there is this question of like what are we actually where is the like the sort of like the precious point around I think the governments and this idea of like the common good because we have like this idea of taxation and also deregulation and even the anti taxation movement was very much around yet like now we're seeing a manifesto like the libertarian agenda but no, I am not willing to pay taxes so that you can have a life in your street we really are fighting for a very different version of like what it means to share a country it's often times like it really to me like that in some ways like it has to start from that place of being like for communities like what is the purpose of that even like geographic proximity of countries like everybody wants to benefit from a big beautiful city like New York but nobody wants to pay taxes to make sure that the infrastructure survives like what's that about too like there is a way that that we have to be willing to build our own autonomous infrastructure at the same time that we're trying to dismantle some other problematic stuff and that to me feels like that's where I do look internationally because we in the U.S. like the left has become such a dessert again for the state like we know, like not properly like have become dessert again for what the state actually should be like and we're filling up like the whole gas and services for what the state should be providing and so I think like there is a way I mean who clarified this for me was like the anti-violence movement that women should have never had to be the ones you know battered women should never have been the ones to start anti-violence programs and agencies right like it should have been the federal government should have been every single state and it wasn't that way like we had to be women who were coming out of battered relationships who were like hold up clearly nobody felt supported to do anything about it and then what happened was the like the entire then we actually then the state was like well okay we'll go that role we'll be over here we'll throw some money here we'll throw some money there but y'all fix the problem and that to me is just a total setup that we're in right now is that the left is actually advocating for the policies that we need and we're so busy filling the like baby needs like daily survival needs of our people that we can't do like we're we're not building a scale of our solutions and so to me like that has to be like there is like this question of like math and common well has to come into play actually in a different way but to me like it's like but it's like no literally everything that our people have to give our life but our imagination like all the work and labor that we put into making all of this company successful and at the end of the day like what is the accountability there is and I think that they're and I think that we are a generation of like I feel out of mind here for like no I refuse to go into corporate work you know and there's like and that's not to say that like because people don't want to live they have to follow one nice path it's because they have to be seen up in terms of like our family like we have this trajectory of like making every sacrifice that would be the perfect employee that would be the perfect corporate player so that my children can go to school and graduate and then what's happening my peers are coming out of school and college with like fifty, sixty, hundred, fifty thousand dollars debt and like and being like really this is what our parents like sacrifice was worth like is this what is that really what we thought this was going to take this sort of classic essential question and it's just it feels like a bit and it's a little bit of a riddle it's a little bit of a riddle to me in terms of like if we're going to continue to pay taxes like what do we actually really want out of that and what are we going to fight for to make that happen back to me why is why the Black Lives Matter movement feels really important because it's it's a different kind of state accountability but it is opening as taking the door open in a lot of ways for that broader federal accountability for what the process role of government is we're saying that there is a lack of role of government and in that I'm going to be one of the next solutions like you know like are we creating our own you know I mean and I think that that's part of why the left is important because there is there is an entry point in this government and like can we govern ourselves and I think that there's this inherent there's this inherent and I'll speak for myself too that like there is this inherent sort of also internalized racism that we have like believed for so long and so that's the process so is that you know but a related question then is you said we need to be building autonomous infrastructure as we're plugging these holes like sometimes plugging the holes is the pressure release though but the guy's also like yeah but yeah we have to do that can we also take over existing infrastructures like is that this idea of occupied institution or is that is that possible is it strategic embedding or sort of commonizing existing infrastructure so that is unbinding for the people sure I mean you know the biggest community organization in the United States are the trade unions you know we forget these are community organizations they're local X, Y, Z I think in my mind so I'm not bringing my own rule and look at the Bolivian story in Bolivia just as in the United States there was an understanding that trade unions which were quite powerful at a time when Bolivia had a national democratic economy democratic importance national economy wasificiated and destroyed because of globalization because firms desipulated and broke up trade unions and that's power just as in the United States so we had these highly you know trade unions with really very difficult tasks to organizing at the workplace so in Kochabamba in Bolivia there was a problem because debt there came in and got the contract privatized contract to deliver the water and they tripled or something the price of water delivery the trade union one of its more interesting leaders Oscar Olivares who was a trade unionist created a movement to fight against privatization what they learned in that experience is that the working class is both in factories and at home in the 19th century it was easy to organize the working class in the factories in the 21st century because of this new forms of production it's harder to organize them in the factory organize them at home but these are still class organizations these are organizations of workers who are working in informal sector unorganizable sector because they are such day laborers etc so they organized people in the neighborhood they did some organizing and they built such a powerful organization they linked with the coca workers union led by Emo Morales and they took power in the state and then they scape some of the institutions they captured some and then Morales would come to the UN and say Pachamama is the most important etc. the climate agenda changes how does that happen? because they won power in the city they took power in the United States I think the trade union was there 15 years ago when it was harder to organize in the workplace they decided to put their efforts into elections so Andy Stewart and others went in big into let's elect good democrats instead of pivoting to where people live and organizing the class in neighborhoods as day laborers as I can't play I have a grocery store at my neighborhood why did people go and burn down the CVS in Baltimore because there are innumerable studies that show that in working class communities in America prices are high so you burn down the damn shop you don't burn down the CVS also the mayor said we struggled so hard to bring the CVS you burn it down you will not be you burn it down you are ungrateful they it cost more for toothpaste in this CVS than in the white part of town so I burnt it down why want the unions organizing there why didn't they go and organize collectives of people who are starving why didn't they create like the communists did in America in the 30s people who can't find work organize them into a union that's how they succeeded they are hand in Venezuela the unions went and organized in the slums because unionists have incredible skills and commitment really best organizes the fruit of a country enters trade unions you know many countries are really most committed people because it's thankless work knocking on millions millions of dollars dangerous work these are really important people but they have been misused by trade union leadership in America by putting them at the service of the democratic party they should have been put at the service of the working class people and that's an experience we can learn from Bolivia I agree I really agree and I think the left was really tripped up by this question of that proximity to power it's not power and I think there is a way to like the labor movement like I'm into them and the FDIO building in DC which is right across the street from the White House and that's where they wanted to be they wanted to be right and served to the White House so you can't test your neighbor off that bad and that's just real fun and that's someone who like does remember right organizing and like has a working coalition with labor unions and trade unions that is absolute especially about how far they're willing to battle because of where they took political power and the credibility comes from that to me it just opens up the question of there has to be politically Islamic spaces they're willing to do what is necessary and so to me like there is there is a way of like the economic the source of our own production and owning of our own labor is so central to that because that is in some ways that's my next meal will I be able to feed my children which is why even in North Carolina in other southern states as well there's beginning to be all of this other local regulations around whether or not you can grow food in your backyard whether or not you can eat the chickens in your backyard and some people are like I don't want to hear chickens every morning that's real and at the end of the day like people who want to be able to grow their own food like what is the harm in that you have to go to the grocery store if you don't have that you know what I think that like there is there's like this concept of social construct around the fact that we are only consumers and that to me is a generational thing but like my generation like I'll be the first one to be like do I know how to grow something like I don't know you know and like that's the kind of like real I don't know how to do rent right I know how to do also I think that I'm like I don't think I'm beautiful and I don't have that it's not like eating my children's bread you know in court and it just means that we go to go off the grid to have solar panels I'm gonna close out with a final question to you what do you really fear about in regards to climate change do you feel like you know for sure and what do you think is cool just why did the I didn't think I didn't think about most of particularly these kind of things it's hard to ask that no no because I love human beings that's there and I'll be dead in some years so you know I understand that our struggle to live together is to enjoy the time we have in each other and to produce a world that's better that's why we live I love people I love hanging out with people that's where I get hopeful some eschatological apocalyptic vision I don't live like that I live every day of my life I never ever wanted a career I wanted to live a life where I could enjoy what I'm doing every day not what happens in 20 years if you don't enjoy your life every day you're screwed you'll be sick of this path you're chasing so hope comes in the little and then in the future because I believe that I've always felt that there is a capacity of human beings to fight against the Yokel and justice he's shown us we've evolved greatly we've overthrown all kinds of tyrannies you know why can't we overthrow this tyranny that comes to us anonymously the tyranny of capital is different from the tyranny of a king we're fueling God we'll run to the fuel of manor and put a pipe through their gut the bank and who are you going to put the pipe through whereas there's no, it's anonymous it's abstract if we can overthrow gold, we can overthrow this I'm confident in that I never lost hope after 1991 in fact my results strengthened keep going comrades we'll reach there someday let's enjoy each other when the climate thing happened I was distressed by how it bound our people it was like a wrecking plot to make people depressed I have my own dear department beloved friend Alexander Kovar and I used to discuss the issue of climate change because Alexander didn't believe he believed it's a right-wing plot anyway I sympathize with him it's an extent what? look it is a right-wing plot I sympathize with where it was coming from firstly I was in awe of him and you know, he's English-making Indians are in awe of him I don't know I don't know why but he was just a brilliant amazing guy he knew how to put me in my place you're wrong so there is a feeling that the climate discussion should not make people depressed because if you're depressed you've lost hope in your memory you know the animals would be quite happy if they get wiped out that's why I don't take and to almost see the whole thing I don't buy any of it I don't have a fear I don't have this adamanty thing that we have to continue the human race forever so the climate thing shouldn't bump people out it should strengthen the resolve to enjoy each other I hate meetings of progressives where everybody is depressed you know you're not doing good life nobody comes to our meeting you're not doing good life you're all there I'm just happy with you Saturday night you are doing good 7th up the absence not the absence why aren't there 50 more people who cares about them we are here the only 5 people came with skill are fun you and me we're all busy But then I remind myself to survive again here, and then I get myself together. What I will say is that I think that there's actually a lot that makes me really capable, and there is a way that to me I'm like, I don't actually think it's going to be the... I don't feel like the environmental assessment is going to be the end of this earth. I think it is a question of actually humanity, and whether or not we're going to be the ones to... Actually, are we going to be the species that rinsed it off to a halt? Or will the earth evolve beyond us? What do you think? And I think there's a way that my mom has this like, hello old school Mexican prayer that she doesn't like people that are getting on her nerves, where she's just like, oh, don't even pray about that. She's just like, you know what, Lord, illuminate them or eliminate them. I think Catholicism and the like, spreading down. But some of it is, you know, just from her sphere of influence. You know, like something like, I think that there's like this huge question right now. It is a spiritual question. It's a spiritual question and what happens, like the consequences of not responding to a spiritual question around our shared survival, what to mean actually is about that. I'm like, are we going to be illuminated towards a different way of life? Or like, is this going to be the rap for a lot of people that quite frankly will have a missing? And to me, I'm just like, what's the, what's, what pains me though is this, and that to me is why I feel like we have to have multiple strategies that are making strategic interventions is because a lot of our people are in a huge, a lot of our people, and I'll speak for the work that I do, a lot of our people, like there is a different, there is definitely a crisis. And to me, the crisis is oftentimes like around poverty, and it is around isolation in a way that this is just magnified in a really different way. And so to me, like in some ways, like it's also like a question that crises up morale as much as it is an environmental crisis, you know, and that to me is about capitalism. That is about the lack of imagination that we have for our shared survival, so I will think that our whole goal on this earth is to get a dollar bill. That it's not our goal on this earth. Our goal on this earth is to actually like be like giving vessels. And to me, I'm like, how we will be on that one dollar bill is the real question. Because that to me will actually crack a whole other set of like options open to us that we don't even think are options right now. Because we're so in tethered for our jobs, you know, or we're so tethered to like what we have to do to hustle to survive. That I think when you're outside of that mind-frame life, there's just a total of different set of cases that they have to be made. That in some ways, like it will be fascinating, the rest of the world outpaces the U.S. around this question, you know, and outpaces our own environmental justice movement in a way that to me will actually, and sometimes be also to the benefit of the U.S. to actually see the rest of the world, like this map, just poised to respond to this question, whether there's actually a different path to the front of all this, you know, and again, like to me, this question of like, do we belong on this earth? Absolutely, I think we belong on this earth. You know, and I actually think I just don't know that. It's a question of why generation? And then do what's necessary to do anything about it. Thank you. Celebrate one another if everyone would like to go downstairs for drinks. So, questions? During the conversation that we had around militarism, often I believe militarism is not a response to ISIS, but a response to, I guess, the creation of risk. I guess, I'm thinking more specifically about what's happening right now in the Asia Pacific region, and the creation of the civil society, and what's happening in the country, I think it's a lot to think about. I think it's important to say that what's happening in the U.S. and our military to help us, is that what's happening in the U.S. And this is the fact that it's happening in the U.S. But I'm wondering where in our period, at the rest of the country, I often like to say that. You know, the architecture of Gansu was there in both of our, and in the questions as well, meaning, what is imperialism? Imperialism is an interesting idea, which is disappeared from all the categories. We don't talk about it much, and it's a very good thing that you've raised here in Australia. We talk about inequality, other than the South Dome, these are euphemisms. I read a book recently called, Imperialism's Fast and Present, which will come out later in the same day as the argument. You know, you have to engage with the concept of imperialism. Why are people like me, strong, using it a lot? Because I'm also afraid of sounding like caricatures. Because people look at you and say, I don't believe you. So we do give you criticism. You're right to say that it's an important main thing. So what is imperialism? Imperialism is the use of extra-economic force to derive economic benefit. So trade policy is an imperialist policy. Intellectual property rights, that's an imperialist policy. Currency manipulation is an imperialist policy. And then what do you do? Chinese are manipulating their currency. But you do it as well. What is a federal reserve? What is monetary policy? It's not manipulation of the currency. And I thought the right side, where against fiscal policy, budgetary policy, we are only for monetary policy. Then they're attacking the Chinese for filling in their currency. But monetary policy is filling in their currency in a different way. So these are forces of imperialism. You're able to mobilize world opinion against China, saying if you're filling in your currency, stop doing it. And to pressure you, we're going to encircle you. We're going to put a base in Australia. We're going to come back to the Philippines to Subic Bay. Americans left Subic Bay in 1992, returned 10 years later. We're going to Hillary Clinton and she exercised US State Department institutions to overthrow the government in Japan. This was very badly reported to the United States. The liberal government came to power in Japan when Hillary Clinton was in the Secretary of State with the promise of closing down the US base in Okinawa. When the government came to power with one mandate, it attempted to push this route the government was overthrowing. It was destabilized. It happened now, not in Guatemala 1954, not in Iran 1953. It happened now. And the Japanese don't have the political might. And Japan is an advanced industrial country, the third biggest economy in the world. And they still have to bend to the needs of a base in Okinawa. So what is imperialism? It's utilizing extra-economic force for economic gain, trade policy, military policy. These are the policy options of imperialism. It's a lively world situation. When Obama became the president, I wrote the treatment of a one-act play which was going to be like this. It was really a bang at a 30-degree angle. And under the covers of the president and the First Lady, you'll have seatbelts when they don't slide. Some kind of device. Maybe a football is standing up. And it's a very quick play because they're saying, what the fuck? What are we doing here? Our friends are Russian, Hollywood, Netflix, IE, and New York. What the hell are we doing here? And Michelle Obama is saying, I told you. I told you it was a mistake. You should never do this. Because now you have a head of imperialism. These are words you know. Because when you were an undergrad, you wore a little jacket. You discussed radical feminism. You talked about friends for a long time. And you used to smoke cigarettes and throw them under the carpet in your dormant oxygen tank and stuff them out into the carpet. And now you're the asshole number one on the planet. That's imperialism. I think it's the time I'm going to go straight to the next question. Yeah. When Donald Trump said, this isn't like that. Well, I need to wait. The second point is that a lot of these big NGOs have managed the environment through major conservancy, conservation, international, because we're all one on the board. You've guys been a obstacle in the street. So many have done, but they're more harm than good. And some of them are creating environment, displacing indigenous communities, and the global agenda. So, why are more people calling them out for the green watching? But not only for that, but for the detrimental things that they're doing, because they're getting way with saying conservation is national. We need some people to do that. You know, like, people say they're cool when they're working with these green groups to do green watching. But now that's only green watching. Do you think they're going to fight it? Why don't we call down the green and the green? I mean, it's such a tactical choice. It's such a strategic tactical choice to merge corporate interests with, and, you know, inside of some of the environmental, sort of like, I feel like the environmental, like, environmentalist sector, almost, to say that actually, you know, and that's why we see all these commercials now, that GE is some of the, like, the world leader for innovative, whatever, whatever strategy. I'll send you comments now. Really, they are. And so is Exxon. And so is Seabed. You know, and I just, and I think that, like, we just have to see it for what it is. And I do think that there is more and more pushback. I think that what, I think ultimately is the same thing, right, around, like, capital, like, capitalism, and sort of economic interests that continues to sort of put a little bit of this, like, facade of the fact that, like, this, yeah, this, like, major polluters can do heart reduction. You know, and that's what it is. And even at that point, all it can, it is. And I think that, like, they have so much money in the political interest that I think that they are the ones that, like, are seen as the only ones who also can provide a scale of solutions. So it's hard in some ways to, like, kick them down, but we don't have a better alternative, right? So to me, that's the question that I'm, like, how do we, like, kick them down at the same time as we're building, actually, like, politically, politically autonomous solutions, because that to me is so much of what's happening. Like, I see it all the time. And in New Orleans, you know, like, when the D.P. still happens. D.P. is, like, being knocked out by the state of Louisiana. That's, like, you know, like, one of the, like, that they're doing a great cleanup and that they're contributing to all of this funds to support, you know, pictures that have been out of work because of the disaster. And we just know that, like, that's not actually true. Like, they're plugging, it's a PR move. And it's a, it's a, to me, like, rightly, like, we know that it's a PR move. We know that it's actually, like, a tactical sort of last over. And I think that, like, until we're willing to actually, like, build some of that stuff without the corporate backing. And that's the question to me that I'm like, there was a choice to be made and there's, like, some political paths to have that made. And so to me, it's also, like, about, like, how power is leveraging each other for the benefit of that. Because a lot of them are, like, they are going into, like, it's money that's going into the elections. Providing political coverage for these companies they have to do the same thing. And so I think it just, it's all kind of come back, comes that whole circle. My love series, it's Restoring Our Plans. Speaking on that panel will be Pablo Salon Romero, Michael Leon Guerrero, Chantel Villajera, that will be moderated by the Center for All. So please come back on my day-to-day chat. If you're not in town, we will be live streaming it on powerown.tv. You can find that information on our website. And in a couple days tonight's dialogue will also be up on our websites. You can share it, send to people who are here. Yeah, it would be great to see you again, and it would be great to celebrate each other downstairs. Please join me in thanking everyone. Love you all.