 It's 9 a.m. Where we are and it's the fourth day of our conference and some of us on this stage are going to be a little tired And we'll have Bill McKibbin with us from the East Coast Where it's noon and he's going to be all fresh and able to make us look really bad But I want to first invite the rest of the panel on to the stage with me first we have Robert Gomez who is an artist and activist and working in Areas that you will hear about in a moment and then Donna Morton From Prince the prince of home Prince of Principium Principium, I knew I was going to get that wrong and primal Shaw who's the president of Kiva and my copy editor copy editor daughter is sitting in the stage and I am embarrassed that We had something happen that I wasn't really thrilled about and that was the name of this title is what is literally worth dying for And I don't think we're Talking about literally dying, but maybe in some ways we are And I think what we're going to explore that because what does it mean? And what does it look like when we make choices that we are not? That are not in line with the culture around us And what do we have to give up and what parts of ourselves might be dying? So we're gonna we're gonna work with that dying phrase anyway, so the panel is gonna go like this builds with us via Skype and We're not always a hundred percent certain that Skype is gonna work so we're gonna start with Bill and make sure we get to hear from him and the the quest some of the questions we're gonna be talking about is you know when When did you know your life was gonna be different that it wasn't you weren't gonna grow up to be the banker that your father wanted you to be or the Homemaker that your mother wanted you to be or whatever culture was telling you and then you know How is that playing itself out in your life today? And so we're gonna start with Bill and ask him to take about 10 minutes to talk to us about About some of those things for those of you don't know Bill McKibben's work And I can't imagine that there's anyone in the room that doesn't he is the founder of 350.org and he is the the Chief climate activist I think in the world and he's been arrested multiple times and has been getting all of his friends to be arrested with him fighting For the things he believes in so Bill welcome, and we're so glad we see him right down there So that's why you'll watch it see us all looking that way We're glad to have you with us. Welcome to Socap Very good with y'all. I wish I was there in person But it's very nice to be joining you via low-carbon Skype anyway Look, I I'm glad to hear that we're not talking about literally dying Because I you know I Think the work that most of us do certainly the work we do at 350 is just the opposite our hope is to Stop people from dying The estimate at the moment is that about 200,000 people a year die from the effects of climate change The most recent study Indicated that by 2030 there'd be about a hundred million deaths due to the effects of fossil fuel on this planet That's why we fight hard against the fossil fuel industry It's why we're so happy to see this quickly spreading divestment movement around the country and around the world It's why we do what we do Let me talk a little bit. Maybe a way to talk about it a little bit was is just to reflect a little bit on The experience of writing a letter asking people to come to Washington to get arrested Which I you know I wrote that letter about two years ago a little more and I'd never written a letter like it And it was a little hard to do as you can imagine I Wrote it and then a bunch of my friends and colleagues Sort of edited it and signed on people like Naomi Klein or Wendell Berry or Danny Glover Leaders all across the continent and we were asking people to come because it was the first the beginning of this fight against this Keystone XL pipeline down out of the tar sands of Canada Though it's since become one of the biggest the iconic environmental fight of our time two years ago No one had ever heard of it. So we figured that civil disobedience would be important for the role that it often plays to draw attention to something and to underline the kind of moral seriousness of it and and That's why we ask people to come and be arrested but asking people to be arrested is hard And I not only wrote the letter, but I was there every morning for those two weeks except for the three days I was in jail myself Talking to people before they went off to get arrested giving a little talk and just saying what you're gonna about to do is brave because You know, we're all raised to When the police tell us to do something to do it That's what feels Right for you know, just sort of from middle-class Americans Whose experiences with the police have mostly been good so on and so forth. It's Psychologically hard to to not do what you're told to do And it was very moving to see people Acting Bravely in that way. I mean it wasn't as if they were going off to the none of us were going off to you know The front in World War two or something. We weren't gonna die on the other hand You know, I mean spending three days in jail in central Selblac in DC as about as much fun as it sounds like it would be, you know I had a hand it's not the end of the world the end of the world is the end of the world Which is why we do what we do Reflect on when I think back on that initial letter that we wrote that seemed important to me where one We didn't think that young people should have to be the cannon fodder for this The college kids have led the climate fight young people all over the world But you know, it's a little harder right now in our economy if you're 22 Maybe in a rest record not the best thing for your resume, you know One of the few unmixed blessings of growing older is past a certain point. What the hell are they gonna do to you? you know and So it was with pleasure that we watched people arrive there Who you know had airlines like mine? We didn't ask people how old are you when they got arrested that'd be rude But we did ask I think cleverly who was president when you were born and The two biggest cohorts came from the FDR and the Truman administrations on the last day There was a fellow arrested with the sign around his neck that said a World War two veteran handle with care That he'd been born in the Warren Harding Administration when I studied American history and I've forgotten there was a Warren Harding administration It was very good to see elders acting like elders Doing the doing the work that they should be doing and it was very moving for the young people who were doing all the organizing of all of this To watch Older people being willing to play their part The other thing we asked that was interesting was that everybody If they'd come would they please to get arrested put on a necktie or wear a dress and you can tell from looking at me That this not my normal attire. I live in Vermont. We know really You know neck ties are for funerals and that's about it But there was a point we wanted to make And the point was and I think this is an important point and one I get it I want to get across in the context of this panel. I don't think there's a darn thing radical about what we're doing I think all we're doing in our movement is asking for a world that works the way it was when we were born You know a world that works the way it's worked for the last 10,000 years I don't think anybody and you know sort of across sort of social movements is asking for very much in the way That's radical. I think people that occupy or supposedly are you know most radical movement or whatever are just you know For the most part saying we want the country to work sort of the way it was said it did in the high school civics textbooks You know not a world where a few people because they're rich get to control everything I don't think in any way that we're radicals. I think radicals work at oil companies I think that if you're willing to make a fortune and the fossil fuel industry makes more money than any Industry there's ever been if you're willing to make that fortune by altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere And if you're willing to do it after scientists have explained what the consequences will be And if you're willing to do it after as with last summer we watch the Arctic melt We've lost 80% of the sea ice in the Arctic if you're willing to do all those things and you are an incredible radical you're you may not be willing to die You're clearly willing to kill for your beliefs and your Fortune and things and and so standing up to that kind of radicalism seems to me like our Task so it doesn't none of it seems to me. It doesn't feel the work that we're about Extraordinary in in any way really what seems extraordinary is that there are people on Who aren't you know sort of involved in it there? There are still people willing to invest money in Exxon You know willing to profit from the wreckage of the climate that seems to me Extraordinary and strange and and and a little hard to understand and we're doing our best to kind of spread the information to make sure that they Understand it so that they'll hopefully stop doing it. You may think I'm just a hopelessly Normal human being and that's what it what it feels like to me And and and one of the good things and I'll just finish here It is to say that the the movement that we're building this climate movement Which has really sprung up in the last five or six years around the world is a beautifully Diverse spread out and sprawling movement without a bunch of leaders. It's not exactly leader-less It's more like it's leader-full and there are Tens of thousands of people all over the country and all over the world who sort of shown up to Provide the motivation and the impetus and the leadership It's very open source would be one way to describe it and another would be to say that you know The the movement that we're building mirrors the well mirrors the system We'd like to see our hope for the future is not a few big power plants, but 10 million solar panels on 10 million roofs all interconnected and that's how we like our politics to Our movement to be and for that reason it's very innovative interesting time and hopefully all of us can do Parts of this and none of us will have to You know go die for it. It's absurd. I mean it's absurd that we even have to go to jail for you know That you know I mean in a rational system It would be enough for scientists to say look the worst thing that ever happened in the world is in the process of happening Here's what you need to do, you know Put a price on carbon let markets work spur the development of renewables. Let's get down to it whatever I mean, you know if our system was working successfully that would be more than enough to get us going in the right direction And it's in it once in a while annoys me that I mean I don't mind having to go off to jail myself But it does piss me off sometimes to watch like Remember watching Jim Hansen our greatest climatologist climb into the paddy wagon for the third or fourth time No in the last few years. It's like, you know really this guy is a great Scientist he should be in his lab hard at work figuring out what's going on. It's pathetic that you know Our system is so dominated by wealth and power that this guy has to go to jail in order to get people to pay attention To what he's saying, so that's all I've got to say Thank you, Bill, and I really love the way he's refocused this question rather than We're up here to talk to these wonderful people who are somehow living outside of what People think should be happening. We've got some folks on this stage who are doing great stuff and they're unfortunately We don't have thousand we have 1900 people here at Socap bill. I thought you'd love to know that but but we don't have 20,000 people It's still we still got some work to do but I'd love to start with you primal about When was it in your life that you? Kind of realized you were gonna see things differently than maybe the other some other folks around you and I've heard this story before and I'm anxious for our friends to hear about well You know, I just want to pick up on what bill said around what we define as absurd And I think a really interesting question that I recently heard is what do you want to make absurd in your lifetime? So if you think about it, you know 20 years ago if you're on a flight The flight people be smoking on a flight you be in a restaurant right here in San Francisco people be smoking in the restaurant Now if that were to happen, that's absurd to us the culture is completely shifted laws have shifted so on and so forth and So in one generation something like that can go from common to uncommon or absurd and the idea of going to jail In order to make sure that our children and our grandchildren inherit a planet. That's viable That's absurd And another thing that's absurd is poverty today I just read that 16% of Americans are below the poverty line and we know that 3 billion people on the planet live on less than $2 a day My family Was lucky enough my parents were lucky enough to have an education in India that when I was a year old I was born in India. I was able to immigrate to the United States and I lived in the suburbs of Minneapolis and When I was five years old my parents took me back to India for the first time to visit my grandparents and You know, I'll never forget the love that I felt I was got sit in between Moped between my uncle and my dad honked the horn a lot It was I got to eat ice cream every day, which was uncharacteristic my mom on that trip, you know It was a wonderful trip But at five I think the thing I could not grok and I still can't wrap my head around today It's just how different it was from the neighborhood that I was raised in in New Brighton, Minnesota the village that my dad lives in or that he was born and raised in and The the town that I was raised in Was completely different and the thing that I think it was most different is access to opportunity access to that social mobility the ability to become a part of the middle class and one one Particular story on one of the first days when I was there my mom let me hold on to a one rupee coin and We were walking through the marketplace. She wanted to go shop for a few things and there's sewage stream running right through my dad's village And I dropped the coin and my mom You know immediately yanked me in the other direction because she didn't want me to pick it up because it was dirty To her and I remember looking back in a woman who was older than my mom in a ragged Sorry, she must have been a beggar in the marketplace. She had walked over picked up that one rupee coin looked up at the sky and then thank God that she had found it and tucked it away in her blouse and her sorry blouse and What my mom was willing and my mom's amazing, but she was willing to literally throw something away That same thing could answer someone else's prayers This is the disparity that we have on the planet today and that is absolutely absurd to me So I think at that that first trip back and travel can open our eyes travel back home can open our eyes that that I Think probably changed the set of decisions that I made Because I knew I wanted to do something about that feeling that I had but I didn't know what that was and you know It's been a complete privilege to have Been a part of Kiva Thank you, Primal. I May have to ask Bjorn to bring tissues up here before this is over I'm gonna the I feel like the tears are gonna be flowing Donna Morton my friend who I met a few years ago at the Unreasonable Institute when she was Working with launching first nation power first power And now is often to a new venture. Can you tell us a little bit about? How you got started on this somewhat counter-cultural road that you're on that we want to make cultural Yeah So I was thinking about the question and and I realized that you know I was made in many ways and I'll talk about that too, but there's also a way People are gonna make fun of me But in the immortal words of Lady Gaga that I was born this way I I was a little girl Who became aware that a lake that I loved was dead? and was Kind of sort of thrust into the environmental movement with some help from John Denver pop songs because I grew up in a Working-class family so a lot of my education came from television and movies And and other forms of popular culture, and I realized I was sort of collecting Information about poverty collecting information about you know, I I feel like I heard future generations as a child I mean, I didn't hear voices, but I I Felt as a child an awareness of myself as an old woman and that I've known all my life that I wanted to die at peace and that the way to do that was to Stay awake and stay aware So I kind of came out of the world like this And then I've been really fortunate to find mentors along my path You know one of the first mentors that really shaped me in some really profound ways was a guy named Joel Solomon Lots of you probably know Joel Solomon from renewal Well, you know Joel Solomon kind of picked me up as an angry street activist in my early 20s. I Like my colleague Bill McKibbin went to jail a lot in my 20s I went to jail every five weeks for two years of my life actually Wow And it was my it was my journey. It was my journey through no Using my body using everything I had to say no to the absolute atrocities I started out as an anti-nuclear activist fought against toxins fought against oil companies Fought against the capture of whales. You name it. I was arrested for it and Then you know, I started telling Joel that I was I was I was in pain because there was something else happening inside me I wanted to say yes I had this spiritual longing to be able to lean in and really say yes And you know Joel said you should come into the social venture network world You should learn about these really awesome business people financial people that are reinventing the world And maybe you'll find kind of your next path and that really happened and then you know along that path I discovered Paul Hawkin Hunter leavens who's become a really dear friend and a colleague Who you know really took me deep inside if you want to change the system I mean the economy is eating the planet whole we've allowed that to happen and we've allowed it to happen with our pensions And our credit cards and our bank accounts and our own investments We're all touching that economy that is eating the planet whole and so if we want to reshape the world We need to put our hands and our hearts and our values on the economy And so you know in this next kind of iteration of my life where I'm shifting from activist to entrepreneur to investor I'm really excited. I'm really excited about the opportunity To align people with their money and move money move it Monday Move the money a hundred percent of it I was so I was so excited by the panel yesterday on a hundred percent You know that the idea that people are taking all of their assets every single Piece of who they are financially in the world and aligning it with what they love I think that's what we need to do. I think we fundamentally need to restructure the economy and that it's not going to be governments that does that restructuring if we're all waiting for our Governments to wake up and restructure the economy to align it with social justice With ending global poverty with abating climate change with restoring the right then the absolute intrinsic right of indigenous people To exist and thrive in the world if we think governments are going to do that. We're missing it. It's us Thank you, Donna We have our new friend Robert Gomez who's new to SoCAP this year He's an artist and an activist and I'd love for you to tell the folks gathered here and who are watching us live streaming about the Some of your history and how you got to this point. Yeah, so I'm a social documentary filmmaker and photographer I think we have a similar story of having our immigrant past really Affecting the way that we are so my family is from Mexico but I was born in the United States and I grew up knowing that the world was unfair, you know I could have intense privilege in the United States Attend a nice private school and then go to Mexico and live in the very rural extreme poverty that my family was in and so Seeing that injustice I also felt a sense of privilege being able to go across borders and there I started to realize that I had an obligation to make the world better and Growing up I always felt that I was going to make the world better by either doing something very difficult to be Overcoming challenges or I was going to do it creatively I was going to create beauty in the world and so leaving high school I entered the United States Military Academy at West Point a Training to be a military officer choosing to make my stand with weapons And it was a really powerful experience because the first month that I was there two planes flew into the World Trade Center and Every soldier there had a very directly come to terms with what the value of their life was You know you realize at that moment that you only have one life to give You know that that's all you can do and so you know a lot of us went through a lot of different Difficult conversations about what it is that we're going to do and we all felt very righteous in being part of the military and being Part of something that was just and right around that time one quote that really stuck with me You know in this kind of soul-searching and questioning of what my life was worth was a quote by General Patton You know who told us to his soldiers in World War two? And he said very famously that I don't want you to die for your country. I Want you to make the other poor bastard die for his country? And there's something really powerful there, and I think this kind of flips the question of what we're talking about You know, what would you die for? Is that the kind of answer to that was that you the ultimate sacrifice doesn't have to mean Taking a bullet it doesn't have to mean dying the ultimate sacrifice can be something active You know where you are really dedicating your life is almost more of a challenge You know getting your dedicating your life to something good working hard for something positive that activism Can be more powerful than actually dying for something and so you know in that moment I started to realize that I wanted to be able to create more I didn't want to just traffic in life and death, you know, which would have been the path if I stayed there And so I left West Point and I started to enter into social documentary photography in areas of conflict And so working in places where people are very much struggling for the rights to survive in the favelas in Rio de Janeiro in Mexico with drug cartels Being able to go there and work with people that are trying to make their lives better through art And so I'd go and work with these people that are very Very powerful very engaging and be able to make work that tells that story to a broader audience to hopefully stop those bullets from flying in the future So that's that's how I got to this point Thank you As I sit here and listen to each one of you tell these stories filmmaker financier Tech genius, you know these labels kind of come to my mind and and I want to go back to primal and start with you again I cannot imagine that anyone who would have ever said this directly to you But do you ever feel this sense of you know people think you You'd be able to make so much money if you just move a little bit farther south down You know the Silicon Valley and apply what you were doing at Kiva to something that could really make a fortune for you and I'm just wondering what it is about Kiva what it is about what you're doing right now that is so compelling that That you find yourself there rather than doing what this culture is just Wants to launch us into doing Talk to me about Kiva Well, it's I mean it's it's such a privilege to have You know work aligned with your purpose That you know If you can live sustainably and work In a way that Benefits others I you know It's thinking about death as part of this panel and I I'd read actually this quote that if everything you do you do for yourself then when you die it all disappears and If everything you do you do for others then when you die it lives on and So it's almost the most selfish thing to do Wow is to actually work for the benefit of others to actually You know you can't eat money. You can't take it with you and It's just a I think being able to you know like all of us are doing create beauty and like this whole group is doing I mean just meet brothers and sisters here who are doing in their own way something that is completely led by passion We've come alive in our lives in a way that I think inspire other people and I know we feel lucky So regardless of the the small sacrifices or the minor inconveniences it is just an incredible privilege And I think that's that's something that you know, I'm reminded of When I when I go to work every day Thank you Donna it's kind of hard to ask you that question after you tell us you were arrested every five weeks from the time You were joining because you've never been tempted I've been tempted. I mean I've had some I've had some some sort of stratospheric job offers throughout my life and It sort of went like this someone would call me and say there's this job this supposedly really great job and We want to interview you and this voice inside just said. Oh, no Just it was just it's easy, which is what I was saying I maybe there's a missing hemisphere in my brain Maybe there's sort of missing compartmentalization facets of some people's brains that I don't possess But I I don't have it. I mean I never took the big fat job and then went. Oh my god I don't have any purpose. I just I'm not wired that way And so I've had this utter privilege of doing what I love and sometimes there really wasn't any money And that was really hard and and hard still like, you know, I started a Clean tech company a clean energy company that works with indigenous communities in Canada You know, I I used all my own assets to start the company and When it's been hard, it's really hard because I'm risking my kids education But that's not as hard as people who have died For what they believe in and and so when you know when the question comes about I Lost sleep over the question of what would you literally die for it woke me up in the middle of the night? Probably five times including last night Because it's a really big fat question, you know, if you take the question seriously It's a really big question that I think should rattle around inside every part of our bodies But, you know, I've had this incredible privilege now to be in three different fellowship programs Ashoka and reasonable and the Ogunte fellowship program for women in the UK and in all of those programs The you know, my brothers and sisters in those programs Lots of them have risked their lives and continue to risk their lives every day doing the change work They do in Pakistan in Liberia And you know in the Ashoka program I worked with a woman who was a former victim of torture who now Helps people heal from the trauma of torture. I mean, I've never done anything like that So what that I sat in a jail cell for 24 hours for Greenpeace, you know I've I've had an incredibly privileged life And and so there's something about that question of what would we die for that I think does Unlock some degree of privilege. I mean there's people who risk dying and die Every day all over the world because of the messes that we're talking about climate change and poverty and grotesque gaps between rich and poor Incredible rampant sexism It costs people their lives every day and so I feel like as you know I have some indigenous heritage, but I have white-skinned privilege and so I feel this enormous sense of obligation To speak because no one's gonna shoot me for shooting my mouth off, you know There's there's a whole bunch of activists in Canada native activists Environmental activists who have been audited by the government of Canada every Ashoka fellow that does environmental work in Canada right now Has been audited by the government and sat in rooms with lights in your face Where they ask you questions about everything you said and everything you tweeted and everything you've thought your whole life But so what? It was inconvenient. It was irritating it upsets me that my government thinks that environmentalists are Enemies of the state we're actually now classed with the Ku Klux Klan as extreme terrorists It's hideous. It's wrong. It's messed up. It's broken, but no one's gonna shoot me I hope for saying So I feel this big fat obligation To say it to really really give it and show up and say it Thank you Okay, so Robert You're really just going into these scary places to shoot documentary films to get attention So some Hollywood producer is gonna notice your abilities and you're gonna get all the way to you know You're gonna become a big famous filmmaker. That's right. Isn't it? That's why you're doing it I thought you might want to talk to us about that a little bit So I kind of want to talk a little bit about the social documentary as being a few but also talking about using that privilege with people They're literally risking their lives to be who they are. So that the second one of my last projects that I did was a Photography workshop in Mexico, you know and in quite as Mexico and quite as Mexico is actually the most violent city in the world for the past several years tens of thousands of people being murdered And I went down to work with orphans of murdered and disappeared women and this is an organization where Kids mothers are found in several pieces if they disappear for two weeks and then they're found cut up on You know in front of the police station one of the kids that I work with her sister disappeared seven years ago and They found her in in a concrete barrel and through forensics They do they realized that she had been professionally tortured for several days and here was this group of kids that was Trying to have fun trying to Learn how to color with crayons and I went down with cameras and What my purpose was was to be able to try and give some type of self-expression Be able to give them a way to be able to hold the reality that they did have the precious little family They could still hold on to and so what we did is we got to take family portraits And they took found they had to redefine their family quite literally With their cousin instead of their mother or their aunt instead of their sister one group of Kids they lost their mother ten years ago and they took a portrait with her with her grandmother and To you two weeks after I left the grandmother was taking them to school and Somebody jumped out of a truck and shot her five times Two times in the shoulders and three times in the chest and her 12 year old and 13 year old grandchildren were present and It's very hard for me to imagine you putting myself in their shoes Thinking of what I would do if I were a 12 year old, you know, would I run to save my grandmother? Or would I run to save myself? It's an extremely difficult situation to be in and so I think that in terms of the privilege that I have I can go and I can leave but these people that I work with they're very much entrenched in trying to do what they can to survive And it's very very powerful, you know, the the photographs aren't gonna sell tens and thousands of dollars You know, I have their little kind of family portrait before this shooting in my home But what is gonna do it's gonna help give them a sense of purpose Helps to allow them to be able to show to the world that they do exist, right? And so they were in small publications there They have their own prints and so that's something that I think is really beautiful about Photography it's not necessarily gonna make you know millions of dollars. It doesn't make large salaries But what it does it allows people that participate in it to validate their own lives. They saw themselves as photographers They got to see themselves as a family And it also allows other people to hear those stories And so that's something that I think is is is really quite powerful in the work that I do I think I get more out of it not necessarily financially But I get more out of it personally and it's much more inspiring than I could ever imagine. Thank you Want to jump back to something that Donna was saying a few minutes ago about going all in and how hard it is in this world to go all in and Bill I think you'll appreciate This anecdote I'm gonna tell sometimes kept people will ask Kevin and me what it is We do and we tell them about good capital and the hub and and so cap and they saw you're doing such great work And I always I come back usually with yes But we fly all over the world so we have carbon offsets to offset the good work We're doing and that kind of happens to all of us where they're these compromises or Choices that maybe aren't even compromises that we just have to make those Places working we can't go all in and I wondered if we could start with you Bill to talk about how do you deal with those pieces of your life where you you have to or you just simply must compromise and and Thank you for saying that you wanted to Skype instead of fly here We really appreciate that although we would have loved to have had you here all week Hang on just a second bill the week can we get that's the best we can do Bjorn? Okay, we're having a little bit of difficulty hearing you So let's try it again. I was hearing enough of it to keep To have you continue to answer By one light bulb at a time We're gonna solve it politically if we're gonna solve it and that means that we need to go out and do the work of organizing and all that So I just you know I'm cognizant of the fact that I'm hypocritical in those ways and then I get on the floor Yeah Primal what about you? What are those places that you feel like you just Have to make a different choice sometimes. Yeah, I'm you know related to what Bill said Peter Singer is a hero of mine. He's a ethicist And he He advised he basically looks at the planet and he says all right if you live in the United States Well, let me start back and he does a thought experiment first of all. He says Say you're driving your brand-new car that you just pulled off a lot and You just bought it and you're on a train track and your car stalls And what do you know you look to your right and a train is coming towards you And you look to your left and there's an eight-year-old child try tied to the track In that moment, what would you do? And if you ask I'd like to believe 99% of Americans would say I've get out of the car Because and you could you only have time to do one of two things push your car off the track save your car or save the child What would you do? Well, 99% of Americans I believe would get out of their car untie that eight-year-old child and save the child and He goes from that thought experiment saying well if you're willing to Let go of a car and you know that 25,000 children a day die from preventable diseases Why isn't every American basically taking any amount of discretionary income that they don't need to absolutely survive and Basically investing in things like deworming children things that are just preventable that could really prevent deaths and You know social scientists have looked at this thought experiment They've later said well oftentimes what's happening is that the child is not right next to you But it's thousands of miles away, which is why at Kiva what we're trying to do is make the problem much more human scale So you can actually see people not from a frame of pity But from a frame of being will be a business partner with them in framed in hope and entrepreneurship But going back to kind of the hypocrite kind of sentiment that I have of I don't actually Give away everything that I have Beyond that and I've been wrestling with Peter singers thought experiment a lot and you know If any of you guys have ways that you've kind of transcended that Bill I like what you had to say that you know turning living in the dark is not going to solve in your home is not going to Solve the climate crisis you're gonna have to find bigger lever points and be imperfect and go on with your work That was helpful, but I do struggle with that thought experiment Well, you know one of the one of the ironies Of the last sort of five years of my life is that in order to work with indigenous communities in Canada on renewable energy I had to get a driver's license Because you can't get there By mass transit. I grew up in big cities. I was a non-driver almost a religious non-driver my whole life No driver's license And then all of a sudden I was going out to these remote communities with no way to get there, but driving But you know I felt like we're helping communities own their energy We're helping communities discover the relationships between art and energy, which is one of the things we did We we helped communities put art onto solar panels as a way of saying this is who we are that we have Ancestors that have lived on this planet sustainably for 10,000 years And now we're going to make a statement about the integration of who we are as beings and our culture and this new Technology that allows us to provide for the future And so it felt like okay. I could live with that set of compromises And now, you know, I'm moving from the entrepreneurial space into the investor space Which feels you know complex, you know, I'm moving full-telt into the world of money You know, I've done policy. I fought for carbon taxes for 10 years, which is another story Talked to me about that some other time. Maybe bill we should talk about that But you know now I'm in the sort of the center of the financial world But the the prospect of helping people You know do really deep value dives into who are you? What do you love? How do you line up your money with everything you are? How do you take the most powerful expression of who you are as a human being your money in the world and Line it up with everything you hold sacred, right? That feels really right It feels really complicated. It feels really complex. It feels like it's gonna be really hard But it feels really right to hold people through that journey to really move the money because we need to move the money Monday, right? We need to move all the money Monday Thank you Robert, where would you like to go? Bigger deeper broader than your you've been able to imagine going yet That's a really really important question I think there's there's a very tense challenge with the work that I do Because I work with people that are vulnerable in a lot of ways and so to bring more exposure to their stories In some ways can make them even more vulnerable can put even more danger in their lives and I'll give an example I was in Jamaica recently working as the filmmaker for the first International social media campaign for gay rights in Jamaica in Jamaica is actually the most homophobic country in the Western Hemisphere and what that means There's a law on the books that Caramelizes homosexual acts and it's punishable by up to 10 years in prison and so That really filters down to a very strict cultural intolerance and when I was there, you know, I was interviewing individuals in the LGBTQ community And two miles away from where I was staying there was a teenager a transgender teenager that was beaten to death by a mob and I got to interview her surviving roommates who are also transgender who were also at the party and They told an incredibly Moving story of how beautiful The gully queen was you know this transgender person that was marvered But they also told about how horrific the event was there wasn't just a mob beating the The gully queen here this transgender girl was also disemboweled Was also run over and was also shot three times And so it's a very tough place to be able to try and celebrate this person Through her roommate stories who are also transgender who want to take risks to be able to be who they are Who want to take risks to be able to love? and told their stories openly and sang songs for us and You know put on their makeup and they became there who they wanted to be and so me thinking about Creating that into a feature-length film be able to see all seen all across the world actually puts them in a very Real danger of losing their lives And so that's something that I'm really constantly struggling with this how big do these projects actually have to be are they just for the LGBTQ community who can see that and and they'll be able to tell those stories and they'll be able to kind of have this type of Solidarity or is it important for me to be able to tell everyone even the people that you know The members in the mob Because nobody has been found nobody has has any charges against them But a mob means that dozens of people committed this murder You know being able to tell them of the humanity of these transgender people So that's kind of the tough point of Do you want the whole world to see it or do you select your audiences? And I think that's that's something that I'm really starting to kind of struggle with But I think first and foremost it's for the community that I work with to be able to celebrate their resilience to be able to tell Those stories and then it's also to select audiences on the outside to be able to have some type of personal investment Into what's happening on the ground there? Thank you so much You all have talked about being anxious about What would you die for in this panel and I have to tell y'all I was not anxious about this panel at all because these Stories these four people are doing such amazing work and Are all of you are heroes of mine? And I'm so privileged to be here and be able to chat with you I see Cheyenne sitting there with a microphone And I want to turn now and see what questions you might have for these this group of people Laura darling has been a privilege hearing your stories I was a Kiva fellow in Uganda a few years ago and one of the things that that really did for me was to Recognize I am never even if I gave away all my money I'm never going to be as poor as some of these people Yeah, and so one of the things that I heard you talking about touching on was on privilege Could you talk about how you manage that and how you hold that privilege? recognizing it Acknowledging it and working with it to do the work you do Without being overcome by it. Thank you Maybe I can start off. I think part of it is just growing up between Mexico and the United States Recognizing my privileges into being an American is not necessarily being better But recognizing that there's a lot of equal worth with that the stories and what you can learn from those people So I feel like it's even though there I have an economic privilege I have a political privilege in being able to move I don't think that makes me better right that there's a very as much as I can give They can give to me and I can learn and so I think that's a way of not really trying to be patronizing Not being a benefactor and being the supreme power that can change the world but acknowledging that it's an exchange between two forces that are really Invested with each other. So I think that's kind of for me how it works There I mean there's a there's a lot of people in Canada that have some Aboriginal heritage Some people are raised deep in the culture. Some people Are estranged from the culture. I was really raised by my European family So getting to work with First Nations communities over the last sort of seven to ten years has been Really important for me as a being I didn't have you know, I didn't have elders that mentored me in my childhood, but I've been sort of taken under wing by 40 50 elders over the last few years Who sort of said you got to learn stuff like yeah, it's great that you it's great that you went to university, honey cool Awesome, you've got some smart stuff that you can teach us. We want it But you got to learn some stuff and so they took me into ceremony. They you know took me into the woods There's a there's a guy who really wants to take me hunting because he knows about my green piece history Which I'm gearing up for my first moose hunt Not quite ready yet But you know, I've learned I've learned really profound things, you know, I have learned from people who are Not just attached to the land. They are The land the land is who they are And I started to understand that much more profoundly Then you know the idea of art and culture and who people are being interwoven I understand it really differently. There's a there's a quote from a Métis Radical rebel philosopher who was hung by the Canadian government a man named Louis Riel Who said a lot of really amazing things you want to Google him He's a really wise guy, but one of the big quotes that really changed my life is Louis Riel said My people will sleep for a hundred years and when they wake up. It's the artists that will give them their spirit back And I really believe that I think that is part of where we are in this moment in time that we need art We need artists. We need people to show us a new way of being we need story tellers We need dancers we we need to remember that we're creatures of spirit and soul and that we're Cellularly tied to this living world that all of us have indigenous heritage all of us not just people that have North American indigenous blood or South American indigenous blood or Indian blood every human being has the cells in their body that we inherited from our ancestors that is Ancient knowledge about how to live and we have to remember we have to wake up those parts of our brain That that know that you can't pee in the drinking water The parts of our brain that know that we are connected to the animals and that what we do in the world and the messes We create comes back to us, you know, we need to find that part I've met some amazing indigenous scots over the last few years that are really trying to reindigenize Scotland Elders who take that on really seriously. They're learning Gaelic They're learning traditional ways of being in the world and they're you know, there's snowy white people with a beautiful sense of Indigeneity of of not modernizing indigenous people, but Indigenizing the modern economy and I believe that that's The gift of this time we can we can really learn from each other We can we can learn from people all over the world through social media indigenous people are strongly speaking through Twitter and Facebook and We can gather their voices and the things they know about how to live in the world and and we can make Dramatic changes through that wisdom. Wow Yeah, thank you Another question. Oh, yes Yes I just a couple of thoughts and I think to your last comment Donna The artists are there you have woken up And and you are inspiring Each one of the audience that is hearing your stories. So thank you for that first The the question that I wanted to ask is in one of the panels and I think Penelope Douglas asked the panelists about What would you? Have so kept to be accountable for and Sort of taking a stab into that question Asking you what would you like to see? In order for at least this audience to be more engaged in the work that you do How can we be part of each one of your stories and help you guys? maybe with this or maybe with this but Really engaging in the work that you do That's that's a great question as I'm watching the clock tick down I'm realizing that that's probably the last question We're gonna get to take and so I would like to say why don't we make that the closing question You know, what would you like? What would each of you bill primal Robert Donna? What would you like to challenge this group of people to? What step to take next where to head? Let's start Bill Let me just say You know, you know, we don't need to go to jail right away Um If you belong to anything that invest money in anything Thank you Bill, and I know you have to go on and leave leave us, but we'll we'll stay and have these three folks on stage Thank you Bill Rimmel well, you know, I'd flip it back and say that At Kiva one thing we're really fascinated by is how we can help all of you and I would say the subset of you who are social entrepreneurs here looking for capital We have historically Only worked with micro finance institutions and now have opened up the platform to social enterprises of all types And I know that It can be really really hard to fight the two-front war of doing incredible work with your intervention And then also trying to raise money for it and it can we were we're we're very open to How this platform how the Kiva community that's raising about a million dollars every three days can help put more good things into the world make the markets work better for for everyone on the planet and That's the one thing that I wanted to invite anyone Who who's looking for that funding to to get in touch with us at Kiva because we're we're starting to open it up to all social enterprises, right? Robert what's the step you want us to take so I can I think of the stuff that I want to mention is all of us know a Lot of local artists and I think part of it is to be able to empower those people at the grassroots level You know to be able to invest in them in whatever way it is either giving support or going to shows or whatever else But I think the kind of the underlying question that for me and thinking about what I would literally die for is To kind of flip it to you is is to really think about you know, what is that your life mean and what would you live for? That's the underlying question, you know and to be able to really live fully and passionately I think is the most important thing to be able to take it to that question because everybody knows they're gonna die But it's what you do with your life. That's really important So I think just to think about that question. What are we prepared to live for? Thank you. It's a great question I have a friend who's a Darwin scholar who likes to talk about how people got it really wrong when they think that Darwinism was about competition that he actually wrote a lot about collaboration and so You know one of the things moving into the investment space that really Excites me is the opportunity to flip it and do it really differently And to out collaborate Conventional investment. I mean, I think we can do that. I think this community can do that I think we have to do that though going back to Luisa's sort of question by being really concrete that it is really about Metrics and impact. I think I think there is probably a way that we could collaborate Across platforms in this space to really get clear about how many lives did we save? How many girls did we educate? How much CO2 did we take out of the world as a community and that we could build? Dashboards and tools. I mean we're talking Principia is talking with some folks about how to do that, but I think we should share that I think it shouldn't be ours. I think it should be ours I think this this this community this highly wanting to collaborate Community we need to get really clear about what we mean by impact and impact is not intention and impact is not policies and impact is not grandiose statements about how clean and green and CSR we are Impact is about did you change lives? Did you make the world better? Did you take pollution out and make it more possible for future generations to build a life? And so I I would love to see so cat move into not just convening about impact and talking about impact but making it possible for us to get really really clean and clear and precise and measured Thank you Thank you to each one of you for being here. It's I can't Believe I get to do things like sit on the stage with folks like you and hear the passionate stories that you have and to kind of bask in some reflected glory of Bringing your stories to light. It's so amazing to me each. Thank you to each one of you for what you're doing and We will we have just a little bit more time here together and I'm looking forward to to seeing how the rest of the day turns out so Break time. Let's let's go to the impact