Chrysalis with John Fiege

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The tires of your car have a chemical in them, called 6PPD, that slows tire degradation by binding with oxygen and ozone that could break down the rubber. But these same reactions that protect the rubber are also creating a new chemical, called 6PPD-quinone, which scientists just found in 2020 to be highly toxic to aquatic organisms.

6PPD is in essentially every tire made since the 1960s, and aquatic ecosystems around the world, particularly in dense urban areas, are in danger.

Coho salmon is particularly susceptible to the toxin, and salmon populations in the Seattle area have been decimated by stormwater runoff containing the tiny particles that wear off tires as they speed down the road.

Now that the science is clear, the search is on to find a substitute for 6PPD; but for many years to come, the pollutants will continue to shed from our tires and into our waterways.

How to stop the stormwater from getting to the salmon and other aquatic organisms is one of the many ways that the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance is advocating for the ecological health of Puget Sound and other waterways in the Seattle area.

Sean Dixon leads these efforts as the executive director of the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, which is part of the worldwide network of waterkeepers.

I discuss with Sean the work he’s doing in Seattle but also the waterkeeper movement more broadly and the importance of organized, community-engaged action to protect waterways and the diverse ecosystems that depend on them across the planet.

This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Projects series. You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Sean Dixon

As Executive Director of Puget Soundkeeper, Sean works with the entire Soundkeeper staff team, board, and network of community partners, volunteers, and advocates to drive clean water progress across the Puget Sound and its watershed. As an attorney, entrepreneur, and environmental advocate, Sean has worked for years defending communities and ecosystems from pollution, supporting sustainable fisheries, pushing for climate adaptation and mitigation, and fighting for innovative approaches to solving the myriad threats facing our oceans, coasts, and waterways. Before moving to the PNW, Sean worked as an attorney at Hudson Riverkeeper, a local sustainable seafood fishmonger, and, most recently, as Chief of Staff for the Region 1 (New England) office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Sean currently serves as the Publications Officer for the American Bar Association’s Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources, and holds an LL.M. in Climate Change Law and a J.D. in Environmental Law from the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, in White Plains, NY, a master’s degree from the Yale School of the Environment, and a B.A. in Marine Biology and Oceanography from Boston University.

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Credits

This episode was researched by Lydia Montgomery and edited by Sarah Westrich, with additional editing by Isabella Nurt, Amy Cavanaugh, Arthur Koenig, Kate Fair, and Marta Kondratiuk. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Mixing is by Morgan Honaker.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

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There is a line in Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s poem, “When the Animals Leave this Place,” that I find haunting: “They said no one belongs here.”

She’s writing about land that used to flood cyclically but that settlers used for farms and pastures, against the advice of Indigenous elders and without regard for the seasonality of the rain.

Embedded in these six words—“They said no one belongs here”—is the history of conquest and colonialism in America and the mentality of the control of nature, which, to this day, dominates our societal relationship to nature.

The forces of nature and history and a deep knowledge of the land burst forth from Allison’s poem, along with a spirited and iconic crew of animals.

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is the author or editor of eighteen books and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. Her most recent book, Look at This Blue, was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is currently Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside.

This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series. You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is a widely-acclaimed poet, editor, and activist. She was born in 1958 in Amarillo, Texas and spent her formative years in three separate locations: North Carolina, Canada, and the Great Plains. Initially dropping out of high school to work fields in order to support herself, Coke completed her GED at age 16 before enrolling in courses at North Carolina State University. She went on to receive an AFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College. A recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and the First Jade Nurtured SiHui Female International Poetry Award, she is now a distinguished professor at the University of California at Riverside. Outside of these duties, she works with underserved incarcerated youth and serves on multiple literary and editorial boards.

Hedge Coke has authored six full-length books of poetry, her first of which (Dog Road Woman) won the 1998 American Book Award. 2022's Look at This Blue was a National Book Award Finalist. More broadly, her works have achieved wide and extensive acclaim. In addition to these collections, she has written ten poetry anthologies and an immensely evocative and powerful memoir, Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer: A Story of Survival, which discusses her upbringing, her story-cultural heritage, and the tumultuous experiences that have helped inform her identity, perspective, and journey.

"When the Animals Leave this Place"By Allison Adelle Hedge CokeUnderneath ice caps, once glacial peaksdeer, elk, vixen begin to ascend.Free creatures camouflaged aswaves and waves receding farfrom plains pullingupward slopes and faraway snow dusted mountains.On spotted and clear cut hills robbed of fir,high above wheat tapestried valleys, flood plainsup where headwaters reside.Droplets pound, listen.Hoofed and pawed mammalspawing and hoofing themselves up, up.Along rivers dammed by chocolate beavers,trailed by salamanders—mud puppies.Plunging through currents, above concrete and steel man-made barriersthese populations of plains, prairies, forests fleein such frenzy, popping splash dance,pillaging cattail zones, lashing lily pads—the breath of life in muddy ponds, still lakes.Liquid beads slide on windshield glassalong cracked and shattered pane,spider-like with webs and prisms.“Look, there, the rainbowtouched the ground both ends down!”Full arch seven colors showered, heedwhat Indigenous know, why long ago,they said no one belongs here, surrounding them,that this land was meant to be wet with waters of nearbynot fertile to crops and domestic graze.The old ones said,“When the animals leave this placethe waters will come again.This power is beyond the strength of man.The river will return with its greatest force.”No one can stop her. She was meant to be this way. Snakes in honor, do not intrude.The rainbow tied with red and green likethat on petal rose, though only momentarily.Colors disappear like print photographs fade.They mix with charcoal surrounding.A flurry of fowl followlike strands, maidenhair falls,from blackened clouds aboveswarming inwardcovering the basin and raising sky.Darkness hangs overthe hills appear as black water crests,blackness varying shades.The sun is somewhere farther than the farthest ridge .Main gravel crossroads and back back roadsslicken to mud, clay. Turtles creep along rising banks, snapping jowls.Frogs chug throaty songs.The frogs only part of immense choirheralding the downpour, the falling oceans.Over the train trestle, suspension bridge withcurrent so slick everything slides off in sheets.Among rotten stumps in black bass ponds,somewhere catfish reel in fins and crawl,walking whiskers to higher waters.Waters above, belowthe choir calling it forth.Brightly plumed jays and dull brown-headed cowbirdsfly as if hung in one place like pinwheels.They dance toward the rain crest,the approaching stormbeckoning, inviting, summoning.A single sparrow sings the stroke of rainpast the strength of sunlight.The frog chorus sings refrain,melody drumming thunder,evoked by beasts and water creatures wanting their homes.Wanting to return to clearings and streams where ash, orwhite birch woods rise, tower over,quaking aspen stand againststorm shown veils—sheeting rains crossingpasture, meadow, hills, mountain.Sounds erupt.Gathering clouds converge, push,pull, push, pull forcing lightningback and forth shapingwindy, sculptured swans, mallard ducks, and giantsfrom stratocumulus media.As if they are a living cloud chamber,As if they exist only in the heavens.Air swells with dampness. It has begun.

In 1993, Cid Corman selected "When the Animals Leave This Place" for the Charlie and Thelma Willis Memorial Editor's Choice Award (Abiko Quarterly, Kyoto, Japan) and Ed Friedman pressed it in The World, Poetry Project at St. Mark's. "When the Animals Leave This Place" is in Blood Run, Salt Publishing London & Cambridge, UK 2006, US/Global 2007.

Poem reprinted courtesy of Allison Adelle Hedge Coke.

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Credits

This episode was researched by Lydia Montgomery and edited by Sofia Chang. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Mixing is by Morgan Honaker.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

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I love beautiful pictures of animals surrounded by their natural habitats. It’s exhilarating to see idyllic environments and the animals so amazingly well-adapted to live in them. It’s also comforting to know those places still exist, despite what we’re doing to the planet.

But there’s a danger in that exhilaration and comfort: these animals appear to live in a world so separate from our own, and at the same time, we might be lulled into thinking that this other world and these habitats are safe.

Kara Maria’s paintings take a very different approach to representing animals. Her work features extinct, endangered, and invasive species, but they all float in abstract worlds, popping with color and soaked in the impact of humans on their lives.

Kara’s work is captivating. It’s also an alarm sounding about the dire threat that Earth’s biodiversity faces in the age of humans. Her paintings of animals bring the biodiversity crisis to our front doorstep and spur us to think about how our actions are at the root of the ecologically devastating changes happening around the world.

Kara Maria is based in San Francisco, and her work is held in the permanent collections of the Berkeley Art Museum, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the San Jose Museum of Art, among others. She’s been awarded a number of artist residencies, including the Recology Artist in Residence Program at the San Francisco Recycling and Transfer Center, which we talk about in this episode.

This episode is part of the Chrysalis Artists series. You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Kara Maria

Kara Maria makes paintings and works on paper that reflect on Earth’s biodiversity crisis and the place of endangered species in our increasingly unstable environment. Borrowing from the broad vocabulary of contemporary painting, Maria blends geometric shapes, vivid hues, and abstract marks with representational elements. Her recent work features miniature portraits of disappearing animals, focusing attention on the alarming rate of extinction now being caused by human activity.

Maria received her BA and MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. She has exhibited work in solo and group shows throughout the United States at venues including the de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, CA; the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Sonoma, CA; the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; and the Katonah Museum of Art in New York.

Her work has received critical attention in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Art in America. In addition, Maria has been selected for many awards and honors, including a grant from Artadia, New York, NY; an Eisner Prize in Art from UC Berkeley; and the Masterminds Grant from SF Weekly. She has been awarded artist residencies at the Montalvo Arts Center, Recology Artist in Residence Program, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and at the de Young’s Artist Studio.

Maria’s work appears in the permanent collections of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA); the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation); the San Jose Museum of Art; and the Cantor Center at Stanford University; among others.

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Credits

This episode was researched by Lydia Montgomery and edited by Sarah Westrich, with additional editing by Arthur Koenig and Marta Kondratiuk. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Mixing is by Morgan Honaker.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Kara, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

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Before I read Brian Teare’s poem, “Doomstead Days,” I had never heard of a doomstead. It’s a clever portmanteau, combining homestead with doomsday: an alternative universe where the homestead is a preparation for the climate apocalypse.

The poem Brian weaves around his encounter with this word is a lyrical romp through our connection to land, water, and each other. Water flows, gender is fluid, and the rigid binaries of our imaginations dissolve.

Brian’s exploration of the doomstead unearths some vital questions about ecological crisis. How do we respond? How are we, as a society, fleeing to our doomsteads and hiding, waiting for disaster, hoping to survive? What does it look like for us to leave our doomsteads, engage the problems directly, and find collective solutions?

Brian Teare is the author of eight chapbooks and seven books of poetry, including, Doomstead Days, which won the Four Quartets Prize. He is the recipient of many awards and honors, including fellowships from Guggenheim, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Pew. He currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is an Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia. He’s also an editor and publisher and makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.

At over 1300 words, this poem is much longer than the others we’ve featured in our Poets series, but it’s worth it.

This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series. You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Brian Teare

A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, Brian Teare is the author of seven critically acclaimed books. His most recent publications are a diptych of book-length ekphrastic projects exploring queer abstraction, chronic illness, and collage: the 2022 Nightboat reissue of The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven, and the fall 2023 publication of Poem Bitten by a Man, winner of the 2024 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. After over a decade of teaching and writing in the San Francisco Bay Area, and eight years in Philadelphia, he’s now an Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville, where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.

Doomstead DaysBy Brian Tearetoday’s gender is rainit touches everythingwith its little silverepistemologymottled like a brook troutwith a hundred spotswhite as bark scarson this slim trunkthrust up fromone sidewalk squarethe four square feetof open groundgiven a street treetwiggy perimetercontinually clippedby parking or car dooror passing trash truckthat snaps an actualbranch I find hauntingthe little plot its winged achenesauto-rotate down toit’s not that I don’tlike a wide sidewalkor the 45 busthat grinds right bybut if organismsdidn’t insist onforms of resistancethey’d be deadof anthropocentrictechnomechanicalsystems whose gridsrestrict the livingthrough perpetual stressthat elicits intensephysical responselike an animalpanic hittingthe psoas with crampsor root fungus sunk inthe maple’s allotmentof city propertyas tolerably wide as the migrainethat begins at the baseof my skull & pincheswith breadth calipersmy temples untilthe feel of flay arraysthe dura’s surfaceinside the bones insidethe head the healer holdsin her hands & saysthe occiput is shutflat & irks the nervesthat thread through itsunappeasable shuntinto the spine I seea white light I keepthinking about the waylong drought dries outtopsoil so deep beneathits surface the firsthard rain wreaks floodtaking the good dirtwith it the way today’swet excess escapesits four square feetof exposed root& rivers outa flex of sedimentalluvial overthe civic cementof the anthropocenein currents a supplerippled velvet dunas Wissahickon creekin fall’s brief seasonof redd & spawn when brook troutin chill quick shallowsonce dug into gravelto let nested eggsmix with milt& turn pearlstranslucent as rawunpolished quartzeach white eyed ovaflawed by a black fleckmy eyes close overat the height of migrainefertile error waitingwith incipient tailready to propel itdeeper into nauseauntil the healer haltsits hatching & calmsneuralgia betweenthe heels of her handspressing the occiputback open intothe natural curvethe bones forgetthe way the banksof the Wissahickonhave forgotten rapidsrinsing schist shadedby hemlock that keptthe brook trout coldeach patterned aspectof habitat lostfirst to dams & mills& industry runoff& plots of flaxGermantown plantedfor paper & clothmade with water’s power& hauled out ofthe precipitous gorgeup rough narrow roadssouth to the city portbefore adelgidstook the crucial darkfrom under hemlockssun heating the rockycreek down steep rillsto the lower Schuylkillwide in its final milesdammed at Fairmountfor two centuriesof coal silt & dredgefabric dye & sewagethat gave rise to typhus& refinery spillsthat gave rise to firerinsed by this genderthat rememberscurrent’s circuitanadromous shad& striped bassleaving the Atlanticheading uprivershedding saltwaterfor fresh in runswhose numbers turnedthe green river silverif color counts asepistemologyspring sun on the backsof a thousand shadis a form of knowing local to anothercentury & the dullercolor of oursis the way the wordgender remembersit once meant to fkbeget or give birthsibling to generate& engender allfertile at the root& continuousas falling watermolecules smoothingthe sparkling gnarlof Wissahickon schistuntil its surfacemirrors their forcethe fuel element& fundament alikederive thriving frombeing at its biggestwhen it’s kineticenergy headedtoward intensityeverything’s bodyconnected by this totally elasticmaterialityI feel as ecstaticwide dilationwhen the shut skullgives up resistanceto the healer’s hands& the occiputopens its bonesmy mind’s eye goesokay I’m awake nowrowdy with troutpsoas relaxedmy body’s a conduitit roars with waterpassing from pastto present throughpipes & riparianecotones alikeall of my fluidspollutants cyclingback into my ownwatershed toxins& heavy metalsbonded to bloodstored in liver & fatC8 glyphosatemercury & leadit’s awkward okayI keep thinking aboutthe man who asks meto visit his doomsteadwhich seems kinkyfor a first datewhat’s the safewordfor men with gendersbuilt for the world’s endmen with weaponizedgenders hoarding solarpower & canned goodsbottled water genderstending small vegetablegardens out backbehind the chickensconcrete genders sealedin lead their doorssecured from insidewith thick steel barsfringe libertarianendtimes gendershetero girliecamo gun calendarsapocalyptic titspinned on brick wallsby lone bunksso the men can cross outeach day oncecivil societyends with a patheticsnivel like please helpdoomstead men livedoomstead days alreadysealed in extreme fictionas if there wereever a way to staysafely self-containedby which I meanthe anthropoceneis its own genderbiospheric in scaleits persistent fluxfrom fossil recordto Antarctic ice coreso uncontainablewe all exhibit itwith a local senseof personal chosenexpression strategicor contingentlike fertilitymedicalized trackedmanaged or casualhappy f***gwithout a condomrisky given the odds leveraged against us& the blamelessmicrobes seekinghomes in our nooks& tubes so I don’tvisit his doomsteada psychic structureI feel in my headas blocked thoughtI watch play outin the Schuylkillwhere it pools wideshallow with siltabove Fairmount damI stand on the bank& know I’m notsupposed to posit an analogybetween the river& my body butcourtesy of this damthe city siphonsits water into meanother humaninterventiondiverting its patheach of my cellsa little prisonthe river sits in so we’re relatedon a molecularlevel so intimateI think I can sayit wants speed& movement freeenough to jumpthe strained relationto human needsit serves without reliefwithout the handsthat hold my bones& tend my fasciathat remembera different posturewithout blockageor pain a modelfor undoing harmdone by capitalempowered to frackduring record droughtmillions of gallonsof toxic wastewaterinjected into earthor kept in open pondsprone & porousin western countieswhere river ottershave rebounded afterlast being spottedin the Alleghenyin 1899otters are raucous& chirp chitterchuckle & grumblewhen wrestling togetheror sliding on iceplayful biophonyrivers have missedfor a whole centurylike brook trout rootingin loose cool gravelor the plash of insectsfallen from hemlocksthe intact easternriverine biomeone serious messof sound enmeshedin sound enmeshedin biotic patternsas heavy as trafficwhen the weekendweather is nice& I ride the early27 busto the Wissahickonit’s not that I don’t likethe city it’s just ifbiodiversityis a measure of healtha city isby definition sickwith people & builtstructures crowdingout other livesthough I love signsspecies persistthis sidewalk mossprobably bryumargentum nativeto guano-coveredseabird rookeriesthis fertile gingkostinking up the streetwith stone fruitscrushed underfootthis nameless fernin a downpipe drainso modest in scalelike the simple songsof house sparrowseverywhere though this chubby oneis hustling a falleneverything bagelof seeds & crumbs& it’s not that I don’tlike people eitherour socialitygenitals & smellsinteresting dictionsurprising privaciesrevealed at partiesbars & in bedroomsour genders in actsvarious & wetas thought productof dissolved saltswashing our brainsin rich cognitionthat falters withoutwater which can’t betaken by the headin the hands & heldin the hopes of healingits body is too vastits mind boundlessby definitionthe world is awakebe careful my dearsit is the genderthat rememberseverything

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Nightboat Books

Link To Complete Poem

Credits

This episode was researched by Elena Cebulash and edited by Sarah Westrich and Mo Armstrong. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Mixing is by Morgan Honaker.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

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What is our relationship to the land, to its other-than-human inhabitants, and to the rest of humanity? These are fundamental questions for thinking through how we can transform ourselves in ways that allow a multiplicity of ecologies and human communities to thrive alongside one another. And these questions are not just fundamental to us as individuals—they are essential to how we view our cultures, traditions, institutions, and ways of knowing.

Layel Camargo lives at the vibrant intersection of ecological justice, queer liberation, and indigenous culture—a cultural space that offers a distinctive vantage point on how our societies work, while holding enormous potential to both see and reorient our relationships to the land and to one another.

Layel Camargo is an organizer and artist who advocates for the better health of the planet and its people by restoring land, healing communities, and promoting low-waste and low-impact lifestyles. Layel is a transgender and gender non-conforming person who is an indigenous descendant of the Yaqui and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert.

I met Layel at a climate storytelling retreat in New York City in 2019, where I became a huge fan of their work and of their way of being in the world.

Layel is a founder of the Shelterwood Collective, a Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ-led community forest and retreat center, healing people and ecosystems through active stewardship and community engagement.

Our conversation explores the idea of culture as strategy in confronting the climate crisis, diving into Layel’s work in video, podcasting, and poetry and the origins of their approach to this work of healing people and planet.

You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Layel Camargo

Layel Camargo is a cultural strategist, land steward, filmmaker, artist, and a descendant of the Yaqui tribe and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert. Layel is also transgender and non-binary. They graduated from UC Santa Cruz with dual degrees in Feminist Studies and Legal Studies. Layel was the Impact Producer for “The North Pole Show” Season Two. They currently produce and host ‘Did We Go Too Far’ in conjunction with Movement Generation. Alongside Favianna Rodriguez and at the Center for Cultural Power, they created ‘Climate Woke,’ a national campaign to center BIPOC voices in climate justice. Wanting to shape a new world, they co-founded ‘Shelterwood Collective’. The collective is a land-based organization that teaches land stewardship, fosters inventive ideation, and encourages healing for long-term survival. Layel was a Transformative Justice practitioner for 6 years and still looks to achieve change to the carceral system in all of their work. Most recently, Layel was named on the Grist 2020 Fixers List, and named in the 2019 Yerba Buena Center of the Arts list of ‘People to Watch Out For.’

Quotation Read by Layel Camargo

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the s**t that weighs you down.”

Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

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Transcript

Intro

John Fiege

Layel Camargo lives at the vibrant intersection of ecological justice, queer liberation, and indigenous culture—a cultural space that offers a distinctive vantage point on how our societies work while holding enormous potential to both see and reorient our relationships to the land and to one another.

And besides that, Layel is hilarious.

Layel Camargo

My passion for humor has come from has been maintained by a lot of data and information that I've gotten around just the importance of people being able to process things through laughter. And that the climate crisis is nothing to make mockery and or to laugh, there's this is very serious. The ways in which our species is kind of being at threat of extinction, and right before our eyes. But I think that as humans, we're so complex and layered, and we're so beautiful in the sense that we get to feel so intensely, and feeling is what motivates us to take action. And laughter helps you process so much data quicker, it helps you be able to take something in, embrace it, release, and then have it make an impression.

John Fiege

I’m John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.

Layel Camargo is an organizer and artist who advocates for the better health of the planet and its people by restoring land, healing communities, and promoting low-waste, low-impact lifestyles. Layel is a transgender and gender non-conforming person who is an indigenous descendant of the Yaqui and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert.

I met Layel at a climate storytelling retreat in New York City in 2019, where I became a huge fan of their work and of their way of being in the world.

Here is Layel Camargo.

Conversation

John Fiege

How you doing?

Layel Camargo

I'm doing pretty good. How are you doing?

John Fiege

I'm doing well. I've got this thing in my throat. I, so I'm going to be drinking a lot of tea. And I might have to have a bathroom break. Know, I have forgotten to take my allergy medicine. And here we are. Great. Yeah. So can you start out by telling me where you grew up? And how you viewed your relationship to the rest of nature when you were a kid?

Layel Camargo

Yeah. Um, I can start off by Yeah. talking a little bit about where I grew up. Yeah, so I grew up on the Mexican border between Tijuana and San Diego. And my upbringing was in this very highly dense migrant community from Latinx to Philippines, because of the proximity to the military base. It was very military towns, pretty much the professions. They're like you're either work for Homeland Security, the military or police. And I didn't really notice what my upbringing was like till I left. But I grew up crossing the border back and forth. My grandmother migrated from the Sonoran Desert, to Tijuana. And that's basically where my mother was born. And she grew. She went to high school in San Diego, which is why I can say I'm an American citizen, but I'm a descendant of the Maya or the uremic tribes, my grandmother said, and then my grandfather said, The yucky tribes of the Sonoran Desert so I think for me, my connection ecologically was like the ocean Because I grew up in a beach city, and then it was also the desert, because of all the stories and my grandmother's connection to sanada. So high, I never felt like I was at home because as a queer person paid never really fit into the conservative nature of San Diego due to how militarized it is, and all this stuff. But it was through a drive, which I took from Northern California, down to Sonora, where my grandmother's family lives, when I drove through the saguaros and Arizona that I remember seeing the Saguaro forests and just like needing to pull over and just like, take them in. And I had this a visceral feeling that I don't think I've ever had before of just like being home. And I think this, this experience was like in 2016 2017. And that's when I realized that, in theory, I was a climate activist, I cared about the planet. But it wasn't until that moment that I was like, oh, what I'm actually doing is like actually fighting for us to return to be in better relationship with the planet. And this is where I belong, this is my source of my route, these trees and this desert. So because of that, and growing up in proximity to the beach, water conservation has always been an area of like passion for me and caring about the ocean, which pushed me to a practice of lowering my plastic consumption and being more mindful of oil consumption. And the desert has always been a source of like grounding in regards to like place and knowing that I come from the earth. So it's kind of like I was gonna say, it's kind of like, I'm from a lot of places, I moved to Northern California in 2006. So I love the forest. But nothing speaks to my heart, like the beach in the desert.

John Fiege

Well, they have sand in common. Is there? Is there a tension between the ocean pulling you in the desert pulling you or is it? Is it a beautiful harmony?

Layel Camargo

It's a bit of a tension. But I would say that in my body, it feels the same. They both dehydrate me and over, over like it's just a lot of heat, typically. So yeah, that it's different for Northern California beaches, because they're a little bit more Rocky and more cold. You have to wear more layers. Right? definitely like to where I grew up, it's it is warm, the sandy ness. That's a great connection, I definitely need to make that a little bit more concrete.

Totally

John Fiege

cool. Well, can you tell me more about the path you took from the neighborhood where you grew up in San Diego, to studying at UC Santa Cruz and what that experience was like for you?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I, I went. So I grew up in a home where there was a lot of violence, which is very common in a lot of migrant-specific and indigenous communities. And I kind of came into my teenage years, like really realizing that I was different, but I didn't know how when it kind of got summarized in college around my queerness my sexuality and my gender, but just feeling this need of like needing to leave. It just didn't make sense for me to be there. And with that being said, I had a wonderful community. I still have quite a few friends in San Diego that I keep in touch with my sisters live there. And I was actually just started last weekend. So I, when I was in San Diego, I think a lot of my trauma responses of like, just ignore what doesn't make sense and just keep moving forward was how I kind of functioned. And that race. And I loved it, I succeeded at it. I've actually realized that I'm a performance artist because of that upbringing. Like I, you know, was captain of the water polo team. I was president of my senior class, I was featured in newspapers for my swimming. I was a competitive swimmer for 10 years. I I did, I did a you know, a good job. I had advanced placement classes and honors classes and I was well rounded but in the inside, I just didn't feel like I belonged. So I picked UC Santa Cruz to go to college because it was the farthest University and the University of California system that had accepted me. And they went and I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I visited the campus like two to three weeks before I had to actually be there to live on campus. Bass. And when my dad drove me, drove me up with my whole family drove me up and they left me they were like, are you sure you want to say I'm like, I got this, like, it was all redwoods. So it was definitely like, we went down to the local store. And it was like all these like hippie dreadlock, folks. And I was like, I don't even know what I got myself into. But I'm getting this degree, so we're good. And it was a big culture shock, I think for a lot of black and brown and indigenous youth when they have to leave their communities to attend. What is like better economic opportunities outside of them it is it's, it's more than just having to adjust, it's having to really like, Oh, I had to let go of everything I knew. And in order for me to take the most out of college, and I was fortunate enough that I had a container a university is like a container for young folks that I wasn't having to leave for work or opportunities. And so I fully immersed myself, and it allowed me to be able to identify myself sexually and through my gender, and a gave me solace, when you know, my family rejected me for coming out. And I think that I'm so fortunate that I had that experience. And then I also was able to gain double bachelor's when feminist studies and legal studies which allowed me to have some upward mobility that my family hadn't had, traditionally I was, I am the first person in my whole family to attend a four year university after high school. So I'm definitely very grateful that that path took me there. And at this point, I feel like it was not only good for me, but it was good for my whole family for me to have taken that journey.

John Fiege

And did you come out to them? In college or before college?

Layel Camargo

in college? Yeah, I was my second year, I had my first girlfriend. And I was a Resident Advisor, always I'm always trying to be the overachiever. So I was like Resident Advisor of my college, I was like, involved in every club, I was part of the dance team. And, you know, my mom called me, I just decided to actually move in with my girlfriend the following quarter. And she was like, What are you doing? I was like, Oh, my girlfriend's house. And she was like, why do you have to tell me those things. And I'm just like, because I'm not gonna lie to you. And she was like, I know, you're gay, but I just don't need you to rub it in my face. And I was like, then I guess we can't talk. And so we didn't talk for three months. And then she called me It's, it's, it's hard, you know, like, going to college is hard, especially when I went to very marginalized public schools before that. So I was struggling academically. And my solace was, like, being involved on campus, like to meet some social needs. And I was in, I was in a retention program for black and brown youth from urban communities. So that helped a lot. But I, I, my mom kind of rupturing that, really. I didn't realize what the impact was until probably a quarter the quarter into after that. And she called me three months later, and was like, so are you not gonna talk to me? And I was like, you're the one that doesn't talk to me. And she was like, well, let's just let's just try to make this work. And so we, you know, it took probably five to six years for my family to kind of fully integrate my, you know, my, my lifestyle as they, as they call it. The magic word of magic word. Yeah.

John Fiege

Yeah, wow. Well, you know, that's just what you need, right in the middle of college trying to adapt to, you know, crazy new culture and world is for your family to reject you.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, yeah. It's definitely one of those things that like a lot of queer LGBTQ folks. I, I feel like it's so normalized to us, right? And it's just like, well, when you come up, just expect to lose everything. And I think it is it now until I'm like, in my 30s, that I realized how painful that is, and how, like, it's just like, you know, one of the core things I think, as a human species is to know that you belong somewhere. And if you don't belong at home, then where do you belong? And I think for many of us, we've had to go through that unconsciously, without really thinking through that we're seeking to belong. And this theme of belonging has been something that's been coming up as I'm I navigate like, my professional career now is that like, I really do want people to feel like they belong somewhere. And the only thing I feel like makes sense as we all belong to the planet. We all belong to the same descendants and how we got here as a species and that I think that's being rejected from my family allowed me to be like weird do I belong? And so I fortunate that I had a best friend who was also queer. I had my queer community I had student governments and students social organizing. And then when I graduated, I was like, wait, like, Where else do I belong? So I went to my natural habitats like to the beach, and I picked up surfing again and scuba diving. And then it was like, Oh, I actually like I belong to the earth. Like, that's where I belong.

John Fiege

That's beautiful. Yeah. I love that. Oh, I am hearing some background noise.

Layel Camargo

Is it audio? Or is it just like,

John Fiege

people laughing?

Layel Camargo

It's my partner's on an Akai here, I'm going to shoot her a quick text. She like gets really loud because she gets so excited. Just going to share a quick text.

John Fiege

So before coming to climate justice work, you worked as an organizer with the Bay Area transformative justice collective. Can you tell me how your work in transformative justice informed your understanding of the climate crisis and how you approach ecological concerns?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, so I I organized with transformative justice for about six years. And then I you know, for folks who don't know, transformative justice is an alternative response model to violence, harm and hurt. And so similar to restorative justice, which works with the carceral system, so police, judicial systems, etc. to reform in order to help alleviate some of the biases that exists in the systems, transformative justice, as there's those systems actually don't serve certain communities like migrants, folks like that are trans, just the way that those systems just inherently violate certain people who are not included in our society fairly, was like, transparent justice exists to serve folks who cannot access or choose not to access or use the carceral system. So if you will, if you believe in defunding the police, and let's say you're sexually assaulted, you're probably not going to call the police for a rape kit, because there's probably ways that you've experienced those systems as harmful or violent. So when I started organizing were transferred to justice the spoke to me as somebody who had just come out as trans, somebody who grew up in a mixed status family, have relatives who have been deported. And I realized, like, Oh, it's actually worth investing in alternative models, besides the police. In order for us to get our needs met when crisises do happen, because they happen to all of us. And I was in it for six years, you know, we had built up, I had built a great capacity to work with people who had caused harm people who are caused domestic violence, sexual assaults and transforming their behavior and working towards reparation of relationships and or just like helping victims be able to move on after something like that happens. And it's it wasn't an easy task. And what we would come back to is we would spend like the first front of the months, trying to make sure that people's basic needs were met in order for them to slow down enough to process what had just happened. And basic needs included food included shelter, if they lived near, you know, a toxic site, what was infringing on their health, making sure that they had access to health coverage or health benefits. And that was about 60% of what we're doing was making sure that we could get the basics kind of stable so that they could jump into really honoring what it was a justice look like for them. And in doing this a handful of times, not too many, I will say I didn't think thankfully, we had a team. And so I did wasn't always having to handle everything. And we, the experiences that I did have, I was like, man, if people just had, like, a healthy environment where having to fight for housing wasn't a thing. Like we could just actually say, this is where I was born, this is where I belong, and I'm in relationship with the land. And that's how I feed myself, I clothe myself, like all these things that are kind of like indigenous traditional ways, then people could actually solve a lot of their crisis. He's in the moment without having it to be delayed years or having to rely on for it to get outsourced through the carceral system in order for them to feel like they get a minuscule amount of justice. And so I started to just be more cognizant of the way that we interact with the planet and how are everything from our legal structures to our economic structures are just completely devastating. Our environment that have led for us not to have good air quality for us not to have good clean water for us not to feel like we've belong to the earth that is right beneath us that we like, are in relationship with, with the rest of you know, most of our lives. And I, at the time I was living in West Oakland and I had just looked into the air quality report in the area I lived in, and I had the worst air quality in the whole Bay Area. And I started noticing my dog started developing like little spots on her skin, I started having like a lot of chronic coughing. And I was looking at how much money I was making. And so at the time, I was doing a lot of our pop ups, I was really passionate about zero waste, I cared about veganism, a lot of it was through the planet, and it just slowly started shifting away from Yes, I care about how we respond to violence and harm and all of that. And I want us to have alternatives that meet the needs of folks who fall through the waistline of certain systems. And at the same time, we don't even have clean water to come home to to drink when something violent happens, like we have to go buy it from, you know, a grocery store. Most of us don't even test our tap water anymore, because it's just consistently, we just grew up thinking that it doesn't, it's dirty, it's gross, it's non potable, so Right, right. I think at that moment, my heart just completely was like, I want to dive into this work 100% I want to fight for people to have clean air, like if you can't breathe, then you can't, you can't even do a lot, a lot of things. And so many black and brown people who grew up in rural communities have high rates of asthma have like low life expectancy because of air pollution, to you know, the logistics industry etc. And I just kind of fell in with all my heart in like, if I'm, if I'm against plastic put which at the time I was, like vegan for the planet and vegan for my health. And I was also really passionate about reducing plastic use. And I was like, if these are two things that I care about, I want to do it at a larger scale. So it meant that I had to really make those connections of if I want to end gender based violence, if I want to end large forms of violence, I have to start with the one common thing we have that we're constantly extracting and violating, which is the earth. And I think that that led me towards climate justice, because that is the most critical environmental crisis that we're in at this moment.

John Fiege

So what is the climate crisis? What what what causes is how do you how do you think about culture as a source of power and strategy for climate crisis?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I mean, I this is this is really, you know, this, that this is what I do for my life is I spent the last 7 to 8 years really strategizing around what are the cultural shifts that are needed in order for us to be able to be in right relationship with the planet where things like the climate crisis are not happening, so that we can have an economic system and a political system that is serves the planet and the needs of our of us living and thriving, not surviving, which is I think, what we're stuck in as a global society now. And the, we have like quite a few things to kind of look at historically. And I think that there is a dominance of, which is we now know, it is like white supremacy, which is the idea that one group of human is like better than another group of human, and that because of that, everybody else needs to conform to the languages, the culture, the food, the clothes, the housing structures, that are pervasive, and that in, you know, the Euro centric way of living, and that has created a monoculture that is now spread at a global scale. And it's even because it's an economic sister in their economic system. Now we have global stock markets. Now we have the extraction at a global scale, for the sourcing of consumer goods that are all homogenous, and there. There's just one kind of how we do things. And I think the crisis that we're in is the ways that human have removed ourselves from our natural biodiversity relationships with our ecological systems. And then as removing ourselves we have are allowed for the rupture of a relationship that is very needed, which is if we're not integrated into the trees that are natural in our environment into trimming certain invasive species and supporting other biodiverse relationships around us, then we're crippling the ability of the soil to be healthy of the air to have the most amount of oxygen Have you Now we know that we need to be trapping carbon at such high rates. And I think that with a crisis that we're in is that we've allowed and have fallen victims to white supremacy, which was facilitated by colonization, that I, you know, that dominance of one group of people in the way of existing, and I think that's where we're at. I mean, if you look at the kelp forests, the kelp forest needs the otters, they need the, the sea urchins. But when you remove the otters and the sea urchins, you know, are not being preyed upon at a normal scale. And that's, you know, we're connecting it to white supremacy, let's assume that the sea urchins are like the dominant and because they're, they're the ones that ruled the kelp species are starting to be eradicated, and some of them are becoming a threat of extinction. And without a healthy kelp forests, you don't have healthy oxygen and maintenance of the acidification in the ocean, which, you know, couple that with global warming, and you basically have the rapid eradication of so many other natural ecosystems in the ocean that we need to survive. And so when you have one species dominating over another, it leads towards a crisis. So I think we're in a imbalance of relationships because of, of white supremacy. And that's what's causing the climate crisis we have. We have a monoculture. And so just as you look at mono cropping, as you look at anything that eradicates the health of the soil, because it doesn't have the reciprocal relationships that it needs from other crops, and are the resting in order for the soil to be healthy. This might not be speaking to everybody who's listening. But it makes sense that like, Yeah, definitely. The environment crisis is a symptom of Yes. Oh, the climate crisis is a symptom of a larger systemic problem.

John Fiege

Yeah. And in so many ways, white supremacy was created by colonialism, like, white supremacy is the cultural system that in some ways had to emerge to justify the political and economic brutality of colonialism. You know, it was a it was it was a way of organizing and understanding the world that justified these terrible things that were happening. And they're so it goes so much hand in hand.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I could talk about this for hours, because there's just so many ways in which we can break it down to the minute level. And then there's so many ways that we can think about solutions. And a lot of my my work and my passion is really bringing as much power as I can to black, indigenous and people of color. Because the retention of culture, language, and different ways of engaging with the world, everything from how we grow our food to how we dress and what we celebrate. And where we honor is what's going to help us be more resilient towards the impending and the realism of what the climate crisis means to a lot of our communities.

John Fiege

Yeah, totally. Yeah. And you're you're living and working at this really interesting intersection between ecological justice, queer liberation and indigenous culture. Can Can you talk a bit about the intersections of your identity and cultural background and their importance to you and how you orient yourself to this work?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, definitely. So as I mentioned, I'm a descendant of the Yaki and the Mio tribes in the Sonoran Desert. And I didn't really realize how much this matter to me, I think till about like five to six years ago, because I grew up because of the borders. Technically, I'm Mexican descent, and Mexican American salesperson in this country. But the Mexican government is similar to what we're talking about white supremacy was created by European settlers and, and a hybrid of mixture of stealing of indigenous cultures. And there are so many subgroups of different indigenous cultures. And my heritage is that both my grandfather and my grandmother's tribe as they were nomadic, and they used to migrate up and down the Sonoran Desert, before the border was there from seasonally for survival. And there's so many ways that like food that we eat, how we dress, how we talk that I didn't realize like, Oh, that makes me so much more than just Mexican American. It makes me more than just Latinx. And I think my background and being in such close proximity to immigration and the necessity of immigration or to survive because my grandmother came to Tijuana because it was industrialized and she needed work. And so when they migrated, they like left everything behind. And they never went back. Like, I think so many people leave their home, thinking that they're going to go back and they don't, their children are born in different places. And eventually, that led me to be born in a different country. And so because of that background, I am so keen to issues around native sovereignty and land back here in the United States is like the retention of keeping people in the place of their origin is a climate solution. It's a way of keeping that ancestral knowledge in the place that is needed. I mean, here in Northern California, we look at the wildfire crisis, and it's due to climate change. And it's also due to the lack of forest management, that our indigenous relatives that are native to that area have been robbed of the opportunity to maintain those forests at the scale, which is needed in order to adapt and prepare for wildfires. Yeah,

John Fiege

yeah, with with the prescribed burning, and all that maintenance that used to happen. That was invisible in so many ways to the European colonists, they didn't even understand that that was going on, or how it worked.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, and I feel like, you know, it goes back to the monoculture. And I think, because I have indigenous ancestry, because I understand the nature of needing to migrate. And the realities of migrant experience, I think I feel so passionate about keeping people in their place of origin as much as possible, and allowing for people to move freely when they have to. And I think as as the climate crisis gets worse, I started to realize just what a disservice we have made by instilling borders by having governments that have been so gatekeeping and operating off of scarcity, that we've kind of mandated a world where people can move freely people, and people have to leave their place of origin. And that these two paradox that we exist in, is creating the dehumanization of a group of people that if you cannot sustain yourself in your place of origin, because of global extraction, by the way, because of environmental degradation and the economic viability of your area, and how that creates wars and mass extraction, that that is why people migrate. But yet those same people who are creating those systems that make it difficult for you to stay in your place of origin have also created borders to not let you move freely. That paradox to me is also part of this climate crisis as because many of us are going to have to leave john, at some point, there's going to be floods, there's going to be hot water, we're experiencing a drought prices in California, I'm actually living between northern California and Southern California already. And a lot of it is because of the wildfires and my family's down here. And my family's at threat of sea level rise by living in San Diego, which San Diego filed a lawsuit against Exxon and Chevron. And I think one or two other oil companies is we're all we're all existing now in this global climate crisis, that it's not quite in our face every day, but we feel it seasonally now, so we're gonna have to be able to move. Right? So yeah, and last to say is like similar to my cultures I have I lived with an end an endocrine illness. And so air pollution is something that could severely impede my ability to reproduce my ability to function. At this point, I spend about four to five days a month in bed, working from bed, and I'm fortunate enough that I get to work remotely. But for a lot of people, we're going to see more and more ways in which the mass destruction of the planet which has led to the climate crisis is how we become to adopt ways of having different abilities or not being able to live our day to day function. So yeah, the intersecting points are just, they're overwhelming. And I think a lot of us are starting to feel that more as things start to kind of get a little worse.

John Fiege

Right, right. Yeah, I was talking to, to my partner the other day, she was she was talking to a fellow activist about this idea of ableism. And how, you know, so much of the discourse around it is you know, what are your abilities and, and this, this person was talking about how it it's how unstable that is. Like you can be able bodied today and tomorrow, you can be not able bodied in the same way. Because of, you know, like you say the changing air quality or something happens, or you just you're getting old, or you get sick. And it's one of those things that we've so ignored as a culture of what, what ableism really means about our assumptions about the world.

Layel Camargo

And like the economic viability and how our economic system is just so dependent on us being fully productive 24 seven, which I made a video on this called The Big Sea, which talks about the intersecting points of labor and how the labor crisis is actually the root of our climate crisis. Because if we can have people have a bigger imagination around how they can use their bodies, to serve their own needs, instead of serving the needs of corporate interests, how that would actually alleviate a lot of pressure on the planet. And that that would potentially lead to our most successful outcomes in regards to the climate crisis.

John Fiege

Yeah, totally, totally. Well, can you tell me about decolonizing conservation in the environmental movement and what that looks like to you?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, so I, I started during the beginning of the pandemic, I started a nonprofit called shelterwood collective, which is black and brown and indigenous queer folks who are aiming to steward land at the time, I was aiming to sort of land a month ago, we acquired a 900 acre camp in cassada, California, and Northern California and our team is about conservation efforts, specifically with forest resiliency against wildfires. Taking Western Western practices of conservation, mixing them with indigenous practices that are similarly to conservation. And I feel like when we think about conservation efforts, a lot of them have been dictated by European ways of thinking through conserving natural environments, which a lot of it is like humans are bad, nature must be left uncared for. And this does such a disservice because our indigenous ancestors knew that in order for a forest to be thriving, we needed to be in relationship with it, we needed to monitor monitor it, if there was a fun guy or a virus that was spreading their disease, that we could actually help it, he'll help trees, he'll help it spread less, if there was fires that were coming that we could trim, and tend and do controlled burns, if there was, you know, sucks anything happening where a species was struggling, that we could help support its growth and its population by you know, hunting its predators. And so I think that, that is the challenge between indigenous conservation efforts are traditional ways of just being in relationship with the natural environment and conservation is the western conservation is that we have been so removed from what it means to protect water systems, what it means to protect forests, that now we have a crisis of mismanagement we have and that more and more countries are adopting European Western perspectives because of the dominance that white supremacy has instilled that there are certain group of people that know more than we do. And that's just that's created, at least for me feels very heavy on when it comes to wildfires. There is certain areas in Northern California where there have been residential communities that have been built on wildfire lines that we know now, indigenous people knew that like every 30 years, for every 50 years, there would be a wildfire that would run through that area. And now that we're not that it's getting hotter, the gap of that time is getting shortened. And also that we're realizing that the years, hundreds of years of mismanagement, and lack of tending has led to also these extreme wildfires, that's now causing casualties outside of wildlife. And I feel like conservation needs to evolve. I think that there needs to be more understanding around the harm that Western conservation has done to not only the ecosystems but to the people who have traditionally been keeping those ecosystems. And I do feel like it's like it's evolving. I just think that it's not evolving as fast as we need. And unfortunately, with the climate climate crisis, we're gonna have to really come to recognize what do we need to move really fast on on what can wait because it just feels like Everything's urgent, we need to save the oceans as much as we need to save the forest as much as we need to Save the Redwoods as much as we need to take the rain forests and it just feels like and and that is like the natural environment, then we have like the growing list of extinction, threats of extinction for certain animals. And I think that I don't know why just came to my head. And then you have people like Bill Gates who want to eradicate a whole mosquito species. So it just feels like we're gonna have to pick and choose our battles here. And I do feel like coming to reckoning around the harm that this pervasiveness in western conservation, which isn't the idea that sometimes we are harmful to, you know, our natural ecosystems isn't a bad one. Yeah, we are. But how we got here was by completely removing ourselves and not knowing how to take care of those ecosystems, had we been in a relationship with them for the last 100 years, maybe we wouldn't be so wasteful, maybe we would have caught air pollution sooner than then our body is telling us, hey, we don't like this, this is bad, we're gonna die sooner if you keep doing this. And I think that that is a disservice. So it's beautiful to see more forest schools popping up for young people. It's beautiful to see more conservation groups trying to bring in indigenous leaders into the conversations. But I do feel like that overall idea needs to shift. And I also think that the land back movement, which is returning national parks back to indigenous hands, is going to help alleviate some of those major tensions that do not honor that certain people have been doing this for hundreds of years. And if we don't return it in this generation, we just run the risk of losing more language, more culture and more practices that we need at a larger scale.

John Fiege

Yeah, in protecting ecosystems is just not a complete picture of everything that's needed. Like as you say, it's important on some level, but it's it's not it's not a whole, it's not a whole understanding of of the problem or how to address it. There reminds me I was I was just reading or rereading a bit of Robin wall kimmerer book braiding sweetgrass, and she talks, she talks about this very issue a bunch about, you know, sweet grass in particulars is something where there's this, this back and forth relationship between humans and nature. And she talks about teaching one of her University classes up here in New York, and asking them at the beginning of the semester, you know, whether people are bad for the environment, and almost everybody says yes. And we also

Layel Camargo

have this this perception of we are bad. Right?

John Fiege

Yeah. Yeah, this Western guilt is pervasive in that as well. Which is,

Layel Camargo

which is facilitated by religion? Yes, religion has a very good job of making us feel like we are horrible for everything that we have sent us that we need to repent for our whole existence as like, going from embryo to sperm is actually a sin itself. So we're born with so much already on our shoulders.

John Fiege

I was gonna say Catholic guilt, but I feel like at this point, it's so much broader than that. Yeah, it is. So you work with the Center for cultural power. And, and one of the main projects you've done with them is climate woke. And I'd like to start by saying how much i'd love the artwork of the logo. It says climate woke. And it's in, in the style of this fabulous flashback 1980s airbrushed t shirts, with, you know, rainbow colors and sparkles. And it feels like there's so much meaning embedded in the artwork. And I wondered if you could tell me about climate woke, how the project emerge, but also like how this logo artwork reflects what this project is.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, so we when we started thinking about what climate woke would be, we didn't know what's going to be called climate woke it was through several meetings with different community partners, different funders and other stakeholders, where we kind of discussed that we wanted a unifying symbol for all the communities that we had been meeting and we kind of landed that we wanted something to look good to represent black Dan Brown young people between the ages of 16 to 25, something that was appealing that somebody would wear with pride. And, you know, at the time, there was a lot of like, different stuff coming up around the importance of wokeness. The it wasn't used as how we use it now, which is like political correctness. It's, it's, it's not where it is now. And so we decided to kind of ride on the, the term itself climate woke, which talks about uses black vernacular very intentionally that this is a racialized issue. And we spoke with several leaders in the black community, and at the time, it felt like it made sense. And, and so we kind of quickly were like, this makes sense kind of work. We want people to wake up to a climate crisis, but also be like down and enjoy it. And that it's different than this doom and gloom narrative that we constantly see when it comes to the environment. As it is kind of depressing when you think about it. But so we wanted it to feel like inviting. And at the time, which I think was like 2017 2018. All these like 90s was like coming back. So we sat with like two or three potential designers, and we didn't really like what we saw. And then it was heavy and agile that he Guess who is kind of a co creator of this. Also, like a globally recognized artist who was like, hold on, I got this and just like hopped on her computer through some colors, did some and we were like, We love it. Like we just love it. We wanted it to be bright. We wanted it to be inviting. And I feel like we've been successful just two weeks ago actually got a text from my executive producer who works on the planet. Well, content, it was like to send a photo of like, I believe it was a young male of color about 21 or 22 years old wearing a climate woke t shirt. And she was like, do you know where that's from? And he was like, No, I have no idea. And I was like, that's how, you know, we succeeded. Because we popularize something, we made it look so good. People don't necessarily need to make the connections, but they'll be promoting our work. And I'm sure and I get so many compliments when I wear t shirts and sweaters. And so she she told him to look up the videos. And you know, she sent me the photo. And she's like, we've I think we've succeeded. And I was like, I think we succeeded, I think we have you know. But at this moment, we are considering evolving the terminology because it doesn't feel as honoring. And we definitely are very sensitive to the fact that we use black vernacular intentionally. And it's time to kind of give it back and think through like what other ways can we popularize other terms to kind of help. It's about it's about to help kind of build the community because it was about building a group of people kind of drawing in a certain community that wouldn't necessarily be about it. And I feel like that to me was like a, we did it. We did it.

John Fiege

Yeah, it's it's it's definitely one of those terms that the the right has co opted and really done a number on they. Yeah, they're they're good at stealing those terms and turning them on their head. And usually, honestly, as a as a weapon back the other direction. Can you turn down your volume just to hear again, just noticing when you get excited? I get excited so much. Alright, how's that? Right? Great. Yes. So in a couple of your videos, you talk about what being climate milk means to you. And you say it means one, standing up for communities of color and communities most impacted by climate change, to complicating the conversations on climate in the environment. And three, doing something about it. Can you take me through each of these and break them down a bit?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, so the first one is, can you repeat it again, that's the first

John Fiege

standing up for communities of color and communities most impacted by climate change,

Layel Camargo

right? That's right. Yeah, I've said it so much. And we actually haven't even recorded anything because of the pandemic. So I'm like, I haven't said it in a while. Yeah, standing up for communities of color. I think that that one to me specifically spoke to that. We need black, brown and indigenous people to feel protected and seen when it comes to the climate and environmental crisis. And that's everything from activating people in positions of power to empowering the people who come from those communities to know that this is an intersectional issue. I think that the climate crisis traditionally was like a lot of visuals of melting ice caps, a lot of visuals of the polar bears and you It's interesting because as we're getting more people narrative, I feel like the, we need to get a little bit more people narrative. And we need to return those images a little bit back, because the IPCC report has just been highlighting the rapid rates in which we were losing ice. And I think that when I initially thought of this at the time, there wasn't highlights of how indigenous people were protecting the large scale biodiversity that we have on the planet. There wasn't stories of, you know, urban, black or brown youth trying to make a difference around solutions towards climate change. And so I kind of made it my purpose that climate woke represent those demographics that we that I was important for me that black, brown and indigenous people of color were at the center of the solutions. And the complicated conversations and do something about it was that I actually feel like we have a crisis of binary versus complexity in our society. And I think that how we've gotten into this climate crisis is because everything's been painted. So black and white for us, that if you want a job, you have to be harming the planet, if you want to be unemployed, then. And then like all these hippies that are fighting to save the trees, they're taking away your job, you know. So I feel like there's so many ways in which our trauma responses just look for the patterns have been used against us. And it just felt really important for me, that people feel comfortable to complicate as much as possible, where we're gonna need different angles and different ways of looking at solutions that we need to embrace experimentation, where we need to embrace failures, and we need to really let go of these ideas that technology is going to come in and save us technology is a big reason why we got into this mess. And so I think that complicating the conversation to me was about this is like, if you are black, brown, indigenous, and you want to be a part of the climate crisis, but you have no way of integrating yourself besides talking about gender oppression, go for it, look at look at the leaders in this movement, and look at how many women are fighting and protecting, you know, at a larger global scale that don't get the visibility that they deserve. So I feel like that was my aim is to really invite that complexity. And then let's do something about it is that I don't want things to get stuck on the dialog. One of the biggest failures of the United Nations when addressing these crisises is that they don't have global jurisdiction. So they cannot actually mandate and or enforce a lot of these, it's usually done through economic influence, or like if one if we can get a first world to sign on to a certain agreement, then hopefully, they'll all do it. But then who ends up in implementing it, usually it's not the United States and Europe is not the first one to do it. And yet, we are the biggest global polluters on almost every sector you can think of. And I think that the do something about it is, for me a call to action, that we can talk about this, we can try to understand carbon emissions, methane emissions, global greenhouse, carbon markets, carbon, sequestering drawdown methods, we can talk about it. But if we're not doing it, putting it to practice while integrating these other two points, which is centering communities of color, and embracing the complexity of that, then it's nothing, it's pointless. We're just we're just allowing corporations to keep exploiting the planet and governments can keep, you know, sitting back and saying that they're doing something because they're convening people without actually regulating and putting down their foot for us. So, yeah, I think it was trying to summarize just my general feelings of this movement and the ways that there's been just lack of opportunities by not centering certain other people or allowing there to be more complexity.

John Fiege

Yeah, there's, I find, watching how those un meetings go down. So frustrating. Yes, just, you know, Time after time. It's just maddening. I'd have a hard time working in that space.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I think I was fortunate enough to take I voluntarily took like a law class at pace, Pace University, pace law University, and one of the classes was United Nations policy, and so I got to witness the sub All meetings before that big meeting where Leonardo DiCaprio came out and said that we had a climate crisis, which everybody googled what the climate crisis was, I think it was called climate change. It was like the most time climate change was googled in the history of mankind. And I was sitting in those meetings and just seeing how it really is just a lot of countries just try not to step on each other's toes, because relationships translate into the economic sector, that I'm like, wow, y'all, like legit, don't care about the people you're representing?

John Fiege

Yeah. Yep. Yeah, it's crazy. Well, I wanted to talk a bit about what environmental justice means to you. And I thought we could start with your video called a power to rely on. And in your crudest, you include a statistic in the video that says in the US 75% of all houses without electricity, are on Navajo land. And, and then one of the people you interview in the video with Leah, John's with a group called native renewables, says, whoever controls your water and your power controls your destiny. And that's really powerful statement. Can Can you talk a bit about your experience working on this video, and how it impacted your thinking about environmental justice?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, so I, I realized that I'm really passionate about renewable energy and alternatives to energy capturing, probably through working on this video. And when we were first thinking about what themes we were going to cover, that's usually how I approached most of the climate world videos as I tried to talk to a few community partners. But mostly, I just do a lot of like, cultural observation, just like what are some of the themes that feel that are kind of resonating for people outside of the sector. So what's resonating for folks outside of the environmental justice world, and, you know, land back native sovereignty is something that's been popularized, especially after the Standing Rock camp, the no dapple camp, and I was noticing that it was kind of dwindling down. But a lot of data was coming up around the fact that a lot of indigenous communities are either sitting around and or holding and protecting 80% of the global biodiversity. And so something that how I approached this video was I wanted to show the native sovereignty piece with the land back as well as my passion for alternatives to our current energy use. And what Haley Johns is somebody who was recommended to me by Jade bug guy who's also featured in the videos, a dear close, like cultural strategist, filmmaker, co conspire in the sector. And she would I had initially approached her and said, I want ndn collective, which is what she works to kind of help us think through the script. And she said, Yeah, we're down and like, we trust you, like, we know you're gonna get the story, right, but we're down. And so it was, it was very easy for us to start with that. And then when I was like, Who do I talk to? They're like, you need to talk to a hayleigh. And I was like, Alright, let's talk to a healer. And so I flew out to Arizona, just to have a scout meeting with her, which I felt like I was chasing her down, because we didn't know she was going to be in Flagstaff, or if she was going to be near Phoenix, like we didn't know. So we were flying in. And we were like, Where are you today? She's like, I'm at my mom's house. I'm with my mom at this hotel. And we're like, Alright, we're coming through. So it felt very, like family off the bat, which now she has been nominated for I forget the position, but it's the internal affairs of Indian energy, energy efforts and some sort. So she's she's doing it at a federal level now. And when I was when I was working on this video, and I had talked to her and I interviewed her as she was giving me a lot of these numbers, and I just realized that, you know, the irony of this country is just beyond what we could imagine. You have a lot of these coal mines that help fuel some of the larger energy consuming cities and in the United States, like Vegas, like la that just consume energy at such high rates that are being powered by coal mines in Navajo or near Navajo Denae reservations. And yet, I was hearing about what halos program and her efforts were just trying to get funding and or subsidies from the government in order to put solar panels on folks his house because the infrastructure doesn't exist. And she was running she's letting me know about that. cost, she's like at $75,000 per house. And then we in order to like run the lines, and that's not even including the solar panel infrastructure. And then if they can't, we can't run the lines, and we're talking about batteries. And she was breaking this all down, I'm like, that is a lot of money. We need to get you that money. And then she started just educating us more through that. So I think I went into this video just knowing that I was going to try to make those connections. But what I realized was that I was actually going in to learn myself, just how much I need to humble myself with the realities that communities who have had less to nothing in certain things, everything from food, to energy to water, have made alternatives that they are, they've already created the solutions like we found one of the elders who had put up one of the first solar panels and Hopi reservation, which I highlighted in my video, she got it 30 years ago, like I, I was flabbergasted that she had the foresight, and the way that she articulated was everything from comfort to entertainment. But at the end of the was she knew she needed power. And she runs a business, the local business won a very few on the reservation that she was passionate enough to keep alive. And so this video just showed me that like, wherever you go, where there has been disenfranchisement, that's where you will find solutions. Because a lot of people have just making do for a long time, it just hasn't been seen, it hasn't been highlighted. Those are the people that like the UN should be talking to the you know, our federal government should be listening to.

John Fiege

Yeah, and I actually wanted to talk to you about Janice de who's the Hopi elder that you mentioned. And, you know, in particular, how it relates to how depth and skillful you are communicating with people from a wide range of backgrounds. in you, you you use humor a lot. And in this power to rely on video, you're sitting down with Janice day. And talking about how she's one of the first people to get solar power 30 years ago. And you asked her whether the first thing she charged with solar power would be a vibrator. And that was that was that was really funny. And all of a sudden, I'm watching with anticipation, asking myself, how is this woman going to react to that question? And you seem to have such a good read on the people you're speaking with. And I was hoping you could talk a bit more about how you communicate so many, so well and so many in so many different spaces and how you consciously or unconsciously lubricate the relationships with humor.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I've been I I think a lot of it is my passion for humor has come from has been maintained by a lot of data and information that I've gotten around just the importance of people being able to process things through laughter. And that the climate crisis is nothing to make mockery and or to laugh, there's this is very serious. The ways in which our species is kind of being at threat of extinction, and right before our eyes. But I think that as humans, we're so complex and layered, and we're so beautiful in the sense that we get to feel so intensely and feeling is what motivates us to take action. And laughter helps you process so much data quicker, it helps you be able to take something in, embrace it, release, and then have it make an impression that is the one line that everybody brings up with that video. So I made the impression. And I hope that people watched it and then wanted to show it to other people. And so I think that, that that knowledge has retained my passion for humor. And then like I said, You know, I grew up in an abusive home where we had to process things fairly quickly in order to be able to function in the world to go to school to go to work. And growing up in a home where there was a lot of violence. I learned how to read people very keenly everything from anticipating when something was going to happen tonight, and I speak about that pretty like nonchalantly because I think a lot of us have a lot of strategies and skills that we've developed because of our traumas and our negative experiences that we've had in the world. And I think they don't often get seen as that we'll just say like, Well, I was just really I'm just really good at reading people and we'll leave it at that and it's like, but what is your learn that from like, there have been many chronic situations where you had to be really good at reading people in order for you to like practice it so clearly in it skillfully. And so I think I honor my experience in that in order for me to do that. And then I think cultural relativity and cultural content petencies is another thing like, Janice de actually reminds me a lot of my grandmother and my grandmother was somebody who was very religious. And at the same time, I always loved pushing her buttons. I would just like try to say things to get her activated. And I knew at the end of the day, she loved me. And that was about it. I didn't have to question whether she loved me because she was upset that I asked her something and appropriately. So I think it's a combination of that. And I'm grateful that I can embody that and be able to offer it to people who are curious about climate change and and feel more invited through laughter than they would about doom and gloom or heavy statistic videos and our ways of gathering information.

John Fiege

Awesome. Well, another kind of video you made is called consumerism, cancelled prime. And the first shot is you waiting while the camera crew sets up the shot and you're putting items in your Amazon cart on your phone. And then the quote unquote real video begins. And and you say 80% of California's cargo goes through the Inland Empire. And then you yell along expletive that's beeped out. And you ask emphatically his climate, wrote, his climate woke about to ruin amazon prime for me. And and I love how rather than just saying Amazon, or Amazon customers are bad. You're starting by implicating yourself in this system that leads to serious environmental justice issues. And again, it's really funny. Can you talk more about the situation with Amazon and other real retailers? And and how you went about positioning yourself in this story, and using humor again, and self criticism to connect to the audience?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I mean, when we first started working on this video, we explore different avenues of that opening scene, when we wanted to highlight community members, I kind of at this point, have a pretty good like tempo of what it is that I want. I want a community member I want somebody who's like academic or scientifically based, and then somebody else who kind of comes in allows her to be more of a creative flow. So we have a pretty good structure at this point of the voices that we seek, we just didn't know how we wanted to hook the audience. And we went back and forth quite a bit on this, the thing that kept coming up was amazon prime memberships are very common. Most people have them most people buy on e commerce and this is pre COVID. And I was keenly aware of that I also knew that Amazon was growing as a franchise to now own Whole Foods that were just like expanding in regards to what it is that they offer people online. And as I mentioned, I, through my passion for reduction of plastic usage and plastic consumption, and plastic waste, I understand the ways that ecommerce has really hurt the planet. So I myself am not an Amazon Prime member, I I don't actually buy online and I allow myself when needed one Amazon thing a purchase a year. And it's like kind of more of a values align thing. So in order for me to reach connecting with somebody who's kind of a little bit more normal in regards to needing to rely on buying online, is I just had to exaggerate what I think happens when you're shopping, which is you look at a lot of stuff, you add them to cart, you get really excited, and then you kind of mindlessly click Buy without knowing what's going to happen. But you're excited when it arrives, surprisingly, because maybe you bought it in the middle of the night while drinking some wine and watching some Hulu. So that's like what I was trying to embody. And then what I was really trying to highlight in this video was I wanted to invite audiences to not feel shame about what they do, like we are we've all been indoctrinated by the system through what our education has taught us. Like we have values of individualism and patriotism and all these things, because that's what we were taught in schools. And that's been used and co opted by corporations in order for us to continue exploiting other humans and the planet. And that's by no fault of our own. That's a design that's an economic model that was designed since the Great Depression. It's just the way that it's been exaggerated and has scaled so quickly is beyond our control where our governments don't even regulate it anymore at the ways in which they should be. And I think that I wanted this to feel like it's not just on you as an individual, but it's specifically if you live in Europe or in the United States. You need to know that we are The biggest consumers on the planet, we have the most economic resources. We actually, if even a fraction of the United States decided to stop shopping at Amazon, we could significantly bring that Empire down. I say Empire pretty intentionally. And we could I mean, I feel like you. And that's and how I understand economics is that all you need to do is impact 10 to 20%. of supply and demand chain in order for a whole corporation to collapse. The problem is, is that our governments always come in to aid these large corporations that are hurting us on the planet by saying that they want to maintain jobs and maintain a GDP are going stock market, which they're reliant on. So this video was meant for audiences. And for people to feel like this is not just on you. But if you live in a first world nation, you have power, and I need you to use it. And at the same time, it's a bigger system. So it's not going to be enough for us to cancel our amazon prime memberships. It's also going to be on us to support community organizers, sign petitions, when possible join council meetings, you know, call your senators and your mayors. And we worked with Athena, which is a labor organization that's specifically has an anti Amazon campaign. And so they were kind of feeding us a little bit of our talking points. So we actually wanted to go the video mostly on a system scale, talk about how the systems need to shift, but they were really pushing for the US to bring in that individualism component. Because as difficult that is as it is to digest. As a consumer in the United States, my power of influence is like three to five times more than somebody else living in the global south. So it felt important to do those two intersections, but we're really just trying to hook people where they're at. So if you shop at amazon, and you want to watch that video, like don't feel like we're gonna call you out or make you feel like a horrible person, like, it's it's not it's not our fault, but we do have power.

John Fiege

And can you talk about what the situation is with the trucks in the distribution centers? And like, what's the environmental justice issue there?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I mean, so there's the manufacturing of goods, which the manufacture of goods is done through a large global scheme, things are extracted and raw material. High mineral producing areas like Africa, South America, different places like that, then the raw materials get moved to places where they can manufactured quickly with the lowest cost, which is typically places that are not heavily regulated by the government, which is China, Asian countries, other other places like that. But they are very prevalent in an Asian countries. And then they're manufactured there and then shipped to Assembly in the United States so that they can get that made in the US kind of stamp. And then they get they get put on boats or truck trucks across the country. The Inland Empire specifically, which California is like a big supplier to the United States, we prove we you know, we supply 25% of most of the foods that are consumed in the US, we provide a lot of goods that come in on the ports on this side, to the US, but this the Inland Empire does. Supply I think like 50 to 70%, the numbers pretty spread out of all of California. So a lot of a lot of goods get brought in to Long Beach or LA ports. They get put on trucks, and then the trucks drive from LA or Long Beach, to the Inland Empire, where communities they're fighting to maintain the residential communities because warehouses are being popped up so fast. And so you have a lot of people in positions of governmental power, just constantly approving developers to build and build more warehouses. So you have school schools, hospitals and homes right next to and surrounded by warehouses that their sole purpose is to store materials anticipating you to click Buy. And the biggest corporates in that area are Walmart, Target and Amazon. And so when you look at the the what is happening is the problem is the storage and the breakdown of the residential communities because now you have people who can't afford to live and or work there, they need to sell their homes and they're being bought up at rapid rates by warehouses and then the warehouses all of a sudden appear within months of time, and we're talking about football fields were at the warehouses. I think we had said that in the video. And the the problem that's impacting the health of those communities is as these trucks they're coming in, I mean, y'all we buy really a lot in this country. So we need to be supplying and keeping these warehouses fully stocked in order for them to be efficient so that you can get it the next day, if that's what you choose, which a lot of people do tend to go that route specifically when Amazon gives it out so freely. And so in order to do that, we have to have trucks constantly coming and going from the ports in LA and in Long Beach down to the Inland Empire. And so what that means is that you have a lot of trucks in idle around the warehouse is waiting to unload and offload, you have a lot of trucks coming in, which are sitting in traffic, because they remind you all this is a heavily trafficked area, because there's been also a lot of push from the posts, Great Depression, to have people in Los Angeles consume more and more cars. And so there's just like, it's saturated. And then you have a lot of homes that are still built, that are still living along side these freeways, because the Inland Empire is a big Cross of many different interstates and highways, and the trucks are stuck in traffic. And so you have communities there that are lowering their life expectancy from like up to 1010 or 15 years, we're seeing a lowering and life expectancy because of respiratory complications like asthma, cancer, other other illnesses, and there isn't enough solutions to this problem. You know, it's very common there that people have respiratory conditions. I think in my work there, I will say from the start of this movie, from the start of this video, to completion and release, which got delayed because of COVID. But it ended up being about a year, a year, a little over a year, there was from everybody we interviewed, there was about, I want to say three deaths of relatives in the area from parents, two siblings, just one year. And these are just a microscale of people that we interviewed. And that just shows if you look at that at the larger scale, there's probably a lot of deaths happening in those communities. So yeah, that's that's the scheme of it, it's a lot of it is the logistics of how to get your goods to you. That is hurting people's health. And then if you look at the larger scope, assembling and creating those goods, is what's causing global greenhouse emissions that's causing climate change. So it's really addressing it on the place where we feel the most empowered to which is stopped demand. Cool.

John Fiege

Well, and and there's been a crazy twist to the story. Since you made that amazon video I saw on the news, that the Center for cultural power received one of these large donations from Mackenzie Scott during her giving spree in the wake of a divorce from Jeff Bezos. So how do you how do you wrap your head around that one?

Layel Camargo

Well, it was funny, because when we got the announcement that Mackenzie sky had given over $10 million dollars over to the Senate for cultural power. Our deputy director was like an even though we made that video against Amazon. She still came to us. I'm like, maybe she gave it to us because he made the

husband.

Layel Camargo

Yeah.

John Fiege

So funny. Yeah.

Layel Camargo

I mean, I think I think what that speaks, what that made me think of was that if you're passionate about something, you shouldn't let any politics or economic interest. stand in your way if it's in the service of creating a better humanity and not hurting anybody else.

John Fiege

Because if they're screwing over your community, they might also be screwing over their wife who leaves them and gives away all their money. Yeah, I'm so grateful for that. It's great. It's the layers of complexity and and irony and humor are hard to hard to fathom. So recently, you launched a podcast called while you recently I think you wrapped up the first season of the podcast. And it's called giving go too far. And you co host it with Trey Vasquez in I love the podcast. It's it's an enormous amount of fun. And your movement from video into podcasting also, of course, reminds me of my own kind of trajectory of looking for new ways to expand and deepen important conversations beyond film and video. And you cover so much ground in the podcast which shows on everything from pandemic parenting to liberated communities, to my personal favorite, a beautiful show on fashion and queer, queer ecology Can you tell me how you got into podcasting and and how it's related to the other work? You do like the videos?

Layel Camargo

Yeah. First off, congratulations on this podcast, john. Oh, thank you glad that you made this shift even if it is for short term or however long. Yeah, well, thank you for helping I AF course, I think that I've always been really passionate about just telling a story and movement generation who is the executive producer of the podcast, we had been thinking about how I could support them in creating some content in order to get their just transition framework out. And so I was coming in already with a lot to compete with is they had executive produced web series called the North Pole show, led by Josh Healy. And they, you know, Edie eventually made it to second season. And by then Rosario Dawson had also been co executive producer. So I was kind of coming in and being like, oh, man, I don't know if I can create something as amazing as that. And at the same time, I was really excited about the challenge. And so we got had a few ideation meetings where we talked about what was important for them to tell. We're pretty politically aligned. And we care about the same social issues, they're a little bit more focused on the ecological justice of it, which makes it a little difficult because a lot of people don't understand how to make the cross between climate justice and ecological justice, which is very much just like mimicking the way that the natural world is being heard and or responding that can help us think through solutions towards climate justice. And a, you know, we identified a few people who wanted to be involved Trey Vasquez being one of them. And then Alan toy who's also a collective member. And we had several meetings where we just thought through like, what what are some of the things we want to talk about. And movement generation is great at putting out pedagogy at bringing fact and community amplification to solutions and understanding the climate crisis in the environmental crisis at a more digestible scale that isn't so scientific and based on carbon economics, or carbon marketing, or any anything that has to do with global greenhouse, they actually barely talk about greenhouses when they teach about what's happening on the planetary scale. And I always love that about them, they make it so accessible. And so I was really hoping that the podcast could be the mixture of accessibility that they bring, as well as the humor that I like to bring. And just the reality that a lot of people are really just trying to get schooled. Like, I think during the pandemic, people had time to really sit down with some of these complicated thoughts that we haven't really necessarily been able to think of. So we did it all in horizontal fashion, because they are a horizontal, collective. So we had different people who would approve certain themes. And then we had everybody to ultimately at the final decision table, just being able to give their stamp of approval. But we started by creating kind of a list of topics, we did some hybrids, so the query colleges and fashion was a hybrid one. And we started identifying people we wanted to highlight in the community that we're doing amazing work. And then we just started pairing up the themes, and everybody was approving and giving their opinions throughout all of it. And it was really rewarding. I, one of the things that I've been able to do, from translate from film over to work, from video over to podcasts is this collaborative nature that is possible with creating content that isn't actually very easy to do, especially when you have a vision, but that I always find it as a fun challenging thing is how do I get other stakeholders, other people who care about me care about creating and who don't have necessarily all the skills, but they have a story to be told, how do I make it easy. And so for them, podcasting was the easy way to go about it. And I was excited. I'd already co hosted a smaller podcast with the Center for cultural power. When it was culture strike, we went to 12 episodes. And then we ended it was most more focused on current events and kind of more of a talking. And this one was really more of a preparation, like what was the story we were going to tell with three points we want to make sure the audience got, who did we want to highlight? And how did we want to work on it. So we also hired an all woman podcast production company called we rise. And they helped with editing and social media amplification. And they, you know, they they're very passionate about the issues we were talking about as well. So they occasionally with throwing a few of their creative ideas on how to speed things up. So it was overall very rewarding. And how I made the switch was that it just made sense. We were in a pandemic, people were very tuned in to having more of a connection and it was really timely when we started planning for this was about About six months prior to the pandemic, and then we contemplated just making it about current events and releasing it sooner than later. But we ultimately agreed that the issues and the themes we were trying to hit were merited giving such good attention. So if you haven't listened to it, I recommend you do. It's called did we go too far? And I think it's just a good way to get some information and to also get a little a little chuckles and giggles over, you know, about some things that are kind of difficult to digest at times.

John Fiege

Yeah, totally. And, and just transition is a key issue you address in the podcast? Can you talk about what just transition is and and how you think that term has been used or misused or appropriated in environmental spaces?

Layel Camargo

Yeah. So just transition comes from thinking through the green economy. And traditionally, it was created for labor workers to be able to discuss, being able to shift from a crony extractive economy over to one that's green that protects jobs that is a little bit more holistic when it comes to addressing just work and jobs and what's needed for a green economy or for something that's like more environmentally aligned. There's a few group of like social justice activists that care about climate justice and the environment who kind of took it one step further, which is that if we do want to just transition that does honor people's labor that we have to look at it a little bit more in detail. And so they coined and or potentially amplified more of the talking about what we currently have, which is the extractive economy, which relies on this, like extract, create, burn, dump kind of mentality of how our economic system works, and that's in a forest through militarism. And that works towards the concentration of wealth and power, at the scale, which has created, you know, a lot of the narratives around the 1%. So they coined that whole system, which is the one that we currently live in economically, which is called the extractive economy. And then they are envisioning a new world for us, which is the acquainting the regenerative economy. And so in the regenerative economy like sacredness and wellness is at the center, the labor sector is more cooperative and collectivized, there's more decision making that is drawn down to the local level. So allowing people to be making more decisions around like what's happening in their environment, and being able to dictate things that are more ecologically aligned. And and, you know, it there's like a upcycled system of how we create and use things that can be returned back to the earth, it's like pretty holistic, I think it's pretty awesome, which is why I lean towards talking about it, I think that just transitions are often used as like, we need just need to move away from fossil fuels, we need to invest in green economies. And when it stops at that scale, and it doesn't look at the way that the current labor sector is set up. Like for example, whether it's like a CEO or president or somebody who like friends, a whole company, and then you have other laborers underneath them that it's more likely for there to be a margin of failure margin of harm on the planet, because it's the actual people who work to land who extract the raw materials who run the companies who can be able to be able to inform and are realigned to sustainable practices. So I think the just transition framework is has evolved now where you have a lot more organizers and activists talking about now just recovery as well as like, when there's a hurricane, can we potentially get support not only on the food aid or initial Red Cross aid, but also like how do we look at the current infrastructure and how when the next hurricane hits, it's going to put us in the same position versus how do we adapt so that the negative impacts that has on communities are actually minimal. And so I think that the just transition is about centering the impacts that certain people are having to to the large global economy that we live in. And where it originated from is basically how it gets kind of CO opted is just thinking about it as kind of like let's create green jobs and that's going to fix everything. It's it that's that's not actually going to be the solution creating just green jobs. We need to look at how are the materials being extracted, how are they being democratized and the way that they're being put back in the hands of the people who are using them to the people who are selling them and how Do we approach the actual green economy in a way where maintenance is at the center where people who are actually using certain new technologies that we need to rely on, actually know how to repair them. So they minimize the waste cycle, it increases the empowerment of the community to be able to reuse versus dump and have to get a new one, which increases the power of corporate interests. So I think just transition is about doing something that's a little bit more holistic, that centers a new world, which is about being in reciprocity and regeneration with the planet and are you can eco ecosystems and their economic models mimic that. And I think that we can do it. I think that that's why I'm a big champion for and I love to talk about that.

John Fiege

And do you? Do you see tension in conversations or spaces you're in? Around kind of what the implications of that term like how, how systemic or holistic or radical it is, versus, you know, because I do feel like there's this sense that if we just switch to electric cars and solar panels, everything's gonna be fine from so many different, so many different parts of the media and different entities and groups and interests. And it I feel like it's becoming, it's becoming even more problematic.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I definitely think that the tensions are there. I yeah, I think that there just hasn't there's there's certain folks who I've been in this is happening as frequent as much as probably because I'm in a lot of like, black indigenous PLC, like folks who intersect labor union organizing with like climate justice organizing, like that. It's less pervasive for me. But there is that a few times where I've popped on calls with just other community members who just want to chat and or potentially talk about collaborating. And it's like, oh, you're talking about just transition from such a different way that I haven't. So the, the narrative hasn't fully evolved. And I think a lot of that evolution is due to just how we haven't been really mixing as a group of people as organizers is I think that there's still this concentration of resources with the big green tops like Greenpeace like 350 dot org. And that, because there isn't that people centered approach that a lot of grassroots organizations that are actually thinking about the regenerative economy in a way that it serves the frontline communities that they're in day to day relationship with that that hasn't necessarily translated on the practical note. So a lot of folks can't really talk about it. But I do feel like it's just about moving away from talking about a just transition that's solely focused on energy consumption and alternatives to energy consumption, to really looking at the scale that like, as a first world country, we actually consume a lot of energy. And so we have to, at some point, come to the reckoning that we need to lower our consumption of energy that maybe we do not need to be watching TV 10 hours a day, or being on computer eight to 10 hours a day. That that is something that we're gonna have to come to recognize. And I think that will be instigated by values that are aligned with a regenerative economy, which is really about lessening the suffering of a few and increasing the wellness of many. And I think that in that spirit, people who just think that surviving this climate crisis is about having carbon drawdowns or carbon sequestering or making sure that everybody has solar panels on their roofs is not going to be the only solution. And that's that's just nature is going to let us know that. And it's going to be facilitated as well by a lot of big top green organizations just relinquishing their access to large amounts of resources and redistributing them to grassroots movements. But the tension is there, but it's not so big. I think it's the the tension is around, like the clarity of what it just transitioned on a holistic level could look like,

John Fiege

right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's complicated, because the simple understanding of just transition is an essential element of the more the more systemic conception of it, you know, it's not like, you're against solar panels, you know? It can't stop there. And another thing I hear you say a lot on the podcast is, I don't know, which I read as a powerful political statement in a world where all kinds of people claim to know what's what's the importance of humility. And of being honest about not having the answers, and and how how do you see that approach to the world, in contrast to other approaches that you might encounter out there?

Layel Camargo

Just that the level of humility, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think for a lot of us, needing to just like, really understand the level of slowing down, that's going to be necessary in order for us to create, for example, a new regenerative economy or a new political system, it's going to require us to really slow down, be humble and kind of realign and discard the values of that instigate greed, individualism. And that shifts us over more to collective well being. That that is at the core of I think what I'm wanting to do is I'm wanting to use storytelling in order for people to feel empowered to be able to look at the core values that colonization and white supremacy has written on, such as greed and individualism, and to start to challenge those in small to big ways. Because we need to rewrite our whole story as a nation that is causing a lot of havoc. And I think that's one of the pieces that when I was talking about instigating more complexity in this movement that is dear to my heart is what are the core values that are actually hurting? They're actually hurting our, our system, they're actually hurting the planet that we need to shift.

John Fiege

Yeah, do you? Do you feel like a lot of people have trouble saying I don't know.

Layel Camargo

I think they do. Plug in my computer for a second. Okay.

Oh, okay. Oh,

oh, I didn't see that.

John Fiege

Okay.

Gotcha.

Layel Camargo

I like can I just answer from that point, john, if that makes sense.

John Fiege

Okay. Do you want me to join me to ask the question again? Yes. Okay. Great. So I'll just, I'll just back up for a second. So another thing I hear you say a lot on the podcast is, I don't know, which I read as a powerful political statement in a world where all kinds of people claim to know, what's the importance to you have of humility and being honest about not having the answers? And how do you see that approach to the world in contrast to other approaches you might encounter out there?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I think we discuss this on the first episode is that I, we are like pretty saturated as like a human species to just have to say that we have a solution or that we know what we're doing. And I think it's like, in our ancestral ways, where it's like, rooted to actually slow down, observe the seasons, look at the pace of the earth and be able to be like, Oh, yeah, actually, let's just sit in contemplation about this big area where we don't have a certain answer. And so in the first episode, we covered that idea that like, yeah, that's a larger mainstream ideology of like, needing to have solutions to their problems, or needing to have answers to questions that may feel daunting. And in the first episode, we kind of sat with that of how that has seeped into our social movements or social justice movements, that even when we are fighting a big crisis, we are still carrying the same values that have dominated our American Society for lack of like, you know, just thinking about it at a bit of a national scale, which are like individualism and greed that have really pushed us to feel like we have to create solutions. And when we're looking at something as big as the climate crisis, it's actually in the practice of slowing down that not only are we going to find solutions, but we're going to be actually practicing this solution which a lot of why we're exasperated. The, you know, there's the tension and the pressure that we're putting on the planet that's causing this this large symptom and reaction is because we're moving at such a fast pace that in the slowing down and trying to find more holistic and diverse solutions. is where we'll be able to thrive. And so I think that there's a bit of an ego problem in this country. And I think in first world countries where everybody wants to be right, everybody wants to lead in the technology that's going to quote unquote, save us. And everybody wants to have all the solutions that are going to be spread at a global scale. And that is a symptom of value. And the belief that we've all inherited from white supremacy. Yeah.

John Fiege

Yeah, it's, it's, it's something that I feel like, you know, I work at a university. You know, talk about a group of people who think they know the answers to things. Yeah, it's, it's so woven into everything. So another video you made recently is called a grief letter to COVID, which combines a poem of yours read by several people with images from Oakland, San Francisco and LA, I think, and many beautiful moving portraits of people in the community wearing masks, could could you read this poem and tell me a bit about the story behind it, and particularly how the COVID pandemic has informed your work and your understanding of what we face with other cascading crises?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, maybe I'll start up by reading it. Yeah. That'd be great. Okay, so I wrote this, and I'll speak a little bit more about why but it's called the grief letter to COVID COVID you ravaging monster? If you could? Please listen. I don't know why the universe brought you to us and somehow in a sick way I feel like we needed you. Do I need to thank you. You've been taking on a bigger beast you keep showing us who's really to blame that even in a crisis we are last to be protected last to be seen last to be vaccinated hit first hit hardware Hit, hit hit COVID You are our wake up call. You are reminding us that no matter what we need to save us care for us we've got us COVID you literal virus you spread and no see land or distance is a barrier for you. Stop taking our family stop taking my loved ones they have we familia and impasse. Why do you let them die alone? COVID. We're done. This is a grief letter, a breakup letter. We're breaking up with you. We're breaking up with the system's keeping us down. This abusive relationship needs to stop. We will draw tarot cards cast protection spells and pray. Oh God, how we have prayed for work done. Take this as a warning, a warning to the greedy a warning to the premises warning to the systems that be we are done being seen last, we are done being ignored. We demand vaccinations. Now we demand health care now we demand pay to stay home COVID slow us all down to that so that our loved ones can recover so that we can curve the spread so that we can fight for more vaccines. This is our last call COVID go away to where you come from. And while you're at it, take the greed take the racism take the in justices to us our kinship and our planet. Take everything that isn't working. Sincerely, the people who are sick of this st. So I started to write this ad was kind of like an artist residency. At the time, my aunt and my uncle and Mexico were fighting to survive co COVID, which they did, thankfully. And then I had an uncle who was in the ICU. And I think I had just found out that he passed away. My uncle who passed away was African American. And you know, it just the statistics were coming up around how prevalent COVID was in the black community. And then shortly after, while I was writing this, I wrote the first draft I wrote it around around that time and when I was doing edits, my cousin got COVID I had another cousin who got COVID and then my grandmother sister passed away from COVID from respiratory complications. And I was just really enraged. I was pissed off that this was happening to my community and that I wasn't surprised because my family is you know, first generation first generation migrant people of color. And my family they're all frontline workers, you know, working restaurants working, janitorial services, and My sister was a frontline worker, she's a nurse, and every other week, it was like, Oh, I could potentially have COVID. So she was quarantining, like, at least once a month, from coming home from work. And she has two kids. And I was going back and forth between being in San Diego to help with childcare to being up to Northern California. And I was sitting in my, you know, 300 square foot apartment when I was there, and just like feeling so relieved that I felt so safe. And at the same time when I would leave, just feeling so scared of potentially getting in this is pre vaccination, and the rollout was happening of the vaccination. And then there was more anti vaccine rhetoric that was being spreading that was spreading in migrant communities and eventually, in a lot of black communities. And so when we were starting to, when we were starting to produce this and turn it into a video was when the vaccine rollout was like, just at eyesight. And I this felt important for me to write because I was upset, I was pissed off. But what I loved about the time and quarantine was that I got to isolate and I got to really sit and care about the things that I wanted. I grew my garden beds, from two beds to six beds, I was harvesting a lot from the land that I lived on at the time. And I was spending more time at home was go I started hiking. I actually hiked I think I ended up hiking at most like 14 miles that one go about 2000 elevation and increase. I was featured on a podcast because I picked up hiking and I was feeling really healthy. I was cooking at home three times a day. And all this is happening while my relatives are sick. And I'm sure that they had some positives as well of like, not not needing to stay home and also the negatives of the economic disparity, I was fortunate enough that I could work remotely. And so I wrote this because it was like being in COVID, at the height of it really highlighted that all these systemic disadvantages were all made up, a lot of us were being asked to stay home, the government was doing some rollouts around, you know, some of the ways that they were financially compensating people to see how much was not enough and not anything close to what people were losing. And then at the same time, we were seeing women of color being let go of jobs and losing jobs at the highest rate. So it was a combination of processing that information. And then the piece around the piece that I wrote around, like, I take everything with you that isn't working like greed and racism was my attempt at being like when COVID goes away, I want this world to be reset. And this like to protect our kinship and our planet and allow for these injustices to go away was in me highlighting that COVID wasn't eco logical crisis like we have extracted from the planet at such high rates so much that we're going so much more deeper into wildlife that has not had contact with humans that were coming into contact with other viruses. And if we do not slow down our extraction rates, we're going to have more and more pandemics like these happening. And as the variants continue, it's going to just keep mutating and potentially have larger effects that were unaware of. And so this was a way of me processing that in that at the systemic scale. I just wanted to let people know that we needed to stop extracting from the earth in the way that it was and that as people we were done, we're fed up with the ways that we've been systemically disproportioned and used to harm the planet. And so the, you know, the sincerely the people who are sick of this st is like a call of solidarity for black indigenous and people of color for us to just have a voice. But it was a very powerful piece. And I'm grateful that the Center for cultural power allowed me to turn it into a poetry video.

John Fiege

Yeah, it's really beautiful. You know, listening to you talk about it reminds me you know, that a decade or so ago I got cancer is really bad cancer almost died. But you know what, when I first got it, and I kind of like entered this kind of cancer culture in a way and start reading a bunch of stuff, I kept seeing this expression that people would say, as cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me. And when I first had the beginning of this whole experience, I just remember thinking like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. And by the end of the cancer experience, and I did survive, which is a key part of it, but I understood it all of a sudden, were it's not something you would ever wish on anyone, but it does so much work to reveal the fissures in the fractures in the in the The the assumptions that you're making in life and and the things that were always there that you didn't necessarily see. And I, I don't know, your poem makes me think a lot about that in relation to COVID. And how, with all the terrible things that COVID is, it's it's also an opportunity to see the world differently. Possibly in ways you haven't seen it before, but possibly just to, to to refocus on what you already knew. And and seeing, like, even more how important it is.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, that's a powerful connection, john. Yeah.

John Fiege

Yeah. And, you know, reminds me a bit of Arundhati Roy's essay. Did you see you see that? a pandemic is a portal? And she talks about? I don't think I've read it yet. Yeah, she talks about how the pandemic is a portal is an opportunity to enter another world. And there's that question, of course, like, what world are we going to enter when we go through this portal? But regardless, it's an opportunity to enter something else. But yeah, well, I love your your poem, and the piece you made is really beautiful. So thank you for, for reading that again, here. Of course, my pleasure. So we're wrapping up, and sorry about all the delays. But I just have a couple more questions. You could keep going for a few more minutes. Let's do it. All right. So going back to young Lyle, growing up in San Diego, how has your thinking changed since then, about who you are about your relationship to the rest of life on the planet?

Layel Camargo

I mean, I would say it's changed pretty drastically. I I think that young me was just really absorbed in the world that I lived in, which I think happens to a lot of us and the fact that like I wanted, I had dreams of having a family and having a connection with, you know, the people that I loved and cared and career that like fueled my heart. And now that I'm older, I'm realizing that like, what I at my core wanted was as a young person was I wanted purpose, value and meaning in life. And that I found, I could summarize that, in that way through these accomplishments that I saw for myself as a child based off of what I thought you had to do. And now that I'm older, and I think specifically coming out as queer, and definitely jumping into more understanding, like my role in the larger eco ecological crisis is that the possibilities of what finding meaning and purpose and value is, is actually way more bigger and complex than I can imagine. So I still want those things I want connection with the people that I love, I still want to, you know, have a quote unquote, viable career, which I think really just is my purpose. And my purpose is to tell stories and help create a world where we're in better relationship with the planet. And I feel like I'm doing all those things. And I don't necessarily feel like at my heart to have changed too much actually have this strong line that I kind of go by on a day to day, which is like people don't change people are at the core of who they are and how they were born into the planet of needing to be. And at the same time, I've, how I interpret that and how I choose to practice it. That's the part that has shifted, and a lot of it is through learning about the ways that ancestry what's been eradicated from my history, from my personal, indigenous lineage, and then what's been eradicated from other people's lineages and seeing how I can learn and adapt and be a better person and also looking at where we're headed. I'm contemplating starting a family very soon. And I think a lot about why I want that and then also what are some of the things I need to teach not only my children, but the children that I have close relationship with, and who I want what I want to leave behind if I What if and when I leave this earth and so I feel like a lot of that is rooted on us repairing and making this earth viable for not only myself but the next, you know, seven generations as a lot of indigenous elders like to remind us of and I think that that has changed. I think initially, it was like, have kids have a good home and have a career. And now I think it's like, oh, I actually have a large impact. And I'm choosing to, like, step into that and help create a better place for not myself, but the next generations. And I take that pretty seriously, but also with comedy.

John Fiege

As you always do, which is fabulous. Yeah, well, I must say, having kids. You know, it made the cancer experience as life changing event seems small. It's a man that it really changes everything about man, it's a it's an experience of facing yourself and who you are and the assumptions you make about the world and, and what you thought you were what you thought your role was, you know, man, I'm going through that my oldest just turned 11. And I, you know, I feel like I'm going through that on a daily basis. Still, you know, it's not like, Oh, yeah, I did. I did that. It took a couple years. I figured it out. It's like, nope. Like, every day is a different. It's a different maze. Navigate. I'm excited for that journey. Yeah, well, good luck. That's it's it's a journey. Gabriela who's listening right now is holding a four month old baby about four months, three months. How old Gabriella? Oh, that's it. It's only been two and a half months. Oh, my goodness. Yes. All right. So at the end of your power to rely on video, we hear from Jade Begay, who is the creative director at at MDN collective, which is an indigenous advocacy organization. She says, We have already survived Apocalypse, we've survived genocide. We've survived settlers colonization, wiping out entire food sources. We've survived biological warfare. And we're here and we're still thriving. The rest of the world and non native folks have a lot to learn. What do you think the rest of the world has to learn about surviving on this planet?

Layel Camargo

I mean, I think a lot of it is like, everything that we think we're in pursuing of. If you see yourself getting to the finish line and not being fully satisfied, then it's probably like a false solution. I think that we are such a beautiful species like we've evolved to be able to feel to love to care to be smart and intelligent, to build rocket ships to see go to the moon to go to the great depths of the ocean. And yet at the same time, our day to day pursuit is based on a fictionality that is for the economic and political viability of the concentration of wealth and power. And I think that it is such a disservice for us as humans that we spend our day to day on that grind, and we're so dissatisfied, that we can enjoy our families we can enjoy being able to make something with our hands and have the time to do that. And so I think what the rest of society that Jade is kind of alluding to that we need to learn is that we need to be more observant, we need to slow down, we need to be more interdependent, we need to lean into some of those indigenous stories that we are fortunate enough to still have even though colonization tried to eradicate them, and try to learn and apply those in our day to day they're often telling us about how to be in better relationship with each other how to be in better relationship with other animals, how to be in better relationship with plant species with trees, the forest ecosystems, and they're all through storytelling. And I think those wisdoms are the things that a lot of us have lost because of migration A lot of us have lost because of being in a settler colonial country for more than just a handful of generations. And for a lot of, you know, our white relatives is like your whole existence has been a whole system of eradicating other people's cultures and that that is a large healing that we're all going to have to come into reality with. And I think that is in our indigenous wisdoms that we still have access to the I think we should all fight our hardest to preserve is where we will learn that realignment that will break the chain that keep us I mean, for lack of better words that keep us like locked into a system that is exploiting our bodies just so that somebody else could have a third, fourth, or fifth vacation home. And that like what justice does that do when your children are at home, needing help with homework, and you can even take 10 to 15 minutes from your day to do that, because you're trying to keep up with a mortgage that you've been locked in so that you can keep working, that the whole system has been rigged so that we can use our bodies for that. So I think it's the reclaiming of our bodies in order for us to reclaim our impact and relationship with the earth. I think that's that's a big part of me. Jade is Jade is amazing. And she has so much wisdom. And if you don't know who she is, you should look her up and try to follow her as much as possible. But that's that's what I took from from that statement.

John Fiege

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the people you've you found and put in your videos are really remarkable group. It's really amazing work that you've done with that. So I've asked you to bring a quotation to read that's been particularly meaningful and your journey in life, could you end the show by reading what you brought and telling the story of its significance to you? Yeah,

Layel Camargo

so I'm going to pull it up on my emails, I don't miss read it, because I've read it so many times that sometimes I feel like I make up my own interpretation. But the quote is, you want to fly, you got to give up the st that weighs you down. And that's by Toni Morrison in the book, Song of Solomon. And the first time I heard this, I was in high school. And I think I was like 15 or 16, at the time, and I was in this terrible rut where I was just like, ditching school every day. And just feeling so dissatisfied. I think that's the year I got a concussion. And I was, as I had mentioned, I was a competitive swimmer. So I wasn't even swimming. And then, you know, I guess I would now understand that as like, I was depressed. And I was sitting in my AP, but I was still an overachiever. Y'all like how I managed, I have no idea. But I was sitting in my AP English, like literature class. And we had to read this book, I hate reading. But my teacher did such a great job at like taking us through the synopsis and the summary of the actual storyline, which is very metaphorical. The book is very, very deep. And I was in such a deep, depressive place that I really connected with it. And I remember when we got to this line, which is one of the characters that were very, like, there's a lot of metaphors around this character talking about wanting to fly, the that, you know, a lot of it was like connected to suicide and depression. And I realize that this line, you want to fly, you got to give up this st that weighs you down, just spoke to my spirit, and has I have come across so many other passages that are very equally, equally inspirational. But I always come back to this one, because there's always a situation where I have to give up something in order for me to get to something else. For example, you know, in order for me to get to college, I had to give up what I knew. And I jumped into this place that I had no idea. Most recently I've been, as I mentioned, I've been going back and forth between northern and southern California, and I had to give up my home in Northern California in order for me to be able to have more mobility. I'm in a relationship with somebody who's autoimmune compromised, and she works and lives in Los Angeles. And so because of the pandemic, I had to start making some of those choices. And so I feel like every single situation that I have found myself where it's difficult, even in advocating for the planet, and everything, there's always something that is holding us down, that once we get the consciousness that we need to make a leap to something better that we have to let go of. And to me, this speaks to my whole purpose in serving the planet and everything that I've talked about. Now, it's like to jump into video production, I had to jump into something I didn't know and give up the comfort of, you know, sitting behind my work in order to jump into climate change, I had to shift how I was advocating for better lives for people and leave behind my more active participation in transformative justice. And so I feel like everything is in st. Sometimes you have to give it up, but it turns into st if you hold on to something that isn't serving you anymore. So I feel Toni Morrison and this quote has always guided me and I want to read more of her books. And sometimes I'll pick up you know, different different books of hers that actually have a lot of them on my bookshelf that I haven't read. But a lot of it is reading visually doesn't work for me audio book is the best. And so I feel like I always want to get into things but If, for some reason this quote is one of the things that whenever I've come across it again, I just want to reread it over and over. And it just shows to me that as a, you know, low income youth who grew up in a disadvantaged community that I didn't have to read a whole book, I just needed to have a connection with a passage in order for me to make great leaps that I don't think would have been possible had I not had this perspective from a woman who really gave herself the opportunity to sit through and be intentional about how she walked around the world and had big impact. And if this that's the impact she had on me, I can't imagine what she did for other black Americans who just needed to see themselves more represented in storytelling.

John Fiege

Yes, she's absolutely incredible. And do you? Do you think there are some things that weigh you down, like past trauma or abuse, the need to get rid of while there are other things that weigh you down? Like maybe caring for an elderly parent or a stepchild or even a healthy child, and you're better off accepting and dealing with the terms and limitations? On your desires to fly?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I mean, I feel like it never it never. I feel like it's about really being expansive with the statement because you know, some of the things that you're asking, I'm like, Oh, yeah, politics of disposability. Like we definitely live in a culture where people are more disposable, or situations are more disposable than others. So like, you'll have, you know, like folks who are in the disability community will talk about how disposable they feel from the economic sector, lack of an employment, and that, like, if we are talking about the misuse of the statement, it would be in like, thinking that you can just throw things and then somehow propel yourself to another level. The reality is, how about you throw your conditioning? How will you throw your perspective? How will you throw the ways in which your value is being challenged in this way, and make adjustments and so I think it's really thinking creatively and approaching this in a way that is the least harmful, I do not believe that. Things can easily just go away. But I feel like if you are dealing with a sick relative, and that is a limitation in your life, it's not about getting rid of the relative, it's about changing your perspective, and maybe growing your community of support. So if you feel like the embraces around the changing and adapting with your conditions, and I have I have this, like posted that I keep by my desk, that says your environment doesn't dictate your your environment doesn't dictate your conditions or your conditions don't. It's like my desk is a mess. I'm like, Where's that post it, but I just keep it around me and it says, My conditions do not dictate my perspective. And so what I really try to bring to myself is like, no matter what's happening externally, I always have options and choices, which is something very powerful for a queer, trans, migrant descent, indigenous descent person to be able to say, in a world where we're constantly being indoctrinated into a system that isn't meant to help us it's meant to hurt us.

John Fiege

Wow. Well, that's a great place to end. Thank you so much for joining me today. L'Oreal. It's been amazing conversation, as always, with you. Thank you so much.

Layel Camargo

Thanks, John.

Outro

John Fiege

Thank you so much to Layel Camargo. Go to our website at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can find the quotation Layel read from Toni Morrison, plus book and media recommendations, and links to Layel’s video works, and organizations they’ve worked with.

Chrysalis is produced and edited by Gabriela Cordoba Vivas; with music by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas, design by Unai Reglero, and mixing by Morgan Honaker.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Layel, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Contact me anytime at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can also subscribe to our newsletter and support us with a donation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

View Details

Lichen is a strange presence on this planet. Traditionally, scientists have understood lichen as a new organism formed through symbiosis between a fungus and an algae. But the science is evolving. It seems that there may be more than one species of fungus involved in this symbiosis, and some scientists have suggested that lichen could be described as both an ecosystem and an organism. Lichen may even be immortal, in some sense of the word.

In lichen, the poet Forrest Gander finds both the mystery of the forest and a rich metaphor for our symbiosis with one another and with the planet, for the relationship between the dead and the living, and for how our relationships with others change us indelibly. In his poem, “Forest,” lichen are a sensual presence, even erotic, living in relationship to the other beings around them. They resemble us, strangely, despite our dramatic differences.

The words of the poem teem with life, like the forest they explore, and Forrest’s marvelous reading of the poem adds a panoply of meanings and feelings through his annunciation, his breaths, his breaks. It’s phenomenal.

This poem, and his work more broadly, is about nothing less that who we are on this Earth and how we live—how we thrive—in relationship.

Forrest Gander writes poetry, novels, essays, and translations. He is the recipient of many awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his book, Be With. As an undergraduate, like me, he studied geology, which became foundational to his engagement with ecological ethics and poetics.

Forrest often collaborates with other artists on books and exhibitions, including a project with the photographer Sally Mann. His latest book of poetry is a collaboration with the photographer Jack Shear, called Knot (spelled with a “k”). He recently collaborated with artist Ashwini Bhat on an exhibition at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles, called “In Your Arms I’m Radiant.”

His poem, “Forest,” is from his 2021 collection of poems, Twice Alive.

Forrest has taught at Harvard University and Brown University. He spoke to me from his home in Northern California, where he now lives.

This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series, which focuses on a single poems from poets who confront ecological issues in their work.

You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Forrest Gander

Born in the Mojave Desert in Barstow, California, Forrest Gander grew up in Virginia. He spend significant years in San Francisco, Dolores Hidalgo (Mexico), Eureka Springs, and Providence. With the late poet CD Wright, he has a son, the artist Brecht Wright Gander. Forrest holds degrees in both Geology and English literature. He lives now in Northern California with his wife, the artist Ashwini Bhat.

Gander's book Be With was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. Concerned with the way we are revised and translated in encounters with the foreign, his book Core Samples from the World was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Gander has collaborated frequently with other artists including photographers Sally Mann, Graciela Iturbide, Raymond Meeks, and Lucas Foglia, glass artist Michael Rogers, ceramic artists Rick Hirsch and Ashwini Bhat, artists Ann Hamilton, Tjibbe Hooghiemstra, dancers Eiko & Koma, and musicians Vic Chesnutt and Brady Earnhart, among others.

The author of numerous other books of poetry, including Redstart: An Ecological Poetics and Science & Steepleflower, Gander also writes novels (As a Friend; The Trace), essays (A Faithful Existence) and translates. Recent translations include It Must Be a Misunderstanding by Coral Bracho, Names and Rivers by Shuri Kido, and Then Come Back: the Lost Neruda Poems. His most recent anthologies are Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin American (selected by Raúl Zurita) and Panic Cure: Poems from Spain for the 21st Century.

Gander's books have been translated and published in more than a dozen other languages. He is a United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow and has received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim, Whiting, and Howard Foundations. In 2011, he was awarded the Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellowship. Gander was the Briggs-Copeland poet at Harvard University before becoming The Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor of Literary Arts and Comparative Literature at Brown University where he taught courses such as Poetry & Ethics, EcoPoetics, Latin American Death Trip, and Translation Theory & Practice. He is an Emeritus Chancellor for the Academy for the Academy of American Poets and is an elected member of The Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Gander co-edited Lost Roads Publishers with CD Wright for twenty years, soliciting, editing, and publishing books by more than thirty writers, including Michael Harper, Kamau Brathwaite, Arthur Sze, Fanny Howe, Frances Mayes, Steve Stern, Zuleyka Benitez, and René Char.

“Forest”

By Forrest Gander

Erogenous zones in oaksslung withstoles of lace lichen thesun’s rays spillingthrough leaves inbroken packets a force call it nighttime thrusts mushrooms up from their lair of spawn mycelialloam the whiff of port they pop into un- trammeled air with the sort ofgasp that follows a fine chess move like memories are they? or punctuation? was itsomething the earth said to provoke our responsetasking us to recallan evolutionarycourse our long ago initation into the one-among-others and withinmy newborn noticing have youpopped up beside me love or were you here from the starta swarm of meaning and decay still gripping the underworld both of us half-buried holding fast if briefly to a swelling vastness while our couplingbeginsto register in the already awake compendium that offers to take us in you take me inand abundance floods us floats us out we fill each with the other all morning breaks as birdsong over us who rise to the surface so our faces might be sprung

Recommended Readings & Media

Forrest Gander reading his poem “Unto Ourselves” from Twice Alive.

Transcript

Intro

John Fiege

Lichen is a strange presence on this planet. Traditionally, scientists have understood lichen as a new organism formed through symbiosis between a fungus and an algae. But the science is evolving. It seems there may be more than one species of fungus involved in this symbiosis. And some scientists have suggested that lichen, and could be described as both an ecosystem and an organism. Lichen may even be immortal in some sense of the word.

In lichen, the poet Forrest Gander finds both the mystery of the forest and a rich metaphor for our symbiosis with one another and with the planet, for the relationship between the dead and the living, and for how our relationships with others change us indelibly. In his poem, "Forest," lichen are an essential presence, even erotic, living in relationship to the other beings around them. They resemble us strangely, despite our dramatic differences.

The words of the poem teem with life, like the forest they explore, and Forrest's marvelous reading of the poem as a panoply of meanings and feelings through his enunciation—his breaths, his breaks; it's phenomenal.

This poem in his work, more broadly, is about nothing less than who we are on this earth, and how we live; how we thrive in relationship.

I'm John Fiege, and this episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series.

Forrest Gander writes poetry, novels, essays, and translations. He is the recipient of many awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his book Be With.

Forrest often collaborates with other artists on books and exhibitions, including a project with a photographer Sally Mann. His latest book of poetry is a collaboration with a photographer Jack Scheer called Knot. He recently collaborated with artist Ashwini Bhat on an exhibition at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles, called In Your Arms I'm Radiant.

His poem, "Forest," is from his 2021 collection of poems, Twice Alive.

Forrest has taught at Harvard University and Brown University. He spoke to me from his home in Northern California, where he now lives.

Here is Forrest Gander reading his poem "Forest."

Poem

Forrest Gander

“Forest”

Conversation

John Fiege

Thank you. It's so wonderful hearing you read it, the intonation and the flow of the words and your emphasis is just like completely new hearing you read it, rather than just reading it myself. I want to start with the sexual imagery. You begin with "erogenous zones in oaks, slung with stoles of lace lichen." And that last line, "stoles of lace lichen the," that was one of the things that jumped out to me, is the is at the end of the line there. And you read it as if it was the end of the line rather than pausing and using it as part of the next stanza. But in addition to these, this erogenous zone, you've got thrusting mushrooms in a layer of spawn, and sexual imagery doesn't often accompany decomposition, and decomposers like lichen and in fungi, but this combination brings a strong sense of the interconnectedness of life and death of reproduction and decomposition. And so this is the cyclical world we live in, even though we're often myopically or delusionally, focused on some kind of progressive, linear, supernaturally immortal view of our lives. How are you imagining the reader encountering the beginning of this poem, and its images of sexually charged decomposition?

Forrest Gander

I'm, uh, trying to connect decomposition and eros, or the merging of more than one species, one individual, into a community. And I'm trying to use a syntax, which you notice, that also doesn't easily separate itself into clear, discrete sentences, but seems to be connected at both ends. And the sense is for us to lose our security in reading our feeling that we dominate the reading that we can figure it out quickly and divide it up into these parcels, and instead, create a kind of reading experience that mimics the kind of experience that we actually live, where everything is connected, and, and where the erotic and the decomposing are involved in the same processes.

John Fiege

Yeah, and thanks to Governor Jerry Brown, lace lichen is now the official California state lichen making...

Forrest Gander

(Chuckles) Isn't that great?

John Fiege

...making California the first state to recognize a lichen as a state symbol. And the poem, like you were saying, how the syntax is mimicking the organic world. Visually, the line breaks and the varied intended indentations appear as local lace lichen itself. Can you talk about your relationship with lichen?

Forrest Gander

Yes. You know, I think like you think, which is why you're doing these podcasts, that we're in an exigent historical moment where the environment is rapidly changing, and species are rapidly disappearing. And we've been hearing about this for decades without really responding in a sufficient way to the exigency of our situation. So I'm trying to find models of, instead of just heaping on more climate information horror, I'm trying to find models of other ways of thinking about our relationship with the world. And one, since I have a background in science—I have a degree in geology—is a scientific one. And I worked with a mycologist, named Anne Pringle, who taught me to see fungus and lichen in places where I hadn't been seeing them before. And it turns out lichen covers about 92% of the world you can find lichen in. And despite that, most people know what it is. They've seen, like on rocks, green, brown, little spots. It turns out, scientists don't really know what lichen is.

John Fiege

It's cool to find something that scientists don't feel like they know that much about.

Forrest Gander

It is! And yet, it seems like there's more more of those things that we don't really know that we can't measure, that we can't feel like we are in control of it all. And lichen is these two—more actually, it's not just an algae and cyanobacteria, or Sienna bacteria and fungus that get together it there's more organisms that are involved that come together, and are transformed completely and can't go back to what they were. And they formed this new organism that acts completely differently. And we're not so different from that, that our own bodies are full of other organisms, and even our DNA contains DNA of parasites that long ago became incorporated into our system. So lichen gives us a way of thinking about the mutualities that our lives are really made of.

John Fiege

Yeah, and this poem, "Forest," is part of that collection, Twice Alive, where you have "Post-Fire Forest" and other poems related to wildfire and the aftermath of them, and that collection follows on the heels of your previous collection, Be With, which, you know this moving series of eulogistic poems to your late wife. It seems that Be With wrestles with and processes personal grief, while "Twice Alive" adds the element of ecological trauma. How are those two realms of trauma-related phenomena—the personal and the ecological? And how do they play out in the poem?

Forrest Gander

The poems of "Be With”… they are so personally painful to me, I couldn't even read from the book after I published it. I think I read twice and then stopped reading from it. And one, as Albert Camus says, you can't live on in a grief or depression that's so terrible that it doesn't leave you with any openings. And so I wanted to find positive things to write about. But we're living during an ecological crisis. So I'm, and I've been writing about that crisis through really most of my adult life. But I wanted to find positive ways of reimagining our relationship with the world and maybe with death also. Because in lichen, and in the metaphor of like, and work, to two or more things come together and are transformed. I thought of human intimacy and the way that my relationship, my close relationships, I'm transformed in those relationships, I become something else. And that thing, which is welded in love, has a durability, and lasts. And in the same way, scientists—some scientists are saying that our whole idea of death comes out of our mammalian orientation. And that may be because some things don't die, and have theoretical immortality, and lichen, given enough nutrients, may be one of those things.

John Fiege

That's amazing. How does it make you feel to think about the possibility that there's something that actually has some kind of immortality?

Forrest Gander

How does it make us feel? I think it checks what we have always thought we've known. And it checks our instinctual perspective. And that kind of check, I think, is really helpful in terms of how we begin to reimagine our place in a world of other species that are completely different from us, and yet, share so much DNA.

John Fiege

Can you tell me about the Sangam literary traditions that you've referenced as an important element of your recent work in Eco-poetry?

Forrest Gander

Sure! What brought me to Sangam was looking for other models of relationships between the human and the nonhuman. And it turns out that, you know, 2000 years ago, in Southern India, there was a blossoming of literature, which came to be called Sangam, which means convergence, and that one of the two styles of that poetry, which is called Akam, it was considered not only unethical but impossible to write about human emotions, as though they were independent of the landscape around us, which affects our perceptions. And, it impacts how and what we feel. And so, using that model for poems and finding that the same five landscapes that come up in the Sangam poems are the same five landscapes that one can find in California, where I live, I used those Sangam poems as a kind of model for writing poems that expressed that mutuality of, of the human and the nonhuman in the five landscapes of California in my home.

John Fiege

isn't that so satisfying on so many levels to be able to look so far back in history? And to see people encountering the world in ways that are so resonant with the ways you are, we are encountering the world today in a completely different part of the planet, even? It's kind of amazing.

Forrest Gander

It is! And yeah, I think it's what we will find everywhere that, you know, the Native Americans in what we now called the United States. They didn't think that these European invaders would last very long because the European invaders hadn't lived for thousands of years, with animals and plants of this continent. And so they thought we would fail. And we have failed, we've failed to live in a way that takes into account our interdependence with the nonhuman world.

John Fiege

Well, jumping back into the poem, your word choices and juxtapositions and the sounds, and the rhythms of the words in the poem are so powerful. Here's a section that begins at the end of a stanza and carries on to the next, "a force call it nighttime thrusts mushrooms up from their lair." I like this idea of nighttime as a force that has the power to push things up out of the earth. And nighttime is when we rest, but also maybe when we have sex, or maybe when we don't have sex often enough. But how is nighttime of force for you?

Forrest Gander

Because there are so many processes, especially plant processes, that take place after the sun goes down. And that often, we're not thinking about night being a reenergizing process for other species. And also, I'm connecting nighttime, and that darkness with the half-buried to the things that go on in the dark, the things that go on underground.

John Fiege

Right! Well, here's another section I'd like to dig into. If you don't mind me reading, I feel bad reading your poem as you read it so beautifully, but just to go through it again. Like memories, are they or punctuation? Was it something the earth said to provoke a response, tasking us to recall an evolutionary course, our long-ago initiation into the one among others? So in this section of the poem, you shift from third person into first person plural, and we don't exactly know what the 'we' or the 'us' is, but I'm imagining it to be our species collectively speaking with the earth here. I personified a personified Earth. And each of us is merely one among others, one person among other people, but also humans are just one among many other species on the earth. So what's going on here, with the earth being provocative, the shift to first person plural, and to us thinking about our evolutionary course?

Forrest Gander

So I'm thinking of mushrooms as kind of exclamation marks that come up and call our attention to the nonhuman, and also how memories are like that, that they pop up from the darkness of our mind into our conscious mind. And that, what they remind us of, what any contact with a nonhuman reminds us of, is our involvement with them; our long ago initiated course as an interdependent species, as a community in a community, that we are one among many others, as you say, and that if we forget that, then we don't take care of the earth because we don't recognize that it's part of taking care of ourselves. And for many human communities and cultures earlier, this was de rigueur, it was understood that, that we were involved. Our lives were educations in how to live with the world around us. But we've become so separated from that in our urban cultures that we need reminding.

John Fiege

Right, right. Well, and that reminds me of another section of the poem, we have this phrase "newborn noticing." So the stanza it's in is, "and within my newborn noticing, have you popped up beside me, my love? Or were you here from the start?" And I love this idea of newborn noticing it suggests that we're noticing a new, but also noticing, as a newborn does, like Lao says—‘newborn baby, unbiased, undistracted, nonjudgmental.’ And this section feels like it touches on our deeply ingrained, anthropocentrism and ignorance of other species, and maybe how poetry can help us notice the world around us more fully, especially the other-than-human world. What is this 'newborn noticing' to you?

Forrest Gander

Right, I'm so glad you bring up Lao Tzu, also. Lao Tzu says, "Those who are not in constant awe; surely some great tragedy will befall them." And hear the 'newborn noticing,' again, that earlier passage you mentioned, that connects the punctuation to coming out of the ground of the mushrooms, to memories that come out of the darkness of our mind into our conscious mind. That's also the birth of something.

John Fiege

So here's... oh, go ahead.

Forrest Gander

I just like that you've been, I mean, some people ask, you know, what can we do in this environmental crisis, and one of the things we can do is to try to have a chorus of not just scientists and biologists, but a chorus of artists and priests, and poets. And that's what you've been doing: putting together that chorus of responses to our crisis. And I think it's going to take the voices of a lot of people from a lot of different trajectories, to affect any kind of change. So I'm proud of what you're doing.

John Fiege

Yeah, I totally agree. And I'm glad you notice and appreciate that (chuckles). You know, one thing I say all the time is, you know, our environmental discourse is dominated by science, economics, and policy. And those three things are all extremely important, and we have to keep on top of all of them. But it's leaving out the whole rest of the human experience. And if we are not all focused on this problem, and dealing with it in the ways that we know how, and the ways that we know how to interact with the world, we just... we can't get there because the problem is... it's so overwhelming as it is to leave it up to a small portion of the population to address is not sufficient,

Forrest Gander

Right? Or it would have changed already. And I think what art and poetry and literature can do is add a kind of an emotional and psychological approach to it, that can add it to the science, and can be more convincing,

John Fiege

Right? And not even just like, a way to convince people, but just a way to, to understand and feel the problem is so much beyond, you know, just a reason-based problem that you can solve or not, you know, but that it's part of who you are and what you value in the world and what you know, get you up out of bed every morning.

Forrest Gander

That's beautifully put. Yeah, I agree with you.

John Fiege

Well, here here's another line I love from the poem, "A swarm of meaning and decay." And this goes back to that cyclical view of life and death; birth and decomposition. And it also brings in this concept of meaning—this thing that humans are obsessed with. Our perpetual question of why—what is the meaning of life? And so much of the foundation of our understanding of meaning is bound up in the perpetuation of life. And oftentimes, in the avoidance of death, despite the need for death to bring life. Can you talk more about this "swarm of meaning and decay?"

Forrest Gander

So the "swarm of meaning and decay" comes just a moment after my "newborn noticing." And here, the poem merges the human—we don't really know for sure whether I'm talking about human beings, or I'm talking about other forms of life that are emerging from the underworld, like fungus, for instance. And in that merging of subjectivity and world, I'm trying to emphasize how the human life and the processes of the life—lives that aren't human—are completely related to each other. It's interesting to me that the kind of poetry that I write is sometimes categorized as eco-poetry, the idea of Eco-poetry is that there might be a way of writing in which human subjectivity and the non-human aren't so discrete from each other and that we might be able to show in writing, a different way of experiencing, or really, the real way of experiencing our relationships with otherness, which is that our subjectivities merge into otherness. That we're made of multiple creatures and were made by multiple interactions with the world. And I think that's what art has always done, is that it's expanded our way of thinking of the human.

John Fiege

Definitely, definitely. Well, let me jump into the last two stanzas in the poem, which read, "And abundance floods us floats us out, we fill each with the other all morning breaks as songbird over us who rise to the surface, so our faces might be strong." And again, there's so much richness in this language. But to start off with, how does abundance, both flood us and float us?

Forrest Gander

Well, our lives are abundant; the world is abundant. And that sense of merging with another in intimacy, in love, and merging with the world is a sense of expanding. This, you know, the notion of the self, and that's an abundance, it's recognizing our collaborative relationship with otherness. And it floats us out of ourselves so that we're not locked into our own minds, our own singular psyches, we fill with each other. And then again, here, the syntax is working in two ways. We fill with each other, we fill with the other "all morning". And then we revise that as we, as we make that break. We fill with the other "all morning breaks as birdsong over us." And I'm thinking here about how human beings, Homo sapiens, from the start, almost all of human beings have experienced birdsong since we were born, since early in our lives. We've grown up with the songs of birds infused in our minds, in our hearing. And how much of a part of us birdsong is. We're rising to the surface like the mushrooms coming from underground to blossom so that our faces might be sprung. And here again, the human and the nonhuman? Am I talking about mushrooms here? Or am I talking about human beings? I'm purposely talking about both in a way that is perhaps indistinguishable.

John Fiege

And as you mentioned, the poem starts with the imagery of the mushrooms thrusting upward. And then, at the end here, it seems that the we in the poem rises to the surface. And the last line of the poem is, so our faces might be sprung. This sense of emergence comes to that most intimate thing—our faces—and this vague 'we' suddenly has a face. And we are like flowers or emergent mushrooms in the nighttime. Where does this poem leave you? And how do you think about where you'd like to leave the reader at the end?

Forrest Gander

I think in that uncertainty about where the human and where the non-human begins, I think that's the strategy of the poems, which is presenting not some romantic notion of our involvement with others, but I think a form of realism, it's recognizing that our involvement with otherness is entire, that were composed of otherness. So I think the feeling of what a mushroom is, is just the face, it's this little—fruited body, they call it—of an organism that's underground that we don't see at all. And, in a way, that's what our lives are also: this brief flourishing of the face of something that's connected to a body that's much larger than ours. And that ambiguous space is what I'm interested in, in thinking about.

John Fiege

And does that noticing or that knowledge calls us to do something? In particular, do you think?

Forrest Gander 32:43

Well, I don't want to turn the poem into a didacticism. But the poem presents a vision. And that vision can contribute to the way that we see ourselves in the world. And the way we see ourselves in the world forces us to make ethical decisions about how we are and what we do. So in, I want to provide a vision or share a vision. And I want readers to do with it what they feel called upon to do. There have been different ways that we've understood our relationship and our role in a living Earth, through time and in different cultures. And the worldview that we have now, which is using the Earth very transactional, can be changed. And that art can inspire us to imagine those kinds of changes. In some ways, we're like the yeast that gets put with grapes to make wine. The yeast, which is a fungus, eats the sugar, and it secretes basically alcohol. That's what where we get alcohol from, and it proliferates and proliferates, and keeps producing alcohol until at about 13%. The yeast kills itself it dies because it can't live with an alcohol content greater than that. And we're like that yeast on this earth. We’re using up all of the resources, and we're proliferating, and pretty soon, there's not going to be room for us to live on the world will pollute ourselves out of existence, and the world will go on. It's just that we won't be part of it.

John Fiege

That's a beautiful place to end; with yeast, and lichen, and erogenous zones. All swirling around together. Can you end by reading the poem once again?

Forrest Gander

Sure. So, 'forest' is one of the five major landscapes that appear in the Sangam poems.

[See poem as transcribed above]

John Fiege

Forrest, thank you so much. This has been wonderful.

Forrest Gander

Thanks a lot, John. I'm really pleased to be a part of your series and to be part of the chorus of voices that you're putting together.

John Fiege

And it's a beautiful voice that you've brought to it.

Outro

John Fiege

Thank you so much to Forrest Gander. Go to our website at chrysalispodcast.org, where you can read his poem "Forrest" and find our book and media recommendations.

This episode was researched by Elena Cebulash and edited by Brody Mutschler and Sophia Chang. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas, mixing is by Juan Garcia.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Forrest, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Contact me anytime at chrysalispodcast.org, where you can also support the project, subscribe to our newsletter, and join the conversation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

View Details

Our love for the world around us and our passion for protecting that world can come from many different places. It can come from a connection to the land, or a magical experience we had with other people in a particular place, or our sense of awe from the beauty of the living creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But that love and passion can also come from seeing or experiencing the destruction of the same ecological web, from pollution in the air that rains down onto a playground, or the clearing of a wildlife habitat to make way for a fossil fuel pipeline.

Dave Cortez has been organizing for environmental justice in Texas for the better part of two decades. He lives in Austin now, but the love and passion that guides him came from the Rio Grande, the Sierra Madre Mountains and the high desert of West Texas. And from fighting a copper smelter and other threats to the land, air and water in and around his native El Paso. Dave has a fierce love for his El Paso Community. But cutting his teeth as an environmental justice organizer in his hometown wasn't easy.

Dave is now Director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, where he’s bringing his El Paso roots and years of experience on the streets and in the communities around Texas to the Sierra Club’s statewide campaigns.

I’ve known Dave for many years and used to regularly attend environmental justice meetings in Austin that he helped organize. I’ve seen him rise from an on-the-ground organizer to the leader of the Texas chapter of one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the world.

Our conversation tracks his education as an environmental justice organizer. From the playgrounds of El Paso to the gentrifying neighborhoods of Austin, his story reflects the changing nature of the American environmental movement and the exciting possibilities of more robust connections between community-based frontline environmental justice struggles and the large and powerful environmental organizations with nationwide influence.

You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

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Dave Cortez

Dave Cortez is a 3rd generation El Pasoan now based out of Austin where he lives with his partner and six year old daughter. He grew up and learned organizing on the frontera, where industrial pollution, poverty, gentrification, racism and the border wall are seen as intersecting issues. Dave serves as the Director of the Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter, and has been organizing in the Texas environmental movement for 18 years. Dave is supporting staff and volunteers across Texas who are organizing for power by centering racial justice and equity alongside frontline communities directly impacted by polluting industries.

Quotation Read by Dave Cortez

"There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. Malcolm knew this. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew this. Our struggles are particular, but we are not alone. We are not perfect, but we are stronger and wiser than the sum of our errors. Black people have been here before us and survived. We can read their lives like signposts on the road and find, as Bernice Reagon says so poignantly, that each one of us is here because somebody before us did something to make it possible. To learn from their mistakes is not to lessen our debt to them, nor to the hard work of becoming ourselves, and effective.

We lose our history so easily, what is not predigested for us by the New York Times, or the Amsterdam News, or Time magazine. Maybe because we do not listen to our poets or to our fools, maybe because we do not listen to our mamas in ourselves. When I hear the deepest truths I speak coming out of my mouth sounding like my mother’s, even remembering how I fought against her, I have to reassess both our relationship as well as the sources of my knowing. Which is not to say that I have to romanticize my mother in order to appreciate what she gave me – Woman, Black. We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present. We do not have to suffer the waste of an amnesia that robs us of the lessons of the past rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding.

We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how important it is not to lie to ourselves.

We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it is all about – survival and growth.

Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust. If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between anti-poor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women, and resurgent violence against Black people. I ask myself as well as each one of you, exactly what alteration in the particular fabric of my everyday life does this connection call for? Survival is not a theory. In what way do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people? Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives." - Audre Lorde

Recommended Readings & Media

Transcript

Intro

John Fiege

Our love for the world around us and our passion for protecting that world can come from many different places. It can come from a connection to the land, or a magical experience we had with other people in a particular place, or our sense of awe from the beauty of the living creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But that love and passion can also come from seeing or experiencing the destruction of this same ecological web: from pollution in the air that rains down onto a playground or the clearing of wildlife habitat to make way for a fossil fuel pipeline.

Dave Cortez has been organizing for environmental justice in Texas for the better part of two decades. He lives in Austin now, but the love and passion that guides him came from the Rio Grande, the Sierra Madre mountains, and the high desert of West Texas—and it came from fighting a copper smelter and other threats to the land, air, and water in and around his native El Paso. Dave has a fierce love for his El Paso community but cutting his teeth as an environmental justice organizer in his home town wasn’t easy.

Dave Cortez

Two of my close family members worked at the plant. My dad's brother worked at the plant and then worked at Chevron on the other side of town. And then his brother in law, worked at the plant and retired. And here I was, this younger punk, you know, sort of just not super close to the family, showing up at events and they asked what I'm doing and, oh, they think I'm a paid protester, you know, forget my education, forget what's at what I'm actually saying. You know, it's, deep cultural assimilation. It's deep colonization, sort of this Stockholm syndrome that develops out of poverty and repression. It's horrific, and it's sad to watch. People fiercely defend the only thing that has helped them in their eyes and not be able to acknowledge the harm that's been done. It's not different from, you know, addiction in that way, or depression.

John Fiege

Or domestic abuse.

Dave Cortez

Exactly. It's heartbreaking. It still hurts me to talk about.

John Fiege

I’m John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.

Dave Cortez is now Director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, where he’s bringing his El Paso roots and years of experience on the streets and in the communities around Texas to the Sierra Club’s statewide campaigns.

Here is Dave Cortez.

Conversation

John Fiege

Well, you grew up in El Paso in Far West Texas, and it's right on the border of Mexico and New Mexico. Can you tell me a bit about growing up there, and your family and how you saw yourself in relationship to the rest of nature.

Dave Cortez

I've got a little picture I'm looking at my my very first demonstration. It's a bunch of kids, kids meaning college kids, my my age at the time, about maybe 22, 23, and a big peace flag and we're hanging around what was called Plaza de Los Lagartos, Plaza of the Alligators. And we're there I think we're protesting, must have been continuing invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, but you know, I keep it up. And I keep pictures of the mountains of West Texas, the edge of the Rockies is what cuts into the central central part of El Paso, the Franklin Mountains. And then you have the Rio Grande, the heart and soul of that land. And on the other side of the river, those mountains continue into the Sierra Madres all the way down to the coast. It's majestic. It's, you know, that land is as colonized as is its people. You know, it's been, the river has been dammed up upstream in New Mexico, and two reservoirs to provide water for agriculture and farming and things like that, recreation. It was the only area of water that we we had access to when I was a kid. We would drive up to Truth or Consequences and load up on nightcrawlers and whatever other tackle and bait, and then take my dad's car and drive along somewhere, find a good spot. And fish from the shore for a couple of days at a time, camp, and, you know, that was a desert lake. It was wild for me, because we didn't have water, you know.

John Fiege

So tell me about what you did.

Dave Cortez

Well, we would just go up there. That was, that was our place to go get get access to water, you know, away from the desert, you know, growing up in El Paso, you just, it's It's dry, it's desert, we get, we used to average nine inches of rain a year, it's down now, you know, but the Rio was, it's always been sacred and it was special, it was a place you could go and see water. Not all year round, but most of the year and see it flowing and you look in any direction, away from the mountains, and you can see what feels endless, but it's actually you know, two or more hundred miles to the horizon, you see Thunder heads 30, 40, sometimes 45 or 50,000 feet high way far away, you think maybe you hope maybe those might come your way, maybe we'll get lucky and get a little bit of rain. Most times they don't. But with that sometimes you're blessed with the outflow that carries the smell of creosote, a native plant in the region that everybody's come to call the smell of rain. And, you know, even if you don't actually get the rain yourself, you might get some of those breezes and some of that wonderful smell. And it's, it's life giving, it's restorative. As a kid, you know, I was fortunate that my family made an effort to take us out into the desert quite a bit, we would go chase storms, we would watch lightning, my father would turn the AM radio to a blank station so we could hear the the lightning on the radio, the static pop. And we got a real kick out of that and we'd go off roading and find spots and park and you know, just hang out. And that was a pretty common thing for a lot of folks around town is just to get out into the desert. You know, my my heart and soul and my spirit is connected to that land, it is part of that land, I draw strength from those mountains, from that river. I worry about moving further away, what that might do to me, how how that might be a strain. Even just being here in Austin 600 miles away, it feels very far. You know, my family was middle class, I call it 80s middle class. And, you know, both my parents worked. I have two older siblings. And you know, we were all in public school and doing our thing. You know, everything seemed, you know, like The Wonder Years kind of situation. And you know, you don't when you're young, if you're fortunate, you don't see a lot of the issues around you. It wasn't until my teens, my parents split. And I was living with my mom and started to see a lot more other sides of life, some of the struggles, and just kind of notice more about the town, about the culture. But it was really when I moved back to El Paso after college, here in Austin at St. Edward's, where I studied political science and philosophy and environmental policy. When I moved back, it all started to come together how much I missed, how much I was removed from about my community and my culture in my youth. You know, so the language is the biggest example. We did not speak Spanish in my family. It was something my parents spoke to each other when they needed to talk about something that we didn't need to know about as kids.

John Fiege

Right, right.

Dave Cortez

You know, we didn't know about our indigeneity we weren't raised around that, we didn't know about the cultural connection to the land. I think in some way the spirit in my family drew us towards it. We would go spend time around those things, but we didn't really have conversations about it. And the biggest thing I didn't know about was how heavily polluted and contaminated the air was growing up. I tell a story about going into middle school. This time I was in in private school and Catholic school. Just being out on the playground it's a you know, concrete schoolyard kind of situation. And you run your hand on the on the railing and there's yellow chalk-like stuff and you don't think twice about it because it's like chalk. Or it's dust. Well, you know, in that part of town, downtown El Paso, it's because of the copper smelter. We had a 110 year old lead and copper smelting operation called Asarco that was less than two miles away from where I was going to school. And you know, you move on, maybe, you're a kid, maybe you wash your hands, maybe you don't. And it just, you know, when I moved back, I thought of that--I thought of all the times, I used to play in the dirt, like every other kid in El Paso does, you know, you don't got Barton Springs to go to or Greenbelt Creek, you play in the dirt, dig tunnels, and that stuff gets in you. And that's loaded with heavy metals, arsenic, cadmium, lead, you name it. It was it was a huge shock for me to learn that the land that I was around as a child, and the air that I was around as a child was just heavily contaminated. And I knew nothing about it.

John Fiege

But what was the experience like when you were actually in college and getting more heavily into activism? Like what was motivating you? And how did you see yourself in relationship to other folks?

Dave Cortez

Right on. Well, I can't leave out that the reason I came to Austin was because of my older brother and my older sister. I had never seen green, like this town, when I came to visit my sister in the summer. So I just was blown away, everything was green, there was water, it rained, I just felt like an oasis and I wanted to come here. So I went to St. Ed's, which ended up being, you know, expensive as hell, but really cool in the sense of, you know, an opportunity to learn, to be away from home. You know, and so, I didn't really know what to make of this town when I was here. I didn't know what to make of the people, the students, but by the grace of the Creator, in serendipity, I was thrown into a class on social movements. And that's a study in the 1960s. And so, you know, I developed a really foundational experience learning about the broader politic of American civil society, in that case, which blossomed into deeper learning around political theory and rhetoric, dating all the way back to some of the Greek philosophers, and modern day political thinkers, but I really got a ton of wild information into my head. In 2006, it wasn't here in Austin. It was on North Padre Island. The Austin Sierra Club was organizing a trip, there was a woman I liked at the time. And we were were fancying each other and were like, "Hey, let's go camping. I don't know what a crawfish is. But they're doing a crawfish boil. And they say they're going to clean up the beach." So we grabbed my SUV when we went and set up, and it was awesome to be out there around all these people we didn't know, you know, offering us free food and beer and just, you know, associating on this beach. And that, I really loved. Folks might not know this, it's like 60 plus miles of primitive Beach, outside of Corpus Christi. But I didn't quite understand what we're really doing until the next morning, right at dawn, when I was awoken by these huge sounds of tractor trailers hauling right by the water right in front of us. Just a caravan of them driving down to the other end of the beach to do gas drilling. You know, we get out of the tent, and we're watching this and I mean, you just want to, you know, throw something at those trucks, you know, and go put your body in front or something like "What the hell's going on?" And you're just watching the rubber, the plastic, you name it just fall off these trucks. And in their wake is just a mass of debris, and trash. And this is all in endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle habitat, its nest a nesting area for the Kemp's ridley sea turtle. And that's why we were there. And so, you know, right after that we all commiserated and got to work and picked up more trash than I think, you know, I've ever picked up. And I'm still shocked that that was allowed. But that's really where I started to take a turn and understand more about how the state facilitates this destruction, the destruction of the land and for the profits of few. And shortly after that I graduated, and that was it for my time in Austin.

John Fiege

So after you graduated from college, you went back to El Paso, and you became an environmental justice organizer for El Paso, ACORN. And it was shortly after your time there in 2009, that right wing activists did a big hit job on ACORN and brought down the organization in the US for the most part. An ACORN was was a powerful community organizing group at its height, and it had this unique community based organizing model. Could you talk a bit about the ACORN organizing model and how it, possibly, I assume, became part of your organizing DNA?

Dave Cortez

Just like learning about the 1960s is a pillar of my practice. The work with Acorn is right there with it. You know, it shaped me, maybe it's just because it's one of the first things I learned about, but it'll be with me, as long as I do this work and have breath in my lungs. You know, some people were quick to point to that it's built out of the school of the Industrial Areas Foundation and Saul Alinsky model of community organizing, and yeah, that's true. But, you know, I didn't know any of that. I didn't, you know, I was, I was just taken in by these folks. There was a guy, recovering addict, just trying to make his money doing his canvassing while I was hanging out at a coffee shop, kind of where I was living in El Paso, the university. And there's my day off and I'm out there hanging out. There's this dude, his name was Ken. Ken let me know how they were planning to reopen the ASARCO copper smelter, the big 120 820 foot tall smokestack that I grew up around, and I was shocked. And, and that's, you know, like I studied all these things. And I was like, wow, I cannot believe that that's right there, my mom lives over here, you know, she works there, I live over here. And, you know, I told them, whatever I can do to help: get more letters, spread a petition around, whatever I can do. And they invited me in to meet the team, which was a small team. And the first task they gave me was actually nothing to do with that it was just to go distribute information about free tax prep, helping people in a really poor community, not far from where I went to middle school in which is not far from the smelter, get access to tax prep, in English and Spanish. And at the time, I had a, I had a mohawk. I covered that thing up real fast. I wore a straw cowboy hat and went door to door knocking on people's doors, let them know about this. And Jose Manuel, the the lead organizer at the time, the director saw me and, you know, was into it. And, you know, they offered me a job after a few days of that. And the job was doing the same thing, plus inviting people to come to a community meeting about the reopening of ASARCO. So here's a way that we can help you. With some, you know, with your money, basically, your your bottom line, and also, there's a situation happening, that can affect and will affect your your health and well being, and the safety of your family. At the time, I didn't realize that there was a very intentional strategy there. But that strategy is essential to the work that we do as environmentalists and in climate justice activists around the country, and here in Texas, people are struggling, and you got to find ways to help them directly with what they're struggling with day to day, which is often their pocketbooks. And so if you can do that, you're going to build some trust, you can build some relationships, and then you might be lucky to talk to them about another bigger, more complicated issue.

John Fiege

That seems to be, like, a really beautiful definition of the difference between environmental justice organizing, and traditional environmental organizing, where environmental justice organizing, you have to start with the community, and make sure everybody you know, you have to deal with everything, you can't just isolate an environmental issue. Would you agree with that?

Dave Cortez

Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't know where that came from. I again, I'm not a I've read all the books about these things, but that, the model that was picked up by so many organizations and NGOs is is you know, it's it's almost like counter revolutionary, it's almost counterproductive. Like you're intentionally trying to marginalize your base in silos, you know, so, so whatever we do, you know, I try to espouse that in folks, some of the work we've done around Austin and other parts of Texas, that's the route we go, talk about bills, talk about bills every time and then, you know, start to figure out what else is going on, you know. With ACORN, a major flaw in the national model was that they would want to sign people up to be bank draft members, like you, you'd push a card onto them, "Hey, send this card in with your bank info or something. And we'll sign you up, you know, so you get access to our help." And obviously, I didn't do that. And as the work evolved, and we got more people canvassing and doing the work, we didn't do that either. It went against our values. Now, if there were middle class people, people with more means, yeah, we'd asked them to do that, too.

John Fiege

To contribute a certain amount each month.

Dave Cortez

Yeah. But we also did things differently, in the sense of, we organized, we found, you know, folks who are highly motivated by the issues, students, artists, residents in the nearby communities who wanted to contribute, and contribute their time, That theory in the ACORN model of, you got to get people financially bought in to be committed, I think can be challenged and there's lots of ways to get people plugged in. And so, one other key here was, you know, I wasn't brand new, this work wasn't brand new. There had been people fighting ASARCO before I was involved, obviously, and it had ebbed and flowed in terms of how much community opposition from just, like, working class people was centered. There was a lot of wealthier folks, politico types, you know, people who worked for legislators or senators or city people, you know, academics, things like that. And there was a handful of working class people in a smattering of workers from plant workers. So our job was really to find more just like students and people in the impacted communities, but it had been going on for so long that people were really drained. You know, parents who, whose children had MS as a result of this or had other health problems, they eventually backed off because it was just too exhausting to go up against the machine of the Texas State Government and go testify, and struggle, and they just couldn't do it anymore. You know, so we had to find new people and inject new life. You know, we made it a point to work with some of the younger folks to start a--not really an acorn chapter--but just a group on the campus called students for reform. And those kids are amazing, a couple dozen students, Chicanos, for the most part, all going off to do awesome things in their lives. But for three, three years, four years, they they led the fight, they're on campus challenging the administration to disclose more information and trying to represent student opposition to the reopening of the smelter.

John Fiege

I was looking up some articles about ASARCO. I found this this one 2010 article from John Burnett, who's a NPR correspondent based in Austin. So he talks about in 2009, the US Justice Department announced the settlement of one of the largest environmental bankruptcies in US history, in which ASARCO would pay a record $1.79 billion to settle claims for hazardous waste pollution in you know, at 80 sites, as many as 20 states, including the copper smelting operation in in El Paso. And he quotes some interesting community members like an 82 year old former maintenance worker named Miguel Beltran, who says, "you can't get a job here in El Paso compared to ASARCO, ASARCO is the best place to work. We were just like a family." And John Burnett, also quotes an anti-smelter activist named Debbie Kelly, who says, "They marketed very well. And the people of El Paso were brainwashed believed that this was the most wonderful thing El Paso could possibly have, this tall polluting contaminating smokestack." And this is this classic tension and environmental justice organizing. The big polluter in town is often the biggest and best paying employer as well, especially for folks with limited education. And these working folks often side with the company in some ways, and then at some times, kind of accepting the environmental problems for the economic opportunities. And the smokestack itself is this shining symbol of progress and prosperity that goes way back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. What was your experience with this tension between economic opportunity and environmental health in the organizing, and how that was represented in the media?

Dave Cortez

Well, let's take a few cracks at it, because it's a big question. You know, I'll start with my family, two of my close family members worked at the plant, my dad's brother worked at the plant and then worked at Chevron on the other side of town. And then his brother in law, worked at the plant and retired. And here I was, this younger punk, you know, sort of just not super close to the family, showing up at events, and that's what I'm doing and "oh," they think, "I'm a paid protester," you know, forget my education, forget what I'm actually saying. You know, it's, it's deep cultural assimilation. It's deep colonization, sort of this Stockholm syndrome that develops out of poverty and repression. It's horrific. And it's sad to watch, you know, people fiercely defend the only thing that has helped them, in their eyes, and not be able to acknowledge the harm that's been done. It's not different from, you know, addiction in that way. Or, or depression in that way.

John Fiege

Right. Or domestic abuse. Don't talk about it.

Dave Cortez

Domestic abuse. Exactly. You know, it's heartbreaking. It still hurts me to talk about. But, you know, that was the case. And you know, in that situation, just try and make peace with your family just, you know, get through the gathering. And you go on in, you know, some of my family was very supportive, you know, like, "yeah, that stuff's bad, and we should do better." You don't get investments in the well being of a community that like say, in Austin and all this money flooding here and STEM education being invested in and, you know, pre K access and, you know, nature based education and Montessori education, things like that. All of this is part of that, that conflict that pushes you to try and find the best thing you can for your family. And any of the workers that I organized alongside say the same thing. They were so proud and happy--Daniel Adriano another sort of lead visible face against the reopening of smelter, he's a former steel worker, you know, he tells a story about like, his dad worked there, his uncle, his cousins, you know, it was just like a family thing, like everybody, if you could get a job at ASARCO, you knew you'd be okay. You could raise a family, maybe even your wife or your spouse, your partner wouldn't have to work. But, you know, behind that, that Golden Gate, there was a lot of things that people weren't being told. You know, things like, maybe you shouldn't be taking your work clothes home and washing them. Right. They sent people home to wash, and that's very common in heavy industry in the 80s 70s 80s and 90s, you know, these these companies do that. In Danny's case, his kids got sick, you know, and they developed health problems. And he points to that as part of the reason washing his clothes in the same machine with, as his kids clothes. His wife feels guilt about that. Heavy guilt.

John Fiege

Yeah. That's hard.

Dave Cortez

You know, it's violating. You know, they had them--that settlement came because they, well, in part because ASARCO was caught for illegally incinerating hazardous chemical weapons waste materials from Colorado, in the smelter in these men weren't told about it. And they shoveled this stuff in there and were exposed to, you know, not recycled waste, just direct waste from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wow facility, a weapons manufacturing facility, Dow Chemical weapons manufacturing facility. That stuff was burned and they were exposed. You know, it's infuriating. And once they learned that, and they were falling ill and they had some evidence, they tried to organize other workers, let them know former workers let them know what was going on. And, and they encountered the same thing that I encountered with my family: just like this, this wall of acceptance, this willful ignorance. You know, I don't know about that, you know, just like denial, denial. And that was really hard on them. They got ostracized, they lost a lot of friends. You know, and so they found allyship in other people whose families had been sick, residents on the other side of the river in the Colonias, whose children had been severely sick, who were bleeding every night because of bloody noses and heavy metal contamination. You know, they found allyship with Debbie Kelly in the current place, which is sort of a wealthier neighborhood, you know, the educated, more white affluent folks who didn't want the smelter around. And this, that's how the "Get the lead out" coalition really came together it was--you just had these different interests aligned around this lack of justice, but the worker piece was always--and the economic piece was always always, you know, the straw that would break our back. And when ASARCO hired a PR firm, Teresa Montoya, to build their campaign, their marketing campaign to reopen the smelter, that was their big thing. I want to work for ASARCO I want to work for ASARCO and they march out all these Chicanos and throw them in front of a plant in their hard hats and talk about the good jobs and the pay. You know, it's tough to compete with. I know the people in Port Arthur, in Corpus Christi, even down in Brownsville, you know, and you name it.

John Fiege

It's the same story everywhere. It's the same story.

Dave Cortez

In Appalachia, as well, with the coal miners. Absolutely. The amount of energy it takes to fight Goliath. You know, you never have enough you never have enough resources. You got a PR firm In, you know, this facility was owned and run ASARCO, Grupo Mexico owned by Carlos Slim, at the time the wealthiest man in the world, you know, like, you're never going to have enough just to stop the bad thing. How are you going to strategize and organize in a way where you're talking about building the good, and replacing it with something better and taking care of these people? It's doable, it absolutely is. But at the time, when you're in the sock like that, it's very hard to pivot. And it's very hard to motivate people who have resources to give you those resources to bring on people to pay them to do that work. It's a boxing match, take your hits, and wait for the time to throw a punch. You know, and I think one thing that really hurt people hurt ASARCO a lot, was when it came out that at their operations in Arizona, El Paso and elsewhere, in the 70s and 80s, they had been using health standards, health assessment screenings that were based on a false standard that black men and brown men had a 15% higher lung capacity than white men, therefore, they could be--they could work 15% longer, they could be exposed 15% more than white men. And that came out. And you know, we had some incredible, dedicated educated volunteers who were digging this information up, who were, you know, putting it to the to the news outlets. And without the news outlets putting that information out there, like the New York Times that put it out about the hazardous chemical weapons waste, you know, we wouldn't have been able to really punch back. But that stuff came out and then we could organize with it. We made materials out of it. I made sure everyone knew that, you know, this is the kind of crap that this place was built on, no matter what they say now you can't trust them.

John Fiege

Right. Yeah. And this--another thing that John Burnett brought up in this NPR story is, he quotes some longtime community members who said that when the winds were blowing to the south toward Juarez in Mexico, the smelter would crank up production and send pollution directly into Mexico where they could, they could do nothing to regulate it or stop it even worse than in the US. And that's a pretty insidious and cynical route around US environmental regulations. American companies have this long history of sending their polluting factories and jobs overseas. But in El Paso, they could just send the pollution directly to Mexico while keeping the plant and the jobs in the US. Were you able to do any cross border organizing in El Paso to combat this kind of flagrant disregard for air pollution in Mexico?

Dave Cortez

I wasn't able to myself, or it wasn't a choice I made to do myself on the broader scale. Marianna Chu, who worked at the time for the Sierra Club, and as an independent activist and organizer did a whole hell of a lot and deserves a ton of credit. Marianna, and others were also were able to build relationships in the Colonias and get to talk to people that were, you know, the definition of directly impacted, right on the other side of the river. You know, you drive through, you pass on I-10, and you look to the left where you're passing through downtown, and it's just colonias and that's Colonia Felipe and some students who we'd found and became acquainted with at UTEP and were filmmakers and they were able to get over into the colonias and document the lived experience of some of these folks, and it's horrific, and they made a short film, I'm happy to share called The Story of Cristo and it's a little boy, you know, who's like that, he's bleeding, bleeding every night, because he's got heavy metal contamination, two years old. You know, and that story spread. You know, it was similar to other families all throughout the Colonia. Dirt roads, just full of metal, not a lot that could be done unless there was funds provided for it. And part of that settlement in relation to the chemical weapons waste was that ASARCO would give money to an outfit in Mexico to pave those roads. You know, that's it. Accept no wrongdoing. No, no responsibility. We don't admit nothing but, here, take this and leave us alone.

John Fiege

Literally, sweeping it under the rug. They're just laying asphalt over the dust.

Dave Cortez

Absolutely. I mean, that's that's absolutely right. And, you know, one interesting intersection here with with the colonias there was, as we marched towards the end of 2007 and 2008. You know, we're still fighting the plant, it started to become more and more dangerous and people were less responsive, and less receptive to being interviewed on camera with our comrades, and the gangs, were starting to move in to the Colonia and control things more. And that was that it wasn't safe anymore you can, the last thing you should be doing is driving over there with a camera. And so those stories sort of drifted away, those folks. And we weren't able to really work with them a whole lot more, because the narco war was starting to take root.

John Fiege

Because it's, it's how it's the same thing they do to fight you, they give your neighbor a job, and then and they get your neighbor working against you.

Dave Cortez

Absolutely, I mean, you know, you're not going to go toe to toe with the same weapons, you got to find a way to find their weak spot and cut them at that weak spot. And, you know, I learned that, I learned that in this fight, you know, we weren't scared of these people. We weren't scared of their minions. We weren't scared of the, you know, the former workers who wanted the plant to open. We weren't scared of them. They tried. Everybody tried to intimidate you, you know, but I'll start with, with that part, first, as a critical strategy. My, you know, 23 year old high energy, Mohawk wearin' self, right, like, I thought I knew it all and was ready to go, just like against that jerk down on Red River Street in Austin. And, you know, the first public meeting, debate, whatever, that we helped organize, some of those, those workers were there outside and they were, you know, they pick a smaller person, a woman to argue with, and she ain't scared of them. But you know, soon enough, there's, there's four or five of them around her and oh, man, you know, machismo is something all of us from the border suffered from and that kicked in hard. You just get into it with these guys. But, you know, that is not the way, that is not the way. You know, arguing and fighting, especially with the people, even though they're trying to get you to do it. The people who want a job in these facilities, the community members who just want a better way for their life, you cannot let the people at the top pit us against each other. That's why it's so important to be anchored in community talking about the nuance, you know, how to step and where, what to look out for, and really trying to build together, it has to be at the forefront.

John Fiege

Isn't that the history of American industrial capitalism, that for it to work, the, the industrialists need to pit various groups of people against one another, whether it's along lines of race, or income, or religion, or geography, or immigration status, or, or whatever. Like, that's, that's how it works. You need to divide people by those things, so they don't get together and they don't, they don't form a allegiances.

Dave Cortez

That's right. That's right. I mean, it's, but it's not something that's created by the oligarchs and the industrial capitalists and the power holders. It's something that they exploit, right? It's a, it's a wound that's already there. And, you know, it's something that concerns me greatly about broader civil society, and our failures to build community, in relationship in brotherhood and sisterhood. You know, in a true spirit of mutual solidarity, the more that we neglect doing that work, the easier it is for something to divide us or someone to exploit it, we see it, there's an endless amount of examples we can point to. But if you start your work in trying to build something better, and build through a positive relationship, it's going to feed in the long run, it'll help you endure all of the struggles that are going to come the conflicts, you know, the the infighting, the personality disagreements, whatever, you got to have some foundation and I learned that from that, that night outside the UTEP Library arguing with these guys that, "No, we got to we got to find a way to work with these workers. We got to really center the fact that people need work in jobs." And and that's where, you know, I really started to become close with, not the guys I argued with, other workers who were already disaffected, Charlie Rodriguez, and Danielle Riano and Efrain Martinez and others. You know, they became, in some ways they already were but from my work, they became the center of what we're trying to do and focus on, that this is actually not what we want these, these jobs are not the kind that we need, because look what they did to me. And so that's one piece. We've got to find a way to get people more meaningfully involved with the policies we're trying to change, so there's just a far greater number of people pushing for positive investment in something that is, you know, not just like NGO staff, you know, like, the less NGO staff and those boardrooms, the better. You know, get every day, people in their meeting, pressing for these decisions, and calling for it, and that makes it much harder for the special interests to push push their own agenda.

John Fiege

Well, that's a good transition to Occupy Wall Street. So in 2011, Occupy Wall Street began in New York City in Zuccotti Park. And then the movement quickly spread around the world, including to Austin. And I know you were heavily involved in Occupy Austin, and its campaign to get the city to divest from commercial banks. I participated in a couple of those occupy Austin Bank actions. And I don't think I'd met you yet. But, you know, as many people might remember, one of the big discussions and debates around Occupy was whether and how to organize and whether to make formal demands, which always makes me think of Frederick Douglass who famously said, "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did. And it never will." But those words from Frederick Douglass, were not the guiding light of many occupy organizers and participants, I'd love to hear you talk a bit about your experience with Occupy Austin, and the internal debates and conflicts about what it was and how it should operate. And what you brought away from that whole experience that you put into your organizing work after that.

Dave Cortez

Yeah, it was one of the most exciting times of my life so far, you know, to be able to three, four, sometimes five nights a week, meet up with 50 to 60 people not at a general assembly, but a working group meeting, and everybody's there ready to, you know, talk and break out and figure out the next step for getting people to close bank accounts. And, you know, organizing the rally and building the art and all those things. It was organic. I'm so happy that, I'm fortunate to have that experience in this city, and in this country. It was real, you see the romanticized version of uprisings in film, in writing, and on the news, different ways around the world. But, you know, this was that, at least the closest I've been to it, and it wasn't just the, you know, the sign holding, and, you know, petition gathering, we did all that. But it was, I mean, like people were, people were in, you know, the sacrifice time away from whatever they had going on around them to contribute to something better, and I have never seen an appetite, so large for participating and contributing to something that can change the world. I've seen it tried to be engineered a whole lot by NGOs. And it's laughable. It's insulting, you know, but for me at the time, it was it was like a dream come true. I remember a week before occupy launch, there was a meeting happening at Ruta Maya, and the room was full of people, and, you know, a bunch of white dudes, hippie yoga types on stage, you know, talking about some stuff, but I'm up there front row, just, you know, like, eager. And just like listening, I'm like, "This is great," you know, so they open the mic for everybody to come up and have something to say. And it was awesome. I'd just never seen it. You know, I was like, "wow, this is the Austin I always wanted to see," you know. Sure enough there was a meeting after that the next day, and the next day after that. And that kind of continued on for a few days. And then and then there was the day of the launch and lots of people packing City Hall. I mean, you couldn't move there were so many people out there and there were people talking for hours. Everybody was just willing to stay. And you know, I can't, I just can't believe how patient people were for weeks. And just like hanging out. You know, I think they just wanted something different. And they wanted to be part of something, like I said, Now, me, day one. I'm like, "yo, if we're gonna be out here, we need some data." And I got my clipboard. And my dear friend and former partner Betsy had been working for a group that was doing foreclosure organizing and getting people to move their bank accounts or close their bank accounts. And so, you know, I got some, some materials from her and took up like six clipboards, to the to the rally. And that was my whole shtick was just like, "Hey, y'all, we should close our corporate bank accounts," and people loved it. You know, it was like, "hey, here goes, put your name down, if you want to help out," and I mean, I filled up pages and pages of this thing, people who wanted to help out or close their bank accounts. And from that, you know, like, you'd find more people that were like, "Hey, I used, you know, I can help with that. And I used to work at a bank," or, you know, "I've got some time on my hands," you know. And so we, it was rad, because while all the noise was happening, the day to day that people were more familiar with Occupy Wall Street. You know, the the General Assemblies, the infighting, the conflicts with the unhoused folks and things like that, we had this parallel track of our bank action crew, which was doing, building switch kits, and, you know, trying to reach out to people to, you know, help walk them through how to close their bank accounts and stuff like that, or organize marches on the bank, so people could go in and come out and cut their credit cards, so we could all celebrate, you know, like, that was, that was great. That's classic organizing. I, you know, if you weren't down in City Hall, every day for that first month, you're missing out on something, you know, I don't think people appreciate enough how much work people invested into trying to maintain a space, like, maintaining a physical encampment is, you know, the people with the most knowledge on how to operate a small, little civil society is the people have been doing it before, which is our unhoused folks, you know. And there was a huge class conflict, that really emerged quickly, that the police and the city manager and others began to exploit, you know, by trying to bring more unhoused folks down to City Hall, allowing some to sell and distribute drugs, not enforcing any oversight, you know, we had women attacked, you know, and attempted assaults and things like that, that they were just looking the other way on. Because they wanted this to go away. And it was up to us to figure out how to manage that. And that really became the core of the non-bank action, kind of conversations. You know, everybody wanted to do solidarity with everything else. But it was really about, like, how do we keep this thing going? And how do we maintain our presence here? You know, do you negotiate with the city? Who negotiates? Who's responsible? Do we just say, you know, F-U, we're not going to talk to you all, you know, but like, through all that, like, some amazing friendships were developed, and I mean, like bonds, true, real friendships, and people may not be super close anymore, but all it would take is a phone call or text to bring people back together. You know, it's something I'll just value for the rest of my life.

John Fiege

Yeah, totally. And in 2015, The Austin Chronicle named you the best environmental activist in Austin for your work as, "The heart and soul of Sierra Club's 'Beyond Coal' campaign in Central Texas." And I know you've done all kinds of work with the Sierra Club. But I wondered if you could talk about what the fight has been like to transition from dirty energy to clean energy in Texas, which, of course is the oil capital of the country. And looking over the years you've been doing this work, what stands out? What have you learned from this massive campaign?

Dave Cortez

Like you said, it's Texas, we're the number one carbon emitter in the country, and a huge one in the world and the United States cannot meet the modest two week goals in the Paris Accords unless Texas gets its act together, you know, and we got some real problems here, not just from fossil fuel pollution, but from industrial and toxic pollution and just from our livelihoods, you know, there's another story out yesterday, you know, are we going to have power next week, because we're going to hit hit the peak of the summer. You know, it's hard to think about the fight for clean energy in Texas without thinking about the power of the fossil fuel and industrial industries. There's there's been a battle since 2000 and 2005 to stop new power plants and advocate for clean energy. The fuel type changes and you know, back then it was coal and then it is gas and and now, it's like, oh my god, we just don't have enough power. Now, how do we get it? But it's still the, you know, trade associations, the Association of Electric Companies in Texas, you know, Oncor, which is an electric distributor company, NRG, you go down the line, Energy Transfer Partners, all of these fossil fuel corporations, making billions and billions of dollars, still call the shots, they still influence, and basically direct, decision makers on what is going to be acceptable in terms of, even, discussion. You can't even get a hearing in the state legislature on flaring reduction, which is a very modest thing. Because they have enough influence to make sure that that conversation is not even going to happen. And their members, like Energy Transfer Partners, and others are some of the biggest donors to politicians in the state. So, you know, why shouldn't we listen to those people? Kelsy Warren, Dakota Access Pipeline CEO, behind Energy Transfer Partners, gave a million dollars, his largest donation ever to Governor Abbott, right immediately after the legislative session. And this is after his company made well over a billion dollars, I think it's closer to $2 billion, coming out of the winter storm, Energy Transfer Partners. While people died, these people decided it would make better financial sense and profit sense to go ahead and withhold supplies of gas to power plants and gas utilities, and let the price go up before they would deliver that gas and therefore make a ton of money. Forget that more than you know, some say 200, some say 700 people died, many of them freezing to death, many of them carbon monoxide poisoning during the storm, forget that. It's all about the money. And that's the biggest takeaway here, just like we would be fighting Carlos Slim, and ASARCO and other folks, you got to look at what the interest is, you know, why are people supporting this? Why are they facilitating this? I know, it's easy to just say, well, we just got to vote these people out. Well, you know, we've got to come up with strategies that will allow us to do that. We've got to come up with strategies that will make it so, in this state that's so heavily corrupt and captured by corporate interests, fossil fuel interests, industrial interests, that we're going to find a way to cut into their enabling electorate. Their enabling base. And it's more than just a voter registration strategy. It's more than just a mobilization strategy, or getting people to sign a petition, it gets back to what we started talking about with ACORN. What is their base? Where are they? What are their interests? And where does it make sense to try and make some inroads, and cut away? And unfortunately, we just don't have enough of that happening in Texas. There's an effort to try to build coalitions with, you know, some social justice and some youth focused organizations. But we're all part of that same progressive "groupthink" or Democratic base, that we're not actually doing much to expand, other than registering some new voters. And there's a lot of unpacking that needs to happen. You know, can we go talk to some steel workers or some people on the Texas-Mexico border, who started to vote more for Republicans and Trump, because they were worried about the Green New Deal? They're worried about losing their oil jobs. Why, I mean, like, to this day, we haven't made that pivot collectively as a movement, and it's hella frustrating.

John Fiege

Yeah, it gets back to what we were talking about earlier with, you know, kind of the DNA of environmental justice orientation to this work, the work has to be intersectional if you want to transition Texas, the oil capital of the world, to to non-fossil fuel based energy, you know, you need to deal with, with voting rights, you need to deal with the bad education system, you need to deal with healthcare issues, you need to deal with police brutality, and you know, it's like it's all connected. To think that we can remove this issue of decarbonizing our energy source from all of that other, you know, what some people see as messy stuff is delusional, it just doesn't doesn't work, doesn't make sense. Especially, and it's so obvious in places like Texas, where, you know, what are they doing? They're just trying to, they're trying to suppress the vote, like, they know what the deal is, you know, they're they're losing numbers. They need to disenfranchise more voters in order to maintain this system.

Dave Cortez

You know, there's an important caveat and distinction for environmentalists, environmental justice folks, or whatever. You know, if you talk to John Beard with Port Arthur Community Action Network, you know, he's a former steel worker. His whole pitch in Port Arthur is about youth engagement jobs, investing in the community. He's willing to talk to the companies, things like that. It's not environmental-first type of thinking. But the enviros, and you'll see this any legislative session, if you pay attention, we are on the far losing side of the losers. Okay, the Democrats being the losers, you know, Democrats in Texas carry House Bill 40, which is the ban on fracking bans. You know, Mrs. T, Senator Senfronia Thompson out of Houston, she authored that bill, Black Democrat, you know, revered for her work on voting rights and reproductive justice. You know, enviros, we are way, way out of the mix. And so even if we got those organizations doing the work you're talking about, to speak about climate change, speak about the grid, you know, pollution, things like that, we'd still be part of that losing side. And I'm not saying we need to need to be building out into red country, or rural country. It's a critique of the broader progressive movement that we aren't doing enough to find people, the greater majority of people that don't participate in our process, in politics, in voting, except in presidential elections. We are not doing enough to reach people who are just going about their lives and do not give a s**t about the things that we post online about our petitions or positions, or our op-eds, or whatever. That is where the fight is, we've got to draw more people in while the right wing tries to keep more people out. That's our only pathway. And so--

John Fiege

What does a just transition mean to you?

Dave Cortez

It's what we've been talking about, it's a whole shift in, you know, the operating system of a of a community, whether it's a town of 50,000 people or a state of, you know, 25 million. Just transition means that we're taking into full consideration, our triple bottom line, you know, our health, and shelter, and food, you know, our economics, our jobs, and ability to put, you know, bring income and get the things that we need. And, you know, just the land and our ecology. Just transition has to anchor that we are--that those things are connected, and that they're not--they can't be separated, that in order for our families, and our children and our neighbors and all that, to have a future and have a livelihood, we need to be concerned about our air quality, concerned about our water quality, but also about the quality of their education, the access to healthy food and grocery stores. If you were to talk to people and ask them to envision what, you know, their dream society looks like, which is a hard thing for people to do nowadays. You know, you'll hear some of these things and just transition is the process that we take to get there. It's not about you know, getting a worker from a fossil fuel job into a clean energy job.

John Fiege

Well, and speaking of that, you know, in addition to your beyond coal and just transition work, you've done a lot of work with low income communities of color in Austin around a whole assortment of things: illegal dumping, access to green space, community solar and solar equity, green gentrification among among a bunch of other stuff. Can you talk about gentrification and how Austin has changed in the time you've been there and the tension that's emerged about Austin becoming one of the greenest but also increasingly one of the least affordable cities in the country?

Dave Cortez

Yeah it's tough. People in Austin are largely still here to just party, have fun, make money. You know, they're really eager to do what they moved here for, you know, go do the cool thing and the restaurant, and the corporate soccer game and whatnot, you know, fine, whatever, I'm not trying to harp on people who want to have a good time, the problem is that there's no thread of the greater good of civil society, of trying to care for those in town that struggle and have the least. That doesn't exist here. It's just, it has lessened every year, it might be new people moving here might be more money here, and people being displaced. But you know, for the most part, with gentrification, the white wealthy middle class here is strong, you know, median family income is close to $90,000, you know, qualifying for affordable housing, you can make a ton of money and still qualify for affordable housing. And the people that move in, my brother calls them the new pilgrims. They're not super interested in learning what was there before, they're interested in what's around them now, and what might come in the future. And we do have a responsibility to make sure that we not just offer up but press on people at the doors, at community events, you know, cool, fun, s**t, barbecues and things like that, to learn what was there before they came, you know, sort of an onboarding into the neighborhood. And we did some of this in Montoplis, my old neighborhood that I lived in before I moved to South Austin, you know, people who I was like, "man, they're never going to help us," they're just, you know, part of that new white, middle class "new pilgrim." When I learned the history of the community, and the issues that were going on, I said, "Hell, yeah, whatever I can do," from, you know, cooking funding, speaking, writing letters, coming to meetings, you name it, you know, but we had to keep on 'em. And we had to give them a meaningful task. There is a lot of power, gentrification sucks. But I've really tried to work with myself on not being--automatically hating folks for just trying to move in into a home. But you do have to challenge folks on how they behave after they've moved in, you know, in Austin with our urban farming and desire for new urbanism and density and things like that, the culture of I know what's best is so thick, and it's really hard to stay patient. But I try to, even when I get mad and angry and frustrated, I try to remind people of what's called the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, and the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond's Principles of Anti-Racism, encourage them to read them, and to do everything they can to just shut the F up, and go listen to the people that they're talking about in affected communities. And get a sense of where you might be able to build some common ground.

John Fiege

I actually wanted to spend a minute on that because, you know, you started, or you were one of the organizers, who started environmental justice group in Austin years ago, and I went to a bunch of the meetings. And I feel like that's where, you know, we got to start hanging out a bunch for the first time. But you would always start the meetings with the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing. And, you know, those came out of this meeting hosted by the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice and Jemez, New Mexico back in the 90s. Can you talk more specifically about the principles and why they're important to the work you're doing?

Dave Cortez

So when you're thinking about undoing racism, or being an antiracist or antiracism work, you know, you're acknowledging that you're confronting a built system, something that's built under a false construct, race, you know, and when you're going to combat that, there's, you know, there's a lot of issues to it or whatever, but the Jemez principles will help you see, how do you approach people and talk about it? You know, for example, listen, let people speak is one of the principles, you know, listen to the people on the ground. Don't barge in there don't don't come in with your your petition and your fancy stuff and, or be online and be a dick. You know, go try to introduce yourself and get to know people. You know, ask questions. That's okay. You know, people were very generous for the most part, whether they're Black or Brown or or Native or Asian, or you name it, you know? If you're able to ask questions and listen about an issue, people will likely talk, you know. Trying to work in solidarity and mutuality is another big one for me, you know, it's not just about like, "I'm here to help you," versus, "I'm here because our struggles are connected and intertwined. And for me and my family to be successful and get what we need, it depends on your family, and your people being successful and getting what you need. How can we work together to make sure that we everything we do reinforces that and that we lift each other up?" A lot of things that we see is very transactional in the advocacy and activism world, you know, sign this, and then we'll go do that for you, or will tell the person to do the thing and change? It's not so much how can what can we do to help you directly, like we talked about bills and taxes and things like that. But also, we have to know that, what is it we're gonna get out of it, it's not just this potential policy outcome. There's tremendous value in human relationships. And in culture and community building, you're going to learn about the people in your community, you're going to learn about the history, you're going to learn, you know, and make new friends and maybe some recipes, maybe, you know, some new music or something. It's limitless. You know, humans have tremendous potential in beauty. But we we rob ourselves of that by, you know, retreating into our silos in our, in our four walls. You know, Jemez can give something--these are short, short, little principles that can give people something to read and reflect on, they can be kind of abstract and theory based, but when you're advocating for change, and then you look at these and you ask yourself, "sm I doing this?" There's tremendous potential for learning, and changing how we do our work.

John Fiege

And the Sierra Club is one of the oldest large-scale environmental groups in the world. And it's traditionally been a white organization. Its founder John Muir made racist remarks about Black and Indigenous people, and in 2020, the Sierra Club officially apologized for those remarks and the white supremacist roots of the organization. In Texas, with your work and your presence, I feel like you've really helped the Sierra Club evolve there, where you are, and you thrive there, despite the structural and institutional challenges. Can you talk about what it's been like to come into the Sierra Club as a Chicano or organizer and from El Paso?

Dave Cortez

Yeah, thanks for that. I mean, there's a crew. First and foremost, there's a crew of brilliant and dedicated people within our team and our staff that have pressed and carried the torch for, you know, we pushed for that, what you just talked about. Bryan Parras and Bekah Hinojosa and Shane Johnson and Christopher Basaldu, and Vanessa Ramos and Misti O'Quinn, Natalie Martinez and others of our Black, Indigenous and Persons of Color caucus, in our staff, and others who came before, we've pushed for these acknowledgments. And it's, it's been tough, it's wonderful to be surrounded by so many rad folks right now in the staff. Because I remember when that wasn't the case, you know, Texas is unique in the Sierra Club universe, because we, you know, it's a chapter, and we're not the national organization, so there's a lot more room to mold and break apart and reshape things. The national organization, you know, is a lot more difficult just by sheer size and numbers and geography, you know, but I still remember when I was doing the Blue-Green Alliance stuff, and working with Sierra Club, you know, the countless numbers of boardrooms I'd walk into being the only brown person. And on top of that, you know, not being a policy person or someone with advanced degree, just an organizer, the number of years that I was described as being the rabble rouser with them with the bullhorn, you know, are the one who could give a speech or something like that, not acknowledged for any thing else: the critiques the strategy, the ideas, you know, that just recently begun to break away from that as I've been around more people and done more things. The environmental world is white, it's classist, it's racist. And, you know, it's gonna take time for that to really shift, you know, and I really just, again, admire and appreciate not just in Sierra Club, but all across the movement, the BIPOC folks and the Persons of Color that are holding it down and doing the work. You know, I look at groups like Southwest Workers Union in San Antonio that has stayed on steady course in the last few years just to look at the whole picture of just transition at community building, and taking care of their people in the whole, and I'm so grateful to see that that's a thing and that they're still carrying that mantle. Our membership in Sierra Club, as most folks who know the organization would know, is older and whiter, mostly male, mostly middle class, and upper middle class. So to have folks with these different backgrounds and demographics, working there, speaking loudly, calling for change, inevitably causes conflict and tension. And it wasn't until a few years ago, where I started some of the things I've been telling you today about building and understanding and culture building really started to take root because before then I was very similar to how I was at ASARCO, like, screw you, s**t or get off the pot. And that wasn't really working, you know. And, for me, the solution to the pollution, as Bobby Seale said, of this problem of racism and classism in the environmental movement, it is dilution, but it also is people's uprising and revolution. There are so many folks out there who care about the future of the land, the air, the water, and our grid in Texas. And we need to do better to afford them opportunity to be leaders in this work. There's a belief in environmental circles that I do not understand at all, that only folks who have been around for a while who know the stuff, know the issues can be the ones that are the leaders and the chairs and the board of directors and things like that. And that's just way off base. You know, if we don't invest in cultivating new leadership and letting folks have the mantle to make decisions and make mistakes, then all those folks are just going to die off and run this thing into the ground, which is happening in a lot of ways. And you know, that's a that's a constant struggle for me and for others in trying to get the folks, who've held power in Sierra Club and environmental spaces for, many times more than 20 years, be willing to let go of that power.

John Fiege

Well, years ago, you wrote a Facebook post that you titled "Earth Day Reflection on Privilege in Environmental Justice Organizing, I want to just quote from you for a second, you wrote, "The world's a different place when you see a tower of death every day, from most every part of your city. When you can run your hand across your school railing and see yellow chalk like particulate pollution on your fingertips. When plant workers complain of excruciating pain and illness while showing you scars and tumors on their arms. I personally hold a tremendous amount of internalized anger and oppression inside my body, and my heart that fuels my organizing and at more times than I'd like to admit my pure hatred." While you acknowledge the importance of anger and organizing you go on to say, "but I've learned that anger only carries you so far, that without a crystal clear symbol of oppression like an 828 foot tall smokestack, a dying husband or wife or ill child, you have to rely on more than anger to build a movement. Humans have a history of forgetting our history, we move on." So this is just a short Facebook post, but it feels like there's a lifetime of experience behind it. Can you talk a bit about what you were getting at here, and how you've come to now view the relationship and tension between anger and movement building?

Dave Cortez

You know, more often than not, people are compelled to action in a fight or flight mode, run away or challenge without much thinking, you know, it's our natural reaction. And it becomes more and more difficult to reflect on what caused us to take action. And to think further ahead about what are we trying to actually build and do. As I've mentioned several times, we don't give people the opportunity, nor the space to have those kinds of reflections, and then listen to others and take that and actually use it to inform how we're going to do the work that we're setting out to do. I have a lot of guilt around the ASARCO work, because, you know, I had the opportunity to leave. And I did, and I feel like I left folks behind. Any community I've organized in, I carry guilt, because, you know, I've moved on with my life, every single one, it's a tough thing, you know, and it's a testament to the need to leave behind infrastructure as best you can. I believe, just like, we need social workers and firefighters and electricians and plumbers, we need organizers available at scale, to support communities in their--in this work and in their infrastructure, building and maintenance, you know, and without it, I think we just depend on people to do it. And that's not sustainable. You know, in through all of that, we can look back on things, we can learn together, we can look back on our--what we did our struggles, or our tactics or strategies, our demonstrations from the KKK rally to the Iraq war to Occupy, Save our Springs, whatever, and try and find ways to share that knowledge in alignment in, in spirit of the indigenous peoples of the land, and the culture and the and the lifeways that they've carried, and that we've moved away from so much. You know, it wasn't until the water protectors work that I became involved in, in 2016, that I really, and my brother, ___ Ward, really began to realize how much harm the anger was doing to me, spiritually and physically and mentally, it was always easy to get angry, and then use that, you know, but I found myself spread thin, people around me telling me I gotta slow down, I was doing too much, I gotta get some sleep, I couldn't sleep, I was drinking a whole ton, you know, and, through that work and through prayer and ceremony, and time in the lodge and around the fire, and in listening to various elders in the community, I was able to really, you know, let go of some of that and still hold it but let go of the tension and try to move towards, what is it I want to build in my life? What I want to work on in my life and, and bring into the world, you know, and without all of that I wouldn't have I wouldn't have crossed paths with my partner, we wouldn't have gone camping at the launch of a pipeline camp in West Texas and come across some sacred red tail hawks, a whole family of them, we wouldn't have had that trip together, we wouldn't have had our daughter, and all the things that have come since.

John Fiege

There's an Austin American Statesman article from 2016 that talks about you and Pete Rivera door knocking around various low income neighborhoods of color in Austin, talking about energy efficiency. And Pete Rivera is is the president of the Springdale Airport Neighborhood Association. And he's quoted in this article talking about educating low income residents on lowering energy usage and accessing energy rebates and subsidies from the city. He says "it's just a lack of us reaching out to people where they are, actually at their homes. Nobody has gone house to house." And part of the work you and Pete are doing here is countering that classic narrative from fossil fuel interests, that environmental protection, and a transition to clean energy will hurt poor people. But I also just love the sentiment of the story: Let's go house to house and start conversations with about these important issues. An that's what you've been talking about. It's just, like, true community organizing and having known you for a long time now, I'd say that this act of walking around the neighborhood and starting conversations, which I've done with you and I've seen you do it, and, you know, learning from people and sharing your knowledge, I'd guess that that's kind of your your sweet spot and where you're happiest. What do you think about that?

Dave Cortez

Going door to door in a way where you're not just, like, trying to get something quick and hit a certain quota of doors in a certain amount of time, otherwise some, you know, aspiring politician or political staff member is gonna get on your ass because you didn't hit it, you know, like, it's wonderful man. It's just talking, you know, it's been around people getting to know and through it all. The more tactics and cards you have up your sleeve to deploy, you know, about, I'm talking about the houses in the neighborhood going up for sale, or the loose dog you saw or the chickens running around, or whatever it is, you look around, you know everything around you, and that's all of your material to use to chat, you know, to get to know somebody. It's just, it's beautiful it's authentic. And people may invite you into their home, before the pandemic, they might invite you into their home, they might offer you some food, or water, show you around, I mean, you could spend an hour in one house, on one door, and learn so much there. And it's just such a wonderful experience that I want as many changemakers as possible to be afforded the opportunity to do that. And then to come together and talk about what that experience is like, what they learned, you know, and then to strategize together about how do we actually, you know, as strangers in the neighborhood that don't live there? How do we make a plan to cede the space to these folks and support them, so they're the ones going around, like Pete, and talking to their neighbors, and building some infrastructure, like the Springdale airport Neighborhood Association, and help them you know, supply their meetings, if we need transport, to their meetings, food at their meetings, you know, whatever it is. And, you know, the wild part about all that work is, technically it wasn't really, you know, what I was "funded to do" by the Beyond Coal campaign, I was supposed to shut down a coal plant.

John Fiege

Right, I always noticed that you always had your hands in so many different things. And I would always be like, "this isn't a Sierra Club work." This is like, you're involved in so many different organizations, and so many different people and communities. But that's, that's what community organizing is.

Dave Cortez

That's right. And that'll be my role going forward and talking to funders and other other folks about, you know, defining the "work." You know, I made the case, and I laid it out for the coal people in Sierra Club, why that strategy mattered, in terms of their city council votes and the need to build a base in city council districts where we had, you know, sometimes 10, or fewer members, we had a strategy for actually doing it, and doing it successfully. And we did it in a way, John, that, yeah, in the end, we got those council members to vote against the coal plant and vote for clean energy and all that stuff. Sure. But all along the way, we were providing direct help to people, and letting them know about smaller trash bin sizes they, they could easily, we could help them apply for, in some cases, they could save $30, $40 a month, right then and there. Or get an additional recycling bin, then learn how to recycle.

John Fiege

That's awesome.

Dave Cortez

We helped advocate for safer routes for the kids to go to school, so they wouldn't have to crawl under the train to go to school. And most visibly, most known is the cleanup of the Red Bluff Vista. 50 years of illegal dumping of oil and construction materials, atop one of the most beautiful views in all of Austin. You know, working alongside Pete and his brothers, you know, as we did all this, we talked to people about what do you know about La Loma? What do you know about Red Bluff and the hill up there? You know, Hungry Hill, how do your kids get to school? You know, what do you think about that new house that got built, rent and things like that, you know, we're not talking about coal, we're not talking about solar, you know, we're helping on things that they need and that they know. And everything that we touched around there was highly successful because it was community led, it was the concerns of the community put front and center. The only thing that we couldn't confront and that I hold some guilt around is the displacement and gentrification because that is just a tsunami that's incredibly tough to fight back. And now we're seeing Springdale airport be targeted for some incredibly insane redevelopment.

John Fiege

Sp we're wrapping up here, how does environmental organizing in the environmental movement need to change to quickly and effectively address the mounting ecological crises we're facing around the country and around the world? What are you seeing from Texas?

Dave Cortez

You know, we need to acknowledge right away and be fully clear that even with our, you know, C3 and C4 and different funding pots, we need to acknowledge that the root of the problem here is the political system that is operated and controlled by fossil fuel and corporate interests, and is going to continue to prioritize the needs of those corporations and companies over the needs of the people, and that we need to defeat them. And then we can work backwards to figure out the strategies to defeat them. We're going to see that, you know, we need to do as much local work in Texas as possible, you know, cities, towns, school districts, around some of the positive things like clean energy, like bill savings and energy efficiency, the winter storm and the grid collapse has presented us an incredible opportunity to do that kind of organizing and talk about what people can do to make sure that they don't suffer from that, again, that we hold people accountable. And just continue to drive on this economic lens, front and center, and build as much infrastructure as we can, but really try to tie people back to that, that larger reform that's needed, and do so in a way, most importantly, that is bringing folks that generally participate politically every four years, or maybe don't participate politically every four years, focusing on those two constituencies to bring them into the fold. So when we have our local races, and our, you know, State Representative and Senator races, that those folks are activated, and they're ready to challenge any, you know, Republican or Democrat to hold the line on grid and climate and environmental justice issues. We're not doing much of that at all right now.

John Fiege

How has your relationship with the rest of the natural world changed since you were a kid growing up in El Paso?

Dave Cortez

I think it's oddly similar, and you know, like I said, my dad would get us out all the time, I talked to my daughter about how we used to, you know, throw open the garage door and bust out the lawn chairs and watch the rain every time it happened. And more often than not run out and grab the trash can lids and go for a ride down the curb down the water, you know, and make our way down to the creek or whatever the Arroyos that were out there, you know, our time in the desert, hiking in the dry Arroyos. You know, a lot of times as a kid, I was very, "I don't want to be out here," you know, typical kid stuff. And now I you know, yeah, I love it. And I, I'd rather spend my whole day in it. You know, I think I'm more in tune with the ecology and the impact of various things on our ecological balance from, you know, drought, to invasive species pollution, and, of course, the the changing climate patterns. But, more than anything, the deepest change would be something like my spiritual connection with that land. I wasn't aware of that as a child, you know, and even just giving thanks to the pecan tree that shades my house, every day. The value of that, you know, praying to the river and giving gratitude to the cottonwood trees, it's a core part of who I am now.

John Fiege

So I've asked you to bring a quotation to read that's been particularly meaningful in your journey in life. Could you end the show by reading what you brought and telling the story of its significance to you?

Dave Cortez

Yeah, let me let me start off by reading it and then I'll we'll get into it. This is from Audre Lorde, radical intersectional, feminist, poet and author. And it was written in the 1980s, in reflection on on the 1960s and Malcolm X. And the most famous part is the first line and then I'm going to read quite a bit more from the speech afterwards. "There is no such thing as a single issue struggle, because we do not live single issue lives. Malcolm knew this, Martin Luther King Jr. knew this. Our struggles are particular. But we are not alone. We are not perfect, but we are stronger and wiser than the sum of our errors. Black people have been here before us, and survived. We can read their lives like signposts on the road and find, as Bernice Reagan said so poignantly, that each one of us is here because somebody before us did something to make it possible. To learn from their mistakes is not to lessen our debt to them, nor the hard work of becoming ourselves and effective. We lose our history so easily. What is not pre-digested for us by the New York Times, or The Amsterdam News, or Time Magazine, maybe because we do not listen to our poets or to our fools, maybe because we do not listen to our mamas and ourselves. When I hear the deepest truth, I speak coming out of my mouth, sounding like my mother's, even remembering how I fought against her. I have to reassess both our relationship as well as the sources of my knowing. Which is not to say that I have to romanticize my mother in order to appreciate what she gave me, woman, black, we do not have to romanticize our past, in order to be aware of how it seeds are present. We do not have to suffer the waste of amnesia that robs us of the lessons of the past, rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding. We know what it is to be lied to. We know how important it is to not lie to ourselves. We are powerful because we have survived. And that is what it is all about: survival and growth. Within each one of us there's some peace of humaneness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis, and is grinding all our futures into dust. If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between anti-poor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women and resurgent violence against black people. I ask myself as well as each one of you: exactly what alteration in the particular fabric of my everyday life does this connection call for? Survival is not a theory. In what way do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people? Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives." The first line in that, the single issue lives and single issue struggle, you know, I didn't learn about that until the House Bill Two protests at the State Capitol against, you know, Wendy Davis, and abortion restrictions in in Texas, and there were two young women holding a sign that had that. And that's around the same time, I was going through some antiracism training classes, and, you know, it fit, right, like, I was carrying a sign that said something about like, we don't have to take this crap, the same people behind this are the same ones that are polluting our air, you know, putting our kids in prison, you know, whitewashing history, etc. And so it was exciting to learn about Audre Lorde, and what, what was she talking about? Deeper than that, as you hear in the in the quote, it's, you know, one, we have a responsibility. And two, we have so much that we can tap into that we ignore. And if you go on to read the whole piece, she'll get in even deeper, something that should resonate with a lot of activists around, and lefties around the country, you know about our own infighting about how much we do to minimize each other's identities and contributions in order to prop ourselves up, or make us more of a visible or vocal authority in a space. There's so much to unpack from this. And for me, it's part of that deeper level of power and culture shift that we need to get to, when so much of what I've talked to you about today, and changes in the movement is more of like, how do we march towards that place?

John Fiege

Yeah, well, what often strikes me about these brilliant thinkers and writers and reading their work decades after it was written or said, it often strikes me how present it feels.

Dave Cortez

And not just the relevance in that way, but I mean, she's reflecting on 20 years before then. Right? It's 40 years since she said this and wrote this. And you have, like, you know, I really grill into people as much as I can: reflect on the amount of time that it has taken the right wing and the corporate elites to build their power, and what pushed them to. They responded to the 1960s. They responded to Nixon signing, you know, the Clean Water Act and all those other transformative Earth policies, Earth Day policies, and they took their time, and they used the culture wars, the Christian conservatism, and the right wing stuff in the 1980s to build a formidable machine and base and they're reaping the benefits now.

John Fiege

Well, thank you so much. This has been amazing.

Dave Cortez

I'm grateful for the space and the time to process some of these things and talk about them.

Outro

John Fiege

Thank you so much to Dave Cortez. Go to our website at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can find the quotation Dave read from Audrey Lorde, plus book and media recommendations.

This episode was researched and edited by Gabriela Cordoba Vivas. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Mixing is by Morgan Honaker.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Dave, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Contact me anytime at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can also subscribe to our newsletter and support us with a donation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

View Details

When we’re gone from this Earth, what will we leave behind? What will we pass down to those who come after us?

Plastic. If nothing else, lots of plastic. A plastic bag might take 20 years to break down, but harder, thicker plastics, like toothbrushes, might take 500 years or more to break down.

Elizabeth Bradfield is a poet and naturalist who sees first hand, in her work as a marine educator, the ravaging impacts of plastic on marine life. But she also confronts plastic and our collective addiction to it as a subject of poetry.

Her poem, “Plastic: A Personal History,” is what she calls a “cranky naturalist” poem, which is pretty funny, but embedded in the humor are big questions: how has plastic become part of who we are as individuals and as a species? Now that we know the dangers and devastating effects of plastic production and disposal, how must we change our relationship to this petrochemical product? What kind of world are we making, and what alternatives do we have?

Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of five collections of poetry, including, most recently, Toward Antarctica. She co-edited the newly-released anthology, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Sun, and Orion, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner Fellowship. She teaches creative writing at Brandeis University and is founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press. She lives on Cape Cod, where she also works as a naturalist and marine educator.

This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series. You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Elizabeth Bradfield

Born in Tacoma, Washington, Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Toward Antarctica, which uses haibun and her photographs to query the work of guiding tourists in Antarctica, and Theorem, a collaboration with artist Antonia Contro.

Bradfield is also co-editor of the anthologies Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, and Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic/Artistic Collaboration, 2005-2020.

A professor and co-director of Creative Writing at Brandeis University, Bradfield has received a great deal of recognition through awards and fellowships. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Sun, Orion, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner Fellowship.

Based on Cape Cod, Liz also works as a naturalist, adding an engaging and proactive component to back up the prowess of her evocative literature. She also is the founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press, a journal and grass-roots initiative that, through monthly publications, aims to expose the broader community (beyond academia) to relevant literature and art.

“Plastic: A Personal History”

By Elizabeth Bradfield

How can I find a way to praiseit? Do the early inventors & embracerschurn with regret? I don’t think my parents—born in the swing toward ubiquity—chew& chew & chew on plastic. But of course theydo. Bits in water, food-flesh, air.And their parents? I remember Dadmocking his mother’s drawer of savedrubber bands and his father-in-law’s red,corroded jerry can, patched and patched,never replaced for new, for never-rusting. Cash or plastic? Plastic. Evenfor gum. We hate the $5 minimum.Bills paperless, automatic, almostunreal. My toys were plastic, castleand circus train and yo-yo. Did my lunchesever get wrapped in waxed paper orwas it all Saran, Saran, Saran? Sarah’s momwas given, in Girl Scouts, a blue sheetof plastic to cut, sew, and trim with white pipinginto pouches for camping. Sarah has it still,brittle but useful. Merit badge for waterproofing.For everlasting. You, too, must have heard stories,now quaint as carriages, of first plastic, pre-plastic.Eras of glass, waxed cloth, and tin.Of shared syringes.All our grocery bags, growing up,were paper. Bottom hefted on forearm, topcrunched into grab. We used themto line the kitchen garbage pail. Not that longago, maybe a decade, I made purses for my sistersout of putty-colored, red-lettered plastic Safewaybags. I’d snag a stack each time I went, then foldand sew, quilt with bright thread, line with thrift storeblouses. They were sturdy and beautiful. Rainproofand light. Clever. So clever. I regret them.And the plastic toothpicks, folders, shoes that seemedso cheap, so easy, so use-again and thusless wasteful, then. What did we do beforeto-go lids? Things must have just spilledand spilled. Do you knowwhat I mean? I mean, what pearl formsaround a grain of plastic in an oyster?Is it as beautiful? Would you wear it?Would you buy it for your daughterso she in turn could pass it down andpass it down and pass it down?

Recommended Readings & Media

Transcript

Intro

John Fiege

When we’re gone from this Earth, what will we leave behind? What will we pass down to those who come after us?

Plastic. If nothing else, lots of plastic. A plastic bag might take 20 years to break down, but harder, thicker plastics, like toothbrushes, might take 500 years or more to break down.

I’m John Fiege, and this episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series.

Here is Elizabeth Bradfield reading her poem, “Plastic: A Personal History.”

Poem

Elizabeth Bradfield

“Plastic: A Personal History”

Conversation

John Fiege

Thank you, that's so beautiful. And there's so much going on there, in this poem.

Elizabeth Bradfield

It's funny it started, this poem started kind of just, you know, as a bitter rant.

John Fiege

Well, it didn't end there.

Elizabeth Bradfield

No, it didn't end there.

John Fiege

So, tell me about that. What's the bitter rant?

Elizabeth Bradfield

Oh, just plastic. You know? Honestly, the poem started when my friend Sarah, you know, she's my age. I'm 50, 51. And she showed me this little bag her mom made and I started thinking, "Wow, imagine being the generation that discovered plastic, right? Wow, plastic, so handy," tupperware parties, all that stuff, right? And I mean, to be the generation that saw plastic come into use, I was just really thinking about that shift and, and that's where the poem started.

John Fiege

So I want to just dive into to probably my favorite moment in the poem. So I'm gonna I'm gonna reread this one stanza. You too, must have heard stories now. quaintest carriages have first plastic, pre plastic eras of glass, wax cloth and tin of shared syringes. So that line of shared syringes hit me really hard. You know, prior to this, you mentioned rubber bands and credit cards, and Yo-Yos, and saran wrap, and Girl Scout pouches, all these kind of quaint objects of the past. But shared syringes is like this bomb you drop in the poem, you know, toys, and everyday items, the toils and frivolities of childhood all of a sudden become the life threatening addictions of the teenage years and young adulthood, a plastic addiction that may seem at first to make our lives better, while it slowly kills us. Can you talk about this moment in the poem, like, you know, where did this come from? Maybe, what's going on structurally here that gives this moment in the poem so much weight?

Elizabeth Bradfield

Well, I think a couple of things, I was, you know, I did just want to imagine and put forth the ground truthing that we did have a world before plastic, right? What did we do? There were these things. And then I was thinking, I was thinking, all right, let's think about the advantages of plastic right of disposable syringes of, you know, the problems of disease being swapped out, the doctor comes to your house, or what you're a morphine addict, or whatever, in the Sherlock Holmes-ian kind of way with his glass syringe. But of course, you didn't throw any of that away, right? And so there is a benefit to plastic, right? There's a danger in this older world, as well as the danger in this present world, and so I wanted that pivot and that shift I didn't want this poem to be. I mean, gosh, you know, I think about what my life would have been like, as a queer woman in the era of wax cloth, and tin, it wouldn't have been so happy. So I was thinking of just the darker shadow of that nostalgia, I suppose.

John Fiege

Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting to start with nostalgia. And then, I mean, this is the poetry of it. It's that single turn of phrase changes the color, and the tone of everything so quickly.

Elizabeth Bradfield

Yeah and I really, you know, there's, I think, you know, how you write a poem. And for me, when I write a poem, it's a journey, right? It's an act of discovery. And a lot of the discovery for me in this poem was through sound, as well as through images. And for me, that rhyme of tin and syringes was a discovery, a linkage, and I think it was same as same as earlier in the poem, you know, plastic, even for gum that we hate the $5 minimum, and that gum minimum, right? These kind of resonances. They kind of they tickle me, you know what I mean? So there's like, the darkness and also the humor for me, and also the delight of sound and all of these things swirling around.

John Fiege

Right. Well, you know, the other thing, you know, I got cancer 10 years ago, and, and almost died. Yeah, it was horrendous, but I'm here. But, you know, I spent two years in treatment, and the number of disposable plastic objects that were discarded in front of me to care just for me, just blew my mind away. And at the same time, it saved my life, you know, and so when I get, you know, you talk about how you started this poem as a rant against plastic. And I find myself in that place frequently. But I guess I try to--I don't know, I guess I try to forgive our society, our humanity sometimes, to say, you know, people weren't trying to destroy the planet when they invented plastic. You know, they were trying to create this miraculous thing that would allow us not to cut down so many trees and, and grow so much cotton and, you know, do all these other things that felt like the limits of the natural world.

Elizabeth Bradfield

Oh, I'm so sorry. Not kill so many whales, right? I mean, that used a pre-plastic material.

John Fiege

Exactly. So, you know, I try to remind myself of that. And, you know, you could talk about syringes in kind of a life saving positive way. But you can also talk about them as shared syringes. Which, you know, immediately brings to mind of course, you know, heroin epidemic, and things like that, that have just taken so many lives. So I don't know how, when you were in the midst of the journey for this poem, what were you--how are you weighing those things of the ranch versus kind of checking yourself about nostalgia or other things?

Elizabeth Bradfield

I think what I love about poems is the ability to hold contradiction, you know? And I, you said, check yourself, and I do try and check myself, I try and think in poems, you know, how am I culpable in this moment? You know, I'm not removed from it. And so I wanted, I wanted those layers of complexity to be in the poem. And I think, you know, it's funny, I wrote this poem, the first draft of it, before the pandemic. I think the first draft was in 2017. And of course, during the pandemic, I've thought only more and more and more about plastic and the way that we've turned toward disposables in order to, you know, prevent contagion and contamination and spreading of disease, through our face masks, or even to-go containers. But I think what I really--what angers me about plastic in our lives, is how thoughtlessly it can enter, right? And I think I wanted a poem that used a little bit of humor, to possibly suggest that we can think twice about some of these things, right? Especially a yo-yo. There are still wooden yo-yos out there, right, there's still, there are glasses that we can use instead of plastic cups, we can--all of these things that we can do. And it's not convenient. And so we don't. And so I thought if I could just play a little and be a little funny, and a little snarky, but also kind of acknowledge these darknesses, that might be a way to just shine a little light.

John Fiege

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and what I was saying before about, you know, being understanding of, you know, how we didn't really know how bad plastic was when it was invented. But the other side of that coin is--

Elizabeth Bradfield

But now we do.

John Fiege

And we're still not doing anything about it. Right? And that's where the, like, the real culpability starts to come of like, you know, what are you doing about it?

Elizabeth Bradfield

Yeah. Are you going to buy another fleece, is that recycled wood porch really a good thing? You know, the recycled wood?

John Fiege

Yeah, well, it's got that word recycled in it.

Elizabeth Bradfield

Oh, absolutely everything is recycled.

John Fiege

Well, let me let me reread another stanza. So this is in the middle. Not that long ago, maybe a decade, I made purses for my sisters out of putty colored red lettered plastic Safeway bags, I had snag a stack each time I went. Then fold and sew quilt with bright thread line with thrift store blouses. They were sturdy and beautiful. rain proof and light, clever, so clever. I regret them. So there again, that last line is so cutting, "I regret them." You set us up to see your kind of crafty upcycled purses, as, you know, practical, durable, ecologically responsible. But then you regret them. So I have questions about that. So I see the complicated relationship we have to plastic in this in this section of the poem: It's incredibly durable and malleable and useful, and in some ways, it can allow us to reduce our use of other resources. But there's this dark underside, again, like we were talking about before, to this durability and persistence in the environment, specifically. So maybe you regret stealing a bunch of Safeway bags so you weren't actually upcycling but I was hoping you could just talk a little bit about you know, what do you regret?

Elizabeth Bradfield

Yeah, I mean, I think to what you were speaking about before when you read that other stanza, too, in terms of form, for folks who haven't seen this poem, there's a there's a dropped line here, right? "Clever, so clever." And then a little bit of space and the next line, "I regret them," drops down, a continuation, but a break. And I wanted that break, you know, that pause and I wanted to allow the poem to be caught up in that kind of delight and joy of making, you know, I was totally broke, I wanted to make something pretty for my sisters. I felt like I was, yeah, upcycling, I suppose, I'm not sure the word existed then, it probably did. But yeah, make something new, free from what was at hand, and I love doing things like that. And I was kind of, you know, a little, a little in love with myself for coming up with this awesome plan. And pulling one over on Safeway.

John Fiege

Free bags, I'll take some!

Elizabeth Bradfield

And they were really cute little purses. I'm not a purse kind of person. I wonder if they still have them? I have no idea. But of course, now looking back, I'm like, "Oh my God. That's what I regret," that I would even think of this as a gift to give to, to spend all that time with that plastic, making this thing for my sisters, who I love. What an idiot, you know. And I was just, I was so blind to that at the moment. I was just in love with the making. And, you know, 10 years ago, we knew plastic was bad. But it just it wasn't, I don't know, the alarm bells were not as heightened. I was living at the time in Alaska. And we hardly had recycling. Paper recycling, no. Plastic recycling, no, you know, so even to that extra use adds another another layer, right? But yeah, I was living in a place where even, ostensibly, there was no recycling happening.

John Fiege

So, you know, you can pay a lot of money right now to buy a fleece that's made from recycled plastic bags. And that is marketed as better than creating new plastic. I can't do the math about you know what the waste is in one direction or the other. But it seems on the surface like "Yeah, that's better. If you're going to have a fleece jacket, that's better."

Elizabeth Bradfield

Oh, no.

John Fiege

Not at all. You don't even think the recycled fleece is better?

Elizabeth Bradfield

No, because, okay, wear wool. But also, those fleeces, when you wash them, the microfibers come out, and they go out through your gray water. And they go through if you, you know, if you're on a septic system, they just go right in, if you're on a sewer system, even they escape out, and they go out into the ocean. So I mean, I work on these, I work as a Marine educator and I work you know, help out with some field work with some whales and I work on the local WhaleWatch boats here as a naturalist and I always tell people like, one thing you can do to help save whales is do less laundry, all the stuff that we wash, it all goes out. And so, no, the recycled bottle into a fleece is, I believe, not good.

John Fiege

Okay, so the better thing is to take that plastic and contain it and never let it release into a water source again.

Elizabeth Bradfield

I think so.

John Fiege

And find completely different alternative natural fibers to use.

Elizabeth Bradfield

Yeah, and I mean, we don't need we don't need plastic bottles. We don't need plastic trash liners. I still use a paper liner in my kitchen. You know what I mean? I I don't use shampoo, I use bar soap. I mean, now we're getting to this, like, what do you reduce your plastic footprint? Because there's plenty of plastic in my life. I mean, right here I am on a computer. My headphones that are plastic are plugged into my ears. You know, I'm not a purist in that way. But I do try and think, is there an alternative?

John Fiege

Well, it's interesting too, because you know, things like upcycling, that's such a hip thing right now. And if you if you look at a lot of the eco fashion kind of world, that kind of all the rage. It's not just about the source of the of the materials, it's about the end destination of the materials.

Elizabeth Bradfield

Yeah.

John Fiege

Let's jump to the last stanza.

Elizabeth Bradfield

Sure.

John Fiege

Do you know what I mean? I mean, what pearl forms around a grain of plastic and an oyster. Is it as beautiful, would you wear it? Would you buy it for your daughter? So she in turn could pass it down and pass it down and pass it down. So you end the poem by expanding these questions of our relationship to plastic to questions of time and value and beauty. And finally, you end with the question of what, you know, specifically with a question of: what would you pass down to your daughter? And thinking on that generational level, we pass down fair family heirlooms, or wealth or knowledge or traditions. But we can also pass down ecological devastation, social pathologies, inequalities, a planet polluted by so much plastic junk, and maybe junk disguised as a pearl, that appears to hold meaning, importance, value and beauty. But really, it's rotten or toxic or plastic at its core. So what's going on here at the end, for you?

Elizabeth Bradfield

I mean, I think for me, that ending is very ironic, because we are passing this down, right? We are passing this down to the generations that follow us. And would that pearl be as beautiful? Probably, if you didn't know what was inside of it. How, you know, how important is it for us to drill down and really examine what we're holding? And what's inside of it? And to really question what's at the heart of what we're carrying? To me, that's a really, really important question.

John Fiege

Right. Right. So how does this poem fit into the broader context of your work and your life? And in you know, are there any other, kind of, stories around this poem, specifically, that you think are interesting?

Elizabeth Bradfield

Well, I kind of consider this poem as a sub-genre of nature poetry, which I call the cranky naturalist poem that I find myself writing quite a bit of, I think there's a lot of poems in, especially my book, once removed, that fall into the cranky naturalist genre. And I mean, I think I write them because I do get cranky. But also, I think they're a little bit funny. And things are so bad that I have to laugh. You know what I mean? I have to laugh, I hope someone else has to laugh too. Because if we're not laughing, then we're turning away. You know, and laughter is a way of engaging, it's a way of being. So I like putting on that posture of the cranky naturalist. And yeah, I do, I work as a naturalist. I work mostly with marine mammals with marine ecology. And so I divide my life between books and boats, basically. And both of those things really feed me and I think a lot about the world that a seal or a whale is swimming through. And the urban ocean, that most of us know, most of us who live on the coasts, whether you're on the East Coast, I live on Cape Cod, or the West Coast, or, you know, the UK, South Africa, Australia, wherever. All of these coasts are very urban coasts. And we, the ocean has been thought of for so long as something that's, you know, "too big to fail." But we're seeing some failures. And it's really concerning to me. So I think a lot about the ocean, which I love so much, you know, that I find inspiration and solace in and has a very complicated human history. Also a really complicated ecological history that we hardly even understand. You know, I mean, we don't even know how long really, humpback whales live. There are so many mysteries out there, and, and we're changing the ocean pretty rapidly. So a lot of my time and thought goes into thinking about ocean ecology, marine ecology.

John Fiege

And in reality, the oceans are too big to ignore, which is exactly what we do. You know? Yeah. Human history is a history of dumping our waste into a water source, whether that's a river or an ocean, or some other place where it seems to our to our eyes to disappear.

Elizabeth Bradfield

Yeah. And in all honesty, we're all downstream. Right? Exactly. I mean, some people more immediately than others.

John Fiege

There's no, there's no stream on a sphere.

Elizabeth Bradfield

That's right. Yeah. So yeah, so In terms of my writing, I read a lot about, there's a little ocean in here, not a ton. But I read a lot about the fulcrum between our social selves and our animal selves, you know, or the other more than human beings that are out there in the world. And I find that a really interesting, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes inspiring, and complicated set of dynamics.

John Fiege

And you know, if you're going to start a podcast, eventually you're going to have to call it "The Cranky Naturalist."

Elizabeth Bradfield

My friend Melissa and I, she's a naturalist also. But we had a joke that we should start a podcast called "Wait, wait, don't touch that." All the things that you shouldn't be doing that the naturalist would like, you know, tisk tisk you for doing. Um, number one would be those those recycled fleece sweatshirts.

John Fiege

Wow, I don't buy those recycled fleece sweatshirts, but I've at least given them the benefit of the doubt that it's better than the alternative. But you, you're right, you're totally right. So, right now, there's so much activism going on around our use of plastic and the ridiculous ubiquity of plastic pollution, single use plastic wasteful packaging, microplastics in the bodies of fish and every other living thing in the ocean. How do you see poetry or other forms of art, in relationship to the activist project of understanding and bringing attention to huge problems like plastic pollution,

Elizabeth Bradfield

I think what I love about poetry, in addition to so many other things, is that it's really a form that asks us to occupy both the mind and the heart, right, the intellect and the emotion. And that's what we need to do to move forward and make any kind of progress. Thinking isn't enough, we also have to feel, and to help people connect and care. And so I think, if we can write things that keep these conversations alive, and stop us from just numbing over to the things we know, like we know plastic is bad. But if there's--I was at this show the other day, at the Center for Coastal Studies, which is a research and education nonprofit, on Cape Cod and Provincetown. And there was an art show that had a lot of marine debris-inspired of work in it. And one of the one of the images that was so striking to me, I can't remember the name of the artist, but it was a photographer, and she had collected, you know, tennis balls on the beach, which you find so many of and she set them up in this grid and photographed them in this sterile, pristine way. And they were so beautiful, and so strange and made me look at them differently and think about them differently. And I think that is what I think art and poetry can do to just wake us up and make us consider, slow down a little bit of time, hold a little bit of space, and allow us to feel and not just be numbed out by all this information.

John Fiege

Right. Yeah, and, you know, ice core data, and, and, you know, carbon dioxide level changes over the last couple of decades, you know, that stuff's really important, but it doesn't, it doesn't make you feel in a direct way. I mean, maybe it has an indirect way of making you feel if you have enough background knowledge about what it means and you can translate it in your own head. But also, I think, besides the feeling is, kind of, a there's a pragmatic side to art, too. You know, you have a poetry reading, and you invite people and they come and it's fun. And you get to hang out with people, you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna read your ice core data to people in a room unless you're at a scientific conference, at a glaciology conference, you know? So it, I mean, for me, also just in this on this very pragmatic level, and just allows us to keep the conversation going, in forms that people are more comfortable with, more excited about, are kind of a positive, beautiful, kind of beneficial side of their experience, rather than something that seems dull and grueling and opaque.

Elizabeth Bradfield

No, absolutely. I think the energy of a rant or a cranky naturalist poem, for me can be a lot of fun and can be a way to vent frustration and rage that that is really necessary, and then hopefully move on, pick up and move on. Right, I think we look for art not just to help us explore the more difficult realities of our world, but also find energy, solace, inspiration to move on, you know, maybe do something a little bit differently to, to not just sink into despair.

John Fiege

Yeah. Yeah.

Elizabeth Bradfield

I think that's really important to me, that poems are part of our greater public discourse. And I think, you know, what you're doing with your podcast is doing that, our conversation is about that also. And, you know, it's not it's not an elite, isolated form, right? Poems want to connect. And they can, and, I welcome every little moment where I see that happening in the world.

John Fiege

Awesome. Yeah, I, I have Irish heritage, although I've never been to Ireland. Although I've never been to Ireland, and I'm completely disconnected from the culture and place in a direct way. But, you know, I've heard that, to this day poets are, like, huge celebrities in Ireland, like, every town has their, like, you know, poet laureate, essentially. And it's such a big deal culturally. And then I think about America and how all of our superstars are, you know, from Hollywood or, you know, or like sports or, you know, business moguls. And sometimes ask myself, how would our society be different if the poets were the superstars here?

Elizabeth Bradfield

I don't know. I think in some circles they are, you know, I was lucky enough to be able to study with the poet Eavan Boland, who's Irish, when I was at Stanford, and I'll never forget her telling us a story of Aer Lingus that the airline for Ireland. They were redesigning their interior cabin and they, I don't know, this kind of cracks me up. But they took one of her poems and wove it into the seat embroidery. And so I just think about all of those people sitting on Eavan Boland's words. And it's kind of gross, and kind of, like, farting into it and all the things that you do on an airplane. But it's also kind of amazing and wonderful that they would want poetry as part of this journey into the sky, too, you know? So yeah, so I wonder the same thing.

John Fiege

Great. Well, can can you end by reading the poem once again?

Elizabeth Bradfield

I'd be happy to.

Poem

Elizabeth Bradfield

“Plastic: A Personal History”

Conversation

John Fiege

Beautiful. Liz, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been great.

Elizabeth Bradfield

Thank you for having me. I really, really appreciated this conversation and really enjoyed it, John.

Outro

John Fiege

Thank you so much to Elizabeth Bradfield. Go to our website at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can read her poem “Plastic: A Personal History,” see some photographs of her at work as a naturalist and marine educator, and find our book and media recommendations.

This episode was researched and edited by Brodie Mutschler, with additional editing by Sofia Chang. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Mixing is by Morgan Honaker.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Elizabeth, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Contact me anytime at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can also support the project, subscribe to our newsletter, and join the conversation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

View Details

Art can show us the pain and trauma and suffering of the world, and often it does. But art can also go the other direction. It can reveal the beauty, harmony, and unity of the world.

The canvasses in Salma Arastu’s series of paintings, We Are All One,are full of soft colors, continuous lines, immersive habitats that flow into one another, and—sometimes—two-dimensional representations of humans and animals occupying the same space, echoing cave paintings.

Salma found the continuous line in her study of Islamic calligraphy when she was living in the Middle East. She was born into the Sindhi and Hindu traditions in Rajasthan, India, and then embraced Islam after marrying a Muslim.

It was this continuous line that became a central element of her approach to painting and a central technique she uses to express the ecological views she finds in the Quran.

She seeks to transcend difference through her art and find oneness and interconnectedness in a world that continually ravages ecological systems around the planet.

Since the 1970s, Salma has been exhibiting her work nationally and internationally and writing about art. She currently lives in San Francisco, where I had the pleasure of visiting her in her studio and seeing so many of her wonderful paintings.

This episode is part of the Chrysalis Artists series. You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Salma Arastu

An Internationally exhibited artist, Salma was born into the Sindhi and Hindu traditions in Rajasthan, India. She later embraced Islam and moved to USA in 1986. Her work creates harmony by expressing the universality of humanity through paintings, sculpture, calligraphy and poetry. She was inspired by the imagery, sculpture and writings of her Indian heritage and Islamic spirituality. She was born with a left hand without fingers. Because of her all-encompassing God, she was able to transcend the barriers often set-forth in the traditions of religion, culture, and the cultural perceptions of handicaps.

After graduating in Fine Arts from Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, India, she lived and worked in Iran and Kuwait, where she was exposed to a wealth of Islamic arts and Arabic calligraphy. Calligraphy, miniatures, and the folk art of Islam and the Hindu tradition continue to influence her work today. She has been invited to Germany twice, as a Resident Artist at Schwabisch Gmun in 2000 and by the Westphalia Wilhelm University in Münster to publish her paper “Art Informed by Spirituality” in God Loves Beauty: Post Modern Views on Religion and Art. Further she was invited to Morocco for a one- month Artist Residency Program in March of 2018 through Green Olives art Gallery. She has presented work at Stanford University, Commonwealth of San Francisco, Seattle University, Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, and Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, St. Louis Missouri.

She has displayed at 45 solo shows nationally and internationally and has won many distinctions: the East Bay Community’s Fund for Artists in 2012, and 2014, and 2020, The City of Berkeley’s Individual Artist Grant Award in 2014, 2015, and 2016. She has public art pieces on display in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and San Diego, California and has written and published five books on her art and poetry. Her most recent book deals with ecological consciousness from Quranic verses “Our Earth: Embracing All Communities.”

Selected Works

A more comprehensive collection of work is available here.

Recommended Readings & Media

Salma Arastu Sharing process of her art.

Transcript

Intro

John Fiege

Art can show us the pain and trauma and suffering of the world. And often it does. But art can also go the other direction. It can reveal the beauty, harmony and unity of the world.

The canvases in Salma Arastu’s series of paintings, We Are All One, are full of soft colors, continuous lines, immersive habitats that flow into one another, and—sometimes—two-dimensional representations of humans and animals occupying the same space, echoing cave paintings.

Salma found the continuous line in her study of Islamic calligraphy when she was living in the Middle East. She was born into the Sindhi and Hindu traditions and Rajasthan, India, and then embraced Islam after marrying a Muslim.

It was this continuous line that became a central element of her approach to painting and a central technique she uses to express the ecological views she finds in the Quran. She seeks to transcend difference through her art, and find oneness and interconnectedness in a world that continually ravages ecological systems around the planet.

I'm John Fiege, and this episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Artists series.

Since the 1970s, Salma has been exhibiting her work nationally and internationally, and writing about art. She currently lives in San Francisco, where I had the pleasure of visiting her in her studio last summer and seeing so many of her wonderful paintings. At ChrysalisPodcast.org, you can see some of my photos from that trip and images of her paintings, including those from her We Are All One series.

Here is Salma Arastu.

Conversation

John Fiege

Could you start by just telling me a little bit about your project, We Are All One?

Salma Arastu

Yes, I believe in oneness. And these are kind of my oneness projects, you know, like, I want to bring the whole humanity together. And in my work, initially, they were abstract figures, you know, that they are coming together in groups, you know, celebrating together, sharing together, chanting together. So this has been my theme always. And from that, you know, gradually, as I was looking around the nature, I live on the bay in this area. And so nature has been great friend, I would say, you know, I keep watching the plants, the water, the clouds every morning. So this has been part of my daily schedule that I look at the nature and absorb it and go to my studio. And so somehow the nature, the the birds, the animals, and the plants, they all got into my work, and I realized we are all one, we are all breathing, we are all connected. So I think gradually I started doing work, which showed all living beings in my work, and I call it We Are All One.

John Fiege

Great. And And can you talk also about Our Earth, and as part of this project, and what did you do there?

Salma Arastu

As a daily practice, I do read Quran, my book of faith. And, you know, suddenly I started noticing the verses, which talk to me about the planet about, you know, like Earth and the communities. So let me tell you the first verse, which really, really was holding me for some time, you know, before I started the project, and that verse was so related to my thinking, we are all one. So that particular verse, it says, “There's not an animal in the earth, nor a flying creature flying on two wings, but they are communities like you.” So then I went to the description of that verse and amazing results I found because different scholars have given the beautiful description of this verse. And understanding this verse was like a divine invitation to follow the concerns of these all ecologists in our time. So I went deeper into it. And then especially one scholar, Dr. Fred Denny, who said, “The verse presents a paradigm of interconnectedness. Communities necessarily interact with one another. And we are enjoined by the Quran to view the animal world, not merely as parallel to us and organized into communities but signals interconnectedness between their existence and well being and our own, as no community on Earth exist in isolation of the others, and what affects one community ultimately affects other communities.” So this was amazing revelation to me. And then I started you know, noticing these verses which talked about the plants, the mountains, the ships, the see the fish, you know, the ant, bees. It was a beautiful revelation for me, and I started noticing them down and I found 90 verses like that, almost, which is my limited knowledge, you know. Then I started to shorten the list because I really wanted to do this project. I said I want to bring this positive from Quran to the mainstream in the world, so they understand the positive side of Quran.

John Fiege

Oh, that's great. Yeah and it seems like with that project in particular, it's almost a theological process of, it’s almost like through art you have been studying the Quran. Is that accurate?

Salma Arastu

Yeah, I would say through, yeah, through my art, I was reading Quran, in the sense—or from Quran I was doing art. In Quran, the God has ordained us to look at the nature to study the nature, because—I read something here. “Quran describes nature, presents signs of God, as divine is manifest in nature, and guides to study nature as reference to the wisdom of Quran.” So in fact, as I understand, Quran is a textbook, and the nature is a workbook. Believe me, and that's how I worked on it.

John Fiege

Oh wow. That’s great. Yeah and and my understanding of Islamic law is kind of these basic elements of nature, like land, water, fire, forest, light, are all living things, not just humans and animals as living things.

Salma Arastu

Yes, yes.

John Fiege

You have a really interesting relationship to the Quran and to Islam, and to religion in general, really, your parents were Hindus who fled Pakistan during partition, and settled in Rajasthan in India, is that, is that all right?

Salma Arastu

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

John Fiege

But but then you ended up marrying a Muslim man, and living in Iran and Kuwait, and eventually the United States. You've also talked about the importance of your mother, who is a devout Hindu, in your developing spirituality. Can you talk about a bit about this spiritual journey and how it's infused in your art and how it's led you to engage deeply with ecological subjects?

Salma Arastu

Yeah, sure. I think I do give credit to my mother and my bringing up, because though she was, you know, I mean, they were refugees from Pakistan, when I was born in India. So in the sense, though, my father has started the practice, he was a doctor, he was a physician, but he had lost everything like, you know, in Pakistan, and he was very depressed, but my mother was very, very positive thinker. So she always said, things will be fine. I remember, as a child, you know, my father used to be so upset and angry at times and more in the night, you know, say, I have lost everything, they have not given me back anything, so but she would always calm him down. So that's how I'd always seen it. And the other thing she kept telling us, We are all same. And because in Ajmer where I was born, the Rajasthan, the city in Rajasthan, it has the both pilgrimage you know, Hindu and Muslim. So like, she has seen all that. And she always told us, No, we are all one. We are all one actually came from her thought, you know, that we are all connected, we are not different. So I carried that thought all through my life. And when I met my husband, I tried to restrict myself, I tried to hold myself back. But somehow, somehow things happen. So I said, this is the this is the God's will, you know, that I marry this man. So my mother, though she was very disturbed, but she blessed me. And she said, your destiny is with you. But my blessings are with you.

John Fiege

Wow.

Salma Arastu

So this is all I needed. So I got married. And I'm grateful because we have been married for 47 years now. And it has been a blissful journey. Yes, my husband is very supportive of my art. And the family, also, my children also. So somehow, it's a beautiful journey. And I'm very grateful for that.

John Fiege

So when you were living in the Middle East, you began studying Islamic calligraphy. And you discovered the continuous line as you as you call it, you've called it your guiding line and the light that leads you, and I love how this technique of the calligraphic line complements so strongly the themes of unity and connection in your work. Could you talk about calligraphy a bit, what it means to you, how it’s influenced both your art and your ecological thinking?

Salma Arastu

Yeah, so what happened when I did my masters from India, I was doing abstract work, but nature only, you know, it was movements of nature I was doing. I didn't know anything about Islam. I didn't know anything about Quran, I didn't know anything about calligraphy. So when I went to Middle East, I love this calligraphic the continuous line, you know, I used to copy it. And there was one quote from one Islamic scholar who said that the calligraphy starts from the field of action, it starts on right, you know. So it starts from the field of action, and lands in the field of heart. So, it was so beautiful, and I think it stayed with me. And then I started learning Arabic slowly, because, you know, I was curious, what do they say? So then I started making the sense of those words, and I was amazed at this line, how it's making the meaning also. But before I went deeper into the meanings of Quran, this line became my language. And when I came to USA, I continued with those abstract figures and you know, my lines, but then 2001, when this 9/11 happened, after that, I got a jolt, you know, like, it was something, people started asking me because I was known as a Muslim artist, you know, so they would ask me, Is Islam like that? Do you believe in that? So I said, No, my God is same. My God hasn't changed. So he is not Muslim. He is not Hindu. He is not Christian. So he is not like that. It cannot be like that. So there's some, something wrong gone somewhere. So I started learning Quran.

John Fiege

Where were you? Where were you living during that? When 911 happened?

Salma Arastu

I was in Pennsylvania. I was in Pennsylvania.

John Fiege

Okay, so did you see a lot of that? Like, anti-Islamic backlash?

Salma Arastu

Yeah, exactly. Islamophobia. Yeah, because suddenly it happened. And I watched it, and it hurt me also, like, I was in tears, watching the falling of Twin Towers, because I used to visit that place. So I'm just saying it affected me a lot. But then I started learning about Quran. And seriously, it gave me such positive thinking like, such positive verses I have found, you know, which talk about hope and unity and connection and earth. And then now I say that my work is about oneness, connecting humanity, soil and soul. So that is my tagline nowadays, you know?

John Fiege

Awesome.

Salma Arastu

I'm trying to connect humanity, soil and soul. Yes.

John Fiege

That's great. And, you know, one thing I was thinking about is representational and figurative art are generally discouraged in Islamic art. And I think in your early work, it was all abstract. But in, in some of your paintings personally, more recently, you represent plants and animals, and even people, although the people seem to always be faceless in some way, you know, the heads are generally represented with just circles. But I was just wondering how you see your work within the tradition of Islamic art and the precepts that come with that?

Salma Arastu

Yeah, so frankly speaking, I was, I knew about it, people say that, like I did faceless figures without realizing that Islam, it's not allowed. But then I talked to some scholars, and I was told, it's only the sculpture form, because, you know, in Islam, the worship of icons is private. Okay? So it's not that you cannot draw. What he what I was made to understand that if you make a sculpture, and then you make it a human-like, so that is not allowed, like, because you cannot create a human. If you see my work, it's very folk style. That there, I'm not doing exact three dimensional, you know, figures. And even if you go back to books, the miniature paintings, and which talk about the story of Islamic periods, and all that, they are also two dimensional, you know, they’re, nothing is three dimensional. So what I'm trying to say that it is allowed in the story form, in fact, in my book, there's a last page, which a scholar wrote for me, in favor of my work, saying that Islam is allowed. “Prophet Muhammad was known to praise diverse forms of beauty and to have said Allah is beautiful and he loves beauty. All of these meanings and more find the holistic expression in the Quran and Sunnah, and are subtly unveiled, explored and expressed in Salma Arastu’s paintings, and the English translation of the verses presented with them. Through her work cell mitosis encouraging the viewer to contemplate important meanings of unity, justice and balance as well as the impact of human actions the need for oneness and universal care for creation, all of which are indeed among the higher objectives of this Islam.” So that's how I did it. I don't know, I was inspired. I was, rather I would say I was guided to do it like that, and I did it. But so far, I haven't heard any, any criticism on that.

John Fiege

Well, that's great. And you've also described your process as very physical: scratching, sanding, layering materials like paper, rope, modeling paste, paper mache, or copper plate, embroidering with pen and ink. How does the physicality of your technique relate to your work, which is very much about both the physical biological world, but also spiritual existence?

Salma Arastu

I like textures. You know, I don't know, I like the penetrating textures. And some are right from beginning, I used to use paper first, you know, and then I used to, like, glue the paper on the surface and create, you know, textures and then paint gesso on it. And then I work sometimes, I'm a lot of sanding, because I like to show the layers beneath, you know. I don’t know, I'm so physically involved with the work,I mean, that I can't describe, you know, I don't know, it's a new, it's a new experience each day, you know. The new painting that I'm doing, I'm using rust as my paint, I create this rust with a vinegar and aluminum and you know, make them rust, you know, make it rust color, and I paint with that also. So, and I'm using rope in my recent work. So yeah, I love textures. And I like pen and ink, I mean, I don't know it’s the calming me down. You know, when I do the large works, the different works with a lot of physical work and like a lot of textures, then pen and ink is something which calms me down, it brings me back to myself. And it's like a meditation. So all my paintings have some work in pen and ink. It's like embroidery, I call it you know, it's like putting my you know, final touches on my work.

John Fiege

That's great. Well, I'd like to for a minute look at a specific painting, and one of my favorites is called Earth and Skies. And so on one level, when you look at it, it's a traditional landscape painting in the sense that, you know, the bottom half of the canvas is green for the land, the top half is blue for the sky. But when you look closer at it, you realize that the sky is also the ocean and teeming with marine life. There are animal figures, both terrestrial and marine animals. And they, and as with all your work, it's drawn in two dimensions. And in some ways, it's reminiscent of cave paintings, I've found. And the entire canvas has this two dimensional flatness, with no sense of depth at all. And interestingly, there are some human figures in the landscape. It's not this idealized wilderness landscape devoid of humans. But the humans blend into the background and are represented in a similar size and style as the other animals. I also love your color palette, it's all these soft colors that that dissolve into one another. And of course, your your fluid lines are everywhere in the piece. Can you talk a bit about the techniques and concepts behind Earth and Skies? And like how do you create these colors that flow and dissolve into one another and, and, you know, you just your process for for conceiving and and creating this.

Salma Arastu

Sure. So as I told you, I work with very thin acrylics. And my I don't make sketches of my paintings, I go directly on the canvas, and I feel guided you know, like, whatever comes is coming from within me, from within me, from my soul through my hand on the canvas. That's how it is. I don't know what is going to come on the canvas. So that particular theme, the earth and the skies, comes from a verse from Quran which talked about the balance. It said that God has created this establish this balance of earth and water in the skies, and don't disturb that. So, so that was the main concept in my mind when I started working. And somehow these soft colors, they, you know, I started with very thin paint very, very thin pane, and I started drawing animals, fishes, because I'm showing the connection. So for me, the birds, the fishes, the animals that are all part of this balance, you know, even the human figures. Here I want to mention one thing somebody told me recently and I love that concept. The man thinks he's the great and he's the protector, you know, taking care of this earth. While he's not needed to take care of earth, God is taking care of everything. Human being is just part of this whole system. You know, the whole web of life. It’s the ego of the human, you know? So the word I was told that even the caveman knew that human figures don't, don't mean anything, like they are just part of it, because he always, the caveman also drew the figures as the sticks, and did the beautiful drawings of animals.

John Fiege

Right, right.

Salma Arastu

So I really like that concept. I said, that's beautiful. Yeah. So this one, it just developed, as I told you, like, it just happened, you know, like, one layer over another, and another and softly I was going with very light colors, because I, it had to come through that, you know, and then I do a lo ton sanding. So in that painting, I've done a lot of sanding to give it an antique feeling in the bottom part with the figures. And it's a slow process if you ask me. But but it happens very spontaneously.

John Fiege

That's an amazing combination. Slow, but spontaneous.

Salma Arastu

Yes. Because whatever comes out, it comes out. And then I wait, I look at it. And then I go to it again, again throw some color on it, and then come back.

John Fiege

Well, that seems to go back to this idea of the process of art as meditation or contemplation or study. It's like the, the processes.

Salma Arastu

Yeah, it's a dialogue. You know, it's a constant dialogue between the work and artist.

John Fiege

That's awesome. There's a, there's another painting, I really love, The Waves and the Birds. So I love this painting, I just, I just visually love it in the colors. But also, the birds are flying in a flock through, you know, seemingly through the ocean. But it it creates this sense of the parallelism between a flock of birds and a school of fish, because they kind of look like a school of fish swimming through the ocean. Can you talk a bit about that piece? And, and where that came from?

Salma Arastu

Yeah, yes, you know, I walk on the bay, as I told you. So I often see this, you know, swarms of birds, you know, flying in, in fall, you know, they come, the migrant birds, and they sit there, and they are just moving around, you know, it's like a constant flow. The waves and the birds, you know, I don't know, it just remained in my mind. So one day, it came like this on a canvas. So because there's no end, the waves are till the top, you know, because I see the whole bay area, you know, and then I see this burst just going over it. So this painting, it happened again, you know as I told you, they, they just happen for me, I don't plan them. So when I was going to do the birds, you know, I took my pen and ink because I didn't know how to show the birds. You know, I didn't want to mix them with my paint also. So I just did those with pen and ink if you see, so it was a very, I don't know, it just happened. I mean, that's why I always say I'm guided. I don't know why I'm doing it, how they come. But it really came together really well. And I'm so pleased with the composition. I know even I like it.

John Fiege

Yeah, the composition, the composition is amazing.

Salma Arastu

Yeah, thank you.

John Fiege

Often you, I know you write poetry. And, and some of your paintings have been accompanied by poems, both your own poetry I think and I think you sometimes pull text from the Quran and other places. Can you talk about that relationship between poetry and your painting work?

Salma Arastu

Yeah, you know when I'm walking in the morning at the bay, you know, a lot of thoughts come in my mind. I feel so full of inspiration, you know, when I come back, I want to do this today, I want to do this day. So I record my words, and I record my whatever thoughts are coming and come back in my studio. So sometimes first I write the poem, which is which came in the morning, you know, in my mind, and then go to the painting, then start the painting. I don't really sketch but the words you know, sometimes the words helped me to portray what I want to do that, like my thoughts, you know, so they're connected. I know many times poetry happens first, the painting happens, you know, not for every painting, some. And sometimes the painting happens and when I look at it, it gives me the dialogue of in the form of a poem, you know, so, so they're interrelated in my work, and sometimes I'm directly influenced by Rumi's poetry also, because it's very universal. My work is not necessarily Islamic or Hindu or Christian, or American or Indian. I think my work is universal. I'm painting for everyone. And I, this is what I want to be. You know? So that's how I connect myself with Rumi.

John Fiege

Yeah. Well, he is such an interesting figure, as you say, who is admired by so many different groups that see themselves in such strong opposition to one another in the modern world. And we really live in this age of identity and difference, and across the political spectrum it's really in vogue right now to emphasize and amplify difference and division in culture, race, religion, gender, age. But you're really going in the opposite direction, searching for universality, unity, love, and in some ways, those are ideals from the past. But at the same time, it feels like in the cyclical world that we live in, that they—

Salma Arastu

We need that.

John Fiege

Yeah, that's maybe what the future is, as well.

Salma Arastu

Exactly. That’s what I'm hoping for, yes.

John Fiege

How do we, how do we counteract this toxic political and cultural division that we have in the modern age and, and the ecological calamity that comes with it? And how do you how do you think about these issues of identity and difference and universality and unity?

Salma Arastu

Yeah, let me tell you, you know, it pains me, I cry, when I see these things around me, I mean, like this, this is torture, being a such person. And then watching these separations, you know, watching these distances, watching this, more and more split between, you know, nations and communities and races. Like, sometimes, you know, I see other artists doing this pain, oh, painting this, pictures of pain, but I can't do that, you know? I'm so full that I can't describe the pain. I think if I also do the pain, what I'm here for? I want to give hope, I want to give that love, I want to give that, that that feeling of you know, compassion. I have done few paintings, which depict the moment of the pain sometimes, but then it makes me cry. I said no, I cannot do this for long. I have to give the hope. I cannot do the same like everybody else is doing. What is my existence then? So think I, I don't know, I feel I'm here to give some message of love.

John Fiege

Right? Yeah. And you've talked in about your work in terms of, you know, this bringing together of Eastern and Western traditions. You know, you're using a lot of Western techniques in your work, but then you're bringing in a lot of these philosophies and approaches to the world that that are much more associated with the East.

Salma Arastu

Yes. Yeah, that's a beauty. You know, I love this western world because I've learned so much, you know. I mean, I have been influenced by art from West, I have loved these techniques, the new new techniques I learn every day. I mean, there's so much to learn, I can't keep up with everything. But I say my what I want to say. So, and just naturally, I'm not emphasizing, I'm not forcing myself to do it, as I told you, I just do what comes from within me and just from through my hand on the canvas, so I just continue like that, you know, because I have surrendered myself to the Creator.

John Fiege

Right. Well, I think when you look at the paintings, you can see this spiritual process, which I find really amazing.

Salma Arastu

Thank you.

John Fiege

And the, you know, the deep contemplation just infuses your work, which is, which is really beautiful.

Salma Arastu

Thanks. Thank you, I really appreciate, yeah.

John Fiege

So your, some of your new work that's that I think is coming out of the same project is these paintings around mycelial networks, which are the, you know, the white fungal threads that create these vast underground fungal networks that scientists have recently discovered to be really critically important to communication and nutrient flow and, and ecological connections between lots of species of plants and animals. And, and, and one of my favorite paintings, you know, you described earlier how you're working with rust, but it's got this rust background and these bright white mycelial networks. Yeah, and I love it. And it's just so just the colors and the textures, even on a computer screen are so striking. Can you tell me about the origins of this mycelial work and what mycelia have taught you about ecological connection and regeneration?

Salma Arastu

Yeah, so you know what happened when I finished my project Our Earth in 2021, and then I, you know, I can't stop myself. So I started looking for the solutions now. I know these are the problems, these are the happening things. But now how do I find a solution? So I started reading science. I never did before. But you know, I saw this Fantastic Fungi. Have you seen that movie?

John Fiege

Oh, I haven't seen the movie. But I've read–

Salma Arastu

Oh, yeah. So what happened, when I saw those mushrooms and when I learned about the how they're beneficial, so mycelia seem to be giving the better future you know. That if only we concentrate and look at it and learn from it and support these organizations who are doing research on it. They're trying to make plastic like things from mycelia, I want to make people aware of it. You know, being an artist, I can creatively create those images which will attract people and they'll ask me what it is. So and especially it again, line, I have been so involved with these lines, you know, I'm so enjoying them, the roots and entangled life and then I'm reading some books also which are inspiring me. Entangled Life is a beautiful book, which talks about this mycelium, you know, how it changed my perspective, changed my thinking that we can be saved, the humanity can be saved.

John Fiege

Yeah, I love how art and science are coming together so much right now in the culture. And we're starting to break down these really hard divisions that that I feel like existed for many decades.

Salma Arastu

Exactly, yeah. Yeah.

John Fiege

But if you I mean, look at the you know, Leonardo da Vinci, you know, he was doing art and science. I mean, there was no division back then.

Salma Arastu

And then we created division, you know, slowly, yeah. The colonization of the world, you know, that created these things, I think.

John Fiege

And, you know, through this artistic journey you've been on, what do you feel like you've learned about what our relationship to the rest of nature needs to be and how to get there?

Salma Arastu

Yeah, since I would say, 12 years, 15 years, I've been walking around this bay, and it's only two miles radius. But believe me, in this short walk only, I have found every morning, something new, something new light, something new bird, some sometimes new plant and sometimes the entangled forms on the ground, the roots, the, you know, lichens them, you know, like, imagine, I can’t, you can't imagine the images that I've collected over this years. It’s thousands of images. And so this is what my joy, and I think if only people can connect with nature, they will find the joy also, it’s biophilia, you know, it’s that you know, it's something people will find joy once you connect with nature. We are born to be like that, you know, outside, we are not born to be inside the apartments and the rooms and the television screens. We are we are we are supposed to be outside, you know, and mingle with the nature. So that will give you the blessings you, that will make you realize the blessings you have around you.

John Fiege

Yeah, well, that's a beautiful place to end. Salma, thank you so much for for joining me today. It's been really, really great conversation.

Salma Arastu

Thank you so much, really. I appreciate you understanding my work, and that's what I want. I want to share my work and I want people to understand that.

Outro

John Fiege

Thank you so much to Salma Arastu. Go to our website that ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can see images of her paintings, the photographs from my visit to her studio, and our book and media recommendations.

This episode was researched by Lydia Montgomery and edited by Brodie Mutschler and Sofia Chang. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Mixing is by Juan Garcia.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Salma, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Contact me anytime at chrysalispodcast.org, where you can also support the project, subscribe to our newsletter, and join the conversation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

View Details

I’m continually amazed by the immensity of the world that a small poem can conjure. In just a few lines or words, or even just a line break, a poem can travel across time and space. It can jump from the minuscule to the incomprehensible vastness of the universe. And in these inventive leaps, it can create, in our minds, new ideas and images. It can help us see connections that were, before, invisible.

John Shoptaw has conjured such magic with his poem, “Near-Earth Object,” combining the gravity of mass extinction on Earth with the quotidian evanescence of his sprint to catch the bus.

John is the author of the poetry collection, Times Beach, which won the Notre Dame Review Book Prize and the Northern California Book Award in poetry. He is also the author of On The Outside Looking Out, a critical study of John Ashbery’s poetry. He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

John has a new poetry collection coming out soon, also called Near-Earth Object.

This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series. You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

John Shoptaw

John Shoptaw is a poet, poetry reader, teacher, and environmentalist. He was raised on the Missouri River bluffs of Omaha, Nebraska and in the Mississippi floodplain of “swampeast” Missouri. He began his education at Southeast Missouri State University and graduated from the University of Missouri at Columbia with BAs in Physics and later in Comparative Literature and English, earned a PhD in English at Harvard University, and taught for some years at Princeton and Yale. He now lives, bikes, gardens, and writes in the Bay Area and teaches poetry and environmental poetry & poetics at UC Berkeley, where he is a member of the Environmental Arts & Humanities Initiative. Shoptaw’s first poetry collection, Times Beach (Notre Dame Press, 2015), won the Notre Dame Review Book Prize and subsequently also the 2016 Northern California Book Award in Poetry; his new collection, Near-Earth Object, is forthcoming in March 2024 at Unbound Edition Press, with a foreword by Jenny Odell.

Both collections embody what Shoptaw calls “a poetics of impurity,” tampering with inherited forms (haiku, masque, sestina, poulter’s measure, the sonnet) while always bringing in the world beyond the poem. But where Times Beach was oriented toward the past (the 1811 New Madrid earthquake, the 1927 Mississippi River flood, the 1983 destruction of Times Beach), in Near-Earth Object Shoptaw focuses on contemporary experience: on what it means to live and write among other creatures in a world deranged by human-caused climate change. These questions are also at the center of his essays “Why Ecopoetry?” (published in 2016 at Poetry Magazine, where a number of his poems, including “Near-Earth Object,” have also appeared) and “The Poetry of Our Climate” (forthcoming at American Poetry Review).

Shoptaw is also the author of a critical study, On the Outside Looking Out: John Ashbery’s Poetry (Harvard University Press); a libretto on the Lincoln assassination for Eric Sawyer’s opera Our American Cousin (recorded by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project); and several essays on poetry and poetics, including “Lyric Cryptography,” “Listening to Dickinson” and an essay, “A Globally Warmed Metamorphoses,” on his Ovidian sequence “Whoa!” (both forthcoming in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Environmental Imagination at Bloomsbury Press in July 2023).

“Near-Earth Object”

By John Shoptaw

Unlike the monarch, thoughthe asteroid also slippedquietly from its colonyon its annular migrationbetween Jupiter and Mars,enticed maybe byour planetary pollenas the monarch by my neighbor’sslender-leaved milkweed.Unlike it even whenthe fragrant Cretaceousatmosphere meteorizedthe airborne rock,flaring it into what mighthave looked to the horridtriceratops like a monarchovipositing (had the butterflybegun before the periodbroke off). Not much likethe monarch I met when Irushed out the door for the 79,though the sulfurous dustfrom the meteoric impactoff the Yucatán took flightfor all corners of the heavensmuch the way the nextgeneration of monarchstook wing from the milkweedfor their annual migrationto the west of the Yucatán,and their unburdened mothertook her final flitup my flagstone walkway,froze and, hurtlingdownward, impactedmy stunned peninsularleft foot. Less likethe monarch for all this,the globe-clogging asteroid,than like me, one of my kind,bolting for the bus.

Recommended Readings & Media

John Shoptaw reading from his collection Times Beach at the University of California, Berkeley.

Transcript

Intro

John Fiege

John Shoptaw has conjured such magic with his poem, “Near-Earth Object,” combining the gravity of mass extinction on Earth with the quotidian evanescence of his sprint to catch the bus.

I’m John Fiege, and this episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series.

John Shoptaw grew up in the Missouri Bootheel. He picked cotton; he was baptized in a drainage ditch; and he worked in a lumber mill. He now lives a long way from home in Berkeley, California, where I was lucky enough to visit him last summer. You can see some of my photos from that visit at ChrysalisPodcast.org, alongside the poem we discuss on this episode.

John has a new poetry collection coming out soon, also called Near-Earth Object.

Here is John Shoptaw reading his poem, “Near-Earth Object.”

Poem

John Shoptaw

“Near-Earth Object”

Unlike the monarch, though

the asteroid also slipped

quietly from its colony

on its annular migration

between Jupiter and Mars,

enticed maybe by

our planetary pollen

as the monarch by my neighbor’s

slender-leaved milkweed.

Unlike it even when

the fragrant Cretaceous

atmosphere meteorized

the airborne rock,

flaring it into what might

have looked to the horrid

triceratops like a monarch

ovipositing (had the butterfly

begun before the period

broke off). Not much like

the monarch I met when I

rushed out the door for the 79,

though the sulfurous dust

from the meteoric impact

off the Yucatán took flight

for all corners of the heavens

much the way the next

generation of monarchs

took wing from the milkweed

for their annual migration

to the west of the Yucatán,

and their unburdened mother

took her final flit

up my flagstone walkway,

froze and, hurtling

downward, impacted

my stunned peninsular

left foot. Less like

the monarch for all this,

the globe-clogging asteroid,

than like me, one of my kind,

bolting for the bus.

Conversation

John Fiege

Thank you so much. Well, let's start by talking about this fragrant Cretaceous atmosphere that metorizes the airborne rock, which is is really the most beautiful way I've ever heard of describing the moment when a massive asteroid became a meteor, and impacted the earth 66 million years ago, on the Yucatan Peninsula. And that led to the extinction of about 75% of all species on Earth, including all the dinosaurs. This, of course, is known as the fifth mass extinction event on earth now, now we're in the sixth mass extinction. But but this time, the difference is that the asteroid is us. And, and we're causing species extinctions at even a much faster rate than the asteroid impact did, including the devastation of the monarch butterfly, which migrates between the US and Mexico not far from the Yucatan where the asteroid hit. And in your poem, these analogies metaphors parallels, they all bounce off one another. parallels between extinction events between humans and asteroids between planets and pollen, between monarch eggs and meteors between the one I absolutely love is the annular migration of asteroids in the annual migration of monarchs. But in some ways, the poem puts forward an anti analogy a refutation of these parallels you know, you say multiple times things like unlike the, monarch unlike it, not much like the monarch less like the monarch. So So what's going what's going on here? You're you're giving us these analogies and then and then you're taking them away.

John Shoptaw

The ending of Near Earth Object is a culmination of fanciful comparisons. In this regard it resembles Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. And you probably know this, John, And that poem proceeds—Shakespeare’s—through a series of negative similarities, which I call dis-similes. And at the end, the poem turns on a dime in the final couplet, which is, “and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare.” Now, I didn't have Shakespeare's poem in mind—probably good—when I wrote Near Earth Object, but I was certainly familiar with it. And my poem goes through a series of far-fetched similarities between a monarch butterfly and the Chicxulub asteroid, we follow the lifecycles of these two and then a third character, the first person I enters the poem comes out the door, and then gets, you know, hit by the asteroid monarch on penisular left foot. That turn at the end, to comparing the asteroid to me, one of my kind, would seem equally farfetched. What can I have to do with the globe-clogging asteroid? Before climate change, the answer would have been nothing. This poem couldn't have been understood, wouldn't have made sense. Now, we're caught out by the unlikely similarity that, you know, humankind has the geologically destructive potential of the life-altering asteroid.

John Fiege

I love that the idea of that turn partially because it's so much pulls out the power of poetry, and the power of poetic thinking, where, you know, so much environmental discourse is around rationality, of making rational, reasonable arguments about this is how things are, this is how things ought to be. But when you have this kind of turn, you're you're kind of highlighting the complexity, and the complicated nature of understanding these things, which are really complex. And it really, you know, in such a short poem, you can encapsulate so much of that complexity, which I think benefits our ultimate understanding of, of what we're grappling with, with these environmental questions.

John Shoptaw

Yeah, that's very well put. I think that this poem is a kind of psychological poem as well, and that I'm playing on the readers expectations. And I think the reader probably has less and less faith in this persona, who keeps keeps being lured into these weird comparisons between the asteroid and and the and the monarch butterfly. And then at the end, we're thinking, well, this, too, is absurd. And then we're caught up, like I say, and that's the psychological turn, you know, early on, when people and people still many people doubt. The existence of climate change. It's just because of a matter of scale. How can we affect Mother Nature, right? It's so big, it's so overwhelming. It does what it wants. We're just little features on this big, big planet. So that it's so counterintuitive. So that's why yes, we grapple and this poem is meant to take you through that kind of experience. That without saying that explicitly, and I think that's something that, yeah, it sets this apart from both the psychological essay and an environmental essay,

John Fiege

Right the other line I want to pull out of this is slender leaved milkweed. Which I love. and there is a musicality to it. How do you about that? sonorous aspect of the poem and the musicality and the rhythm of it.

John Shoptaw

Yeah, Thank you for that question. Its one of the ways I beleive that poetry is like music. We do have a musicality and one of the wonderful things about poetry and music is that it it works below the level of meaning. A way a song often does. You know you often will before you even know all the words will get the song. And understand what the song is comunicating and sometimes I am communicating delicacy in slender leaved milkweed. Not only by the image, but by the sound. Its a quiet line. Whereas when I say airborne rock, that's very tight. And very definitive, like globe clogging asteroid or bolting for the bus. These are dynamics that I can play with, and I can accentuate them by changing the rhythms making to very hard plosive as an explosion, you know, b sounds far from each other. And this is something that poetry can do, that prose can't. So well. And that, you know, it's one reason why you have soundtracks and film to help bring things across.

John Fiege

Yeah, and then in the midst of, of some of these grand images that you have in the poem of like monarch colonies and asteroid colonies, there's also your presence, and the glimpse of them of what seems like a moment in your life, potentially, you run out the door and catch the 79 bus, which goes through Berkeley where you live. And and you encounter a monarch butterfly, which also has a California migration route. The monarch impacts your, as you say, stunned, peninsular left foot. And so now you're shifting the metaphor from human as asteroid to human as Yucatan peninsula, which is the site the site of the impact. And the way you you play with scale. In this poem, I find quite remarkable moving from the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars to your foot. And in your peninsular foot makes me feel as if humans are both the perpetrators of the sixth mass extinction, but also one of its victims. And so I was curious, was this moment with the butterfly is something that actually happened? And how do you understand it? In relation to that, you know, this small moment with the butterfly? How do you understand that in relation with the broader context of the poem?

John Shoptaw

Yeah, thank you. I, I think, one way I proceed. And in poetry, which is something like chance operations that John Cage and poets following John Cage would use as I become very receptive to things happening around me. And if something happens around me while I'm writing a poem, then it gets to come in the poem, at least I am receptive to that possibility. And as I was going for the bus one day, on the walkway, I came across a dead monarch butterfly was very startled to see it. And I thought, Oh, my God, that pet needs to be in the poem, this butterfly has fallen out of the sky like the asteroid. And so and it turned out that the third thing I needed to link our personal, small felt scale with the astronomical and the geological timescale. And it's exactly the problem of scale, both in space and time. I'm constantly zooming in and zooming out. I actually wrote one poem in which I compare this surreal or unreal feeling that we have, if not a knowledge but a feeling of climate change behind the weather as a hit the Hitchcock zoom, where the background suddenly comes into the foreground, right?

John Fiege

Yeah, and it seems like, you know, the problem of climate change is a problem of scale like, like it's so it's so foreign to our kind of everyday human senses of, of what is danger, and what is something we should be concerned about or care about it. And that problem of scale both, both spatially and temporally. It really prevents us from wrapping our heads around what it means and how to respond.

John Shoptaw

It does. That's our challenge. I take it as my challenge, for the kind of poetry I write. And I think of of poetry as a science of feelings. And one of the feelings I'm thinking about and trying to understand and work through is denial. You know, people usually think of denial as refusal, you refuse to admit, but look at the facts just face the facts. But as you say, climate is on such a different scale. It's often a problem of incomprehension.

John Fiege

Yeah, and I think this idea of denialism I mean, we tend to talk about it in very narrow terms of, you know, people of particular political persuasions deny the existence of climate change. And that's one like, very narrow view of denialism. But it really pervades everything in our culture, you know, anyone who eats a hamburger, or flies on a plane, or, or even turns on their, their heat in their house, you know, is is in is kind of implicated in some system of denial. That, you know, ultimately, our societies completely unsustainable. And we have to function we have to move forward, even though even if we know how problematic those various things are. And so just living in the world requires, you know, some sense of denialism.

John Shoptaw

It does, if you think of the word we commonly used today, adaptation, though, it's really another word for denial. If you see what I mean, we're, we're moving into accepting, partially accepting the reality as it is, so we can live into it. And again, if we think of relativity, flying less, not giving up flying, emitting less, not stopping all the way emissions on a dime, right, but moving as fast as we possibly can, these are things we can do and without being incapacitated by despair. And again, I think, you know, hope and despair are two other very fundamental concepts that poets if they're serious about feeling, can think about and think through and help people we understand.

John Fiege

Yeah, and I love this idea of impurity that you bring in. Not just with poetry, but, you know, I feel like environmentalism in general is, it's really susceptible to this kind of ideology of purity. And it becomes about, you know, checking all the boxes of, of, you know, lifestyle and beliefs and votes and all kinds of things where solutions, solutions don't come with some kind of attainment of purity. They come with it a shift of a huge section of the way the culture works. And that's never going to be perfect or consistent or anything. It's going to be imperfect, and it's going to be partial, but it can still move.

John Shoptaw

That's right. So when people say net zero, carbon offsets, recycling, this is all greenwashing. I say, listen to the word all. Yes, there is some greenwashing going on there. There is some self promotion and maintenance of one's corporate profile at work. But there's also good being done. You can recycle aluminum, and you get 90% aluminum back. You can recycle plastic, you get 50% back, but you still get 50% back.

John Fiege

Well, in the poem, you also give life to what we ordinarily see as inanimate objects. So let me let me reread a section of the poem enticed maybe by our planetary pollen as the monarch by my neighbor's slender leaves milkweed unlike it, even when the fragrant Cretaceous atmosphere media rised the airborne rock, flaring it into what might have looked to the horrid Triceratops like a monarch ovipositing. So in your words, the lifeless, inanimate asteroid is given life and a soul really? Why take it in that direction?

John Shoptaw

To make it real, to make it real for us. And you will see poets, giving a voice to storms to extreme weather events, seeing things from potentially destructive point of view. And that's what I was doing here is seeing things fancifully from the the meteor’s point of view, but I wanted to give that personification to make the link that this is personal. What's happening at this scale, is still personal, it still has to do with us and links with us.

John Fiege

Yeah, and you wrote this great piece for Poetry Magazine called “Why Eco Poetry” and you bring up these these topics a bunch. And there's one line. I really love, you say, to empathize beyond humankind, eco-poets must be ready to commit the pathetic fallacy and to be charged with anthropomorphism could could you explain this, this concept of John Ruskin's pathetic fallacy and how you've seen these issues play out?

John Shoptaw

I think Ruskin had certainly the good sense of what the natural world was. And many artists and poets laziness, when it came to the describing the natural world. storms were always raging, winds were always howling, the words were always that's really what he was getting at. And I appreciate that. You want to make these things real, right. But there is there is a place for pathetic fallacy. But on the other hand, strategically, we often need for that monologue of the lyric poem, to be overtaken by this larger voice, almost like a parental voice from on high, speaking to us and saying, Listen to me, this is real. This is happening. I'm out here. Right? So you've forced me to take over your poem and talk to you about anthropomorphism is, is related phenomenon. And it's it's a word that I, I still find useful and making us really consider and experience the outside world, the world, particularly of other creatures, as they actually are. However, it's a belief it's not a scientific idea. And the idea being that we are ascribing qualities or human qualities to animals or plants, or even inanimate objects, like like meteors. When in fact, when it comes to animals, for instance, we're often identifying qualities behaviors, actions, motivations, we share anyone who owns pets knows pet they have a range of feelings that to say, my dog is happy. My dog is bored. My dog is feeling bad because it feels it's disappointed me in some way, you know, these things are real. And you need to act accordingly to keep things going along. In the canine / human cup, you know, partnership that you have going there.

John Fiege

Yeah, Descartes must not have had any dogs or cats or ever encountered another animal besides a human in his life.

John Shoptaw

That's right. It's partly, you know, one feels, how can we know that other world? We shouldn't be so arrogant in our knowledge. And so it seems like we're being modest, and it's a good thing. And we have this anthropological attitude toward the relativity of, you know, consciousness. On the other hand, it's a form of denial, right? anthropomorphism is a form of denial of what we share and poets need to overcome that denial.

John Fiege

You mean, you mean anti-human anti-anthropomorphism?

John Shoptaw

Yeah, it's what I know. We don't have the language for it. We don't have that word of the problem.

John Fiege

Anti-anthropomorphism, it just slips right off your tongue.

John Shoptaw

That's right.

John Fiege

Well this point you make about anthropomorphism reminds me really strongly of a story. I've heard Jane Goodall tell many times, she was hired to observe chimpanzees in the wild, and she gave them names. But she was reprimanded by by many in the scientific community, who said, a researcher should use numbers to identify chimps or any other animals they're studying, because scientists must be dispassionate to not confuse animal behavior with human behavior. And she identifies one of her most significant contributions to science as recognizing the individuality and personality and really the souls of non human animals. And that recognition fundamentally changed. Our scientific understanding of chimps and other animals in allow these massive breakthroughs in the field. And you seem to be arguing that with poetry, we're in a similar place in relation to the Earth where we need to find a new language that allows us to empathize more profoundly with the other than human residence of the planet. Does that sound? Does that sound right to you?

John Shoptaw

Very much, and really, with thinking and realizing that I'm an animal, as a human being. brought on a conceptual paradigm shift for me, unlike anything I've experienced, in my adult life, everything changed. And when I think, what are the animals think about this? How are they dealing with climate change? Etc. It's always revelatory for me to ask that kind of question. I'm looking at a book by Jane Goodall right now on my shelf called the Book of Hope. And something I've been thinking about a lot in relation to this, because animals have not given up and they don't give up until they they have to. An animal with say, a song bird in the clutch of a hawk knows it's over, and you shut down in order to minimize the pain and suffering. They know that, but they know not to do that prematurely. And I think, you know, often we met we think of hope and despair, as antonyms, but they're very intertwined with each other. I mean, the word despair, contains hope. It means that the loss of hope and there as there is a sense of false hope, where you, you keep hoping beyond the point of hope, where reality tells you there's no point in hoping there's also what I would call a premature despair. I don't know if you have run across the Stockdale paradox. I find it helpful. There's a writer on Jim Collins, who talked to Admiral Stockdale who was taken prisoner of war in Vietnam. And he, he survived through seven years and several incidents of torture. And he said, he was asked by Jim Collins, well, who didn't survive? And he said, well, the optimists who said the optimists were saying, Oh, we're going to because we're gonna be led out by Christmas. In the winter that didn't happen and say, Oh, well, we'll be released by Easter. When that doesn't happen and Christmas comes around again. They die. They die of a broken heart.

John Fiege

Oh, wow. I have heard that in broad terms. I don't remember that story, though. That's great.

John Shoptaw

Yeah, and the paradox is that you have hope, which is resolute. It's not pie in the sky hope, but it's hope that faces reality. And it's hoped that is more like courage. It's more like resoluteness hope. Hope is not easy. And it does not deny despair, and even allows you to relax for a moment and maybe weep. Maybe you say, Oh, my God, it's over. Before you come back and say, No, I'm still here. I can still help I can do what I can.

John Fiege

Right, right. Yeah, and I love how you say that. Eco poetry can be anthropomorphic, but it cannot be anthropocentric, which which flips both of these assumptions that are so deeply embedded in our culture.

John Shoptaw

Now, maybe I could say something about anthropocentrism.

John Fiege

Yeah, for sure.

John Shoptaw

It's a word that, I think is maybe in the dictionary now, but maybe not so familiar word, but you know, thinking of everything in the world, a revolving around us and and the universe. We're the universe's reason for being right. That would be the kind of the strongest sense of anthropocentrism

John Fiege

Another another form of heliocentrism.

John Shoptaw

Yes, that's right. That's absolutely right. That's why I one reason why I, at the beginning of Near Earth Objects, see things for the asteroids point of view, right? To give that kind of scale, but also shifting perspective. On the other hand, lyric poetry is inevitably anthropocentric. We as humans are inevitably anthropocentric. So our moving out of anthropocentrism in poetry is always going to be relative and strategic, and rhetorical and persuasive, never absolute.

John Fiege

Right and totally. Well, another interesting issue you confront in the article is didacticism and the risks of moralism in eco-poetry. And in talking about this, you evoke two poets. The first is Archibald MacLeish, the renowned modernist poet who wrote "a poem should not mean but be." But then you write, poetics wasn't always this way, for Horace, a poem both pleases and instructs. And I feel like this issue of moralism, and didacticism goes way beyond poetry to encompass environmentalism more broadly. How can a poem please instruct without preaching and being didactic?

John Shoptaw

Yes, that's, that's a question. Where there's no single answer every poem, for me poses the question differently. And part of the excitement part of the experimental nature of poems is you find a new answer every time to that problem, how not to be preachy, but to leave readers in a different place at the end of the poem, than they were at the beginning. my poem to move people from unlike to less like., if I if I can get them there, in a poem, I have moved him in a way and that's enough for me.

John Fiege

Well, let's look at the end of the poem. You write less like the monarch for all this, the globe clogging asteroid than like me, one of my kind bolting for the bus? It seems in some ways that you might be settling on an analogy in the midst of of all these intersecting parallels, the asteroid is less like the monarch and more like us, us who have killed the monarchs. Where Where do you feel like the poem lands in terms of making a statement like this and and offering up many conflicting ideas that readers have to contemplate themselves?

John Shoptaw

What would I say? I think when it comes to guilt or responsibility, as I was saying before, we don't want to think in absolute terms, where I'm as guilty as Exxon, I am not. But I still am right. I am still part of this, this world. That monarch butterfly died naturally after it planted its eggs. Its its, its days, her days were numbered. So, that that is part of this. But yet, I do. I do want to say and this is part of, I think, part of the one of the gestures of poetry in the Anthropocene, the era of climate change, a gesture of saying, I take responsibility, I take responsibility. And this is, this is one of the problems of saying, I give up, you know, there's no point in doing any more. We don't have that option. It's irresponsible to give up to ever give up. So I still, though want to say, even something who that has global potential for damage is connected with me good little me, had taking taking the bus because I'm wondering, I'm one of humankind, and we have this destructive potential. And on the other hand, we have this corresponding responsibility.

John Fiege

Yeah. And looking back on the title of the poem, it feels as if we, as humans, have what you might call like, a dual contradictory existence? As, as both we're both Earth objects. And we're near Earth objects. Oh, what do you what do you think about that?

John Shoptaw

Yes, I do. I like that ambiguity. I think, one of the, one of the chances, and the happy accidents of the monarch appearing in my poem, as I was writing it, without planning to have a monarch in it, one of the accidents was to take the monarch also, as a Near Earth Object Near Earth Object is one of these scientific concepts of usually a very large object, like a, like a comet, or an asteroid entering the Earth's gravitational pull. With potentially hazardous effects. But, you know, it can be anything near the earth. And if you take object, also in the title as a goal, my object is to bring us near the earth. not have us simply abstract ourselves, how do we do that - we abstract ourselves by saying, we're special.

John Fiege

I really like that too, because that also ties into this question of scale. You know, you can be near the earth by being, you know, 1000 miles away. Or you can be near the earth by hovering, you know, centimeters over it. And it can be conceptual to, you can be oblivious to the fact that you live on Earth, or you can be extremely aware that you are of in within and near the earth at all times. Yeah, I really like that. That's beautiful. I love how so many meanings come from this tiny little poem?

John Shoptaw

Well, may I say I was not in a godlike position with this poem. For me. poems are like gardens and that they're less intended and tended, and they they grow of their own and I just tried to be the best collaborator with the poem that I can and not to ignore when it's trying to tell me something like, I need a monarch in here. Not to ignore that.

John Fiege

Yeah. Well, can you end by reading the poem once again. I can thank you very much.

John Shoptaw

Poem

“Near-Earth Object”

Unlike the monarch, though

the asteroid also slipped

quietly from its colony

on its annular migration

between Jupiter and Mars,

enticed maybe by

our planetary pollen

as the monarch by my neighbor’s

slender-leaved milkweed.

Unlike it even when

the fragrant Cretaceous

atmosphere meteorized

the airborne rock,

flaring it into what might

have looked to the horrid

triceratops like a monarch

ovipositing (had the butterfly

begun before the period

broke off). Not much like

the monarch I met when I

rushed out the door for the 79,

though the sulfurous dust

from the meteoric impact

off the Yucatán took flight

for all corners of the heavens

much the way the next

generation of monarchs

took wing from the milkweed

for their annual migration

to the west of the Yucatán,

and their unburdened mother

took her final flit

up my flagstone walkway,

froze and, hurtling

downward, impacted

my stunned peninsular

left foot. Less like

the monarch for all this,

the globe-clogging asteroid,

than like me, one of my kind,

bolting for the bus.

Conversation

John Fiege

John, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been fabulous.

John Shoptaw

Thank you, John, for the opportunity. And I love conversing with you.

Outro

John Fiege

Thank you so much to John Shoptaw. Go to our website at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can read his poem “Near-Earth Object” and also see some of my photographs of him at his house in Berkeley and find our book and media recommendations.

This episode was researched by Elena Cebulash and Brodie Mutschler and edited by Brodie Mutschler and Sofia Chang. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Mixing is by Sarah Westrich.

If you enjoyed my conversation with John, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Contact me anytime at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can also support the project, subscribe to our newsletter, and join the conversation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

View Details

Modern society has removed many of us from an intimate connection to the land, the water, and the elements. Air conditioning in cars and artificial light in our homes allow us to carry on without paying much attention at all to the forces of nature around us.

These relationships to ecological surroundings are something entirely different for those who fish artisanally along the coasts of Peru.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder is an anthropologist who writes beautifully and poetically about the people who catch camarones and the various types of fish used to make cebiche. She explores their intimate and visceral relationships to their environments—writing about a world of tasting the wind, talking to rocks, and listening to rainbows.

She finds that efforts to protect the traditional and artisanal fishing industries in Peru have provided the cultural and political power to protect the ecosystems that support these species.

I find her work particularly interesting in the context of the global seafood industry. The United Nations estimates that almost 90% of fisheries worldwide are either overfished or have already collapsed. To meet rising demand for seafood on a planet with nearly 8 billion people, seafood farming has expanded rapidly and now provides over half of the world’s seafood for human consumption. Fish farms pollute rivers, lakes, and coastal habitats, and escaped fish threaten wild populations with disease and other ecological impacts.

I think Constanza’s work points us toward what a healthy ecological relationship between people and marine life could look like, even as we fight to dismantle the commercial fishing industry and repair our collective relationship to the world’s oceans.

Constanza is from Mexico originally, and she’s married to a Peruvian. She’s now a professor of anthropology at Carleton College, in Northfield, Minnesota.

This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Kitchen series, which explores questions of the sustainability of our food.

You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

As an environmental anthropologist, Dr. Ocampo-Raeder’s work focuses on the political ecology of resource management systems in resource-based societies. Her current research projects explore the contradictions between sustainable development goals and policies that impact the livelihoods of small-scale producers, as expressed in initiatives such as food movements, protected areas and ecotourism. Dr. Ocampo-Raeder's current project focuses on the socio-ecological underpinnings of Mexico's diverse culinary traditions where she is exploring and contesting notions of fusion, mestizaje and gendered roles in the booming gastronomic economy. Her research combines ethnographic and ecological methodological frameworks to evaluate the human ecology of indigenous and rural societies in Latin America (Peru and Mexico). Dr. Ocampo-Raeder holds a bachelors’ degree in biology from Grinnell College and doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University. She has published amply in both Spanish and English, often with her undergraduate students, for environmental anthropology, food studies, and human geography journals. Dr. Ocampo-Raeder is currently an Associate Professor at Carleton College where she teaches anthropology, environmental studies and Latin American studies.

Cebiche/Ceviche Recipes from Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Recommended Readings & Media

Transcript

Intro

John Fiege

These relationships to ecological surroundings are something entirely different for those who fish artisanally along the coasts of Peru.

She finds that efforts to protect the traditional and artisanal fishing industries in Peru have provided the cultural and political power to protect the ecosystems that support these species.

I think Constanza’s work points us toward what a healthy ecological relationship between people and marine life could look like, even as we fight to dismantle the large-scale commercial fishing industry and repair our collective relationship to the world’s oceans.

I’m John Fiege, and this episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Kitchen series.

Constanza is from Mexico originally, and she’s married to a Peruvian. She’s now a professor of anthropology at Carleton College, in Northfield, Minnesota.

You can find Constanza’s wide-ranging cebiche recipes and photographs from her fieldwork in Peru at ChrysalisPodcast.org.

Here is Constanza Ocampo-Raeder.

Conversation

John Fiege

Well, can you tell me about the recipe brought and how you prepare it? Just take us take us through it a little bit?

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes, so I actually submitted several recipes because some of my work really delved into understanding the tradition of cooking fish with citruses, which is what we know colloquially as cebiche. And most of my work is carried out in Peru, and Peru is the capital of cebiche of the world, you know, they consider it one of the sort of primary dishes of the nation. So one of the things I wanted to do was, you know, depict different cebiche traditions around the world and sort of put them in conversation with some of the, you know, absolutely musts and must not that Peruvians tend to think about when they consider what the perfect speech entails. And I think, you know, one of the fundamental things that they always note is that their cebiche is really good, because of three fundamental issues. One, that they have access to incredibly fresh fish from a sea that actually has, you know, incredible amounts of, you know, biodiversity, both cold weather and tropical weather because it's right on the, you know, the Humboldt, or you know, Peruvian current, because they have a special kind of lime that they claim has a specific kind of acidity that cooks it to the right point, you know, when you when you actually mix it, and three, that it's simple, you know, and they have, you know, they really emphasize the simplicity of it, of not piling it up with too many condiments, which is actually what makes it different from, you know, other cebiche traditions around the world. So I really went out to try to learn how to make cebiche when I was living in Peru, and I learned it from a lot of different types of people from starting out with cookbooks, but just all the people that I knew, making cebiches at home paying attention to how it was done in restaurants, but then a lot of my fieldwork takes place with traditional fishing communities, artisanal fishermen. And we decided I really decided to pay attention to how they made cebiche because if it's, if you can claim it's the freshest cebiche, they were going to be the ones to make it. And it turns out that the best cebiche among the fishing communities tends to be made by teenage boys, because when they are starting—

John Fiege

Wow.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, it's actually really kind of lovely and there's a lot of pride among these teenage boys about making the best cebiche and they just kind of come up onto the boat with like an old knife, their salt, they're, you know, they have this you know, little sometimes they often put in MSG into it, which is really interesting because it kind of tenderizes the fish. So they have these little secret packets, of you know, of their MSG that they bring in. And, and they just wait to see what's actually captured. And the reason why these young men are doing it is because when you start going into, being folded into the labor of a boat, generally the easiest one for somebody who doesn't have a lot of experience on a ship, is to cook, so they you know, so you can kind of climb up the ranks and get good positions if you're a good, you know, sort of cook, so. So that's how I learned how to make it.

John Fiege

MSG doesn't usually go with our idea of freshness.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Exactly, which is really sort of unique, that they're actually bringing the Ajinomoto, it comes in these cute little packages that you can buy buy strips in the corner store. And they you know, that's their secret ingredient often they're like, you know, so even in these tours—

John Fiege

The not-so-secret ingredient.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

The not-so-secret ingredient, because even though they're bringing out the fish from the sea, you know, they think that it's a little bit tough when it's fresh fresh out of the beach, so they kind of put in a little secret tenderizer into it, you know, which makes a difference, I have to say like I've had cebiches in all these different kinds of ways. And, you know, they definitely, it definitely tenderizes it a little bit. So you know, so I learned how to do it with them. And it's generally pretty simple, you know, you have a pretty, you know, in the cities, there's a preference for certain kinds of fish like flounders and Chilean sea bass. But in fishing communities, you know, they'll make cebiche out of just about anything, just like in any coastal community. And it's basically freshly cut fish, you squeeze the lime with a little bit of olive oil, and some sort of hot pepper, either paste or you cut it up into tiny little bits. And you mix it up with maybe a splash of ginger, that's what you know, sort of changes a little bit from region to region, some garlic, if it's one style, which is the tiradito style, or you put onions in it, which is the traditional sort of Peruvian cebiche style, and you mix it all up and you serve it with something sweet like a sweet potato, which makes this like wonderful combination of like the sweet and sour, the acid and the sweetness. And you know, you mix it up and how long you actually let it mascerate is also changes from region to region. Now they do it really fast they do it what they call nisei or Japanese style. So they basically just mix it up right there and you're eating it as soon as you get it served. And I kind of like that, you know, sort of style—

John Fiege

It’s a lot of drama. A lot of—

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, it's a lot of drama. And you can go to these like cebiche bars, and they'll toss it right there for you.

John Fiege

Right, performance.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes. And then something crunchy, you know, so it could be, you know, if you're in a place where they have fried plantains, they'll give you strips of fried plantains, or they'll give you, you know, sort of corn nuts, like Q’anchita, which have this sort of styrofoam quality to them, which are really interesting. Or, you know, in some places they might give you, you know, some some sort of like a bean, you know, like, frijoles zarandajas. So it just really depends on the region, but it generally has that sort of acid, the sweet and something crunchy. And that's about it. You know, it's really simple and Peruvians have excellent produce. They have great olive oil, like even cheap olive oil is just fantastic.

John Fiege

Oh, really? Oh, because they've got that huge agricultural region.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes, exactly. Exactly. So so that's basically you know, and I talked about in the recipe a lot about this idea of using the eye, el ojimetro, the eye-o-meter, if you will, and you know, and it's really it is really interesting, because you have to kind of develop this embodied feel of how to cook it, when is, I can't tell you exactly how many limes you know, just kind of has to look like it can't be swimming in it, but it also can't be too dry, right and you want to have enough of the lime leftover so you can either pour it in a glass and drink it or scoop it up with spoons. You generally want to eat cebiche kind of communally, but everybody has a spoon so you can get the right amount of the juice and so forth. And they also use they tend to use purple onions, which are a little bit sweeter. And so they have, it's very sort of locally articulated with certain varieties that are very much Peruvian, even the limes, they're technically key limes and you can get them here, but you know when you get have access to real lime trees, like the quality of the lime is just spectacular.

John Fiege

Oh yeah, amazing.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, yeah, Peruvians tend to claim that only their limes have a particular kind of acidity, and it comes from this one particular region. And there might be some truth to that. But to be honest, you know, I grew up in Mexico, and we had limes that were exactly the same and just as good, but, but it's that, that simplicity, and just the quickness of it that really, they have hands down the best cebiche out there. And just the variety of it, which is really sort of incredible.

John Fiege

Well, that idea of, you know, the limes have to be from here in this spot in Peru, like, that reminds me, in your article, you talk about this concept of oceanic terroir. And then you have this word that's really hard to say, searroir?

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes, which now I know, it doesn't quite work, I need to change it to merroir. Because I think there is, you know, the French have already started using it. So I tried to be I tried to coined a term, but it was already coined. So I need to change that. But yes, you know, there is this real, you know, discussion about, you know, one of the—you know, preparing the recipe takes this really interesting sort of communal process in which it's not just about the cook, who's actually preparing it. But to make it right, you also have to include the sort of knowledge of the commensal, the person who's actually eating it. And it's in that interplay of people tasting it and saying, yes, it tastes, it's the right texture, it's the right so-called freshness, it's the right sort of smell, it's the right look, you know, there's a particular patina, there's really beautiful patina, that forms on raw fish that's fresh, you know, it's like a little bit iridescent, but it can't be too much. Otherwise, it's old, you know. So there is this discussion amongst everybody who's preparing it, or giving the fish, the people eating it, about it having to have a particular taste, and that taste is very much connected to the different narratives are associated with what is a healthy ocean, right? What is a healthy seascape? And what is the relationship of all these different people to that particular environment?

John Fiege

Yeah, it's so interesting, because you know, the French talk so poetically about the soil, and the weather and humidity, when they're growing grapes for wine, and it was just, I found it really fascinating to hear some of your, your people you're talking about in your work, talking about the sea air and the winds, and like, what part of the sea that the fish is brought from? I was like, Yeah, of course, you know, like, that's, that's what food is, it's taking, it's, it's taking elements from its environment and, and turning it into something else. And why not? Why can't that be a merroir?

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes, exactly. And, you know, what I think is really interesting, which is going back to this, you know, when you're talking about taste, there is this assumption that because taste is being mediated through a very particular, you know, sort of bodily organ, like the nose and the mouth, right, that it’s objective. And I think what's really interesting about tracing the ways in which people, you know, talk about and construct narratives about the environment, and how it, you know, feeds into food, is that those narratives are actually pretty different. Like the objectivity. Once you start asking about people and comparing different narratives. You know, taste is not as objective, as you might actually, as psychiatrists, psychologists, actually, you know, make us out to think. Like all these studies of tastes and perception, you know, it's very much a sort of, pathway of, you know, different brain sort of processes, and you know, how your body picks up or can't pick up certain tastes. But what I have found in my work is that they're very culturally specific, right? They're socially constructed. And that in the case of the fisherman, for example, if you ask him, What is the best fish for ceviche, it is definitely not the fish that you pull out of the sea, right there and eat immediately. Hence, that's why they use the MSG, right? To them, the best fish is the one that you pull out of the sea, you clean and salt on the boat, you know, that's where, you know, you're using the wind of the deep sea, you're using the water from that particular ocean, you clean it up, you salt it, then you take it home, you store it on the top of your refrigerator, not refrigerated, you so you dry it, and then you reconstitute it, you know, about two to three weeks later. And that's the best ceviche and I have to say that that salting process, once you rehydrate and reconstitute it, it's absolutely delicious. So it's not an issue about freshness. It's about where and how it was prepared for future use.

John Fiege

Right. You know, strangely, this reminds me of some things I've been reading lately about cell phones and our, our, you know, addiction to social media. And there's been some studies by psychologists I believe, showing that people don't enjoy their food as much when their cell phone is sitting on the table.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Oh, I can totally understand that. That's so interesting.

John Fiege

And it's like, yes, of course, taste has this massive psychological element. And it's about what is your interactions with the people at the table? You know, taste is not, you know, as you say, it's not this objective, scientifically measurable thing, it's about, it's about how it all happens in the process.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes, yeah. And it's almost like you're chewing these past stories, right? Like you're chewing it, you're thinking it, your whole body opens up when you are exposed to food. And if you're connected into the sociality of it, and are open to hear about these different stories, I think that that's when taste can become this, like magical, cultural realm, where you're exhibiting different relationships with nature, different relationships with each other.

John Fiege

Yeah, totally. Yeah. And as you mentioned, you know, cebiche is, is really tied up in the Peruvian national identity in this sense of national pride. And it's really this a centerpiece of this gastronomical boom in Peru, that is attracting all this international attention to the food culture there. And it seems like a powerful sustainable food movement has emerged with this boom. But I was wondering if you could talk a bit about what some of the ecological impacts and consequences of this exploding interest in cebiche and other traditional dishes is there?

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes. I think that that is such a great question. Because, you know, the interesting thing about the food movement in Peru is that it constitutes itself a little bit later than most of the sort of contemporary kind of back to land, food movements that we have today. And they explicitly joined a narrative of biodiversity conservation, they were really kind of after the times of terrorism, you know, the country really kind of opened up, woke up to all these discourses that were taking place worldwide as sustainable development, of conservation. And they know and they noticed that Peru was kind of being ignored, because Peru had been closed off for a couple of decades from, you know, really being involved in direct sort of global conversations about things.

John Fiege

Fujimori, and that—

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, it was right after Fujimori was the first one to sort of open it up. And even though he was disastrous for the country in other reasons, he really sort of pushed a conservation agenda, reestablished, you know, sort of research taking place in the country. And that started really sort of catapulting not only economic opportunities, specifically through tourism, so suddenly, you know, they're like, Why aren't why are people going to Mexico and not, you know, lining up in droves to go to Peru? We have good food, we have great, you know, sights to go see, cultural multiculturalism and cultural richness. And so they started articulating sustainable development, around very similar sort of ethos has happened in the slow food movement in Italy. And in fact, a lot of the architects of the food movement are rural sociologists who are kind of, you know, followed the same pattern. And they really started focusing on how can we, you know, harness the sort of biological cultural richness of the country and use it as a weapons for sustainable development. So they even talk about like cocina como una arma social. So it's very much articulated as a sustainable development project. Now, the problem is that, you know, this meant that you would have to really explicitly start building networks to connect all the different producers. And this is an incredibly diverse set of producers, right? With thousands of varieties, if you just think about potatoes there’s thousands of varieties of potatoes, thousands of varieties of quinoas and any of the quinopods. So how do you start linking up small scale producers who are often, you know, inhabiting very different land tenure arrangements, they might be indigenous, communal? You know, how do you start, you know, managing and organizing that. So that's the first sort of problem that not everybody has access to the market or knowledge about how to market it in a sort of, you know, culinary or gastronomic setting. The other thing is that once things start getting popular, let's say that, you know, there's a couple of varieties of potatoes that suddenly became really popular for representing, you know, Peruvian identity. So Lay's, you know, the Frito Lays came up with like papas sandinas, you know, but the problem is that once you need to mass produce it, you need to move towards monocrop. So, those are some of the environmental impacts that suddenly these foods need to be industrialized, right? They need to be, the scaling up of it has a lot of problems. And there's authors like you know, Garcia who's talking about what the impact of that is in certain animals like cuys, and in llamas and other sort of traditionally, you know, raised in different ways animals, and the same thing is happening with a lot of agricultural products. And definitely, with fish, because fish is actually being harvested by traditional fishing operations, they tend to be smaller scale, and they have an actual legal category within Peru. But you know, the demand is up, right. And they're also competing with industrial fleets, which are often impacting the, you know, the type of species that they're harvesting as well.

John Fiege

Yeah, and I thought that was interesting how you talked about how these artisanal fishing folks have exclusive access to to fishing within five miles of the coastline. And so, you know, that's, that's really intensive protection of, you know, the traditional traditional kind of ways of fishing, and none of it’s industrial. But, you know, of course, there are poachers and illegal fishing operations that violate all of this. But it seems that despite all the protections, fish populations are still dwindling. Can you talk about kind of the myriad factors that are going into what what's happening there ecologically?

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's really hard to pinpoint exactly who's responsible for it. Unfortunately, it's these small scale fishing operations that are easy to target by policy and management, but they're really not, I really do believe that they're not really at fault, just because of the scale of it. Even though if you add up all the different fishing villages, it is substantial. I mean, it is artisanal fishing communities provide about 80% of the fresh fish that's actually consumed in Peru. So it's not trivial. But the problem is that first, you know, that fishing folk population, it's incredibly diverse. So they're using different types of aparejos or fishing gear, they're fishing different sections of that five mile, you know, section. So some of them are doing perhaps, you know, lobsters, some of them doing oysters, some of them are doing smaller fish, some of them are, you know, just focusing on tuna fish, others on, you know, different types of things. So coordinating, you know, different techniques for fishing and different traditions of fishing is sort of tricky. But then, you know, there is the industrial fishing fleets that are now capturing entire schools of, let's say, tuna that used to make it in closer to inland but now, you know, they're just not seeing it. So, you know, I've had a couple of seasons where you see, you know, fishing boats go out, and all they come back with is giant Humboldt squids. And that's a disbalance that's happening at the ecosystem level. And we don't know if it's just a normal—apparently, squid, they have these boom and bust sort of ecological cycles. So we don't know if it's because something has happened because of overfishing, or is it a normal cycle of the biology of the Humboldt, but it's not normal for it to be coming in such you know, bursts, that frequently. And then of course, there's climate change. You know one of the reasons I chose to work with these communities is because half of the year, they fish for tropical species, warm water species, and half of the year, they do cold water species because they live right at the intersection between the tropical water currents that come down from the Ecuador and the cold water currents that are coming in from the Humboldt in the current, which is really cold water. So these are communities that are particularly vulnerable to the unpredictability that happens with climate change events.

John Fiege

So yeah, it feels like the oceans, in general, are this massive governance problem we have. And, and it always—

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Oh, absolutely. It's a tragedy of the commons. Yes.

John Fiege

Yeah, totally. And it always has been, and there has been some progress in terms of some kind of international agreements. But really, it only takes one rogue nation or fleet. And who's gonna enforce it? You know?

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, yeah. But here's where I'm, you know, a little bit optimistic, because one of the things that I was really sort of taken aback when I started working in these communities is that, you know, there are so many different social and cultural kind of processes that are helping mitigate who, what are the rules are, you know, these fishing communities, they have very well established rules that are often kind of enforced informally. They're built on like kinship and marriage relationships, and just neighborhood, you know, capital that kind of accumulates. And the other interesting thing is that they don't really act, you know, I think as Western thinkers, when we go even and research a place, you go and research one fishing village, right, and then you might go to the next one, but they are much more, to use sort of contemporary parlance that I use in my classes, they queer these boundaries in really interesting ways. So even though they might belong to Village X, they might have families in the next village, and there's quite a bit of negotiation and discussion between villages—there’s a lot of conflict too, but you know, they solve it through festivals and exchanges. And I think that that's why it's really important to sort of look at these issues at the local level. Because often, they've come up with solutions to kind of, you know, understand—they’re already dealing with these problems, and they have been for a very long time. So it's very insightful to see what are they socially and culturally doing in order to mitigate some of these problems? And it has and you're absolutely right, it comes back to really collective action and how collective action works. And you know, how common pool resources are actually being managed by populations.

John Fiege

Yeah, and it's hard enough to manage a national political conversation. But then you all of a sudden dealing with other nations with completely different interests and completely different political structures. It's just like, woof.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, and even within the country, you know, like, depending on who's in government, you might have somebody who has this really extractivist sort of position, then you have somebody who doesn't, and then everybody likes to build new institutions. So there's so many overlapping institutional, I mean, it's chaotic. You never know who's, you know, you can see a fish and it's like, okay, who regulates this squid? You know, 13 different institutions?

John Fiege

How many different folks regulate it? Yeah. Well, in addition to cebiche, you research and write about camarones, which are similar to crawfish as we know them in the US. They're crustaceans like shrimp, shrimp just live in the oceans. But camarones they go for this long journey from the ocean. And, and they swim-walk upstream through the river until they reach the base of the mountains where I don’t know exactly what the cycle is, but it seems like they grow and spawn there, and then they head back to the ocean.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah.

John Fiege

And they're legally protected, and can't be caught until they reach a certain size. And the people who catch them are called camaroneros. And you describe these fascinating relationships they have with the ecology there and how they communicate through wind rocks, and in my personal favorite, rainbows, they’re talking to rainbows, which is awesome, in order to, as you say, think like crawfish. And can you talk about how the how these camaroneros think like crawfish?

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, it's you know, it's really allegorical because this is a very particular landscape. You know, it's an interandean river valley, it's from the southern, it's still in the department of Lima, so it's still near the capital. But it's these, you know, beautiful valleys, where most of the mountains, if you can kind of envision them, they're completely bare, you know, they, they they don't have any vegetation, except for the vegetation that's on the bottom, along these rivers where there's an amazing amount of wealth of agriculture. And that's where most of the agricultural production in Peru is happening, in these inner river valleys. And so these communities kind of are, you know, you live in that green space and on the river itself. And so it's you can't really escape the sort of, you know, you're always listening to the river flow, you're always paying attention to meteorological differences, because the Andes is a really intense place, you know, when it rains, it pours, the sky is just too blue sometimes, you know, it's a very, very sort of crisp, intense place. So these families are, you know, they, in order to understand the behavior of these crayfish, they really pay attention to what's happening around them, they go down and touch the river boulders to see if they're, you know, warm, or if they're cold to kind of predict what the type of movement of the crayfish might actually be. One of the most beautiful things I learned from them is that they're often tracing rainbows. So they're paying attention to where rainbows are appearing across the sort of mountainous landscape. And if there's a certain kind of shape of rainbow that's happening upstream towards the mountains, that's actually indicating that it's probably raining. And the type of rainbow will indicate if it's raining too hard, which means that it can muddy the waters. So you know, they dive in and hand pick the crayfish, so they actually have to get into the water now and get them because the baskets that they used to use are now, they're too efficient. So they're now prohibited. So they go into the water to handpick them. And if the waters are too muddy, you can't see the crayfish. So, so they're kind of using the signs to sort of understand what type of rain or what type of you know, climactic sort of movement is happening upstream, and they use that to really, you know, understand it. And it's and it's the way that they talk about the crayfish, it’s very personal, you know, they they use a lot of similarities between how the crayfish you know, behave. They, they use similarities like you know, when it's cold, like nobody wants to come out of your house, so why would you come out of your house, but if it's a nice day, you know, then you go out for a stroll, you know. So then that's the type of weather that they like to dive in. Because the shrimp are kind of strolling around their little cave or their little, you know, hole. So they use a lot of, you know, they they use their own life's pace, to sort of explain how the crayfish are working. And it's and its useful, it's very helpful to how they see it. So but they're very in tune. I mean, they're looking for rainbows. They're looking for earthquakes, there's a lot of these tremors that come down the mountains that are wind based, so they're not actual earthquakes. And they can tell, you know, oh, that like windows just suddenly rattle. And they're like, oh, something's going on upstream. So they're, they're kind of looking and adding up signs in order to decide if they're gonna go upstream to swim and capture the crayfish themselves.

John Fiege

It's so interesting. Would you would you mind reading the first two paragraphs of, of your camarones article?

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes, I would be delighted.

John Fiege

It's so beautifully written.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Oh thank you. The title of the article is “When the Rainbows Bring the Crawfish.” “When the wind is not speaking, the people talk to rocks. They walk down to the river below their houses and place their hands on top of a stone’s smooth surface, just like when you touch the belly of a pregnant woman, gently, waiting for something uncertain. They're trying to determine the rock’s mood, because here rocks have temperaments. If they are in a fickle mood, they are tepid to the touch and there is no hope of deciphering what they want to say. If they are apathetic, they are cold and that tells people that the entire ecosystem is upset—it will not cooperate with humans that day. A very cold stone can even cancel an expedition planned for that night. A cold stone outdoes rumbling winds. When the river rocks are feeling sensual, however, when they feel hot in the frigid water, then the harvest begins. ‘A rock ‘in heat’ means the crawfish or camarones are out,’ Emiliano once told me. A hot rock is an excuse for a crawfish to take a moonlit stroll, but this time they do not swim-walk far from their miniature caves beneath the boulder. They softly shuffle about because the stone’s heat will only go so far in warming the water. On those nights, these Andean crustaceans circle the boulders that make up their lairs. Also on those nights, when the crayfish come out, he crawfish folk, camaroneros, are waiting to catch them.”

John Fiege

That's so awesome. I love that, it's so poetic.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Thank you. That means a lot to me because English is my second language. And I took creative writing classes because one of the things I want to do is when I showcase some of these very, very different human natural systems and relationships, often the vocabulary we have is kind of limited by these Western ecological grammar that we tend to use. And I really want to write ethnography as this kind of magical realism. After all, I’m Latin American, so I love the idea of magical realism. And so it took me a really long time to write it. And it kind of goes against the grain for what typical academic articles are.

John Fiege

Yeah, and it's too bad there's not more academic writing like this. Yeah, you know, I love the moonlit stroll.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, that’s how they said it, it's crazy. Yeah.

John Fiege

It's so cool. So, between this writing about camarones and your writing about cebiche, one of the things that really jumps out at me is this relationship of the person fishing in the environment, to where they're fishing, and, and how that's a key element of a certain idea of sustainability. In the US, we have this very quantitative idea of sustainability, this, this notion that sustainability can be measured and regulated to protect “natural resources,” as many people label animals, plants, minerals, ecosystems. But lost in all this is the human relationship to the rest of the natural world. It feels to me like you're hinting at this notion of sustainability that reconnects human communities to ecosystems. Can you can you talk a bit more about this human relationship to the environment and how it impacts your understanding of this amorphous word of sustainability?

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, yeah, I've thought a lot about that because I began as an ecologist. My undergrad degrees were in biology and tropical ecology. And you know, and I started working in different places around the world having contact with, you know, locals who were using those ecosystems directly. And one of the things that I found, you know, pretty, pretty curious early on, and then even to a certain degree frustrating, is that you know, if you're coming in from it from this sort of Western scientific perspective, there is this desire that nothing is valid until you can translate it into some sort of ecological justification in the case of sustainability, when you're talking about the use of, you know, wildlife, or plants, and so forth or forests. And, you know, I kept on thinking like, why do we always insist for something to be proven, either positive or negative, when you're in the ground? You know, these relationships are often entangled, and they're contradictory, and they're not necessarily, you know, harmonious. I think words like, you know, harmonious, which have plagued the sort of human ecology literature for a very long time, and that are still used, directly and indirectly, to talk about indigenous systems of traditional ecological knowledge, you know, are really, I think, often unhelpful. Because what would happen if you if I depict this, and you know, and we have all these wonderful connections with nature, but then the fact of the matter is that in this particular article, I talk about how the crayfish have been, you know, extinguished and have to have been repopulated into this river several times, because it, sometimes it's sustainable. And sometimes it's not, because you can't necessarily control everybody who's interacting with them. So you know, so there's this bar of purity that's often placed upon resource-based populations that they have to do it perfectly, when our post-industrial society, we are far from perfect, you know.

John Fiege

We don't do anything perfectly.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

We don't do anything perfectly. But when we're talking about others, we expect them to just be poetic about it, to be religious about it, to be, you know, nationalistic about it, have identities and sense of place. So I've thought about that a lot, and I think we need to open up to really think about human-nature relationships as often, you know, contradictory, unexpected. I think the Anthropocene sort of literature is really helping us look forward instead of backwards, you know, really take stock of what is here now, and then start reimagining the possibility of what sustainability can mean. And it's not going to be what you and I learned in our environmental studies, you know, when we were undergrads, like this is, I mean, at least I graduated from college over 20 years ago, and I am drastically in a very different place than I was when this sort of sustainable language and vocabulary started coming in. So I think we need to be open to messiness.

John Fiege

Yeah, and it, you know, to me it feels like this dilemma, in a sense that, on the one hand, you know, it's easy for people to sit in their air conditioned house under a fluorescent light and stare at their computer and see these perfect ecosystems and these beautiful photographs and, and have this sense of this unsullied, perfect nature out there somewhere. And, and that's also kind of easy to critique as well. But at the same time, if everybody tried to go have these personal relationships with ecosystems, and our, you know, 8 billion people on the planet, like that wouldn't go well, either. So it feels like we're in this, we're in this hard place where we have these really superficial removed relationships with plants and animals and, and places, ecosystems, the land, the water, but at the same time, you know, that's the only thing that protects it in some ways, you know, like, thank goodness, all those millions of people are in New York City, you know, and not spread all over the state. Because then there would be nothing left. You know.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

On the other hand, you know, I think that one of the reasons I chose to focus on the internal food movement of Peru is because it kind of makes you think about these, you know, sort of different scales and the nested sort of nature of social, you know, groupings and relationships, because, in this case, crawfish are being protected. They are, you know, there is a period of, of a veda, where you can't actually eat it for a certain amount of months, so that they can actually reproduce. And that was actually driven by the increased desire of, you know, restaurants to actually, you know, serve this particular dish inside Peru. They're not exporting, you know, camaroneros, and it's very regionalised. And it's connected to a pretty substantial urban area, which is Lima. And so you don't know where the drivers are going to be at. But what they did right in this case is that they went and spoke to the people who were actually, in this case, you know, harvesting the crayfish, and they worked with them to find different alternatives. And there's different guilds, every river valley has crayfish in Peru, so there's a lot of different guilds. Sometimes they fail, sometimes they don’t. But in this particular case, it also has a lot to do with the biology of a particular, you know, species. But in this case, they've been able to really manage it in what I think are pretty successful, you know, ways. So we need to play with issues of scale, I think, a little bit more.

John Fiege

Yeah, for sure. But I, you know, related to that I found one thing you mentioned super interesting, that in the offseason, camaroneros are hired to enforce the fishing ban, and they're actually paid by the local hydroelectric plant to do this. And from what I, from your article, it seems like the dams are, are getting a lot of criticism from environmentalists, in part because their operations impede the journey of the camarones up the river. And the power companies want to take a bit of the heat off themselves by making sure that the crawfish populations don't collapse.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, I came into this project, thinking that I was going to really write a piece, you know, showcasing the evils of the mining company, but everything again, was so entangled. I mean, they're, they're trying to, you know, resolve a particular image, but they're not only just polluting, you know, disrupting the waterways for the camaroneros but for the entire agricultural sector, which is pretty powerful,

John Fiege

And industrial.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

And industrial, you know, and yeah, it was a very surprising turn of events. And, you know, and it's also a very fragile sort of relationship, because you change mayors or, you know, something happens and those relationships can change. Conservation, I always tell my students is not an endpoint, it's always a process. You're just kind of buying time, throughout this entire thing. You're never gonna say like, oh yeah, here we are we, succeeded.

John Fiege

Now, conserved.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Now it has been conserved. Yes, exactly.

John Fiege

Done, let’s move on.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes. Yeah. Let's move on now. It'll never happen. So we, you know, I'll always have something to go explore. And we'll see what that work looks like. Right.

John Fiege

Right. Well, I just love how you've twisted around these traditional dynamics between industry and traditional fishing communities and urban environmentalists. And that’s, you know, that's, I think, what makes this work you're doing so strong is, is we, in the mainstream media, we fall so easily into these stereotypical simplistic visions of each of these, you know, folks who might be called stakeholders. Which in itself is a problematic term.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, exactly.

John Fiege

You know, and it's, it's so complicated. And we, I think that, that complication, for me, it should give us a lot of humility. And to say,

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

I, you know, that that is a wonderful word to use. I mean, I've been also thinking a lot about the idea of grace, right? Like, when you read about these things, when you read about, you know, let's say, different foods, you know, it's so easy for us in the position that we're in, to say, like, Oh, I just learned about X or Y tradition, I'm gonna go do it, or I'm gonna go travel and doing it. And I think that, that feeds into this consumer thing that everything's up for the experience of others. I don't know how to say this. But you know, I've made the switch to go back to my home country, which is Mexico, to really start exploring what my relationship with food is. And, you know, and I, and I live a really, you know, kind of crazy relationship with food, because in a given week, I'm cooking things from India, from Thailand, from Vietnam, from Mexico, from Peru, and that has incredible ecological consequences, right? Like, not everybody should be able to have access to Peruvian crawfish, you know, like, what does it mean to really move into a much more local, you know, process of eating. And somebody like me, its a really, it's a really hard thing for me to do because I'm Mexican. I’m not going to eat, you know, turnips in the middle of winter, it would just be hell for me, you know. I even have a hard time, you know, doing the CSA even though I love the idea. I love having fresh vegetables. There's a moment in which I look at all those, you know, famine foods, that I consider famine foods, like turnip, beets and all that. And I'm like, yuck, you know, like, I don't, it's not that I don't know how to cook them. I am a perfectly good, you know, cook. It's just that culturally, we're also becoming a much more, you know, multicultural pluriversal sort of globe, and how do you how do you travel? How do you make these other ecosystems and human-nature relationships travel with you? So I have no real answer, but I think your point is really important.

John Fiege

Yeah, and as somebody you know, with Northern European heritage, I’m really, I'm really glad I'm not tied to my own culinary history. You know? And that, that kind of Northern European, you know, focus on on animal husbandry and, you know, limited vegetables. You know, that's been disastrous, ecologically. So at the same time, being able to draw from other culinary traditions has allowed us to at least think about getting a food system into a more ecologically sustainable position.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, because diversity is good, right. But then it also has its bad sides too. So, yeah, so I don’t, you know, just culturally speaking, you know, like, why do I insist on buying avocados in Northfield when, you know, 73% of them, because I'm, like, actually keeping track of it, are always a mess? You know, but I cannot live without avocados. So it's like those cultural underpinnings and connections we have, and the ones we build throughout our lifetime, are really important and they’re not trivial. Yeah.

John Fiege

Right, well, I lived in Texas for a long time, most of my adult life, and I always considered all the produce from Mexico to be local, essentially.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah. Mhm.

John Fiege

But then when I moved to New York, it doesn't work so well anymore. Oh, no longer local. Definitely no longer local. Well, you mentioned wanting to go and explore Mexico and kind of your relationship to food. And one thing I found really interesting that you wrote was how a Peruvian waiter once told you that cebiches in Mexico are disgusting.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Oh, god. Yeah. And I mean, and, and I have even heard worse, like, you know, the Peruvian food movement hit a chord in the national sort of psyche, in a way that is really kind of powerful, and spectacular, but if you're foreign, it takes you by surprise, because you come into the country, and they will say things like that without, you know, considering any type of consequence or maybe decorum, you know. But yeah, no, it's, you know, the very famous Mexican cebiche is a Acapulco cebiche, which I, you know, my family happens to be from Guerrero. So I know it very well. And, you know, they use ketchup, and they even sometimes put Fanta onto it because it's an orange based one. And I know it sounds kind of atrocious, but it tastes so good. Oh my god. You know, it just kind of brings this brightness into it. And you know, and they're just horrified by it. Like my husband, you know, when he comes to Mexico, if I tell him it's a shrimp salad, he'll eat it and enjoy it. But if I remind him it's ceviche acapulqueño, he'll be like, Ugh, you know, that’s actually, you know. Ecuadorian cebiche, which is relatively similar to Peruvian cebiche, except that they use tomatoes, which is an Andean crop, like they could claim that one if they wanted to, and it's acidic, as well. They're like, Oh, my God, they use tomatoes. And they're, they're very sort of proprietary about what proper cebiche really is. So, so yeah, so it's, it's been interesting to sort of think about, you know, the, that that extreme sort of creation of a national identity around food. I have to say that in Mexico, it's very similar. People, we’re very, very proud of our food. But we articulate it differently, like Mexico really is built around this idea of mestizaje. So for us, our food exemplifies that social process very, very vividly, right? Like we're always talking about a mole, for example, it has like the best of the indigenous ingredients and techniques and the best of the Spanish, right, like a proper Mexican, you can't be too European and you can't be too indigenous, you have to be a mix, right? It's a caste system, like the mestizo is a caste system. And so we are articulate it differently. Peruvians don't emphasize the indigenous part of their, you know, ingredients as much as they do in Mexico. But there are some, you know, strange pathologies about like, you know, how Mexicans also articulate themselves as being central to the gastronomic world. But you know, but there's similarities to both places, because there was two pre-Columbian empires there. So you know, there was two colonial, you know, processes, one that took place with the Inca first, and then in Mexico, it was the Aztec and predated by the Maya. Then the Spanish came into this landscape that was incredibly diverse. I mean, these are diverse places ecologically, culturally, socially, historically. And they were just perfect places in order, you know, you had these networks of economic systems already built for the trade of goods, you know, so it's no wonder that the two places where you have these fabulous cuisines are Peru and Mexico. So there's a lot of difference—um, similarities.

John Fiege

And where do you fit into all this? Like, as you think about this new work you're doing? You know, what, what is your what's your relationship to food? How is your identity tied up? Or not tied up in these things?

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

You know, I, that, I, you know, I don't know, I find myself at this, you know, I'm close to 50. So I'm really excited to sort of really think about who am I, and I have this particularly beautiful window in which I'm articulating that, which is to my kids, you know, there to, you know, little boys who are eight and ten and they were born in the United States, but they have a really, really proud Peruvian father and an incredibly proud mother. We travel they do fieldwork with me. And so a lot of the questions I'm posing about what does food do for you, why is it important to articulate and talk about food and really pay attention to how we're eating, is really coming from this insight of raising two children, you know, like, who do I want them to be? How are they negotiating their own identity in the United States? Like we have big rabid discussions about, you know, if a flour tortilla is a proper thing in my household. And you know, and I mean, of course, like flour tortillas are Mexican, right, and there's like, a lot of foods we eat with flour tortillas, but I've kind of become radicalized in the sense of like, I'm like, you shall not eat flour tortillas ever, unless they're handmade by somebody, you know. And so my kids are, you know, it's really, like, I really diversify insects, like Mexicans eat a lot of insects. So we, my kids regularly take up chapulines, or worms or stuff to their, to their lunches that I you know, I'm like, bringing stuff from home, to really emphasize that there's more out there than what they're being exposed. I mean, these, we go to a progressive school, and they have a relatively good lunch, you know, but the food, it's just dreadful. So, I am kind of, you know, really trying to showcase also that food is not just a vehicle to nutrition. I think that, you know, a lot of these notions of sustainability get translated into these strange notions of health, and a clean body and a trim body. And I'm not particularly thin, you know, like, I'm a pretty, you know, I'm a big, robust woman. And so this idea that only through cleaning am I supposed to achieve this very particular kind of Europeanized body? I don't, I'm not, you know, 100% with it either. And so veganism is something that I'm really sort of, you know, considering, like, okay, like, if I'm going to eat meat or animal protein, like in what context. So I'm actively this late in my life really thinking about it, but I think it came through my kids. And so right now my new project is next year, I'm spending a whole year in Oaxaca, in Mexico, and I'm going to write an ethnographic cookbook, but it's very much going to be about, you know, discovering, you know, the sort of ecological, the socioecological underpinnings of the foods we eat, and really kind of bringing out these stories, that a mole is not just a mole, but it really articulates a particular legacy, I really want to write against the idea of fusion, because I think fusion gives you this sort of false sense of like, multicultural reconciliation, when it's not necessarily, you know, it comes from a very particular legacy. And really articulate it into the future, like, what does, what does Mexican food food mean today when you know, Mexicans live throughout the continent, and in different places, right, like, what does it mean for my kids? So it's a big question, and I and I'm grappling with it in the unexpected realm. But one of the things I did choose was to go back to my country and start working in my own cultural space, if you will.

John Fiege

Yeah. Well, that's super interesting. Yeah, these are such, they’re such complex, but also like, deep philosophical questions.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes. Yeah.

John Fiege

And so where are you landing with this? I mean, is even the idea of sustainability, is it like a central thing you think about? Or like, how do you even think about that?

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Oh, God, you know, I don't think about sustainability because every time I try to, you know, kind of operationalize it for a particular project or something, it gets too unwieldy, because I do think sustainability has been, you know, articulated around a particular kind of human-nature relationship, that's much more on the ecological sense of it. And I'm trying to open up the, I believe that you can get to those, you know, systems that, you know, have low, you know, pollution, low outcomes, runoff, erosion, all those good things that I think are merit, you know, meritful. But in order to get there, we still need to get through the sort of human histories that will encourage us to really invest in that system. Because I think it's become, the word sustainable has become too dry in my mind, it's about following the carbon footprint or about doing it. And I can't get on board with that message, because I just can't connect with it at the human level. So we're, I'm really coming down to it as building up these sources of human histories, in order to emphasize that we're connected with food in more ways than we think about. Because like, you know, going back to avocados. Yeah, I shouldn't be buying avocados. I shouldn't be buying limes. I'm pretty aware of what my carbon footprint is. But I'm still going to do it. And the only thing that changes is now I feel guilty about it. But but you know, what can I do?

John Fiege

Progress!

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes, exactly. Like at least now I feel—but what can I do to have a much more sort of, you know, joyful life in the sense of feeling true to my identity, true to the type of person I am, true to my kids’ heritage as well and still, you know, find a new ethos of eating and experiencing the world that is not, you know, problematic. And that's a big task. I don't know. I don't know if I'm being successful at it but I'm trying.

John Fiege

Well, the frame, the frame of thinking about your children is such a great one too. Because in your kids is, I mean, literally, your history. Like written in their DNA. And the way you spoke as they were growing up, you know, it's literally there, the history, but it's also so much about, what is the world they're going to inhabit one day?

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes.

John Fiege

And, and connecting the past to the future is just such an important thing. We can't live in the past. And we can't just be obsessed in with this, as you say, this kind of sterile, mechanistic idea of sustainability into the future, you know, they have to be connected to one another in some way.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, and you know, and that's where I think delving into these, you know, sort of human histories is important, because if we think about all this, you know, discussion about the Anthropocene, like, what does it mean? Like, is it a Anthropocene of cyanide or the end of the world and all these, you know, kind of interesting, apocalyptic language that’s being used to describe the future. But if you look at at least, you know, like, the history of my country, we've already gone through an Anthropocene. I mean, the colonial onslaught was severe enough that it reduced the population to, you know. How is it that we have such an amazing diversity of food today, after the genocide, after the ecocide? You know, after these post industrial processes, I mean, Mexico has been neoliberalizing constantly, since, you know, the 19-, you know, I would say 50s, 60s, but then, you know, went crazy in the 80s. And why is it that it survives? There’s like, stories of survivors and resilience, that's where I want to be hopeful, you know, that this is not the first time we've we've faced these things.

John Fiege

Well, I'm super excited to read about your future work in Mexico.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Thank you.

John Fiege

And, and I hope it feels like those first few paragraphs of your Gastronomica article.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, I hope so. It's been already good. We've gone a couple of times. And it's been really, gotten me to think about, you know, these really interesting ideas of you know like, how here, we talk a lot about how we should go back to these decolonized diets, right. It's always, you know, in the US, it's always everything or nothing, like it’s binaries, you know. And when I ask—

John Fiege

This is the nation of black and white.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Black and white, yeah, right. And when I asked these, you know, indigenous women that I'm, you know, collaborating with, you know, like, what did you use before the Spanish, like, you didn't have almonds, you know, they're not, you know, how would you decolonize this? And they're like, Why would we want to? They're like, They gave us the almonds, and we made them ours. And why would we deny all the work we put into making these almonds—and they have a word for it, they’re criollo. Right, like, so that is interesting. That's not happening with the decolonize food movement here. You know, so we’ll see what happens.

John Fiege

Well, it’s like, it’s like those, those cute little hats that folks in the Andes are so famous for, that are considered this traditional clothing, that they got from the Europeans.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

John Fiege

—long, long ago.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

And so what, are we gonna get rid of them? Yeah.

John Fiege

Is that decolonizing? Yeah, it's a really, it's complicated. But yeah, I very much appreciate this getting out of the simplistic binaries that American culture can, is just so good at pushing us into.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Yeah, and I mean, and the thing is also to remember that it's not like in Mexico, we might have the solution because they take the opposite. It's all mestizaje. It's like, it's all just mixed together. And there are its own pathologies with that, right. But I do think that local stories can help us do that. So yeah.

John Fiege

Well, awesome. Constanza, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been really wonderful and fun.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Thank you, John. I look forward to talking to you more in the future. You have to come to Oaxaca.

John Fiege

Oh, yeah.

Outro

John Fiege

Thank you so much to Constanza Ocampo-Raeder. Go to our website at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you find her recipes for cebiche, her photographs from her fieldwork in Peru, and our book and media recommendations.

This episode was researched and edited by Brodie Mutschler, with additional editing by Sofia Chang. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Mixing is by Juan Garcia.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Constanza, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Contact me anytime at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can also support the project, subscribe to our newsletter, and join the conversation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

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Many assaults on the environment happen slowly and continually, almost invisibly to us: starting a car engine, buying meat at the grocery store, throwing away a plastic straw.

Mountaintop removal is different. It is sudden and violent and intentionally, unmistakably destructive. Coal companies will blow off the tops of mountains with explosives in order to more easily and cheaply access the coal seams underneath vast swaths of forest, streams, and wildlife habitat. They destroy massive areas of wild land to produce a dirty energy that heavily pollutes the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Their use of explosives also allows them to employ many fewer miners.

Mountaintop removal was one of the big environmental stories in the media in the last couple decades. There were massive protests and a lot of bad press for the coal companies.

Now coal production is down in the US, and dramatic and shocking stories about mountaintop removal have largely disappeared from the headlines, but mountaintop removal has not gone away. As the easier-to-access coal is mined, the amount of land that must be destroyed by mountain removal to produce the same amount of coal has increased.

One report that demonstrates this is from SkyTruth, an environmental advocacy group that uses satellite imagery and remote sensing data to study environmental damage. They published a study showing that the amount of land needed to produce a unit of coal in 2015 was three times more than it had been in 1998.

Vernon Haltom and Junior Walk haven’t forgotten what’s happening in West Virginia and Appalachia, because they live it every day. They both work for Coal River Mountain Watch, the organization previously directed by Judy Bonds, the renowned mountaintop removal activist from West Virginia, who was the daughter of a coal miner and died of cancer in 2011 at age 58.

Vernon and Junior’s stories are urgent environmental ones, but they are also stories about the media and how we forget and move on.

This episode of Chrysalis is the first in the Chrysalis Projects series, which highlights the work of community-based environmental projects.

You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

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We’re back!

I’m super-excited about the new series of shows we’ve been recording over the past year here at the Chrysalis podcast.

The new series focus on poets, artists, cooks, and community organizers, and we’ll be releasing them alongside more of our original Conversations series that spans a wide range of environmental thought and storytelling—engaging the climate crisis as a cultural crisis.

I interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Forrest Gander, and here’s how he described what we’re doing with the podcast:

“A chorus of not just scientists and biologists but a chorus of artists and priests and poets, and that’s what you’ve been doing is putting together this other chorus of responses to our crisis. And I think it’s going to take the voices of a lot of people from a lot of different trajectories to effect any kind of change.”

I completely agree.

Subscribe to the podcast to hear my conversations with this growing ecological chorus, and subscribe to our newsletter to receive poems, artworks, recipes, and ideas on how to support the amazing work of community-based environmental organizations that I highlight on the show.

It’s all at ChrysalisPodcast.org.

And please show your support by telling your friends.

You can find the trailer and the show on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Stitcher, iHeart, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, and other podcast platforms. Please rate and review to help us spread the word!

Please share the trailer far and wide!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

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Here’s something we hear all the time: if only more people knew more about environmental problems, then they would certainly act in some ecologically beneficial way. But the problem is, it’s not true. We’re now deluged with data about the climate crisis; and yet, this abundance of available environmental information has not led to an abundance of environmental action.

This deficit model of climate communication is flawed, even though scientists, environmentalists, and other proponents of climate action continue to speak and act as if people would do more if they just knew more about the climate crisis and understood the science of climate change.

Heather Houser writes about environmental ideas and themes in art, literature, culture, and the humanities. Her work blossoms with keen insights about the importance of culture in confronting ecological crisis.

Heather is Professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin. I met her many years ago in Austin, when I was developing a film about dance and environmental justice. She is both a dancer and an environmental humanities scholar.

Our conversation explores climate information overload, the idea of what she calls eco-sickness in literature, the thorny topic of human population size, and whether artists should reject or rework artistic tools of the past that might be tainted by colonialism, racism, or other forms of oppression.

You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Heather Houser

Heather Houser, Ph.D, is Professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin, and the author of two brilliant books: Infowhelm: Environmental Art & Literature in an Age of Data (2020), and Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect (2014), which won the 2015 Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2014 British Society for Literature and Science Book Prize. She is also a co-founder of Planet Texas 2050, UT Austin’s climate resilience-focused research challenge, and has led the following initiatives for the environmental humanities: 2015-16 Texas Institute for Literary & Textual Studies, Environmental Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, and Texas Ecocritics Network.

Quotation Read by Heather Houser

“It's astounding the first time you realize that a stranger has a body - the realization that he has a body makes him a stranger. It means that you have a body, too. You will live with this forever, and it will spell out the language of your life.”

James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

Recommended Readings & Media

Intro

John Fiege

Heather Houser

I mean, especially if you are an environmentalist, you pay attention to these issues. But really, even if you're, you know, you're not, there's a lot just so much like information coming at us about, say, the percentage of extinct mammals, right, how many mammal species are extinct, or bird species are extinct? All the data about climate crisis, whether it's like warming temperatures, ocean acidification, you know, how much of the ice sheet has melted? You know, it's all all this data is like, how do you make sense of that? Yeah. What do you do with that? I mean, what do you do with that, not only as a way to understand the phenomena at maybe, you know, objective or straightforward level. But what do you do with that emotionally if you're an artist or communicator.

John Fiege

I’m John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.

Heather Houser is Professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin. I met her many years ago in Austin, when I was developing a film about dance and environmental justice. Heather is both a dancer and an environmental humanities scholar.

Here is Heather Houser.

Conversation

John Fiege

So, I'd like to start with an essay you're working on about your childhood, which you shared with me. In this piece, you talk about the instability of your upbringing - from your parents' rocky marriage to their financial woes. And the constant moves that resulted. You moved about thirteen times in your childhood, largely around the Poconos region in Pennsylvania, I think, and to other states as well. In the midst of that instability and constant "shifting ground" as you call it, you found a sense of stability, grounding and joy in dance. You write:

“At this age I hadn't yet met the idea of the plateau or of the precipitous fall. This was the time for the joy of movement, the satisfactions of devotion, and a belief that the alchemy of body, space, music and time can make you other than who you are and where you came from.”

I love this idea of seeing your childhood and who you became through this lens of dance. Can you talk more about where you come from and maybe what your relationship to the rest of nature was as a child? And how this, this alchemy of body, space, music, and time led to your interests in the environment?

Heather Houser

Yeah, thank you. So I was born in the Poconos region of Pennsylvania, which is in the North East part of the state right along the New Jersey border. And if you know it at all, you likely know it as a tourist destination for urbanites, you know. When - this was, I should say I was born there in 1979 and grew up there with one one gap when I lived in Massachusetts, but I lived there from 1979 to 1997.

I think things have changed, but back then, it was - certainly there were a lot of resorts, honeymoon destinations, summer camps, so a large tourist influx from New York and New Jersey and Philadelphia. But then there were the locals like myself, so it was a place of abundant nature, I would say. You know, the Appalachian Trail ended and started there. Lots of lakes. It's a hardwood forest area, lots of ponds and creeks, or, as I say, in that essay, "cricks" my grammy and pappy said. I didn't pick that up, but that's what parts of my family called creeks.

But that was actually not my family's orientation. So I lived in this place with so many things I now wish were right outside my door. And, of course, Austin, TX has its own beautiful environments, but, I honestly did none of that. There was one swimming hole we would go to called the 40-foot. It was a 40-foot jump, which I did not do because I was afraid of heights, but I don't remember swimming in the lakes or the "cricks" aside from that. We never went on hikes, except for maybe, you know, walks in the woods near our house (or houses, since there were many of them).

So that relationship that I now have, like the appreciation and really the need to be outside is, is something that developed really in my college years when I lived in Portland, Oregon. When I think about dance and the environment, personally - and my relationship to it - is about movement. Being able to move in space, I think is one of the continuites from my dance persona to my like, environmental appreciation. And even though those are completely divorced - or separate, just didn't really exist when I was a kid - I feel that continuity now for sure.

John Fiege

And you know when you were in the Poconos area as a child. Did you have a, did you have a sense of people from the cities coming there as like a location of nature and looking for this kind of pristine wilderness experience, did you have a sense of that?

Heather Houser

Oh absolutely, and you know, I mean, this is - I was very hard on the place when I lived there. I mean, I really wanted out. I went almost as far as you could go within the continental United States when I went to college. Kind of foolishly to go to a private liberal arts college across the country. But it worked out OK. But I did not - I mean, I definitely knew that people were coming to the Poconos for that experience of nature, and wilderness. And you would, quite honestly - I interacted a lot with tourists because I worked at an ice cream shop - one of those time-honored things you do on the summer vacation is going to the ice-cream shop.

John Fiege

How iconic.

Heather Houser

But you know, I was there - not stuck there, I wouldn't say that. Because I did like that job and my bosses and coworkers so I didn't feel stuck, but certainly different experience. And so I had a lot of contact with tourists that way, but really never befriended any tourists or had deep interactions with them, but it was clear that was a big part of the experience, was something so drastically different from, say, NYC or Philadelphia. And I mean we used to kind of, you know, make fun of or just roll our eyes at tourists, sort of fascinated by the so-called "wildlife" that for us was much more domesticated.

You know, like, certainly we had wildlife, we had bears that would come up. We lived in pretty remote - even within the Poconos - pretty remote parts, 'cause there is like a downtown area that's a little bit denser. But we always lived outside of that. And we had bears that would walk up our driveway, and we had, we had turkeys like a turkey mound that they just hung out on, and these sorts of things. So there was some, there were some animals that were, maybe even felt a little bit wilder even to us.

But yeah, so we would just find it amusing that tourists would find things like foxes or you know, deer, like really, fascinating, and even frightening, right? Like these things that you're not used to seeing are often scary. Even if there isn't much reason to be afraid of them.

You know, I wasn't taking as much advantage of what surrounded me as I would at this point in my life, and so in some sense, I think the people who are coming in maybe appreciated it more than I did because it was such a stark difference from their day-to-day reality. But of course, like most tourist destinations, it had it's very - pretty detrimental effects, right? All that tourism.

John Fiege

Right, the development and the trash and the traffic.

Heather Houser

Yeah, traffic and all of that, yeah.

John Fiege

Well, let's fast forward to what you're doing now. So, what are the environmental humanities, and how did you come to focus your work within that field?

Heather Houser

Yeah, so the environmental humanities. I mean, it really encompasses a cluster of academic disciplines - like history and literary studies and religious studies and anthropology. Often it can capture the arts too, creative arts, but really (that academic cluster aside), it's it's really the - the impetus behind the environmental humanities is, a recognition that we can't understand human relationships to the more-than-human (or "nature," as we you know, typically call it), we really can't understand that through scientific or policy or economic approaches alone. That we need to also understand the cultural aspects of that. We need to understand the artistic aspects of human relationships to nature.

So, that's one dimension of that. Like, if we're going to understand human relationships to nature, which vary over time and across cultures, we really can't just rely on some quantitative analyses. But another dimension, I think, looking forward, is if - thinking especially of environmental issues, challenges disasters. We also need those cultural, historical, and artistic understandings if we are going to really address these challenges, especially in an equitable manner. That - you know thinking about the history of, for example, climate policy you know? Or thinking about the history of colonialism when we're thinking about how to respond to climate crisis today, you know, we need those historical dimensions if we're going to move people.

And this "we" is variable, right? Like it's not that there's a uniform across the environmental humanities, there's certainly not a uniform outcome that people have in mind. But if you're thinking about responses to say climate crisis or extinction, whatever it might be, that you need to also marshal all that cultural representation, all that artistic expression, bring to the conversation. Because that's really what moves people, it's what helps people imagine other futures, and also to reflect on what brought us to the present. So it's really, you know, historical, cultural, and artistic and expressive - and within the cultural I also think of, you know, spiritual and religious dimensions of environmental relation and responses.

John Fiege

Right.

Heather Houser

You asked me how I came to this - I was an English major as an undergraduate, and then took some time not in school. But when I went back to graduate school, I didn't know that that would be a focus. I actually thought, I had lived in Portland Oregon, and living there had become much more attuned to environmentalism, largely of an urban nature, but not necessarily exclusively. And also just had become - became much more of an outdoors person, camping, backpacking, hiking. All of those things.

But I thought that was a part of my personal and political life and not part of my academic or intellectual life, right? But midway or so through my graduate - time in Graduate School - you know, you need to define your dissertation. And I really had two paths I was considering. And one was just was finding a way to merge my personal interest in commitments to environmentalism with my academic life, and I wasn't sure I wanted to do that. Actually, I didn't have coursework in that area, but there was my advisor in a professor, Ursula Heiser, she's really a one of the most prominent people in the field of environmental humanities. So she was she was at Stanford, where I went to grad school. So I certainly had someone to guide me, which she did, amazingly. But yeah, it was, it was a question for me of whether to keep certain spheres of my life separate or to try to bring them together, and I decided to bring them together.

John Fiege

And was that a good decision, in retrospect?

Heather Houser

I made that decision because I thought that could carry me through some of those hard and dark times of being a graduate student, like to sort of think about my commitments beyond the academic sphere. But it has - it is challenging, in that it can feel like everything is a part of everything, and you know, activism or serving on advisory groups or whatever it might be outside of the academic world, and suddenly it's not at all separate, right? So, I don't know. I think it served me well. But there are weeks and days where it can feel, yeah, like there is no "outside".

John Fiege

Well, I can feel the passion of it in how you write, and what you write, so I think that's, you know, that's definitely the positive side of it.So, your first book is called Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction, so can you tell me - what is "ecosickness"?

Heather Houser

So that idea is - it's really capturing how often, environmental degradation or change and bodily damage, or change - how often those things go together. There were a number of writers I was noticing, and I talk about - Leslie Marmon Silko and Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace, among others - in their writing, you know, they are taking stock of environmental damage, in most cases in the literature that I was examining. And at the same time, they're taking account of all of the transformations to bodies that are happening in the 21st century.

And you know, I think in a more scientific register or even a more maybe environmental justice register, we often think of these as "causal relationships," right? So there's a toxin that a polluting industry is releasing into the water, and people consume that. And then they experience maybe cancer or neurological change or, you know, infertility or reproductive changes. I think that causal relationship between the environment and the body is pretty prominent in our thinking of environmental health, but a lot of these authors weren't thinking so directly causally. It was more - they're interested in how we actually can conceptualize the environment, and what's happening to it, in terms of the body - and a body that's sick rather than a healthy body.

Now back in the 19th century in the US, with some of the white male proto- or early environmentalists like John Muir, Henry David Thoreau. You know, that relationship between the environment and the body was also often one of health, and robustness, and, you know, getting out into nature and climbing mountains - and you know, sort of overcoming some of the challenges.

But in the 21st century, or late 20th century and 21st century, certainly that still exists, but we often have an understanding of the relationship between the body and the environment through, through sickness or damage or some kind. So the book is like tracking how really, that phenomenon, that it exists, and also then how it manifests very formally, artistically in a set of novels and memoirs.

John Fiege

Yeah, and you mentioned you mentioned Rachel Carson as well, who is one of my favorite writers. And she's known as a non-fiction writer but, it made me think of the opening of Silent Spring, which is kind of written like fiction. I think even referred to it that way. And so I wanted to read just a quick section of that, 'cause I thought maybe - I would be curious to hear how you relate this to this idea of ecosickness. So this is from the opening chapter in Silent Spring called the Fable of Tomorrow. So Rachel Carson writes:

“There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example, where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere where moribund. They trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices.”

So how does this, how does this passage in this book relate to this larger body of ecosickness literature? You know, in in this example, there's there's sickness in the body of the bird, not body of human, but later in the book she talks about it in the body of humans.

Heather Houser

Well, Rachel Carson is just an amazing writer. I mean, she's certainly probably most popularly known for Silent Spring, but her writings on the ocean are just amazing. And she calls that the fable for reason, so she's already marking it as some you know, somewhat fictional. But of course, fables always point us to deeper truths.

John Fiege

Right.

Heather Houser

So, and there's been - I mean, there's been billions of words written about that opening, I don't really write about that opening, but Carson is really inspirational to me in that project of Ecosickness, but also she's really inspirational for thinking about this relationship between the environment, and the body, through through illness, through rapid transformations that were unforeseen. But that - I mean, there's no causality in that opening, right? The rest of the book is explaining the mechanisms of that, and the sources of the death and disruption of bird populations, among other animals, including humans. But in that opening, right, it's this more evocative feeling of, of the consequences, like there's something out of joint here, right? There's no more birdsong. We don't, maybe yet know why, but we know that that's a problem.

And I mean, I think one of the reasons that so important for thinking about Ecosickness, or you know, environmental health outside of strict causalities. That is, like something that you can conclusively prove through empirical studies, scientific research data, all of that. I think it's important to think outside of those, because it takes a long time - and sometimes it's even impossible - to pin down causalities and that feels really comforting like, especially when you want redress, you want blame, you want compensation, you want quick solutions.

But even before you get there, like to feel that something is wrong and not to ignore it, like that's something that that opening I think really does powerfully, as, as an entree to the rest of the book. And like certainly does for my project of Ecosickness. Like these authors aren't trying to directly explain how, say, depression results from a toxin. It's more thinking about, you know, a toxic environment more broadly and how they coexist and have similar mechanisms and manifestations.

John Fiege

Yeah, well, you know Rachel Carson fits into the next thing I want to talk to you about as well. You know, I think one thing that makes her so powerful is she's, she's a scientist who really - who's been trained as a scientist, really knows the science, and she's a brilliant writer - which is a really rare combination. And I love what you say in the opening of your book about the importance of literary and humanistic knowledge. You talk about how science illiteracy is no longer an option for humanists. But at the same time, you flip that to argue that narrative illiteracy is no longer an option for scientists, or anyone who wants to confront environmental issues. Can you talk about what you mean here?

Heather Houser

Yeah, so um - and that's where that that idea of complementarity comes in, right. Like meeting and sort of both sides coming to a middle more than anyone abandoning a side that is science or art and narrative. There's this amazing book that I write about in my second book, Infowhelm, called Objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, who are historians of science. But they talk about epistemic values - which I know epistemic is a jargon-y term, but basically, the values that are privileged in a knowledge enterprise, like science. And so you know, things like objectivity, things like quantification, causality, universality, things like that.

So also understanding those aspects of science are, I think, part of scientific literacy. But then on the other - you know, the compliment there is when I say that narrative literacy is so important is, I think, goes back to earlier in our conversation. That - I've said this a million times, so I kind of chuckle when I say it, like, data and facts alone are not going to, as you said earlier, "move the needle." It's really through storytelling, understanding the stories and all dimensions of the stories that move people - or don't move people - to think about and act on an issue. And that can often be thought of as science communication. But it's so much more than that, because-

John Fiege

It's not a very exciting term, right?

Heather Houser

And there are people doing great work with that and using the arts for that, so I don't want to dismiss that way of thinking about things, but there's so much - communication, and the way it can be understood, I guess in in “laypersons terms” can seem like unidirectional. Like, we have this bit of information, we need to find the best way to get it out into people’s ears and eyes, right.

But really, I think narrative just introduces so much more complexity that - there really isn't anything unidirectional or predictable about the way stories affect people, right? So, narrative literacy is not only - it's similar to scientific literacy. It's like, “well, what are the stories already out there, and how can those be understood as providing a foundation for environmental relations?” And also, I'm also thinking about environmental futures. But then it also means understanding how narratives work, and they aren't often so predictable or-

John Fiege

Right.

Heather Houser

Assome - as one might think.

John Fiege

Yeah, and you say you write in your book that particular tropes, metaphors, and narrative patterns carry an “affective charge” that can activate environmental care, when empirical studies alone cannot. And so if I'm reading this correctly, you're not saying that any kind of storytelling can activate environmental care, but that particular kinds of storytelling can. And I just wonder if you could talk a bit more about that, and maybe even describe some of these tropes, metaphors, and narrative patterns more specifically that you're thinking about.

Heather Houser

Yeah, in Ecosickness, one of the things I was interested in, as I said, their affect or emotion, the way that narratives generate and represent emotions, and how that does a lot of work on its own to, to affect how people are understanding an environmental problem and reacting to it. So for example, the emotion of anxiety. This is a really powerful emotion, in environmental representation of disasters, or future disasters, or, you know, climate change in general. You know, cultivating, generating anxiety is something that a lot of you know, dystopian or apocalyptic environmental narratives will do. It makes us anxious, makes us uncomfortable, makes us uncertain. You know, anxiety is much more amorphous. Like, there might be sources for it, but it becomes this like pervasive, nebulous thing that's very hard to like, solve, or surmount.

So anxiety is this emotion that I think is quite familiar from representations of environmental damage or crisis. And I look at Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Almanac of the Dead, which is a very, very large, sprawling and challenging novel. 'cause it does depict a lot of the horrors of colonialism, and oppression, and violence against indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. But this, it's a novel that really cultivates anxiety. And so I was interested in that as certainly a powerful way to help people think about problems, right? And to recognize them as problems.

But then what happens to that emotion, right? Like is this an emotion - it might lead to care or to awareness, but is it an emotion you can act on? Or is it an emotion that actually shuts you down, because it is so powerful, pervasive, but also overwhelming. So I think about, you know, those. And I also think about an emotion like wonder. You know, very different. Like has a lot of positive associations with it. But you know what, what are some of the environmental understandings and actions that an emotion like wonder can produce?

John Fiege

And another emotion you discuss is optimism. And you have this wonderful discussion of the split between environmental writers and activists on this question of optimism. So does hope fuel our ability to address ecological crisis, or does hope hinder our ability to confront very daunting realities? Or do these contradictory thoughts happen all at the same time? So here's one of my favorite lines from your conclusion:

“Smart grid, smart phones and smart cars won't alone won't deliver us from our dumb ways of living, so much as perpetuate them.”

So can you talk a bit about this complicated, contradictory idea of optimism?

Heather Houser

I think we often hear it with more through the - and you said this a moment ago - through the idea of “hope” because I mean, often we conflate hope and optimism. But some people like to keep them separate. Like that optimism can be taken as an even more, like a stronger expectation that things will just work out okay no matter what. Whereas, hope is often, I think, a little more mixed. At least within environmentalist circles. But hope is this emotion that I think drives you, even if you don't know, or even if you think things will not work out okay.

There's a - I think it's, well, it's an anticipatory emotion as they say, much like anxiety. Like you're sort of looking out into the future, and imagining what that future might hold. And you - I think what's, what's useful about the reason - at least I remain hopeful, even though I do not remain optimistic, I guess - is that it's something that can drive you in the present, right, even if what you look at on the other side in the future, you're not really sure that it will all work out okay, sort of in the day-to-day reminds you that there's something you care about, that you want to preserve or improve.

And so I think that for me, hope is about care, regardless of the outcome. And just how it motivates people to stay engaged, to form communities around issues and to act, even if they're not certain that action is going to make any any great changes.

John Fiege

Right. Yeah, well within the environmental film world I hear funders and others talk all the time about the importance of hopeful narratives, and they want, they want films to go in positive directions and make people feel empowered to act, rather than hopeless or solely produce anxiety like what you were saying before.

But you know, I, I don't disagree with that, but I question it. You know, I think of a book like David Wallace Wells The Uninhabitable Earth. You know, that is a very anxiety producing book that came out, what, last year? Um, but it maybe had some of the biggest impact on the environmental conversation last year. Broadly, I'd say. I, I feel like that - those modes of anxiety and fear and danger you know can be very motivating also. So you know, it makes me think. Do we need to hunt for a particular emotion or do we need to cover the range of emotions?

Heather Houser

Yeah, yeah, and I want to - like, I think in some comments earlier, it might sound like I was saying there's something conclusive, or definite. Like “oh, we'll just find the right narrative, find the right emotion and that will do XY or Z, whatever your XY or Z are.” But I don't think that. Yeah, it's not - one of the, I think important, aspects of emotional and narrative literacy is that the trajectories are not so certain. You might think you're writing a hopeful ending, or you might think you're cultivating concern, actionable concern, when in fact you're deadening people, or overwhelming. You know, just nothing is so predictable in how people respond to a story.

There's often a desire to have a hopeful ending without a recognition of what has come before, as if you end on a certain note, and that - that that is a teleology, or an end point that the whole narrative is driving toward. But actually we have responses to the, you know, everything that came before, that an ending can't necessarily compensate for, or redirect. So I think there's also that tendency to think like, if you end on hope something is accomplished.

And that's where, I mean, I often use the phrase “cocktail of emotions” in my writing. Because it is. It is this blend of things that you know, just like when you're making cocktail. If you are - if you don't drink, your baking. Like you wouldn't know from those ingredients, you know, what necessarily will result, and often not the same thing does result. Even if the ingredients are, you know, you start from the same recipe and it's not right.

John Fiege

So the title of your second book is Infowhelm, that's one of those words that I never heard before. But as soon as I heard it, I instantly thought I knew what it meant.

Heather Houser

Good! So when I was shopping around that title, like most people would say that, but some people would say, “oh, but why these this wonky, weird word?” But -

John Fiege

Right, right. So does it mean what we think it means? And how does it - you know, and specifically, why it was related to our ecological state of being. So I was wondering if you could talk about that a bit.

Heather Houser

Yes. And I should say, I did not coin the word, though I think I came up with it, and then looked to see if other people had used it. And you know, you never know how words worm their way into your brain, and you don't even know they're there. But yes, that word has been out there, but not, not so prominent as words like info-fatigue, or whatever it might be. But it is what you think it means, which is like being overwhelmed by a lot of information.

And the way I saw that pertaining to environmental issues, and actually, the conclusion to Ecosickness, is a bridge, somewhat of a bridge, into Infowhelm. In thinking about, how does data feel when we consume it? Especially those of us in, you know, more privileged or wealthy media consumers in the West, in America, where you can be deluged by news, Twitter, post-feeds, whatever, all the time. And what does it feel like to have all of that data, all of that information coming at you, when it's not even really bidden? It's not like you're always even looking for it.

And so, Infowhelm sort of acknowledges that phenomenon that so much is coming at us. And in the environmental sphere, I think, I mean, especially if you are an environmentalist, you pay attention to these issues but really, even if you're, you know, you're not, there's a lot - just so much like information coming at us about, say, the percentage of extinct mammals, right? How many mammal species are extinct, or bird species are extinct? All the data about climate crisis, whether it's like warming temperatures, ocean acidification, you know, how much of a, of the ice sheet has melted? You know, it's all, all this data, especially that just can stream at us?

John Fiege

Like, how do you make sense of that?

Heather Houser

Yeah. What do you do with that? I mean, what do you do with that, not only as a way to understand the phenomena at maybe, you know, objective or straightforward level. But what do you do with that, emotionally, if you're an artist, or communicator? I don't just write about artworks in that book. Like, what do you do as a way to convey that information? And what are you also evoking when you when you do that? And that's where the sort of like history and traditions of science piece comes in.

John Fiege

Right. And you talk about, you talk about a deficit model of climate communication, which you say, holds that the public's lack of information and comprehension is the primary obstacle to environmental action. So, what's wrong with this deficit model, and why has an abundance of available environmental information not led to an abundance of environmental Action?

Heather Houser

That deficit model, you know, sociologists, psychologist, science communications people, communications people have, have really talked about this a lot. And it's an idea that the problem is just that people don't have all of the facts. And if they just saw the complete picture of what's happening, say, with climate change - or if it's something like toxic environments, and public health - if they just had all the information, then surely, you know, we would collectively act to make changes. Or individually, like, you know, well, surely you would choose to drive less or fly less, or whatever it might be. And you know, that model of like, “people are vessels, and you just fill them with information, and the outcome will be predictable,” or maybe a factory model, right, you like, input some ingredients, and then there would be this output.

That just doesn't work. As you said, I think at the beginning of this conversation, you know, the so much - there's a lot more to know, of course but - so much of the scientific phenomena of climate change, like changes to our geophysical processes resulting from carbon or methane in the atmosphere, a lot of that is known, or it's known enough. And yet here, here we are in America, but really globally, here we are too.

And so we need to account for all of the other factors that come into play, when people are making decisions at individual and communal, governmental levels, when they're making - when they're responding to that information. I mean, there's certainly an element. And I don't even get into this too much. Because I think there's been a lot of work about like, denialism. There are books like and studies like Merchants of Doubt that just show like, there's right there's people denying the information and clouding it.

But that aside, it's still not a direct, like, give people information, and they respond this way. So we need to understand the emotional factors, issues of race and class and, economics and geography and sex, sexuality, gender. All of these things that really play, play such an important role when people are responding to that information. And I think that's where, where the arts and different forms of cultural representation are so important.

John Fiege

Yeah, and I love in this book, how, you know, you're looking at these writers and artists who incorporate scientific information into their work. But the way they do it addresses both the limits, and the necessity of knowledge derived from science. And one thing you write is, “artists are key players, not only in making sense of climate crisis, but in making meaning from it.” I was wondering if you could talk about how making sense and making meaning are related, but different?

Heather Houser

The sense part might be more like that picture, that maybe a science teacher or someone wants to paint, of just what are the, what are the processes at play here? So, what does happen when we put so many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere? What does get affected? That's maybe, you know, making sense of it. Because it is, I mean, it's not as if climate crisis is like, straightforward, right. It's like, terribly complex. So there's that sense making, just like what is this thing? And how did it happen? And what is happening to, to the natural world, and the social world in response?

But then the meaning is, okay, so what do people do with that, that knowledge? How does it become relevant to their daily lives? How does it not become relevant to their daily lives? How does it become - even if it feels irrelevant to their lives - how does it become a matter of concern about other people's lives, and other beings' lives that might be affected? That, yeah, the meaning is just what we think what we do with that, or different groups do with that information. And how we respond to it.

John Fiege

Right, right. And let's talk about the God's eye view from aerial photographs and satellite imagery for a minute. In Infowhelm, you say, “in the 21st century that air is the space from which millions access new places and perspectives on the planet.” And this connects back to the first photographs taken of Earth from space, which emerged as the modern environmental movement was gaining momentum. And many people argue that these photographs themselves helped catalyze the environmental movement. Most famously, “Earthrise” in 1968, and “The Blue Marble” in 1972. When astronauts, rather than satellites, were actually taking the pictures.

And for the first time, many people saw the earth not as vast and limitless, but as finite and fragile floating, and vast emptiness. And they wanted to protect it from harm. And you explore how literary and visual artists use aerial techniques to point out some of the problematic histories of the aerial perspective, and at the same time show how it can be used to reorient our relationship to the earth and ecological crisis. Can you talk a little bit about, about this tension that emerges in these works?

Heather Houser

Yes, certainly. So I mean, the view from space has been analyzed quite extensively in environmental studies. And so this, you know, my thinking about it is extending off of that work. And it is often thought of as this catalyst environmentalism but, then there's also this thought of how it is a position of mastery or control, right. Like, even if you see the fragility of the earth, it can also instigate a feeling of, “well, this is something I can take care of.” Which is a good sentiment, but also, “this is something I have some control or some mastery over.” So that's where that God's eye view.

I mean, Donna Haraway is a very famous thinker about what that view, that God's eye perspective entails. This idea of mastery, objectivity, as well, authority, those sorts of sentiments that are, you know - can be quite problematic for, you know, not only what one does to the environment, but the, you know, how it impacts different communities as well. And so the artists, I, I was looking at - not just artists, also activists that I was looking at - they absolutely acknowledge the affordances, you know, of the aerial. Like how important, how powerful it is, how much it moves people and grabs people's attention.

I mean, one of the activist groups I talked about is this group called Sky Truth, which uses aerial imagery to sort of like to get purchase on illegal forms of extraction or the damages of extraction, they were really important during the Deepwater Horizon spill. And in seeing how the government was - and BP were - under reporting, the extent of the spill. So there are all these things that the aerial vantage point can really do to, you know, hold people to account to see what's really, what is happening on the ground. So these artists and activists, they acknowledge that. They don't want to say like, well, the aerial is - I think a term I use is like, they don't want to, they know they can't “purify” the aerial of its problems. But they want to still use it at the same time.

And so they deploy it in this way that's very, I talked about as being very self-referential. So instead of thinking of the aerial as like a clear window on to the world. They show what the smudges are, I guess, on that window. So how the aerial perspectives are deeply tied to military histories, they're often a privileged perspective that's owned or controlled by government and corporate partnerships. It's also - the technologies that give one purchase on from the air, or from space, have their own histories of militarization, corporate control, colonial control. And they use these tools and at the same time, recognize those histories.

And those histories are sort of like reminders that this is not an objective perspective, right? That there's so many interested parties, or forms of oppression and manipulation that go along with those perspectives. So, the aerial, it’s really important to talk about it. Because it's not something we want to get rid of, or not use if we are environmentalists, or environmental artists. But it's certainly something you want to be aware of, just what its histories are, what its uses have been and how those really travel with the technology whenever you're using them.

John Fiege

Yeah, definitely. And I love this idea of co-opting the tools for beneficial reasons. But at the same time, it makes me think of that famous Audre Lorde declaration that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

Heather Houser

I mean, that term “master,” right, evokes slavery, it evokes patriarchy, it evokes a lot of a lot of things, I think, for Lorde. And for my study certainly evokes, especially colonial histories. But it also - just this general desire for mastery that often is - comes along with the scientific enterprise or thinking about solutions to environmental problems. So that that phrase, or you know, that quote, was certainly evocative and sort of traveling with me. And I do think I mean, there are some who would say absolutely, like, she's, she's right, right, you do not use the thing. Like, if you're an artist, for example, you do not use a form, you don't use a medium, you don't use a tool or an instrument that is so tainted by, you know, the very thing that you want to fight against. But I think that's quite hard.

John Fiege

I think it also taps into this, this plague of purity. I think that infects a lot of progressive movements, where you know, this assessment of any particular thing or object or perspective - “Is it pure? Is it not pure?” And if it's not pure, we have to stay away from it. And that's a really complicated and difficult way to assess the world. And it's self-delusional in a lot of ways.

Heather Houser

Yeah. And I think of what, at what scale are we talking of the tool? Like, for example, the novel, right? I mean, you have something like, the novel, or poetry, or documentary film. But then, you know, you get more granular, and you might say, like, the sonnet, or the realist novel, or - I know less about documentary film, so I'm not gonna have as good examples here - but so, sort of like an interview based or-

John Fiege

Observational.

Heather Houser

Right. So you know, you also when you're thinking about tools, I think they’re - and now like maybe deviating a bit from what Lorde was talking about, but thinking about the representational and the aesthetic sphere, you know, there's, I think, a lot of different levels at which you can think about that. That, you know, do you want to say like the tool of the novel or the tool of poetry, the tool of documentary or photography is sort of tainted for some reason. So you avoid it entirely? Or do you think about some of the more particular forms that you want to avoid or in fact, like, manipulate and call attention to, be really self-reflexive about the problems with them as you try to reorient them? And that was what you know, I argue, activists and artists.

So, I mentioned Sky Truth as an activist group using the satellite imagery, in a very self-reflexive way that calls attention to the limits of the technology itself. But then I also look at a photographer named Fazal Shaikh, who takes aerial, so not satellite, but aerial photography of the Negev desert in Israel, thinking about the colonial oppression and manipulation of the environment in that region. I mean, he's actually interested in the displacement of Bedouin peoples. And, that I mean, he is certainly using aerial photography. He's using photography itself and acknowledges, through his use of angle - he takes an oblique angle.

And the way he uses texture, and shows texture, and the layering of these pieces, as a way to sort of thwart our sense of visibility and transparency. You know, if we think of the, often the aerial and the satellite image as offering this window, or like offering an objective or transparent direct view of something, he’s sort of using that tool of the aerial, to show how it is incomplete, but certainly shows us a lot of things at the same time. And then going back to your point about knowledge versus feeling, like evoking a lot of feeling in that practice too.

John Fiege

Right, right. And back to this idea of Sky Truth versus ground truth, you know, Fazal Shaikh’s, a vast majority of his work is his portrait photography, of, you know, refugees and displaced people. So, yes, he's bringing in that element ofSky Truth. But, you know, the vast majority of the work he's doing is ground truth. So there's something about contextualizing all these tools with other tools that can make them, I think, more meaningful, less problematic, less tied to an oppressive history.

Heather Houser

Yes. And he writes that, his work for it's called The Erasure Trilogy, this photographic project that does have, yeah, portraiture as well as aerial photography. He then collaborated with Eyal Weizman, who's an architectural theorist and known for what's called forensic architecture in the human rights domain. And they collaborated on this book called Conflict Shoreline, which incorporates the photographs.

But then they talk about how they are constantly moving between the ground and the air. So you know, the aerial leads back to the ground, the ground leads to the aerial or even the subterranean and so that it is this constant moving between positions and that's something I also argue for and demonstrate and that part of the book that it's an argument for a multiplicity of perspectives, rather than sort of the “perfect” or the “objective” perspective.

John Fiege

Right, right. So, in Infowhelm, you talk about the new natural history. These are artworks, as you say, that speak the same tongue as Western natural history, but tell a story of ecological deficit. Can you talk about why these works interest you?

Heather Houser

Yeah, so that was a section of the book that really arose from just being a reader and a watcher or looker-at-er of, of environmental, art and literature. So I started to notice that a lot of contemporary writers - so those writing, and artists producing work, in the last 20 to 30 years - were harking back to these traditions of natural history. And so those traditions, I mean, we know often, many of us probably know, or have been to natural history museums. And it's this practice of classifying the natural world, naming it, putting it into categories, displaying it.

And so things like if you've heard of Linnaeus - very famous person, naturalist who created the system of binomial nomenclature for naming plants and animals. All of these practices of basically ordering and classifying the natural world that arose during the Enlightenment period in Europe, and then in America. And these were like responses to like, greater access to the variety of things on the planet because of colonial expeditions and endeavors. So it's like, oh, you know, you're in Latin America, for example, and suddenly, there are all these new plants, animals, and of course, peoples, because the naturalist enterprise applies to peoples as well in this period. And so it's, it's a way of responding to that abundance by ordering it. A way of understanding it and sort of containing it.

Now, there's always slippage out of that container that are really fascinating, as well. So artists today, were like, referring back to and reproducing those practices. So for example, you might have a poet who - I write about this poet, Juliana Spahr, who has a poem in which, interspersed within the lines, are the names of species that are on the endangered and threatened list of species for New York. And so they are, these artists are using those techniques of representation, and classification or ordering, but as a way to think through a loss of environmental abundance. So whether it's extinction, or deforestation or radical change, changes to the land through mining or dams, things like that.

So they use those techniques, but as a way to get purchase on what is happening today. And to really think through the histories of enlightenment thought and colonialism that have produced the environmental degradation happening today.

John Fiege

You wrote an article for Yes magazine that explores the question of population control, and limiting the number of children we have as an approach to addressing the climate crisis. And you discuss how readily calls for reproductive limits touch what you call “the third rails of modern environmentalism: racism, eugenics, xenophobia, and even death dealing.” For you, what does it look like to deal appropriately with the question of population control outside of the racist and xenophobic history of those things in the environmental movement? Or maybe, how can we acknowledge or address the racist and xenophobic elements, past or present, of the environmental movement while still confronting the difficult question of reducing our global population?

Heather Houser

So, that piece is actually part of a new thing I'm starting, but actually one where I don't know the answer to that question, and don't even know how to bring these two conversations together - if they should be. Because I mean, one of the things is not to say “population control.” So you know, controlling population has, at least in the environmental context, in the context of global development, colonialism, it's always been about controlling certain populations, it's been about advancing white supremacy and often, it's been about reducing the fertility, or - of people who have disabilities.

So really, like the whole, and I'm not the first to say this, there are a lot of people have talked about, like the very phrase “population control” can't but evoke all of that. And so I say, a lot of people have talked about it, but I think that is not something like we all talk about. And so it's important to, to acknowledge that and, and that history is very tied up in environmentalism, both past like reaching back to the 19th century and further, and more present. Thinking that, you know, the earth has limits, or certain ecosystems have limits, and therefore, we need to prevent people from coming into those spaces or limit the number of people reproducing in those spaces to preserve them. But again, that is always about some people, some communities, some races, some types of people being preserved at the expense of others. And so that whole, like, “population control” is just like tainted.

John Fiege

Right.

Heather Houser

So the question though, is, there are a lot of people who think about the relationship between their own reproduction, and the fate of the environment. And this can be everything from “I look around me, and things don't look good, so why should I bring another being into a world that is so shattered? And whose future I don't know.” But then there are some people who think about, again, going back to causality like, “well, if I put another person on this planet, will they be, you know, consuming more resources, emitting more carbon dioxide, will I just be contributing even more to the problems that we're facing?”

And then there's certainly like other, other ways people think about this relationship between the environment and reproduction. And that can include actually, you know, populations who have experienced genocide, or near-genocide, or whose ability to thrive on an environment and ability to reproduce have been significantly harmed. And so, in that case, like having children can be a response to that in the affirmative. You know, sort of creating, shoring up those traditions, creating that sense of connection between place, and community.

So I think, for me, if I continue to think about this, that framing of reproductive justice is, is how I would think about it. And so that's not about you know, deciding there's a limited capacity on the earth, and we need to stick to those limits by curtailing reproduction, but really thinking about the varieties of responses to having children. But also forming different kinds of family or kinship relationships in response to environmental degradation, and particularly climate crisis. Because that reproductive justice framework is much more about thinking about people's bodily self-determination. Thinking about that there is no one “right family,” there is no one “right'' (so called) number of people that we’re seeking, but really curating the conditions for thriving for the widest variety of people and families.

John Fiege

Yeah, well, I see how connected it is to your other work in this sense of looking at something that is very tainted from the past, you know, whether it be aerial photography, or classification, you know, natural history and classification and, and interrogating that. Do we need to reject that because it's tainted? Or do we need to, to, you know, reorient it and, and use it in a different way, with an awareness of, you know, how problematic it's been in the past?

And one element of your essay that jumps out at me, is your note about Project Drawdown, where they say, you know, two of the most effective things we can do to deal with the climate crisis globally are to provide family planning universally, and to increase education of girls. And those two things, you know, shift much more towards the rights of women rather than the control of women, which is so much of what the history of population control has been. Have you thought about it in those terms?

Heather Houser

The way I thought of the continuity of this work from past work was, or one way, was actually probably more at a sort of, like, methodological level - to be nerdy about it - which is, you know, my work in Ecosickness, really venturing into medical discourse, the medical humanities, as it's called, and then also my, my interest in environmental issues. So I sort of saw it as like a return to some of those confluences of like, the medical and the environmental, the bodily.

But I can see like, I like, I like this continuity you're finding between like, what are, you know, these legacies of colonialism, of the enlightenment, of racism, enslavement, like, they, how they really travel in environmental, scientific and environmentalist discourse in ways that don't, some of us can to easily forget, or like think that it's a part of the past or, or just discard entirely. So yeah, yeah. I like how you're drawing that connection. It's often other people who see connections that you cannot see.

John Fiege

Yeah, well, it's actually it's through our conversation today that I connected that actually, which is interesting. And I'm going to step back to Infowhelm for one second. But I wanted to ask you just to see what your first thought was. So I love this term, you use the ‘coming of mind plot’, which is a play off of the ‘coming of age plot’. Can you tell me what is a ‘coming of mind plot’ and how does it relate to climate Infowhelm?

Heather Houser

Yeah, the coming of age novel or movie is something quite familiar, right? Like, you have a young person, usually someone at the cusp of adolescence or in adolescence, like coming, coming of age, entering into maturity and all of the struggles there. And, you know, often it's about like integrating into society or not. Or resisting that. And so that is kind of a familiar trope or genre and so many different narratives.

And I was interested in how there were some climate narratives where - often adults - who is having to, like come to what sort of an environmental maturation or not, you know, like, suddenly comes to have to confront the, the facts, the data of climate crisis. And one of the examples of that, like, the reason, the texts that made me come up with this idea was Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, her novel.

And in that case, it's a woman, the protagonist, is not versed in any real environmental or climate knowledge. But there's this migration of butterflies that erroneously lands in her part of Tennessee. And suddenly, she's starting to think about the facts, the existence of climate crisis. But this information comes into conflict with many aspects of her social life, religion, her socio-economic position, her gender, all of these things. And so yeah, it's this confrontation and integration into a different, like, knowledge reality, and the conflicts that happen, and what results from that.

John Fiege

So I wanted to go back to where we started, with you delving into dance as a child in order to make you “other” than who you are and where you come from. I wonder what that project to remake yourself has led to, and how it informs your view of your relationship to the rest of nature in our collective environmental predicament now. I know that's a huge question. But I just wanted you to kind of think through that, that broad sweep of time to see if you had any thoughts about it.

Heather Houser

I think one, well, I guess starting from the more personal side of things. Well, I was a good student as a kid, but nothing like exceptional. So, like the intellectual part of myself, I think I developed more after I was kind of forced to see dance as not my future in terms of a profession. And there was a certain, I think, just mean, that was a sad moment for me. And sometimes I still question that choice, even though, despite what I wrote or said. But there's, there was a certain opening up I think, like there was something also scary about thinking about being a dancer and how it takes up - it takes so much, it takes so much out of you. And it does that in the very young years of your life where you’re committing to something.

John Fiege

It can easily destroy you.

Heather Houser

And yeah, it destroys most, you know, especially ballet and some of these intense - well, really all of it. But like, it does have its damages for sure. And letting go of that was also sort of like, well, things can develop over time, right? Like, I don't have to know at fourteen what I want to do and commit to it so wholeheartedly, and that sort of like, I mean, I say this to people and that they're like, that's bananas, because like, how much commitment does it take to become, you know, get your PhD and become a professor? And like, yeah, absolutely.

But there was a lot of, like, I didn't know what I wanted to really study when I got to grad school, and I, I discovered it along the way. And I think that receptivity is really important to me and thinking about not only like my relationship to the world around me, like being out there and being receptive to smells, and sights and sounds and tastes, sometimes I guess. But just also being receptive to, you know, different positions on environmental issues. Not being dogmatic, not seeking purity. Like, listening and, and learning a lot rather than, you know, being so fixed in one's understanding. I don't know. I feel like, that's very important for environmental conversations today, even though I have strong opinions and you know, fall on an ideological side and political side.

John Fiege

And do you still dance?

Heather Houser

I do. I come into and out of it a lot more than I used to. And so I really, I stopped in college, more or less. And then I came back to it really wholeheartedly for about, you know, 10 years, and had this amazing teacher and, and community when I lived in San Francisco. And one of the upsides of the pandemic - which I know, like, we're sick of that phrase just as much as all others - is, I'm able to take ballet classes with my most beloved teacher from my San Francisco days. And, you know, granted from my living room, which is not the way I would prefer to dance. It's not a very big living room. But it's sort of clicked in my brain like, oh, well, they're probably offering classes I could take from my living room.

John Fiege

Well, the other thing that clicks in your mind is “this isn't ending anytime soon.”

Heather Houser

Well, that's true. Like, I did think about the virtual dance class way at the beginning. And then I was like, “I don't want to do that. I love to move. Like I love to take up space, like this is going to be pathetic and confining.” But then, as the months wore on, I was like, well.

John Fiege

So, almost to the end here. I've one more kind of big question for you. Why does our struggle to create a more just and ecologically sustainable society need the environmental humanities?

Heather Houser

Well take the environmental humanities broadly, which is like thinking about those cultural, emotional, historical relationships to the environment. I mean, I don't see how you could think otherwise. Right? Like, it's just there's no way. I mean, I'll take an example of like, you know, conversations about climate reparations, that is like, do certain countries or community you know, states even - do they owe other nations or communities compensation for the damage that those communities are facing? That question, I mean, there's an economic way of thinking about it. There's a sort of quantitative, empirical way of thinking about it like, well, what are the actual harms to those people? Whether it be health or loss of land or livelihood. Certainly there are those perspectives on it.

But so much of this is going to be thinking about the history of those relationships between countries or communities, thinking about just what the whole idea of reparations signifies for people. Like in the US, certainly means something different with the legacy of enslavement than it might in another country that doesn't have that same legacy. Those are all things that you just can't really approach without - whether you call it the environmental humanities, like that's what us professors call ourselves, right. But, you know, you might not have that label for yourself, but those kinds of perspectives are just so essential for really any environmental decision or or relationship that we're thinking about today.

John Fiege

Right, right. I feel like, you know, it's, it's this complicated thing sometimes to hold where we hear these calls for following the science, which I totally agree with. But I think a lot of what your work is pointing out is: yes, we need to follow the science, but it also needs to be in the context of, of all this other stuff, so that we can make meaning of it, and that we can understand what to do with it.

Heather Houser

Absolutely. In the very early days of the Infowhelm project, I had, you know, wrote, wrote an early chapter, and someone said, like, you know, this could sound like you're questioning science, you know, fueling a denialist position, or a skeptical position. And that's why I say at many points in the book, like, this is about finding those complementarities; finding, you know, I borrow from a science studies scholar, Sheila Jasanoff in this idea of “paying deference.”

How much deference do you pay to science? Like, not that you deny it, but where do you acknowledge its capacities and capabilities and when do you say, “okay, now we have to look at this other thing”? So I think that's so important, especially now in our, you know, in the midst of a pandemic, or recovering from it. In the future, but yeah, in so many of the areas, we are challenged, it is about some degree of deference to science, but acknowledging its limitations.

John Fiege

Yeah. And I find it disturbing that at universities, you know, the humanities are suffering terribly in terms of funding and students, and everything else. And there's this, I feel like there's this sense that, you know, if you understand science or technology or business, you know, that's all you - that's all you need, to figure these things out. That's where the solutions lie. But it's, it's, it's really dangerous to take that out of the context of the humanities more broadly.

Heather Houser

Yeah, it's, I mean, one of the like, really, sad ironies of my day-to-day life is I spend, you know, I can spend part of my day talking to you or someone else, writing about the importance of the environmental humanities and what it means to me, and I think what it can bring to the world. And then part of my day talking to like, maybe a graduate student just about how there won't - there isn't as much appreciation for that. I mean, which is not to say the only way of doing this work is within an academic context.

But it's, you know, it certainly is not where all of the opportunities can be, right, within humanities disciplines or perspectives. So, yeah, it's, I don't know what would - other, much smarter, greater minds thinking about how to solve this issue, or, or right what to do about this, but it's something I live with every day in my life, I'd say.

John Fiege

Yeah, yeah. Well, people aren't necessarily making a lot of money off of the environmental humanities or humanities for that matters. There's there's always that pull of money in other directions. So I've asked you to bring a quotation to read that's been particularly meaningful on your journey in life. Could you end the show by reading what you brought, and telling the story of its significance to you?

Heather Houser

Yeah, I think I'll read this one. It's from James Baldwin's novel, If Beale Street Could Talk. And he writes,

“It's astounding the first time you realize that a stranger has a body. The realization that he has a body makes him a stranger, it means that you have a body too, you will live with this forever, and it will spell out the language of your life.”

And absolutely there, he's thinking about race, and being a black body, a racialized body. And the idea of the stranger is often one of threat. That idea resonates through this quote, as much as it also I think, outside of that, that context. I think often about how our bodies travel with us, even as they transform.

So when he writes, “it means that you have a body too,” like - and I actually think about the difference between having and being a body - it's something that transforms, it's something that other people interpret, and they impose their interpretations and values on. And yet, it's something that right is, is traveling with you as much as it's undergoing those, those transformations and manipulations. And sort of the endurance of this, “you will live with this forever, and it will spell out the language of your life.” There's something I think there's an idea of entrapment there. And oppression, potentially, but also like how the body can spell out the language of your life to me, is just so, so evocative about - especially someone who's interested in movement, and, and, like, different expressive forms of the body.

So I think like, all of the registers of that, just really stuck with me. And, you know, so there's some familiarity in that quotation, and there's some, you know, some reminders of also, you know, difference, given my position as a white woman, and the position of the characters and Baldwin himself. So, I mean, just one of the most amazing American writers, or writers period, so. So, also worth mentioning.

John Fiege

Yes, yeah. James Baldwin is amazing. But it also makes me think of, you know, being of this world, and, you know, we spend so much time in our heads and dreaming about things far off - things in the future things in the past, you know, it's in the census is like, a declaration of mindfulness. Of like, you know, “be here now, we are of this world.” And I see some, a lot of really profound environmental connections to that quotation as well.

Heather Houser

Yeah. And also, I think, like, you realize that a stranger has a body like again, I said, that can be threatening, right like this. The others body can be quite threatening to you as, as a black person, as a woman, as you know, as anyone - but like, especially in certain positionalities. But I think it's also a call to account, like you said, like a presence. That things do affect other people, you're sharing space, whether that's a room or a, you know, a city or a world, with other people. And that, you know, so much ramifies on the body. You know, I think that the body and the mind as you know, “these are one.” So, yeah, I think it is, it does have those sort of ecological resonances too.

John Fiege

And it connects to your work in Ecosickness, in this sense of the parallel between our bodies, and the broader body of the planet. It makes me think of those things as well. Well, great. James Baldwin is fabulous. Thank you so much for bringing him into this conversation and for joining me today, Heather , thank you so much.

Heather Houser

Yeah, thank you, John. . This was an amazing conversation, for tying together threads like sometimes I don't even tie together in my own, in my own life. So I really appreciate that.

Outro

John Fiege

Thank you so much to Heather Houser. Go to our website at ChrysalisPodcast.org to see the quotation Heather read from James Baldwin and check out a list of her work, including Infowhelm: Environmental Art & Literature in an Age of Data and Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction.

Chrysalis is produced and edited by Gabriela Cordoba Vivas; with music by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas, design by Unai Reglero, and mixing by Juan Garcia. Shubh Jain is our web developer and assistant editor, and Isabella Nurt is our social media producer and assistant editor.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Heather, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Contact me anytime at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can also support the project, subscribe to our newsletter, and join the conversation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnfiege.substack.com

View Details

Each year, we celebrate Earth Day; and each year, our collective actions lead to more greenhouse gas emissions, more habitat destruction, and more species extinctions. It’s hard for Earth Day not to feel like more of a superficial patting of ourselves on the back or a greenwashing opportunity for corporate sponsors than a serious call for transformative change.

The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, was something totally different. With 12,000 events across the country and more than 35,000 speakers from every walk of life—young and old, scientists and preachers, liberals and conservatives—the transformative power of the first Earth Day, conceived as a teach-in rather than a rally or a protest, is hard for us to imagine in our contemporary era of stark political polarization, hashtag protests, and climate denial politics.

Adam Rome is an environmental historian who digs deep into the historical record and emerges with profound insights about the first Earth Day and the origins of the environmental movement. His work reveals the vital importance of understanding our environmental history in order to forge a more promising environmental future.

Adam Rome was my advisor many years ago when I studied environmental history and cultural geography in graduate school at Penn State. And now, I’m very happy that he’s my good friend and colleague here at the University at Buffalo, where he’s Professor of Environment and Sustainability.

My conversation with Adam travels through history, long before and after the first Earth Day, from beaver hats in feudal Europe; to the post-WWII era of prosperity and suburban development; and up to the present, as he probes the business world’s attempts to become more sustainable.

You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Adam Rome

Adam Rome is professor of environment and sustainability at the University at Buffalo. A leading expert on the history of environmental activism, his first book, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism, won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award and the Lewis Mumford Prize. His book on the history of the first Earth Day, The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation, was featured in The New Yorker. He is co-editor of Green Capitalism? Business and the Environment in the Twentieth Century. From 2002 to 2005, he edited the journal Environmental History. In addition to numerous scholarly publications, he has written essays and op-eds for a variety of publications, including Nature, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Wired, and The Huffington Post. He has produced two Audible Original audio courses: “The Genius of Earth Day” and “The Enduring Genius of Frederick Law Olmsted.”

Quotation read by Adam Rome

“The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.”

— Rachel Carson, from Silent Spring

Recommended Readings & Media

Transcription

Intro

John Fiege

Each year we celebrate Earth Day. And each year our collective actions lead to more greenhouse gas emissions, more habitat destruction, and more species extinctions. It's hard for Earth Day not to feel like more of a superficial patting of ourselves on the back, or a greenwashing opportunity for corporate sponsors, then a serious call for transformative change.

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 was something totally different. With 12,000 events across the country, and more than 35,000 speakers from every walk of life, young and old scientists and preachers, liberals and conservatives, the transformative power of the first Earth Day, conceived as a teaching rather than a rally or protest is hard for us to imagine in our contemporary era of stark political polarization, hashtag protests, and climate denial politics.

Adam Rome is an environmental historian who digs deep into the historical record and emerges with profound insights about the first Earth Day in the origins of the environmental movement. His work reveals the vital importance of understanding our environmental history in order to forge a more promising environmental future.

Adam Rome

But mobilizing isn't organizing. And mobilizing isn't empowering. It doesn't take people new places, you know, and then you think about other you know, advertising isn't about teaching you anything. It's about getting you to buy, you know, something. Political messaging isn't about educating you. It's about getting you to vote for this guy or woman rather than that person. So, it's yes or no, you know, Earth Day, the original Earth Day was so much more complicated than that. It left it up to millions of individuals to say, what does this mean to me, what am I going to do? It didn't try to marshal them all in one direction, or to enlist them into a preexisting cause.

John Fiege

I'm John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.

Adam Rome was my advisor many years ago when I studied environmental history and cultural geography in graduate school at Penn State. And now I'm very happy that he's my good friend and colleague here at the University of Buffalo, where he's professor of Environment and Sustainability.

My conversation with Adam travels through history long before and after the first Earth Day, from Beaver hats and feudal Europe to the post World War Two era of prosperity and suburban development, and up to the present, as he probes the business world's attempts to become more sustainable.

Here is Adam Rome.

Conversation

John Fiege

If you could just tell, tell me a bit about where you grew up, and about your relationship to the rest of nature when you were a kid.

Adam Rome

I grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut. The town itself is a couple 100 years old. But the particular house that I grew up in, was in a was built in the late 1950s. In what had been a golf course, for some reason, the golf course moved a mile away. And so, when I was growing up, the former golf course was being slowly developed. And in fact, I remember one day, I don't know how old I was maybe eight, seeing bulldozers come and knocking trees down on one of the nearby yards. That that was undeveloped still. And that I think was really crucial, even more than the wild are places that I used to hang out that a couple of friends and I would go in the wild parts, the still undeveloped parts of the old golf course. And back then parents weren't worried about their kids in the way they are now. So, my parents had a big cowbell on their front porch. And when it was, you know, 15 minutes to dinnertime, they would ring the cow bell, and I can hear it anywhere in the neighborhood and come home, and that's so idyllic. But it was a very typical 50s suburban neighborhood.

John Fiege

So, you, you went to college at Yale, and then you were a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and then you landed in Kansas. Can you tell me the story of how you got to Kansas and what you did when you were there?

Adam Rome

Kansas interestingly, I'll answer your question in a second but, but I had a much much more overwhelming emotional response to the landscape in Kansas than I ever did to any place around where I grew up, you know, that that

John Fiege

Why do you think that was?

Adam Rome

I think I I loved the vastness of the sky. I love the spectacular sunsets. I love watching clouds move through the sky. I mean, you know, there's there's no tall buildings even in the cities in Kansas, compared to the northeast. So, you could see forever. And another thing that I really loved was, especially in the Western two thirds of the state. Wherever there was a river, you could tell those 15 or 20 miles away, because that would be the only place there would be trees. Right. And I love that the landscape was so powerful a presence, everybody thought about it all the time.

John Fiege

So, you eventually landed at University of Kansas, studying environmental history under Dan Webster, who's one of the great minds and founders of the discipline. Tell me what you got what got you interested in environmental history? Had you done anything with that prior to graduate school? And how did you come with? How did you come to work with Don Wooster?

Adam Rome

Environmental history really didn't exist as a field. That or at least it was in its most infant stage. When I was in college, which was 1976 to 1980. I actually got introduced to Don's work and to one other really renowned, now renowned, environmental historian through this humanities project that I did, about the little-known historical places. One of them was a place that during the dustbowl years of the 1930s, when the great plains were decimated by these unbelievable windstorms that that made up, you know, parts of Kansas look like Cape Cod, the dunes on Cape Cod that I had seen as a kid, devastating dust storms. And the government tried to reclaim some of those lands, it was really a pioneering effort of environmental restoration or ecological restoration. And so, there was this Cimarron grasslands in the very southwest corner of the state. It was one of the little-known historical places that I wrote about. And the background work that I did for that involved Don Westers first prize winning book, which is just called Dustbowl, and that book blew me away, I never imagined that you could write a history that combined environmental history and political history. And it's really an effort to understand the dust storms not as a purely natural phenomenon, but it's something that had been partly, maybe even predominantly caused by human activity in the decades leading up to it. And I read that book and it blew me away. And then right after that, I discovered this one other book that had just come out by William Cronin called changes in the land, which is about Native Americans and English colonists in New England, and all the ways in which they changed the landscape that the colonists did. And it gave a new way of understanding why the colonists were able to supplant the natives. But it also had some brilliant ideas about basic ways that we think about, about nature.

John Fiege 08:09

Let's turn to your first book, which is the bulldozer in the countryside. And it's a powerful environmental history of suburbia in America and how after World War Two developers brought Henry Ford's assembly line concept to the production of cheap tract housing on cheap land, on the outskirts of cities across the country. I want to read a passage from the book, but first, could you talk about how the suburbs were created and give us a sense of the scale at which this transformation of the countryside took place?

Adam Rome

Well, first, you have to keep in mind that before World War Two, not counting farm areas, where homeownership was much more common. In cities, there never been a point where more than 40% of Americans owned their own home. And homebuilding in those decades. was was really a mom-and-pop kind of thing. I mean, it was it was a craft. It wasn't it wasn't an industry. A lot of home builders might only build one or two houses a year. So, after World War Two, most famously in Levittown, New York, and then several other Levittowns, but mimicked all across the country. People figured out a way to to turn to mass produce housing, and in order to do that, they also needed cheap land, and large tracts of cheap land. So, although some of these postwar subdivisions that were mass produced were within the boundaries of cities, most of them weren't because the land that was cheap and widely available was was outside the city limits, right and so on. and all kinds of new earth moving equipment, especially the bulldozer had come into common usage during World War Two. And it became possible to turn almost any kind of landscape, you know, a marsh, a steep hillside a forest, into a flat pad, that's like a technical term for building and then breaking down the construction process into, you know, I don't remember the exact number, but let's say 20 different components. So, you know, one crew would would just bring the wood for the roofing, you know, where another would just do the bathroom or, and they could do in the case of Levittown, you know, 17,000 houses in in, you know, a year or two, right. And, and so the new combination of the new mass production method of building houses, and then unbelievable pent-up demand for housing, because there'd been virtually no housing construction during the Great Depression in the 1930s. And then virtually no housing construction during World War Two, right, and then the baby boom after the war. So, you've got millions and millions of people desperate for places to live, they didn't necessarily want to live in the suburbs, but they wanted a place to live and an affordable place, it was often cheaper to buy a Levittown house than to rent an apartment in a city. So, these, and by the late 40s, early 50s 2 million homes a year are getting built, which is an astonishing number. I don't think it had ever been more than 400,000 in a year in American history up to that point. So, a territory the size of Rhode Island, basically, every year is getting turned into new subdivisions, mostly in suburbs. And that that was I write in my book that was in whatever else it was, it was an environmental disaster on the scale of the dust.

John Fiege

Right, right. Just clearing all that land. Yeah, I grew up in Greenbelt, Maryland, one of Eleanor Roosevelt's plans, communities. Yeah, from the 30s. From the 30s. There's kind of pre pre post war, suburban development, but it was right on the outskirts of Washington DC. And, you know, had a little bit more of a idyllic you know, communitarian feel to it than, than the later suburbs. So, with your book, let me let me read a quote you you quote, the writer, Margo Tupper. Oh, yes. Like millions of Americans moved with her family to the suburbs after World War Two in Maryland. Oh, really? Was that Maryland? Yeah, realize that. Oh, that's interesting. Well, let me read the quote. So, she might have been your neighbor. Yeah. Wow. I had no idea. So let me it's a kind of a long quote, but I think it's worth reading because it's so it's so rich. “At that time, our house was second from the last on the dead end street. Beyond were acres of untouched woodlands, which were a refuge for children, a place to play natural surroundings. Youngsters in the neighborhood would go there build dams or catch minnows and a little creek, gather wildflowers and pick blossoms from the white dog woods. They built tree houses, picnicked under the tall tulip trees, and dog Jack in the pulpits, wild Fern and Violets to transplant to their gardens. Then one day my little girl Jan ran into the house shouting, Mother, there's a bulldozer up the street. The men say they're going to cut down the trees. They can't do that. They're my trees. Where will we play? Please, Mother, please stop them. Jan ran frantically out the door shouting. I'll get Susan Georgie Sissy and all the other children. If they're going to take our woods away. We'll have to save all we can. The children returned several hours later, pulling wagons loaded with flowers and plants. Jan brought home a small dogwood tree and planted among the wildflowers in the South Garden. Indeed, the bulldozers did come, these huge Earth eating machines raped the woods filled up the creek, buried the wildflowers and frightened away the rabbits and the birds. The power saws came too and took part in the murder of the woodlands near our home. Dynamite blasted out the huge tree roots trucks roared past our house carrying the remains sections of murdered trees and tons of earth in which were buried vines, shrubs and flowers. Then the dozers came to level the earth and power shovels to dig grade holes in less than a month, the first of 200 look like closely set small all houses rose to take the place of our beautiful forest.” So, at the heart of your book is this great irony that the experience the experiences of suburbanites like Margot Tupper and her family, who witnessed the destruction, on the frontlines of suburban development firsthand out there, front windows, helped ignite the environmental movement. In the 1950s and 60s, the majority of women had not yet entered the labor force. And it was women in particular, who spearheaded the new environmental movement. Can you talk about what Margo is writing there? And how this played out?

Adam Rome

Yeah, so that book came out in 1965, as I recall, and at that point, there had already been, maybe I'd say, for six, seven years, mounting concern, for lots of reasons, but, but one of them was the destruction of places for kids to play. And, and yeah, there's a powerful irony that the house that she lived in, and in her daughter, and all the neighbors that her daughter played with, you know, that had been something wild too, before it was made into their house. And, you know, it might have been that, that an earlier generation would have cried about that, you know, earlier generation means, like a year or two before. And she herself was sensitive to that she doesn't, she doesn't want there to be no development at all. But she's part of a movement to try to imagine land saving ways of development, ways of having same number of people have places to live even single-family homes, but clustered together with much larger, open space that wasn't just yard but was truly Wilder. And that was, that's keeps getting rediscovered, by the way, you know, every, like, 10 years people, people realize, that's an interesting idea. It's never become the norm. But but, you know, my whole book is really about people coming to realize that what, and this is part of a broader story and world after World War Two, that, you know, we have all these amazing technological changes, and new products, new ways of doing things that, that seemed miraculous, they allow us to, to have comfort and convenience and, and wealth on a scale that we hadn't imagined before. But they turned out to also have incredibly bad, unexpected environmental costs. And so, my book is really the story of how people try to come to terms with that, how do they try to reduce the cost of suburban development? Without ending it, you know, that they weren't saying no development at all? No one was, but But trying to figure out ways of meeting the need. And, and even that's an interesting question, you know, what, what do we need and housing? What is a good house? But how do you do that at at much less environmental costs. And it turned out that, you know, I was really stunned. I didn't think anyone would have been thinking about that until the 1970s. After the first Earth Day, and after the, you know, the whole environmental movement is obviously roaring along. But in fact, I found that even in the midst of World War Two people were beginning to find fault with some aspects of this new way of building and with each decade, more and more of these horrid side effects come to light and some of them become only of concern to experts. But open space, in particular led to real grassroots activism, real grassroots protests, and a new language. You know, she writes about rape. And no one had talked like that before, not even John Muir, when he was talking about the destruction of wild spaces. He came close but but this was so much more intimate than, you know, some spectacular place in Yosemite Valley getting destroyed for a damn this, this was your backyard. This was the place your kid played. And people start putting the word progress in quotation marks, you know, that, that it's not obvious to them anymore that that that these new homes are, are just purely good. So that's something radically new.

John Fiege

Yeah, and you bring up property rights in the book and kind of relates So what you're saying about Margo tuber being part of this movement to have more land and common open space. And the new ecological thinking that emerged in this era began to challenge and redefine property rights. Can you? Can you talk a little bit about that, and how that became a central issue and the struggle to protect ecological health?

Adam Rome

Yeah, this was another huge surprise to me. That, you know, with pollution, it's obvious that the, the biggest polluters are businesses. And, and so challenging corporate polluters is part of a long tradition of trying to rein in corporate power. But there aren't, you know, billions of corporations or millions of corporations, there's, there's only hundreds of really big ones, with with property, millions and millions of people own property. And it had been part of American history, that owning property was easy here, which it wasn't in Europe, and ordinary people could own property. And they could do with it, whatever they wanted. That, you know, that was one of the great freedoms of America in the minds of many people that came here from Europe. And by the 1960s, people are coming to realize, not just with homebuilding with development of all kinds that the way you use your land, couldn't really be entirely private decision, because it had consequences beyond the boundaries of your property. And, and people talked about this in the 60s as a quiet revolution, the growing awareness, both in the courts and in state legislatures, and in national forums, that, that how you use your land, how you developed it, especially could have far reaching detrimental consequences to the public good. And that, therefore, the public ought to have some say in what you did, didn't necessarily mean that it would, that it would bar you from doing certain things, although people said that to you know, in the same way that you're not allowed to sell tainted meat, you know, you shouldn't be able to build in a wetland, if that's going to cause flooding somewhere else. Or you shouldn't be able to build on a hillside, if that's going to endanger people who own property lower down the hill, or, you know, any number of things of that kind, where how you use the land could have far reaching implications beyond your borders. And, you know, that idea then, eventually led to a powerful counterattack. People talked about it, as you know, the new regulations that come in the 1960s and early 70s, as a new feudalism, the opponents called it so Feudalism was, you know, pre capitalist way of thinking about rights and responsibilities that came with land ownership, and only a few people could use it. And they, you know, they had to use it in a way that serve the community, whether they wanted to or not. So that's part of the powerful cause the rise of modern conservatism part of the rise of Ronald Reagan, was this idea that, that among those who own property that that didn't accept that idea that it was really a matter of public interest. They wanted to go back to the days when they could do whatever they wanted with their land.

John Fiege 23:36

Right, right. Oh, that's so interesting. And I love the title of your book, The Bulldozer in the Countryside. It paints such a vivid visceral image. And and you mentioned somewhere that that echoes The Machine in the Garden, the book by Leo marks, can you talk about that book and how it relates to your work?

Adam Rome

Yeah, Leo Marx. I'm not sure if he's still alive. I did meet him. He was a professor for a long time at MIT. And I did meet him when I spoke there more than a decade ago. But he wrot e this brilliant book, it's one of the most famous books that any American scholar has ever written in the humanities, called the machine in the garden. And it’s a study of the literary responses in America, although it starts with Shakespeare in The Tempest. So, imagining America to the spread of technology of development of modern civilization into seemingly pristine areas. And, and, and, and for much of early American history, people just thought that was great, you know, that was fulfilling a biblical injunction to subdue the earth to write to make to make the wild spaces into a productive garden. But by the time of Thoreau, and others in the, you know, 1830s 1840s 1850s people are starting to have at least a very elite, well-educated group of artists and writers, more mixed feelings about that they, they, they know it's part of America's destiny seemingly to transform the wilderness, but they also lament some of the consequences of that. And, and The Machine in the Garden in in Leo Marxs is the railroad, that that was the great symbol. Once the railroad came, everything was going to change. And and the railroad goes right through Concord, Thoreau could hear it. Nathaniel Hawthorne can hear it. So, I took that image. And actually, the publisher didn't like the title. I had to really...

John Fiege

Oh really?

Adam Rome

yeah,

John Fiege

wow.

Adam Rome

If it was, if it was a trade press, I would have lost they would have been able to title what they want, but because it was a university press, I won.

John Fiege

Great. Well, moving on from the suburbs. Let's talk about Rachel Carson, who's one of my heroes.

Adam Rome

Mine too.

John Fiege

You wrote an article about her legacy that began this way. “In the decades after World War Two, many Americans imagined that modern technology finally would free humanity from the constraints and burdens of nature. We would overcome disease, moderate the extremes of climate, travel great distances in a flash and enjoy abundance of all kinds. Detergents will get clothes cleaner than clean. Nuclear Fission would generate electricity too cheap to meter. Plastics, seemingly inexhaustible, and infinitely malleable, would end our dependence on scarce natural resources. Bulldozers would transform marshes and steep hillsides into buildable land. Soon we would live on a perfected Earth where everything was easy, comfortable, and safe.” And then enter Rachel Carson, and her nineteen's landmark 1962 book, Silent Spring. What did she bring to that mentality that was really dominant in the 50s, and 60s?

Adam Rome

It's, you know, because we live in a post Rachel Carson world, it's so hard in some ways to imagine just how gung ho people were, especially Americans, but it wasn't it wasn't unique to us. After World War Two, the idea that, that we that we could conquer nature, that we could overcome any natural limit. And, you know, because nowadays, we we all think we love nature. But we're never as honest as we should be about the fact that there are a lot of elements of nature that we don't love, maybe even hate. And, and a lot of those are limits. most obvious one is death, you know. But that was another thing that people thought they could conquer, you know, that they thought modern medicine might allow a kind of immortality almost. Right. So, there's this tremendous faith that in the 50s and 60s that we're bringing nature under control, and that we are, you know, incredibly rapidly overcoming all these natural limits. And, and Rachel Carson is probably the, I mean, lots of people began to have doubts about that. But I would say she is by far the most powerful voice. And it's so amazing. It's just this lone voice, this one woman, she had no institutional by the time she wrote Silent Spring, she's just a writer.

John Fiege

Right

Adam Rome

She has no institutional support. And she's taking on one of the most powerful industries in the country. And she's taking on even more powerfully, this whole way of thinking about what our relationship to nature should be, and saying, no, it can't possibly be conquest. You know, nature is bigger than us. We can't conquer nature. And when we try, we may get a lot out of it in the short run, but in the long run, where we're risking undermining the foundations of our life. And and her warning is about that they were specifically about the new chemical pesticides that came into wide use after World War Two like DDT, but but she was really attacking much more broadly a whole kind of technological hubris of thinking that we could change nature in any way and that it would just be for the good, you know, it would be better we could make a better nature than nature had made. And she said that preposterous. And ultimately, it threatens our survival. But even if it didn't threaten our survival, it also was you know, she had different adjectives for it an immature way of thinking, a brute way of thinking, an immoral way of thinking, you know, that, that she too was saying we could do better. That's not our best self, our best self would be finding a way to to thrive while everything else also thrives.

John Fiege

Right. But you do point out that despite the huge impact of Silent Spring, and the government regulation and pesticides that followed, you write, we use more pesticides now than in 1962.

Adam Rome

Yeah.

John Fiege

And which makes me think, like, has the change been in our mentality and our actions? Or has it been in our messaging and our vision of ourselves? Like, have we covered things up, but not really dealt with the underlying problems that continue in different forms?

Adam Rome

So, so one of the reasons why pesticide use is up, it's not just up in the US. But lot of other parts of the world have developed industrialized agriculture that relies heavily on pesticides. And, and, and that's true about a lot of things, you know, our air is cleaner, our water is cleaner. But that's partly because we don't make stuff here as much as we used to, it's made in China or Vietnam or wherever. Yeah, their air is not cleaner. There, you know, we've exported, we've exported our pollution. Yeah, we've outsourced our pollution, as well as a lot of our manufacturing jobs. And, you know, I go back and forth about this, I have a split personality. On the one hand, I'm Dr. Earth Day. You know, so I, I've spent a lot of time thinking about environmental activism in the US in the last 150 years, and how much more powerful environmental activists have become than they were. And that's an inspiring story, you know, but then the other side of me is Mr. Apocalypse, you know, all the ways in which things just keep getting worse, or at least they're still incredibly threatening.

John Fiege

Right

Adam Rome

And, and I'm trying to understand why, you know, without understanding why we can't possibly hope to, to avoid those outcomes.

John Fiege

So that's a great place to jump to your next book, which is The Genius of Earth Day, with a subtitle “How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation.” Can you paint a picture for us of the state of the environment on the eve of the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970?

Adam Rome

Yeah, it's so hard to imagine now, just how much more polluted visibly polluted the country was in 1970. You know, every city was just full of smoke of all kinds. And, you know, smoke from, from burning trash from incinerators, folks, from utilities, from manufacturers, on and on cement places. The waters were just horrid. You know, you couldn't swim in most urban rivers and many, even rural ones. You couldn't eat the fish safely. You couldn't do a lot of other recreational things, you know that the waters would smell they'd be, they might be acidic, they might even burn you if you fell in. You certainly couldn't drink them. And there was no regulation of waste disposal of any kind, not just ordinary trash, but hazardous what we now call hazardous waste. That phrase hadn't been invented yet. There was no regulation of it. So people could just dump incredibly toxic stuff wherever they wanted. And even, you know, things you you can barely imagine when I was in Kansas, canoeing down the biggest river in the middle of the state, which in Kansas is called our Kansas, of course. You know, you'd see rusted hawks of cars on the riverbanks, you know, that people would take out the few valuable parts of the car that they could sell and, and then they just dump them on the riverbank, and they were sitting there decades later. So, you know, everywhere people were aware that this wasn't like news. You could see it every day. But what was missing was the will to do something about it, it had always been considered the price of progress. You know, as part of a booming economy, we had to put up with pollution, especially in cities. And finally in 1970, after, you know, growing discontent that leads to the modern environmental movement, and to the first Earth Day

John Fiege

On January 18, 1970, Senator Nelson's environmental Teaching Committee took out a full page ad in the New York Times, announcing the upcoming event for the first time, it read in large font, April 22, Earth Day, and then it went on "A disease has infected our country, it has brought smog to Yosemite, dumped garbage in the Hudson, sprayed DDT in our food and left our cities in decay. The carrier is man”. Can you tell me the story of how earth day got its name? But how the idea of the teach-in that Senator Nelson had remained foundational to to the concept of what Earth Day was.

Adam Rome

So, Nelson. And he never wrote down anything about the aha moment when he had the seed of the idea that became Earth Day, but apparently, he was flying back to Washington and having gone out to California to see about six months after the devastation in the wake of the first unfortunately, only the first great oil spill in Santa Barbara. And he read about is a tactic that was used by people who were opposed to the Vietnam War called the a teaching, which was essentially a kind of politicized extracurricular, curricular activity on a couple dozen college campuses in the mid 60s, where opponents of the war and proponents of the war would come together and argue, was organized by the opponents, they were convinced that that would inspire people to to action that it would mobilize them against the war. And Nelson was he he was one of the first senators to oppose the war. That was one of his most courageous moves. But he was inspired by that he thought, you know, maybe the President has failed on this Congress has failed in this, maybe young people could could really carry the ball and make the environment a national priority. So, he, he promised in Seattle in September 1969, that he would organize a nationwide environmental teaching. And, and at first, he was only envisioning it as some small number of campuses, only on college campuses. But and he didn't know anything about how to do this, you know, he's at that point was a 53-year-old establishment figure. He wasn't some young Radster. And he rejected the advice that he got from a good friend that he did, he tried to make it a hierarchical top-down kind of thing. Instead, he decided basically, anyone who wanted to have a teaching could have it and they could do anything they wanted. And he just trusted that that would work out that that that would involve a lot of people, and they would do great things. And he was right. And quickly, this overwhelmed his staff, there was a lot more interest in it than he expected. And K to 12 schools got into it. And then people in communities wanted to have events that weren't tied to educational institutions. So, he hires this, this small number of 20-somethings who had been activists mostly and other causes in the 60s, to help him organize it. And, and, and they found this hipster ad guy in New York, Julian Koenig, who was willing, pro bono to come up with better names they thought environmental teaching sounded too academic. Even Nelson's adviser thought that but that he wasn't able to come up with a better name. And and Julian Koenig comes up with the name Earth Day and then this really blows me away this is part of Gaylord Nelson genius was he really he really didn't try to micromanage so

John Fiege

Right

Adam Rome

These 20 Somethings decide earth day is a much better name and they take out this ad and as far as I could tell they never asked him whether that was okay. They just did and then they changed the name of the of the you know, they weren't technically for this not for profit that Nelson set up called Environmental Teaching Inc. They couldn't legally change the name but they they changed the name on the stationery and everything else to environmental action. You know, again, they were trying to suggest that, that they were about action and protest and transforming America. But but the teach-in ideas still was very, very powerful. And most Earth Day events were places that people talked about these issues, it was an unprecedented discussion that involved, you know, potentially 20 million people. And 10s of 1000s of speakers, who had most had never spoken publicly about environmental issues. And these discussions were very intimate. Some of them were soul searching in the words of the New York Times, and the media to got into it. So, you have all this media discussion, unprecedented media coverage, and then you have these much more intimate settings where people are talking about these issues. And together, that was transformative. I think a lot of people thinking about these issues for the first time realized they cared about them a lot. And they were willing to do a lot to try to solve the problems and to keep doing it, often for decades.

John Fiege

And, you know, I'm really struck by, you know, you already mentioned this, but his willingness to let go, and the profound significance that had, and I just wanted to kind of revisit that, because particularly from today's today's perspective, it's almost impossible to imagine a US senator, starting something like this, and then just being like, Ah, I'll let it go have a life of its own. And I'll put the kids in charge. And hopefully, it's, it's a thing, but you know, I'm not gonna micromanage it like, that doesn't happen.

Adam Rome

No, no, I agree. And he didn't just let it go. I mean, he worked like hell,

John Fiege

right

Adam Rome

to publicize it, and to raise money for the staff and to,

John Fiege

right,

Adam Rome

you know,

John Fiege

But his, his ego didn't seem to get in the way.

Adam Rome

He didn't think of it as his thing. And I think, the way I've put it as he led by encouraging other people to lead, and that was brilliant. And, and you're right, especially in politics, that's so rare. You know, most people in politics want to be the center of attention. And, and he didn't. And in fact, you know, the New York Times, the day after day, the man of the man of the day was the 20, something guy that he had hired Denis Hayes, not Gaylord Nelson. But but it was actually Gaylord Nelson, that set the whole thing in motion. And so, I think that that modesty is so amazing. And that, that, that, you know, and I again, I don't know whether this was just a brilliant intuition on his part, or whether it was a little more carefully thought out, but, but I think he understood that it would be more powerful if a lot of other people could take ownership of it, if they could make it their own. And they did. And that was one of the biggest discoveries in the book for me is how many people all across the country had the idea to do this and spent months and months working on it. And, and those months and months were incredibly transformative for many of them. And they were not just an education on the issues, but people realized they had all kinds of skills they didn't think they had, or they had a passion they didn't realize they had. And and so many of those Earth Day organizers come away after Earth Day thinking, I want to keep doing something like this. And there were there were no, you know, books with hundreds and hundreds of eco jobs that you could just pick, you know, there were only a handful of things that were well established careers, and anything remotely to do with the environment. And a lot of these Earth Day organizers and many other people that just participated in Earth Day, they go out, they pioneer new career paths, they create new kinds of jobs and new kinds of organizations and new new ways of being, you know, an architect or a journalist or a professor, for that matter, to to continue to work on this and that that was only because they had already invested so much of themselves in the Earth Day.

John Fiege

Yeah, and the scale of the first Earth Day is amazing. It generated 12,000 events across the country and more than 35,000 speakers. And, and you write, that this first Earth they brought opposites together in powerful ways. Can you talk about how this big tent of unusual combinations of people gave us Earth Day?

Adam Rome

Well, it was a big tent and that too, is a almost inconceivable now in or was celebrated everywhere, right red states, blue states purple states. A lot of the places that I ended up writing about in the book are, you know, diehard Trump country now Alabama, you know, Montana, they had incredible Earth Day of events. And so part of it was that it was much more bipartisan than you can imagine. But I think one of the places where it brought people together was it combined the power of the establishment, you know, Gaylord Nelson could open doors, he could do lots of things, with the energy and the creativity of the grassroots. That was incredible. And that was so different than some of the other huge events of the 60s that were either more establishment or more grassroots than Earth Day, which was both. It also brought together young and old. And that was, again, something I didn't think about initially, but was hugely important, because that was a time, you couldn't take that for granted. I mean, a lot of old folks looked at college kids in thought troublemaker. And a lot of kids under 30 looked at old folks and said, can't trust them. You know, right. But Earth Day brought together intergenerational collaboration, all kinds of folks and again, at the national level, but also at the grassroots. And, and again, as I mentioned, a few minutes ago, I think this, it created this unprecedented debate about what people started calling the environmental crisis. And the debate didn't take place purely in the media or purely face to face, it was both. And I think that made it more powerful than it would have been in either of those places alone. And I think there's a lesson in that for our social media age, powerful as social media is it can't do some of the mobilizing, and the educating and the life changing things that the face-to-face conversation and the face-to-face planning of Earth Day. accomplished.

John Fiege

Right. So, I've always, to me, it's always been strange that the environment is such a political politicized issue, as if pollution and ecological destruction don't affect everybody. And I just when I read you talking about the kind of, you know, specifically democratic liberal intellectuals theorizing about this as like, is that part of the DNA of how we understand the environment, and therefore, it's so politicized in this country as a result?

Adam Rome

It wasn't, though in 1970. And in the same way, and and even conservatives, except for the most hardcore, you know, the John Birch are far far, far far right, folks, or the, you know, the totally southern segregationist forever, conservatives. Even most conservatives understood that pollution was a real problem, you know, there weren't deniers, then. They they disagreed sometimes with liberals. And as I said, there were liberal Republicans as well as liberal Democrats, right, about what to do about it. But there were a lot of conservatives that spent a lot of time in 1970, trying to figure out what would be a conservative approach? Is there a way to address these issues without big government? And, and so for example, there were people talking about global warming wasn't an issue, yet someone was talking about carbon tax, but there were people talking about pollution taxes, you know, that part of the problem was the market didn't force businesses to pay for the pollution that, but if they did have to pay for it, then they would reconstitute their way of doing things. So, they produced less pollution that was the market. Right. You know, there were conservatives talking about that, in 1970. And I think a couple you know, you there's a whole book about how the Republicans went from supportive to totally opposed, or almost totally opposed. But But I think the biggest thing that happened was, and this is another irony, you know, that modern environmentalism comes out of the prosperity of the post war years, right, and the prosperity is causing a lot of the problems, but it's also creating the political will to do something about them. And and then in 1973, more or less, the post war economic boom comes to an end and and the whole rest of the decade is full of economic turmoil, in fact, unprecedented, you know, high unemployment and high inflation which was supposed to be impossible, that the same, right and, and no one seems to be able to do anything about it. So, in that in that context, it suddenly becomes possible to have people argue again, what, wait a minute, we can't afford to keep going in this direction. Or, you know, these regulations are an onerous burden. By 1980, you know, you have Ronald Reagan saying he's going to undo all the environmental initiatives of the 70s. He doesn't, he can't. But he tries. And he has a lot of support for that that was inconceivable even five years before 10 years before.

John Fiege

Totally. You write: "Earth Day was an educational experience, as well as a political demonstration, that rare combination enabled Earth Day to have both long term and short-term impact". In the book, you tell this wonderful story of the San Mateo high school in California and its biology teacher, Edmund Home, who mentored students in the ecology club as they plan their Earth Day teaching. What happened there in those interactions between the teacher and his students? And what does it reveal about what the nature of the first Earth Day was?

Adam Rome

Yeah, so that's one of my favorite stories. I'm glad it struck you too. And that's the sort of thing Gaylord Nelson himself didn't envision, you know, he didn't originally envision high schools doing anything. But, but at this high school in Santa Monica, the teacher was a nature lover. But all the kids in the ecology club, most of them weren't, they were just interested in math and science. And they thought this was a cool thing. The way to be less nerdy was also something that appealed to some of the civic minded people in the school. So they're, you know, student body president, cheerleaders. You know, they met the teacher and the students over lunch, initially, just once a week for months, to talk about, you know, what, what would in environmental teach-in at their school be. And they had the total support of the principal. And, and those discussions in themselves, some of the participants told me were empowering, you know, that they weren't the kids weren't used to having an adult, listen seriously to their ideas about what they might do about anything. Right. And, and then, you know, they had to start doing the planning and figure out who might speak and what the activities were going to be. And you know, whether any of it was going to be funny, even though these were deadly, serious subjects, they decided they wanted humor. And, you know, they had to decide whether to address politically difficult issues, like population growth, which meant talking about sex, which you weren't supposed to do without permission. And, you know, they do all this interesting stuff. And as it gets closer to April 22, then they start, you know, the key organizer start meeting with, with the teacher at home every day. And again, you know, they he didn't tell him what to do. He had some suggestions, but it was their deal. But he, he nurtured them, he gave them the sense that they could do it. And so many people told me that not just the high school kids that I talked about a lot of the college and graduate school organizers to that, that it was empowering to work on this, that they they came away with it with this can-do sense that anything was possible.

John Fiege

It's so unusual.

Adam Rome

Yeah.

John Fiege

To have an experience like that, that profound at that age.

Adam Rome

Yeah.

John Fiege

So, you know, the institutional achievements in the wake of the first Earth Day are really remarkable. The formation of EPA and the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, all under a Republican administration, no less. But in 1990, just after climate change, became a widely publicized environmental concern. There was a 20th anniversary celebration of Earth Day. It was also a huge event with more professional planning, better funding, and a more focused message than in 1970. But it didn't lead to an environmental decade that confronted climate change or any other environmental issues. And as the first birthday had, as you write, can you talk a bit about Earth Day 1990. And what it reveals about how remarkable and achievement the first Earth Day was, and what lessons we might draw from those differences.

Adam Rome

It's interesting. I often hesitate to talk about the personalities involved, but So Dennis Hayes, and he was the guy Dennis Hayes, who, who was the main force behind Earth Day 1990, the 20th anniversary. So, Dennis Hayes was was not Gaylord Nelson. And Denis Hayes, I think drew exactly the wrong lesson. And he's gone on to do incredibly interesting important things as an environmentalist. But the lesson that he drew was top down. And and so an Earth Day 1990 It had, you know, I don't remember the exact numbers, but let's say 20 or 30 times the budget of the first Earth Day, it had all these political consultants and Hollywood gurus and advertising mavens working pro bono, on their on their messaging and polling and tie in merchandise and getting celebrities involved. And, you know, so they made the mistake, I think of of hoping that they could just mobilize people. But mobilizing isn't organizing. And mobilizing isn't empowering. It doesn't take people new places, you know, and then you think about other you know, advertising isn't about teaching you anything, it's about getting you to buy, you know, something. Political messaging isn't about educating you; it's about getting you to vote for this guy or woman rather than that person. So, it's yes or no, you know, Earth Day, the original Earth Day was so much more complicated than that it left it up to millions of individuals to say, what does this mean to me, what am I going to do? It didn't try to marshal them all in one direction, or to enlist them into a preexisting cause. Earth Day 1990 Did Did those other things, it tried to get people to join groups that already existed, and they did. Environmental groups reached their new heights of membership in the wake of Earth Day 1990. And it certainly heightened the message that individuals what they consumed mattered. But I don't think, you know, when you go to a March, that's very powerful. But it's not necessarily life transforming, it's not right to change the way you think. And the same thing when you go into the voting booth. So, taking politics and marketing as your models, that was a mistake. And they got a lot of people involved way more even than the first Earth Day and they made it global. But they didn't understand that the deepest change comes from the empowerment, that's a much slower process and requires more give and take, you know, it's not just getting the message out, and then having people hear it and do something.

John Fiege

I want to turn to your most recent work, which revolves around business and the environment. With much of your recent writing, you're asking whether it's possible to green capitalism, and if so, what does that look like? you frame the question this way: "At one extreme critics of capitalism dismiss all corporate talk of sustainability as greenwashing as a way to distract people from the fundamental destructiveness of the system. At the other extreme, the boosters of green business take for granted that sustainability is the inevitable next stage of the evolution of the market. Neither view is historically grounded". Why not?

Adam Rome

It's really definitional. So, if you can define capitalism, a variety ways, but some of the ways of defining capitalism make it just theoretically impossible that it could ever be green. So there, they don't they're not drawing on any historical data. It's a theoretical argument. The other argument, the booster argument, I'd say the historical record already clearly disproves. Capitalism is not just going to evolve, right, to a more sustainable thing. There are all kinds of reasons why, why the people that even that have tried the hardest to green, their businesses or their industries haven't been able to do it. So, if there's any chance of capitalism becoming green, the historical record, I would say so far, says it can only happen if there's powerful movement, a social movement, a political movement, that rewrites the rules that the change is what guides business. So that, that the default for business becomes doing the green thing rather than the exception.

John Fiege

Right. Let's talk about a specific example. You write about DuPont. And, you know, at some point in the late 80s, early 90s, DuPont kind of decided to start to lead the way in terms of environmental sustainability. And you really asked the question of how far can the company realistically go and how much can they truly fulfill this idea of, of sustainability, can you tell a little bit about the story of what happened with DuPont and what you drew from that?

Adam Rome

Sure. And so, it's 1989 that they have a new CEO, Edgar Willard. And he says, we need a new corporate environmentalism that's pretty much a phrase that he coined. And to think that they, they have to go in the phrase of the day beyond compliance. They can't just do what the law requires. That they they'll for all kinds of business reasons, they have to actually do better. They have to start thinking about how to green operations. And that's not just true for manufacturing firms, although it was manufacturers and particularly heavily polluting manufacturers that got the message first. So, I had already been thinking about what's the environmental impact of a company like DuPont, and how has it changed over time, and then I noticed that their CEO, Edgar Willard, becomes this national focal point, for an effort to try to create a corporate environmentalism and the next long serving CEO and board chairman of DuPont, Chad Holliday also becomes a national international leader in this movement. And for him, the key phrase was sustainable growth that he tries to envision to reorient the whole company toward some new areas that he foresaw as great needs if we were to become a more sustainable society. And both of them do real things that are, were hard. And in some cases, I would even say courageous. And they make dramatic improvements in certain ways. But in other ways, they totally fall short and the most egregious of their efforts that are non-efforts. Something that predated either of them that one of their iconic products at DuPont was Teflon —still is— and making Teflon involved a chemical usually just called C8, that they didn't make themselves three M made it and they bought it from 3M. But well before Willard comes into office. 3M begins to think C8 is not safe, or it could be hazardous in certain circumstances. They weren't DuPont. And DuPont has some serious internal debate about this. And they decide not to do anything differently than then. And and, and neither Edgar Willard nor Chad Holliday ever reconsiders that decision. In fact, they do the opposite when, when evidence of how dangerous it is to use C8 and and how C8 has escaped from their factory in West Virginia and is polluting the water and is polluting nearby land where they were dumping waste. They doubled down 3M eventually decides it's not going to make C8 anymore. And DuPont instead of finding an alternative builds their own C8 factory in North Carolina. And all of this is secret. This only comes out as a result of a miraculous series of circumstances, all of which could have easily not happened that allow an attorney Rob Billot to slowly build the evidence of how much DuPont knew, how great lengths they went to keep it secret, how they didn't make decisions that they easily could have made that wouldn't have even been that expensive, that could have avoided an environmental catastrophe. And the more interesting discovery in some way for me with DuPont was they they tried to create sustainable alternative to artificial fibers like polyester and nylon. And they tried to create a sustainable biofuel as an alternative to gasoline and for that matter, ethanol. And they put a huge amount of effort into it. And and they didn't get the results out of it, the financial results out of it that they hoped. And I think that's a key part of the puncturing of the balloon of the boosters, is that, you know, they make it sound like if people just had the will, they could create all these green new products and people would buy them and they'd make money. Green is Gold is the title of one book. It's not that simple. First of all, it's not always clear what is more sustainable product is and most companies don't have any expertise in thinking about this. So, they make mistakes but the market, the fundamental flaws of capitalism mean that greener products are always competing against things that are cheaper but dirtier

John Fiege

right, and then the public absorbs the costs, right? Environmental cost.

Adam Rome

Exactly. And, and some of those products can still find a niche, you know, like the Prius, or, you know, early on certain kinds of organic food. But a niche doesn't change the world,

John Fiege

Right

Adam Rome

and it and it also doesn't make enough money for big multinationals like DuPont that are publicly listed corporations to satisfy the shareholders... Right, and the shareholders rebelled. So, DuPont doesn't exist anymore. And part of what the part of what the shareholders the activist shareholders were rebelling against was the R&D Enterprise, which, which is crucial to sustainability. If you have to only think three months ahead, you're not going to be developing a lot of sustainable products, the things that DuPont was trying to do took a decade or more. And that's hard, even even if it's just a standard product, but especially if it's something that's trying to anticipate what would really be greener, 10 years from now. But, you know, the market doesn't reward that it rewards quick and dirty returns, not long-term farsighted thinking.

John Fiege

And you make this, this point that I think is really powerful that, you know, there, there are two different types of making business more sustainable, there are things like reducing waste, and being more efficient. And and using fewer materials, those things are all beneficial environmentally, they also make the cost of doing business less right there, they save money for the company. And companies have very enthusiastically taken that side of kind of eco thinking on and and often advertised how great they are for doing that. But there are other things that actually make the cost of doing business much higher, and things more difficult and more risky and less likely to to produce shareholder value. And those are the those are the things that companies haven't done well at all

Adam Rome

Right.

John Fiege

I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that. And what you've seen with DuPont and other

Adam Rome

Right, so those those win-wins, where it's environmentally better, and it's more profitable, are usually in the category of what's come to be called Eco efficiencies. And even those aren't always easy. That was another lesson for me and DuPont was Woolard pushes his scientists as researchers to find ways to reduce waste. And in their initial response is pushback. No, we can't do that. Are you crazy? If you know if we could do that we would have done it already. It's going to cost more or it's technically impossible. But a lot of times thinking outside the box, in fact, allowed these win-win solutions, these eco efficiencies. And sometimes the savings were gargantuan, really.

John Fiege

Right.

Adam Rome

And, and it's not all just in production processes. You know, Xerox, realized that it could take back copiers and use the parts in the copiers to quote remanufactured copiers. And that would save them a lot of money. And it was and then they realized it would save them even more if the copiers were designed from the beginning to be disassembled and reused like that. And that was, you know, hundreds and hundreds of million dollars a year of savings. But only, you know, someone had to prod them to do that. So, it takes leadership. But then there are all these harder things were in the current business model. They're not likely to to be as rewarding as the alternatives. And at the worst extreme, you know, there are incentives in the market right now, to make climate change worse, you know, there are lots of ways not just a fossil fuel, people can profit from some of the things that are going on, rather than trying to solve the problem. So, if your actual goal is a green economy, whether it's a capitalist one or any other kind of one, then the rules have to change fundamentally the way we understand what business is and what it does, and what its responsibilities are having to change fundamentally. Because we're never going to get to a sustainable economy. If some things pay, and some don't that are green

John Fiege

Right

Adam Rome

Everything has to be paid to be green, or we have to get to a system where that's not the standard judgment anymore.

John Fiege

Yeah, yeah. You've also done some really fascinating work around fashion as a driver of consumption, environmental destruction. Could you talk a bit about the story of the Beaver, and kind of the the ascendant merchant class in Europe and the wide-ranging impacts of the fashion aspirations on on rivers, meadows, wetlands in North America, that kind of thing.

Adam Rome

The reason fashion looms so large for me was you know, there's only so much that you can eat or drink. No matter how wealthy you are, you know, there's, there's a biological limit. And, and that's true for a lot of other things that we consume, but, but fashion creates this potentially unlimited demand, that, that if something goes out of style, and you're no longer willing to use it, even if it's perfectly functional in every other way, and then you buy something new, that's, that's an unbelievable demand on resources, to have, essentially insatiable appetites. And it started with clothing, and especially with the beaver hat, that became a fashion item in Europe, and then and then in the US. But in the 20th century, it's expanded to lots of other things, you know, your, your smartphone is a fashion item, Apple is a fashion company, in many ways, you know, cars became fashion items, and were sold on style, as much as anything else. And so many other things have become like that, that that's become a major form of marketing is to get you to be dissatisfied with what you have, because it no longer is cool, right, and then to junk it and get something else and, and, and that cycle is incredibly destructive, but it starts with beaver. The poor Beaver, you know, their pelt happened to be really good for making hats better than wool, which was the alternative, you know, it was easier to shape, and it was water resistant, and it was easier to dye in it. And it was more expensive. So, it also therefore was more of a status object. And, you know, at the beginnings of modern capitalism, the rising merchant class wanted to have a way of showing that they were important and, and having stylish attire, and especially stylish hats was part of it. And as a result, all the Beaver in Europe is wiped out except for the very far reaches of Siberia, then the New World, new to Europe, at least, is opened up to exploitation. And there's lots of beaver in the northern US and in Canada. And over the course of the centuries, the Beaver is nearly wiped out in North America. All to satisfy this never-ending demand for stylish new hats.

John Fiege

It always struck me as kind of the perfect example of what environmental history is. Because not only did this fashion sense in Europe, originally, wipe out the Beaver for the most part in North America. But because beavers were no longer making dams, then it changed the dynamics of the rivers.

Adam Rome

Right.

John Fiege

and it destroyed wetlands. And it it changed the dynamics of whether there were meadows or not. And this, this very lofty idea of fashion and what people thought of themselves, in a, in a distant land in Europe, had these very real and immediate environmental impacts on the landscape in North America. And that, to me, that seems to be such a perfect encapsulation of the power of what environmental history is combining those two things.

Adam Rome

You're right, you know, that's part of the world of consumption, too, that's so dangerous is that where we consume can be half a world away...

John Fiege

right

Adam Rome

...from where the impacts are the greatest impacts, and we have no way of knowing that. I mean, we've gotten better in the last couple of decades at trying to find ways to find that out. But, but it's still incredibly hard. And as the distance between producers and consumers, and even that's almost a totally outdated way to think about it. I mean, that you know, your your smartphone. Well, who's the producer that I mean? There's a zillion things in it. And most of them are made in different places. Th ey might be assembled in one place.

John Fiege

Yeah, and lots of rare earths, they have to be mined from every corner of the earth.

Adam Rome

Right? Exactly. So, it's, it's become very hard to be responsible as a consumer, you know, whereas 500 years ago, mostly people were still ordinary people still consuming things that were made close by. And they wouldn't know if there were really serious consequences of that.

John Fiege

And that's something I've always thought about, you know, with the success of Earth Day, you know, you talk about during Earth Day, and the the legislation that came after Earth, they targeted specific pollutants and chemicals. And the reduction in those chemicals in the United States in the subsequent decades was dramatic, dropped, dropped 90% or 75%, or whatever, enormous, enormous progress. But at the same time, with a lot of that manufacturing and pollution being exported around the world, the overall emissions and pollution globally has gone up dramatically. And it continues to rise today. And in a way, you know, one of the contradictions of all this is, you know, the success of Earth Day in our success of cleaning up the environment in the United States, has allowed us to, to be ignorant and blind to to what has happened around the world as a result of our consumption here. And no longer is our consumption tied to the effects of that production. That, yeah, they're separated, they're separated geographically now, and you know, climate change, in some ways, is going to start to bring it back together, because everyone's going to be impacted by it. But anyway, you wrote an article called Can Capitalism ever be Green? You seem to be saying that there's a middle way when it comes to making our economy sustainable. So is there a middle way? And what does that look like? If there is?

Adam Rome

So, my argument is partly pragmatic. What would convince people that you can't make capitalism green? If we really try hard and we fail, then a lot more people might be willing to say, okay, now we really have to think outside the box. What, what's the alternative? So, so I want people to really try their hardest, which we haven't come close to doing.

John Fiege

Right, for sure

Adam Rome

But it has to be, and this is why I think it's so important for environmentalists to get out of their comfort zone and realize that they need to think about this as much as Yosemite. That you can't save capitalism from within the firm. You can't rely on enlightened leadership of companies, and there are some enlightened leaders of companies, right, but they can't do it, unless the rules change, and they can't change the rules themselves.

John Fiege

Right, we can change the rules by voting,

Adam Rome

Right, we can change the rules by voting, or by acting differently, as as, as citizens and other ways or as, you know, consumers-citizens, or we can create new legal tools, but but the rules of the market are set mostly outside the market. And and we need to think about what the rules are, that reward people for doing the right thing. And that's not easy to do. And it's even harder to get the the social movement and political power that would insist on that. But, and again, that speaks to a deep, deeper challenge for environmentalists, you know, the movement early on, when it was still mostly about saying no, could could be could could see itself as self-contained. But now that it's about trying to or should be building a sustainable society. There's no such thing as a sustainable society, that's an unjust society. Right. And, and, and so the movement that would be needed to check the powers that are causing all kinds of unsustainability in our society, not just environmental would have to be a much broader movement than an environmental movement. Right, you know, would have to be,

John Fiege

which I think is is starting to happen. We are starting, we are starting to see, you know, anti-racism in environment and human rights and immigrant rights and LGBTQ plus writes, you know, all of it is seemingly starting to converge in some powerful way.

Adam Rome

Yeah, I think young people especially get this right that they understand that You know, I wish I had a better word for it, but that we need intersectional activism. And, and, and I think that's true. But again, I think even if you just start thinking again saying again and again, this is a sustainability movement now it's not an environmental movement that inherently forces you to challenge some of your assumptions about who's in and who's out, and who will care and who won't.

John Fiege

Right. Yep. And, well, this is a giant question. But what do you feel like you've learned through your study of environmental history and through life in general about our relationship to the rest of nature,

Adam Rome

You know, I, I, you know, I happen to discover the field at a time when I was trying to figure out how to be most socially useful, while also studying history. And I came to believe that this was the freshest, most exciting kind of history going. And I had to learn a lot of things that I didn't know anything about. And I had some dark moments when I was overwhelmed. I remember, you know, almost throwing up. And it is a grand challenge. And it's incredibly interesting intellectually, but it's also important. And because so many interesting people are thinking about it, it's constantly stimulating, it's a real community. So so, you know, and I, of course, part of that involves, as we've said, a number of times, rethinking our place in the larger world. But I actually, I actually think about that on a day-to-day basis, surprisingly little, you know, but at some level, one of the things that I've come to appreciate, I guess, through all my work is, you don't have to have the big answers, to do great things day to day. You know, right to see opportunities to improve things. I hadn't thought about this till you asked, but, but I don't wake up every day thinking how can I, you know, myself and how can our society get right with nature? That's, that's just in the background. Even though that's usually important, I'm really more day to day focused on, you know, what's some big aspect of that, that I can work on, that other people might might be also working on and might benefit from what I do.

John Fiege

That's great. And, and what have you learned about how we protect life on earth? You kind of changed your thought about that over time.

Adam Rome

Probably, I guess that's the biggest thing is the sense that we have to outgrow the limits of the environmental movement. And, and, and we have to start thinking much much more about sustainable society.

John Fiege

That's inclusive of everything

Adam Rome

Yeah, and, but that's also involves creating something that doesn't exist rather than restoring something that we've wrecked or stopping something from getting wrecked. That's been wrecked, right at the moment.

John Fiege

Which you can send to kind of exciting, utopian thinking too, you know, I was I've met some Sunrise Movement, folks last summer. And they were really keen on this. There's just like, we need to bring back utopian thinking we need to envision something that we've never seen before, because that's what we need.

Adam Rome

Right. I agree. That's, that's wonderful that you were hearing that from the Sunrise people because

John Fiege

they give me a lot of hope.

Adam Rome

Yeah. And the very name of their organization, obviously is,

John Fiege

yeah, brilliant,

Adam Rome

is brilliant. And so yeah. You know, what, what do we want is something that doesn't exist, yet, parts of it exist. And parts of it are close enough to existing that it's easy to imagine how they might exist, but other parts, we really have to stretch our imagination. And that that also, again, moves us well beyond the technological that's art. That's literature. That's film. You know, that's ethics. That's lots of things.

John Fiege

Right? Well, I've asked you to bring a quotation to read that's been particularly meaningful on kind of your journey in life. If could you end the show by by reading what you brought and telling the story of its significance to you?

Adam Rome

So, this is a line from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. It's in a chapter called Needless Havoc. And it's, it's, I mean, the whole book is so fabulous. But yep. And the whole book is full of these incredible questions. That that the more you think about them, the more profound you realize they are. And so, here's what she says, that I keep coming back to, and I also force my students to think about it. "The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized" And what I love about that, a couple of things, but but she, she's saying this is a twofold challenge. One is purely practical, are we going to survive? And the other is moral. Even if we survive, will we still have the right to call ourselves civilized? Will we still be proud of, of what we've done? And and I think, as we're trying to imagine what a sustainable society would be, you know, it clearly has to be one that doesn't destroy itself, but it also has to be one. That's moral. That's upstanding. That's, that's just right. And, and so she's pushing us to think about how to make sure that what we build is both

John Fiege

right, and we can’t enforce environmental sustainability in some authoritarian way, because that would contradict everything else, we know of as, as moral and what we value.

Adam Rome

And the word life is brilliant. Because it, it, it encompasses every aspect of human society, and then every other living thing. So even though she wasn't really thinking about social issues, you can take it that way. You know, we have to do right by all people, as well as all other living things. Right, we can't wage war in the same way that we can't wage war on nature, we can't dominate some people. And assume that that's going to be sustainable, just as we can't try to dominate nature and assume that it's going to be sustainable.

John Fiege

Well, that was beautiful. And I'm, I'm so glad you ended with Rachel Carson, as you know, I I named my son, his middle name is Carson, after Rachel Carson. So, she is enormously important in my life. And you, you know, I knew about Rachel Carson, she played an important part of my life before I studied with you, but but then your work working with you in graduate school really reinforced her as really my guiding light through my life, really.

Adam Rome

Well, thank you, and thank you for pushing me to find a quote. At first, I didn't think I would come up with one. But as soon as I thought about it, I said, No, no, no, no. There's that line from Rachel Carson that I think about over and over. And, you know, we need to answer that question the right way.

John Fiege

Great. Well, thank you so much. This has been fabulous. Even though we talk all the time. This has been an amazing treat.

Adam Rome

For me too John, I'm so thrilled again that that we're colleagues, not just in the grand scheme of things, but here at the University of Buffalo.

Outro

John Fiege

Thank you so much to Adam Rome. Go to our website at chrysalispodcast.org To see the quotation Adam read from Rachel Carson, and check out a list of his work, including the Bulldozer in the Countryside, The Genius of Earth Day, and the wonderful audible original lecture he did on the history of Earth Day.

Chrysalis is produced and edited by Gabriela Cordoba Vivas with music by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Design by Unai Reglero and mixing by Juan Garcia. Isabella Nurt is our social media producer and assistant editor, and Shubh Jain is our web developer and assistant editor.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Adam, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Contact me anytime at chrysalispodcast.org where you can also support the project, subscribe to our newsletter and join the conversation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnfiege.substack.com

View Details

Environmental activists often focus on facts and data, as if more climate information will lead to more climate action. That strategy may be effective with some communities, but overall it hasn’t prevented global emissions from climbing year after year or habitats from being destroyed day after day.

Many folks in the environmental movement are thinking a lot about how to make messaging more effective. But it’s not just the message we need to question—it’s also the messenger.

In the U.S., white evangelical Christians are not known for their strong support of environmental protections or for believing that humans are even causing climate change, but maybe they haven’t had the right messengers.

Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap is an evangelical Christian climate activist, which is not a combination of descriptors we often hear. Kyle has spent years building a movement of young messengers from within the evangelical community who speak a new language of creation care.

He believes that Christians don’t need to look any further than the Bible to become fierce and passionate advocates for ecological protection and climate action.

Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap was National Organizer and Spokesperson for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action before becoming Vice President at the Evangelical Environmental Network.

I met Kyle in 2019 at a week-long climate storytelling retreat in New York City. I was super excited to continue our conversation here and dive deeper into his own ecological awakening, what scripture says about caring for the environment, and how Christians and non-Christians alike can find common values and build power together to care for life on Earth across cultural lines that often divide us.

You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap serves as the Vice President of the Evangelical Environmental Network. He holds an undergraduate degree in religious studies from Calvin University (B.A. '12), a Master of Divinity degree from Western Theological Seminary (M.Div. '16), and is ordained in the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA). Much of his professional experience has involved the integration of theology, science, and action toward a deeper awareness of the Christian responsibility to care for God's earth and to love one’s neighbors, both at home and around the world. Kyle has been named to Midwest Energy Group's 40 Under 40 and the American Conservation Coalition’s 30 Under 30 cohorts for his work on climate change education and advocacy. Most recently, he was named a Yale Public Voices on the Climate Crisis Fellow for 2020. His work has been featured in national and international news outlets such as PBS, NPR, CNN, NBC News, New York Times, Reuters, and U.S. News and World Report. He is married to Allison and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with their son, Simon.

Quotation Read by Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

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Transcription

Intro

John Fiege

Environmental activists often focus on facts and data, as if more climate information will lead to more climate action. That strategy may be effective with some communities, but overall, it hasn’t prevented global emissions from climbing year after year or habitats from being destroyed day after day.

Many folks in the environmental movement are thinking a lot about how to make messaging more effective. But it’s not just the message we need to question—it’s also the messenger.

In the US, white evangelical Christians are not known for their strong support of environmental protections or for believing that humans are even causing climate change, but maybe they haven’t had the right messengers.

He believes that Christians don’t need to look any further than the Bible to become fierce and passionate advocates for ecological protection and climate action.

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

So when humans read, have dominion and subdue the earth, and they separate that, from the rest of scriptures witness, which is that Christ is creations true king, then it's easy for us to say, "Well, I guess we have a blank check. Let's do whatever we want." Instead of saying, "Well, let's shape our dominion in our rulership after creation's true king, which is Christ." And when we actually do that, then the way we have dominion and subdue the earth is going to look a whole lot different. It's going to look a whole lot less like privilege and a whole lot more like responsibility.

John Fiege

I’m John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.

Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap was National Organizer and Spokesperson for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action before becoming Vice President at the Evangelical Environmental Network.

Here is Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap.

Conversation

John Fiege

You grew up in Michigan. And that's where I wanted to start. Can you tell me where you grew up? And as a child, what was your relationship to the earth, to the forest, to the ocean, to the rest of life on the planet?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Yeah, absolutely. I did. I grew up in Holland, Michigan, which is a beautiful, small town, on the shores of Lake Michigan, western part of the state and grew up, you know, minutes from Lake Michigan. So the beach and dunes were always a big part of my life growing up, as was camping, and just enjoying the beautiful landscapes of Michigan. Northern Michigan, with it's in the lakes and forests, and obviously, Lake Michigan and the coast there. So creation and its beauty, you know, was always a part of my childhood and my upbringing. I can't say it was always a conscious part, though. We didn't talk often about our relationship to the natural world, our responsibilities toward it. My community was a beautiful Christian community, that that taught me lots of really important lessons and values and virtues. But I don't remember a conversation about God's creation and our relationship to it, our responsibility to it, certainly nothing about climate change. And I don't remember outright hostility, to be honest. I think a lot of people expect that from a small Evangelical community like mine. What I remember most was just silence, around climate change, around environmental issues in general, pollution. Except for recycling, which I'm not sure we would have done if the truck didn't pick it up at our curb every other week for us. Except for that, I can't really remember any intentional choices that we made as a family or as a larger Church community. And, and so my childhood was marked by kind of this dissonance between my experience of God's grandeur in these beautiful, breathtaking landscapes that were just a part of me and a part of my life growing up, and the relative silence around those gifts. Silence around what our responsibility would be toward those things. I think it was taken for granted that these things were here, and very little conversation about how to protect them, or what our faith, well how our faith could inform the way we approached questions about how to protect those gifts.

Right. And an interesting thing, though, is even if you're not talking about it, in articulating this connection, you obviously had that really profound experience with the natural world. Even if kind of culturally, politically it wasn't, you know, positioned that way. Do you have any, like, particularly strong memories of an experience that has really stuck with you in terms of being in the natural world?

Yeah, I think more than one experience, I think I have just a general sense memory, of being in the sand and in the water in Lake Michigan. I don't think I ever really reflected on how formative that body of water was to me and continues to be for me. It's almost like a my center of gravity. I travel a lot for my work, but I feel most at home back in this landscape in Michigan, close to the lake. It's my directional guide for someone who struggles with innate sense of the cardinal directions with Lake Michigan's always West. So if I know where Lake Michigan is, I know where West is. So I think more than kind of a general, distinct, or discreet memory, just the the general sense memory of being near Lake Michigan, of going to Lake Michigan often in the summers, going to the beach often, being in those dunes, being in the water. A couple of years ago, I was invited to a multifaith space where people were invited to bring a part of creation that's meaningful to them to the space, and to kind of offer it to the group. And I brought a vial of Lake Michigan water because that was the only thing I could think of, right? Lake Michigan is the spot for me. Yeah.

John Fiege

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I've, over the last couple years, I've started, when meditating, I've started visualizing, being in the surf of the ocean and having the water come in and out in the same cadence as the breath. And that's, I've really, like connected with that as like a technique. And I've thought about it. And I realized, you know, I grew up going to the Atlantic Ocean every summer for a long time. And it's so embedded in me and in my psyche. It sounds like you might have a similar water relationship there.

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Yeah, I love that! I love that. And people who grew up in the mountains speak similarly about the mountains. I don't think I realized it, until relatively recently, the impact that that gift has had on me in my life. Yeah.

John Fiege

Oh, that's awesome. Can you tell me the story of your brother spending a semester abroad in New Zealand?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Yeah, so my older brother is three years older than me. My hero for much of my life, continues to be one of my best friends. He went off to a semester abroad program in New Zealand when he was a sophomore in college, and I was still in high school, I was a junior in high school. And he grew up, you know, in the same kind of milieu as I did. Pretty conservative, Evangelical Christian community. Very, very little discussion around the environment around climate change in particular, pollution, and the environment in general. And he went on this semester abroad trip, which was designed for Christian college students to engage the disciplines of ecology, biology, environmental science, and biblical studies and theology, in conversation with each other, to examine this beautiful, unique ecosystem in New Zealand; and to bring theological questions and biblical insights into conversation with what they were discovering. And he came back totally transformed.

John Fiege

It sounds like an amazing program!

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

It does! I almost went on the same program myself! I ultimately chose to take a different trip elsewhere, but it was an amazing trip. And he came back pretty on fire for what he had learned, and particularly for the way that the trip helped him integrate his existing Christian values, with his burgeoning understanding of the environmental and climate crisis. I think the climax of his return was when he announced to the family...I forget what it was...a couple of days, maybe a week or two, after he came back that because of what he had learned, he was now a vegetarian. Which for my Midwestern, pretty conservative meat and potatoes family, that was pretty shocking. I remember for myself as a junior in high school, I didn't know anybody like me who had ever made that choice. And I had the caricature in my mind of the hemp-friendship-bracelet-weaving, vegan-pizza-eating, throw-paint-on-fur-coats-on-the-weekends-vegetarian, and I was forced to to either keep that caricature and then put my brother in that camp along with them, which was painful, or to suspend my assumptions and hear him out. And he was gracious and patient, and kind of laid out for me all of his rationale for the decision. And most importantly, he helped me see why that decision to become a vegetarian was not a jettisoning of the values that we had been taught by our community. It was, in fact, a deepening of those values. It was a way for him to live more fully into those values, like loving our neighbor, loving God, caring for God's creation. All of the values that we had been instilled with, it was another opportunity to express those values more deeply. And that was, that was a real lightbulb moment for me. I think I had assumed that to make those kinds of decisions or to care about something like the environment or climate change, I would need to turn my back on my community, turn my back on the lessons I learned in Sunday school, turn my back on the values that were instilled in me by my family. And he was the first person who gave me permission to recognize that actually taking these things seriously and doing something about it is a way for us to live more fully into those lessons and those values that we had been taught.

John Fiege

Great. That's so interesting, because it seems to set up a trajectory for so much of what you've done since. I'm thinking in particular about this idea, this assumption that, if we just explain the facts, if we just reveal the scientific truth, and everyone would be like, "Oh, okay! Well, let's change everything now!" You know? And it doesn't work that way. You know, we're changed by the people who are closest to us. And that's the key that unlocks people's ability to transform. So I'm wondering if you can kind of start with that moment with your brother. And you know, what path did that take you on? And what does your work and life look like now? And in particular, I'd love to hear you talk more about the work you're doing with young people, and that idea of change from within the community.

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Absolutely. So that that experience with my brother was really the spark that was fanned into flame, when I myself went off to college a couple years later. Went to a small Christian liberal arts school here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I took classes, and had professors, and read books, and went to lectures, and made friends and all of it just combined to continue to advance my understanding of what my faith had to say about the environmental crisis and the climate crisis in particular, and in how my commitment to my faith was drawing me more deeply into action. At the same time, I was studying religion there. I thought I was going to be a biology major, and all of the intro to bio classes were closed. So I signed up for a religion course, because I had to take two of those as a requirement of the school I was at, and I loved it! I loved it! It was scratching the itch I didn't know I had. It was asking the questions that really got me excited. So I continued to pursue that. I was studying scripture and theology deeply at the same time as I was being exposed to the realities of the climate crisis, being exposed to activists who were doing something about it, embedding myself in a community of peers who are passionate about these things. And were asking these questions too. And all of that led me to after graduation to pursue a seminary degree. I was feeling a call to serve the church. I was pretty clear at that time that that particular calling was likely not to be a traditional pastor of a congregation, but to help the church understand that addressing the climate crisis and taking care of God's creation is a fundamental component of what it means to be a Christian.

John Fiege

Did you have any models for that? Where did that idea come from? That was in seminary school that you first conceived of that as a calling?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Yeah, it was. I had a few models. One model was actually the founder of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, which I think we're going to talk about in a minute, that I had gotten to know over the last couple of years at that point, his name was Ben Lowe. He was certainly a model for me. Other models were Evangelical Christians, or Christians in the Evangelical space, who are active on social justice issues in general, Shane Claiborne, is certainly an influence on me and other Christian activists, who use this language. Who talk about how caring for the vulnerable, protecting the oppressed is a fundamental part of the church's calling in the world. And it's not an ancillary issue for a handful of members in the church who have a predisposition to care about those things. It's not an affinity group on the sidelines of the church. It's at the heart of the church's mission in the world, especially when it comes to climate change. It's just a fundamental part of what it means to follow Jesus and in the 21st century. And so I did have a few models for that. I also had terrific mentors, who helped expand my idea of what could be possible, who kind of helped me discern this calling and tease out the shape of it. And that took some time. That took a few years to really get a sense of the particular shape of that calling. I entered seminary with a general sense that I was called to serve the church in some way. And I was passionate about social justice at the same time, and then over the course of my time in seminary, and conversations with mentors, that the shape of that calling really kind of filled out.

John Fiege

And how would you describe the work that you've done since seminary?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Yeah. So since seminary, I have been working with Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, which is a national organization of young Christians around the country, many with a very similar story to mine grew up in a conservative Christian community, were not given a whole lot of tools to help them integrate their faith and the values they were being taught in church and Christian day school, in many cases, with the realities of climate change, and environmental degradation. Many of them came to be concerned about the climate crisis. But were often told they needed to keep that separate from their life at church. So, many of them would join a Sierra Club or three-fifty protests on the weekend, and then go to church and not tell anyone about it. Because they felt implicitly or explicitly that they were told that those things had to be separate. So my ministry really for the last several years, since seminary has been to come alongside these young people, and to hopefully catalyze the kind of experience that I had. Because of my brother, because of other experiences because of other people I had in my life, that wedded together my faith and my faith values with climate action, to do that, for young Christians across the country, and to hopefully, create a space where that transformation can happen more quickly. Because it took me years, and where that transformation can happen for more people more quickly. And that can translate into a movement within the church of young people calling the church back to our own stated values, our own calling in the world, and can translate into real political pressure that can hopefully create the circumstances that will lead to policy change that can address the climate crisis at the speed and scale necessary. So I use the word ministry, because I believe that's what I'm doing. I believe that's what this is. That this calling I have to educate, equip, and mobilize young Christians. And recently, I actually transitioned to a role with Y.E.C.A parent organization where I'm now the vice president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, continuing to support Y.E.C.E., but also leading other programs for other Christians across the country to. I do believe this as a ministry and I believe I'm called to this ministry. Because the gospel of Jesus, in Jesus's own words is about setting the oppressed free, proclaiming good news to the poor, and climate action is that, and the church needs to recognize that and to get to work.

John Fiege

Well, great. I'm curious to hear more about, kind of your assessment of how that is going. But before we do that, I want to just jump into more of the heart of some of these ideas that I think that you spend your time steeped in and talking about. So I wanted to jump into this book you contributed to called Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care. I was wondering if you could talk about the evolution of the idea of creation care. So let's let's start in 1967, when historian Lynn White Jr. wrote an explosive article in the science in the journal Science called the historical roots of our ecological crisis, he cites the Dominion Mandate from Genesis in blaming the Judeo Christian tradition for its abusive attitudes towards the Earth and its non-human creatures. So here's Genesis 128, "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." What do you hear in this passage, and how do you think it's been read or misread by Christians or non-Christians?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Hmm. That's a terrific question. And you're right. I think a lot about this. So I'll try to be concise, but I am a preacher by training. This is one of the passages I've maybe thought most about. So I hear a few things. I think the first thing we should name is that read on its face in the English translation from the original Hebrew that you just read. It sure sounds like God has given humans license to do as they please with creation. However, I think my seminary education in particular has sensitized me to the importance of a slow, and careful, and contextual reading of Scripture. So when I hear that passage, I want to ask the question, "What's around it? What's around that verse, those verses that can help us contextualize that command?" And when I asked that, I see a couple of things. The first thing I see is that that command comes after 27 verses of God, creating and reveling in that creation. Genesis 1 says, "God looks at what he had made and calls it good," says that seven times and in the Hebrew imagination, the number seven connotes wholeness, perfection, even holiness. So having that Hebrew word in there, "Tov," seven times, for good, signals something to the original listeners, right? God is calling God's creation maximally good. This is this creation, I'm making as good as it gets. And the other thing I see is, pretty clearly, creations true king going about the work of creating, right? The language of dominion, and rulership evokes kingship. And so when we see God giving humans the command to subdue, have dominion over. That is the language of kingship. And we have to ask ourselves, "Is God really placing humans as creations true king? Or does the rest of Scripture attest that creations True King is actually Christ?" And if that's the case, then we have to ask ourselves, "Is our dominion separated from the dominion of Christ's or is our call to rule over creation supposed to be shaped in a particular way?" I would argue our call to dominion is derivative of Christ's true claim to the rulership of all of creation. And if that's the case, then our rule has to be shaped after the way that Christ rules and scripture is quite clear about how Christ exercises his authority over creation. We see it in the Incarnation, when he empties himself and and takes on human form, and limits himself in human form, to bring creation back to himself. I think Paul says it really well in Philippians, when he says that Christ did not see equality with God as something to be exploited for his own advantage. But he emptied himself and became a servant when he came to serve us in the Incarnation, and in his death and resurrection. So we see that Christ as creations true king exercises Dominion in a particular way, and it's not through exploitation, or through domination, it's through humble sacrifice, and through service. So when humans read, have dominion and subdue the earth, and they separate that, from the rest of scriptures witness, which is that Christ is creations true king, then it's easy for us to say, "Well, I guess we have a blank check. Let's do whatever we want." Instead of saying, "Well, let's shape our dominion in our rulership after creation's true king, which is Christ." And when we actually do that, then the way we have dominion and subdue the earth is going to look a whole lot different. It's going to look a whole lot less like privilege and a whole lot more like responsibility. Responsibility to serve that which we are ruling over. And I think Genesis 2 actually supports that interpretation. Genesis: 1 and 2 are two creation accounts in Scripture. Genesis 1 is really high minded language that belongs and, you know,

magisterial archives along side the decrees of the king, but Genesis 2, the language is really intimate and earthy. It's a story about a God who stoops in the mud and forms humans with his hands, and then breathes his own breath into it, into the humans that he's creating. And the first command he gives to humans in Genesis 2 is to serve and protect creation. Genesis 2:15 has the Hebrew words "svad" and "shamar," the garden, those are often translated as till and keep it, which I don't like. Really, when you actually go to the Hebrew, it's pretty clear the word Avad. The Hebrew word Avad is all over the Old Testament. So we have a good idea of what it means. It's almost always used in the context of service and even slavery. And Shamar is also used everywhere. And it's quite clear that it connotes jealous protection and proactive guarding from harm. So in Genesis 2, God takes the humans he just made, puts them in the garden and says, serve and protect this, this thing that I've made. I think when you put that next to Genesis 1's call to dominion, it's quite clear that both of them are calling humans toward a particular responsibility to creation. Not to privilege, but to responsibility.

John Fiege

Wow. Well, that amazing textual reading you just gave it, makes me think about the Protestant Reformation. In the sense that so much of the tumult in the church over the past millennium, has been about who interprets the Bible. And the Protestant Reformation was all about the ability of everyone to be able to read and interpret the Bible as they'd like. But when I listened to you have this amazingly learned and nuanced interpretation of the contextual reading of any one particular line, you know, it makes it gives me pause. I was like, "Yes, we should all be able to read ourselves." But that doesn't mean we don't need help from people who spend their lives studying the intricacies of a very complex text with very old language, that can be interpreted in many different ways. How have you approached that?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Yeah, I like that a lot. I think you're right. And I think we can have both at the same time. I think we can invite people to experience scripture on their own terms. Because I do believe that Scripture is alive, that it is less an object to be dissected, which much of modern interpretive methods have tried to do and it's much more a living subject to be encountered. I believe the Holy Spirit works through our engagement with scripture to shape and change us. So I want people to encounter scripture on their own. And at the same time, I want people who have, like you said, spent their lives studying the cultural context of Scripture, studying the linguistic intricacies of Scripture. I want those people also speaking into folks' individual readings of Scripture to help people understand some of the complexities of what they are reading and what they're experiencing. You know, much of especially modern Evangelicalism, has emphasized a plain reading of the text. And that has been held forth as a way to honor scripture and honor the Bible on its own terms. I actually interpret that as the opposite. I think that's doing scripture a great disservice by ignoring all of the depth that is present in Scripture, that can be gained through a deep study, and winsome explication of it.

John Fiege

Yeah. And it's a bit like constitutional originalism. I see a lot of parallels there with this very plain reading of texts. And it's interesting what you say about interpretation. Where, you know, some of the brilliance of these texts, is their openness and their invitation for interpretation and invitation for nuance, and like almost built in layeredness of meaning, and what meaning could be. And to read that plainly can, as you say, really be a disservice to it.

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Yeah, absolutely. And it's even, there's even more layers than constitutional originalism when it comes to the Bible because the Constitution was written in English, older style English, but English nonetheless. But, you know, Scripture is coming to us through the Hebrew language and the Greek language. Coming to us through a variety of manuscripts, different versions, different interpretations, different translations. There's there's a longer history and more layers of interpretation they're already baked in. So to pretend like we can read the Bible in English and read it, you know, to gain everything we possibly can from it in that one English reading, again, just does a disservice to the complexity and the depth of Scripture.

John Fiege

Let's go back and read Lynn White Jr's article from 1967 very briefly. What I find interesting is that while he clearly blames the Judeo-Christian tradition for our ecological crisis, as he calls it, his solution is not to abandon religion or even Christianity. He says, "I personally doubt that disastrous ecologic backlash can be avoided simply by applying to our problems more science and more technology." Instead his solution is St. Francis of Assisi. He wants to dig back into Christian history and on earth, more earth friendly theologies that have been suppressed over time. And I'd love to read just his last paragraph from his piece. He writes, "The greatest spiritual revolutionary in Western history, Saint Francis, proposed what he thought was an alternative Christian view of nature and man's relation to it; he tried to substitute the idea of the equality of all creatures, including man, for the idea of man's limitless rule of creation. He failed. Both our present science and our present technology are so tinctured with Orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature that no solution for our ecological crisis can be expected from them alone. Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not. We must rethink and refill our nature and destiny. The profoundly religious, but heretical sense of the primitive Franciscans for the spiritual autonomy of all parts of nature may point a direction. I propose Francis as a patron saint of ecologists." I think of our current Pope Francis, I think he would agree. There's this dominant secular idea of replacing Christianity with a purely scientific worldview. But that's not what Lynn White Jr. is calling for. What do you think when you hear this passage? I don't know if you've read it before, but what does it make you think?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

I'm always struck when I'm reminded of Lynn White's conclusion. There's no doubt that this paper looms large in environmental consciousness, particularly in the consciousness of the modern environmental movement, it because in many ways it was one of the catalysts for it. I appreciate his recognition that religion and the Judeo-Christian worldview is so part and parcel with Western civilization that I don't even think a project to jettison it is possible. And I think that's what he's saying too. He's saying, look, we're not going to replace the cultural impact, but the cultural foundations of the Judeo-Christian worldview and Western civilization, probably ever. So how do we work in recognition of that reality toward a better spirituality, a more earth friendly, Judeo-Christian perspective. So I appreciate that. And that's in many ways what we are trying to do in our work. St. Francis is a great example. Scripture is full of support for Saint Francis' kind of spirituality that recognizes the inherent goodness and the inherent sanctity of the created world. Scripture shouts this stuff, not just in Genesis, but all over Psalms, Job, the Pentateuch, the Law, the Gospels, Colossians, Ephesians, Revelation, it's everywhere! Romans. You can't run away from it. And you know, people like St. Francis and other leaders have shown us what it looks like to take those teachings and turn it into an operative theology and a way of life. And this is part of our heritage, too, right? I think that the Church, often especially after the Reformation, the Protestant Church tends to think that the Church of Jesus Christ in the world was established when Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the wall, to the door of the church. But it goes back so much farther. And that's all our heritage and that's all worth reexamining. Especially in the light of the current ecological crisis that we are in. We have tools and resources. The church has tools and resources at its disposal that we can use to help understand the crisis we're living through and can point us forward, give us a way forward toward positive action.

John Fiege

Yeah, great. Well, can you talk about Christian environmental stewardship and how that grew out of a response to this criticism of dominion as domination?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Sure, yeah. So the Lynn White article was a catalyst for a lot of Christians to examine Christianity's perspective around dominion, and how that influences the way we interact with creation. And that started some conversations that kind of culminated in the late 70s, early 80s. Around this concept of stewardship, that was kind of the Protestant Churches, at least in America, the Protestant church's answer to Lynn White's, I think, correct critique of dominionist theology, and the Church saying, Look, Lynn White is right! The Bible does not give us a blank check to do whatever we want with creation. Dominion does not mean domination. It means stewardship, it means wise management. And so stewardship became kind of the dominant frame that was articulated by Christian environmentalists and Christian theologians just looking to try to do better theology, say, look, Dominion. Dominionism, isn't it. Stewardship is much closer to what Scripture is talking about. So stewardship was a necessary corrective and a really important step in the right direction. It wasn't without its limitations, though. One limitation is that from a communication standpoint, a lot of rank and file folks and churches didn't quite understand what it meant. And there was a lot of confusion around are we talking about stewarding creation? Are we talking about why stewardship of money. A lot of studies have been done that show that Christians dominant views on stewardship centered around money still. So stewardship had always been used around language of finances and money, and so to add stewardship onto conversations around ecology and creation felt a little confusing to a lot of folks in the church, and it continues to confuse some people. Another limitation of the stewardship model is it creates unnecessary distance between us and the rest of creation. A steward is someone who is outside of and separate from the thing that is being stewarded. A steward is a custodian, a manager, but it can separate us from the rest of creation and kind of reinforce the hierarchy that dominionism created between us and the rest of creation. When in fact, I think scripture actually teaches us that humans are much more radically interconnected with creation. We are not separate from creation, we are created ourselves. We have a unique role to play in the midst of creation, but we are not separate from it. So stewardship kind of developed out of Lynn White's critique, and now, some of us in the church are thinking about stewardship and its legacy. We're grateful for the ways that it's reframed dominionism, but trying to imagine other ways to think about our relationship to creation that might be more effective in mobilizing Christians toward deeper action and care for the earth.

John Fiege

And this seems to be this, this problem of our separation from the rest of the natural world. You know, that's a problem shared by the broader environmental movement. This idea of locking away nature as wilderness in reserves, as important as that might be, it's not everything. And it creates this distance. As a replacement for the concept of stewardship, you suggest the idea of kinship and commonality in difference. I think this is a really wonderful idea for our view of both the nonhuman and the human world. Can you explain what you mean by kinship? And maybe talk about this beautiful metaphor you use of the mother and the child?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Yeah, sure. So the the project of the Beyond Stewardship book was to imagine multiple different vantage points that we might use to better understand our relationship to the natural world. So I highly encourage reading the whole book because the contributors offer other really insightful perspectives about how we can think about our relationship to the rest of creation. My contribution was, as you said, this idea of kinship, and off the bat, I want to say, this is certainly not a unique idea. Indigenous cultures, throughout time and space, have been articulating our relationship with creation as one of kinship. And I also think that the Old Testament, and the new, but especially the Old Testament, attests to this relationship too. And what I'm trying to get at with kinship is this idea that, for so much of the Christian Church's history, we have elevated ourselves above the rest of creation. We have elevated our uniqueness over against creation and diminished or completely flattened out our commonality with the rest of creation, in a way that I don't think Scripture supports. I think Scripture is clear that humans are different in an important way from the rest of creation, but not separated from it. One of the ways I think Scripture does that really beautifully, is I often say this in my presentations, and people are surprised, but humans don't have their own special creative day to themselves. Humans are created on the same day as all of the other land creatures, day six, when God creates badgers, and beavers, and billy goats. He also creates human beings.

John Fiege

Right. And that's not insignificant.

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Right! It's a really brilliant reminder for humans that, hey, we may have this unique image of God thing, which actually, is a call to responsibility and privilege. But we are embedded in creation. We are a part of creation in really important ways. And I think kinship helps us remember that and center that and keep that front of mind. So that the way I tried to express that is through the metaphor of a mother and a child. And I think that was on my mind because when I was writing this chapter, we had recently had our first child. And the metaphor is essentially trying to get at this idea that a mother and a child are deeply connected, right? They are connected through shared DNA, they're connected through shared spaces, but they're different. They are different beings. So just as we are different from other creatures in creation, we also have shared features, we have commonalities. We are all created from the same earth, from the same stuff, we were created on the same day in Genesis 1. In Genesis 2, that connection is even deeper through the the use of a Hebrew pun. The scripture in Genesis 2 says that God formed Adom, which is where we get the English name Adam, for the first man scripture actually never named Adam as Adam. It's just the Hebrew word Adom, which is "man from the soil," Adamah, we are Adom from the Adamah, we are soil people is essentially what Genesis 1 says. And we share that with the rest of creation. So there's a deep kinship and similarity between us and the rest of creation, while distinctiveness and distinction, and we have to hold both of those at the same time, right? We cannot elevate our uniqueness at the expense of our commonality, and we can't collapse our uniqueness for the sake of emphasizing our commonality because that also doesn't honor scriptures witness scriptures witness is that we are radically embedded in the rest of creation. We are radically connected to the rest of creation. And we are unique in that we alone bear the image of God, we alone were called to exercise authority, exercise responsibility toward the rest of creation. We have to hold both of those at the same time.

John Fiege

And that idea of kinship and commonality and difference. It feels like, it's such a beautiful way to live your life in so many ways. It's not just about the environment. But when we talk about race or human rights, or so many other things that that we're dealing with that centering around kinship and commonality in difference is, it's hard to fault that.

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Yeah, yeah, I think you're right, I think it it extends to a lot of our lived experience. And I think it can inform a lot of the conversations we're having right now, like you said, around race, civil rights, immigration reform, a lot of social justice issues that at their root, in my opinion, are kind of the product of elevating one at the expense of the other. Usually elevating our difference at the expense of our commonality. But if we can find a way to honor our commonality, and our differences, at the same time, recognize that we have commonality and difference, then I think we could we could go a long way in healing some of the divides and divisions that exist.

John Fiege

Yeah, for sure. This mother child relationship is a metaphor used in many cultures across history. But usually in terms of Mother Earth, where we're the children. What you're doing here is flipping the metaphor. We are the mother and the earth is our child. Seeing Earth as our child brings with it, this kind of fierce sense of love and protection and adoration. Do you have a sense of how this image of us loving and protecting the earth as our child is resonating with pastors and congregations and other Christians?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Hmm. I love that. I actually hadn't considered that I had kind of borrowed that metaphor and flipped it on its head. But you're right. I one of my favorite books of the last year is Braiding Sweetgrass, and Robin Wall Kimmerer talks often about how humans are the youngest siblings among the rest of creation, how we have the most to learn from our siblings and creation, about how to live in harmony and in reciprocity with Mother Earth. So yeah, you're right, I flipped it. And and I kind of make us as the mother, because we are given in scripture, this responsibility to steward, to rule over, again, ruling as Christ rules, which is through sacrifice and service, seeking the good of that which is ruled. To your question of how it's resonating, even though as I said, indigenous thinkers and wisdom keepers have been teaching this for millennia. The white Evangelical Church is very much steeped in kind of Dominionism. And I think stewardship even is still trying to break in 40 years after it was put forth as an alternative. So I think the jury's still out, we have a long way to go in reaching pastors with this kind of idea in reaching lay folks and lay leaders with this idea that our relationship to the rest of creation is much more intimate and interconnected than we often think. So I don't have a whole lot of data on that yet. I hope that I hope that in the next several years that this idea can continue to get some traction and can start to make a difference.

John Fiege

Awesome. You talk about liturgies of kinship, that have been enacted for centuries, including the "Canticle of the Sun," a song written by none other than St. Francis of Assisi. And that reminds me of the second encyclical of the current Pope Francis, which takes its name from the first line of a canticle. I just want to read for a second how Pope Francis begins the encyclical. "Laudato si mi Signore, praise be to you my Lord. In the words of this beautiful canticle St. Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. Praise be to You, my Lord, through our sister, mother earth, who sustains and governs us and who produces various fruit with colored flowers and herbs. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts wounded by sin is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air, and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself burdened and laid waste is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor. She groans and travail. We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth. Our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air, and we receive life and refreshment from her waters." What did "Laudato Si," the Pope's second encyclical mean to you, as a Christian, if not a Catholic?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

I remember being deeply moved. As I read it. It's just such an important teaching from such an important figure. And like you said, even though I'm not Catholic, I can recognize the beauty of it, the heart of it. I just think the importance of such of such a consequential teacher and leader in the church, saying the things that are said in that encyclical, right, are hard are hard to overemphasize. I think it's so important. And studies have actually shown that even Protestants were affected by the encyclical. Some of their views on creation and the environment and climate kind of spiked after the release, most evidence shows that it went down again. So I wish that had been sustained. But it had an impact even outside of the Catholic Church, and certainly on me personally, I think it's a gift to the Church universal for all time that will be treasured for a long time.

John Fiege

So I wanted to talk a bit about the idea of love. Love is an essential element in Christianity. Here's 1 John 4:8 from the King James Version. "He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." In your work, it seems to me that you're making an argument to Christians that the biblical idea of love must be expanded to include the nonhuman world. Similar to Aldo Leopold's call and his land ethic to enlarge the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or Albert Einstein's call to widen our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. How is your call for love of the nonhuman world in harmony with these ideas are distinct from them?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Yeah, you're right. That is what I and others in this movement are trying to do. We're calling the church to expand our understanding of love and who our object of love is. I think it's distinct because the way that I understand this call to an expansive love is rooted in a command given by Jesus in Matthew 22 and other passages in the gospels too, you'll find this in Mark and Luke as well. When Jesus is asked by a teacher of the law, which is the greatest commandment, this questioner is trying to trip Jesus up, because at the time there were over 630 commands in the Torah. So essentially, he's asking Jesus to choose a side, and Jesus refuses to play that game. And he says, actually, I'll tell you this, all of those laws and commandments can be boiled down to these two: love God with everything you've got with your heart, soul, strength and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. And that is the heart of, I believe our call to care for creation and address the climate crisis. Because if we are truly going to love God and love our neighbor, in this 21st century, when the evidence is clear, that God's creation that God called good, that is the work of God's hands, is being degraded and destroyed. Creations own ability to praise God and worship God is being inhibited through human actions, then what better way to love God than to protect those works of God's hands? What better way to love God than to ensure that the rest of creation can do what it was created to do, which is to give praise and honor and glory to the Creator. Taking care of creation and addressing the climate crisis is a concrete way for us to get better at loving God. And it's a concrete way for us to get better at loving our neighbor. Because we know that the effects of pollution, the effects of the climate crisis are human. In their effect, in their impact. We know that especially black and brown communities are being disproportionately harmed by environmental pollution. We know that poor communities are being disproportionately harmed by climate impacts. So taking care of creation, loving creation, addressing the climate crisis, are actually ways for Christians to get better at following Jesus' command. When Jesus said, this is the most important thing that you can do. This is the center of my ethic. Love God with everything you got and love your neighbor as if their present circumstances and future prospects are your own. We believe in the work that we do. And I certainly believe that addressing environmental pollution that harms people's ability to flourish and thrive on the earth, and addressing the climate crisis, which is killing people right now. Right is a way for us to tangibly get better at obeying that command. I also believe that the outpouring of love when we cultivate love for creation, the effects of that love will mean that we are really practically also expressing love for God and our neighbor at the same time.

John Fiege

Wow, that's really beautiful. So let's talk about language for a moment. Language is important in so many ways, it can unite us and build community or it can divide us along lines of identity. It can quickly signal commonality and just as easily signal opposition. In this country, the environment is often seen as a concern of liberals in cities, and when Christians don't identify with those broad political or cultural labels, they often think that the environment cannot and should not be a concern of theirs. You don't use these broad, nebulous terms of nature, or the environment very often you talk about the creation and creation care. What are your thoughts on the complicated nature of relationship, of language and, and how you can use a word to connect with one group, but at the same time, that same word might alienate or repel another group?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Yeah, I completely agree. I don't think I can offer thoughts that are any better than the thoughts you can just offer. That's those, that was beautifully put. And that's exactly right. And it's central to the work of anybody who's trying to organize a community around a particular issue or toward a particular action is, first and foremost, you have to understand who you're trying to reach, you have to understand your community, you have to understand what they care about, you have to understand how they perceive their identity, you have to understand what values drive their actions, and then find the language that will connect to those identities to those values. Right, rather than alienate, and creation and creation care. And using those words is one way that we try to do that. But you know, a lot of the research bears out what you shared, which is that language is the the message is critical. How you share the message is critical, depending on who you're trying to reach. And in many ways, the messenger is almost more important than the message itself too. Who is delivering that message? Are they an outsider or do they get us? Do they understand who we are? Do they share important values? And do they share our identity or not? All of that goes into whether or not anyone is receptive to any kind of message. And just like my brother gave me permission to lean more deeply into who I was, and the values that I held dear in my action on this. That's what we try to do with the people we're talking to. Give them permission to recognize how their existing identity and the values that already drives them are exactly the identity and the values that the movement needs and that they can bring to bear on this issue. A lot of people in the Evangelical church, a lot of folks right of the political center, hear a lot of environmental language. And a lot of times they hear it communicated as essentially saying here are all of the ways that you and the community you love are wrong. Here are all of the ways that you need to change the life that you love to be more like us. Doing so will alienate you from people you love. But don't worry, because it'll make you more like us and the world way more like we want it to be instead of hearing here are all of the things about you and the community you love that are great. Here are other people who share your values that are taking action, as a way to deepen those values. When you take action to join them, you become more connected to them, you become more connected to your community. And the world becomes more like you want it to be.

John Fiege

That makes me think a bit about the enlightenment and the scientific revolution where, you know, at that time, you know, truth and knowledge came from people. You believed it because this person said it was, so that may be your priest, that might be your king. And that's where truth came from. And one part of the Enlightenment project was to replace that with objectively verifiable scientific knowledge that isn't dependent on who's saying it. And it feels like we're still fighting that battle, sometimes where sometimes I feel like the environmental movement is saying, "Just look at the science! We don't need to have opinions. We don't need to have personalities. We don't need to have identities. We just need to look at the data and it'll tell us where to move." But that is not that simple. And it's not how people work. It's not how the vast majority people work. And even the people it does work for, does it really? Or is it actually cultural things that are predisposing them to accept scientific knowledge?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Yeah. And it ignores such a huge swath of human psychology, right? Like, we are rational beings, but that is hardly all of who we are. We are also cultural and social beings. We're tribal beings. So yeah, so much of the social science and psychological research is bearing out what you're saying, which is that you know that the scientific revolution has done wonders for the human condition. But it has also, in many ways, at least in the project that you just explained, it has issued huge portions of what it means to be human, in its pursuit of communicating truth and ignores that for millennia, humans have interpreted and understood truth very, very differently. And that's not going to go away anytime soon.

John Fiege

Right, exactly. So in the foreword to beyond stewardship, Bill McKibben writes, in the most Christian nation on earth, the most Christian people have grown ever more attached to leaders in causes antithetical to the idea of taking care of the earth. And here's what you wrote, in a CNN, Op-Ed entitled Young Evangelicals Are Defying Their Elders' Politics. You write, "We've grown weary of the current expression of Evangelical politics stoked by Trump's Republican Party, that seeks to convince us that faithful civic engagement is a black and white, 'us vs. them' proposition where danger to our way of life lurks around every corner and that our overriding political concern should be our own cultural power and comfort rather than advancing the good of our neighbors. Many of our peers have simply left the Evangelical tradition behind, fed up with how selfish, some of the followers of our famously selfless Savior have become." Wow, those are really strong words! I feel like, you know, are you are you channeling the book of Job here?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

There was some pathos in that, yeah!

John Fiege

So I pulled this Job 34. "Can someone who hates justice govern? Will you condemn the just and mighty One? Is he not the one who says to Kings, 'You are worthless,' and to nobles, 'you are wicked,' Who shows no partiality to princes and does not favor the rich over the poor, for they are all the work of his hands?" How have American Evangelicals become so aligned with worthless kings and wicked nobles who trade in destruction of the natural world? How do you understand that?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Wow, great question. So I've thought a lot about this, as you might imagine, and I think it's the result of a couple of realities. I think one explanation that's necessary is understanding the history of suspicion around scientific discovery and scientific findings in the white Evangelical Church in America. Much of this goes back to, uh, it depends on how far you want to go back. You know, it exists in the church universal going back to Galileo and Copernicus. But more recently in the American Protestant tradition, you can kind of trace it back to the middle of the 19th century when Darwin's Origin of the Species is published. And the US church is divided on how to respond. Some churches and church leaders say, Look, we can integrate this into our understanding of Scripture, we can recognize that Scripture is not a science textbook. It's It's teaching us something other than what Darwin is explaining. And both can be true. And we can integrate an understanding of evolution into how we believe God created the earth and how God sustains it. And other portions of the church said, No, this is this is the straw that breaks the camel's back, we cannot abide this, we need to reject this because it is a threat to the authority of Scripture. It is a threat to the bedrock of our lives and our cosmology, and how we understand God to be at work in the world, and we have to reject it. These camps kind of solidified into what became known as the modernists and the fundamentalists. The modernist arguing for integration of evolution into Christian life and the fundamentalist arguing for rejection of it. And it kind of came to a head in the Scopes Monkey Trial in the 1920s, when a teacher in Tennessee was put on trial for teaching evolution in school. And it became this national frenzy, the front page of all the papers around the country and Clarence Darrow. And William Jennings Bryan, went head to head and the fundamentalists won! William Jennings Bryan won the case! The teacher was convicted, but in the court of public opinion, the fundamentalists looked backwards, they looked ignorant, and public opinion really turned against those who are arguing to keep evolution out of schools. And the fundamentalists were kind of humiliated. And they, in many ways, went underground tended to their wounds, but didn't disappear. They were building institutions, they were planting new churches. And in many ways, they reemerged with Billy Graham, in the 1950s and 60s. And his movement, which in many ways became the precursor to the Moral Majority, the religious right, the rise of the religious rights in the 80s and 90s. Which, more than Graham, to his credit, Graham always expressed concern about wedding a particular political party to Christianity. Went a step beyond Graham and really wedded Christian faithfulness and Christian discipleship to Republican politics. And created a culture for an entire generation of political participation that said, if you're a Christian, you need to check the box with a "R" next to it, that is what God requires of you. And it was it was connected to arguments around particular policy issues, especially abortion, which which was kind of engineered into a wedge issue. If you look at the history of how that happened.

The religious right really has its roots in opposition to federal desegregation efforts at Bob Jones University. But these leaders who are trying to create a constituency, turned abortion into a wedge issue and organize millions of Evangelicals into their camp. And that's the legacy right? And it's rooted in this suspicion of science going back to that fundamentalist and modernist controversy. And it's rooted in what a lot of Christians were formed in, which is this idea that faithful Christian civic engagement means supporting the Republican Party. And somehow, environmentalism got wedded to this suite of conservative Evangelical policy concerns also including gay marriage, LGBTQIA rights, feminism in general, and environmentalism as secularism. Environmentalism became seen as a sibling to the evolution debate. An effort to de-legitimize the authority of scripture to replace it with observable objective of scientific method, empiricism. And so environmentalism became lumped in with this suite of policy concerns that animated the religious right, and the movement of Evangelical conservative Christians in the US. And that was exploited by fossil fuel corporations who stood to lose the most from any sort of policy to curb emissions and documents abound, attesting to the fact that Exxon Mobil all the way back in the 80s was suppressing data. That they were spending billions of dollars to resurrect the playbook of big tobacco to hire their own scientists to commission their own studies with no other purpose other than to cast doubt within public dialogue around this conversation about the severity of the problem, the root causes of it, potential solutions around it. And a lot of that money went to target Evangelical Christians, because they were already primed to be suspicious about environmentalism as an "ism," which is to say, as a system of belief ultimate answers to ultimate questions like, why are we here? Who is governing the world or what is governing the world? So they were identified as a particularly ripe constituency to be misinformed. And then they were misinformed to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. And that's the history we're fighting against. And it's really powerful, and the interests allied against our efforts are strong. Those who benefit from the status quo are very powerful. And so it helps to understand some of that history because it gives me, it helps cultivate some compassion in me. I know a lot of these people. I know, a lot of these people are my family. I have extended family, most of my extended family does not understand why I do what I do. And even comes at me sometimes on social media especially. But understanding all of the forces that have aligned against them understanding this gives me some compassion, and also helps to remember my own journey, right? It took me years to recognize this to break the spell that had been cast on me. And so if it took me years, it's okay if it takes others years to and all I'm called to do is try to be one person on that journey, guiding them toward deeper understanding and deeper action.

John Fiege

Well, I've never heard a more succinct, more beautifully articulated story that starts with Darwin and ends with Merchants of Doubt.

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Succinct is generous!

John Fiege

Hey, for a reverend, you know!

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

I'm rarely described as succint.

John Fiege

So what could the largely secular environmental movement learn from Christian environmentalism in the idea of creation care?

Rev. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Hmm. I hope one of the lessons is that the environmental movement should try not to give up on anybody. Because I think the emergence of the Creation Care movement, the emergence of Christian and especially Evangelical action on climate change, is a great case study, in the fact that constituencies can move. Especially when those constituencies are being reached by effective trusted messengers with messages that resonate with them. So I hope the larger environmental movement can look to the Creation Care movement, as an example of a constituency that shares their ultimate goal, even if not their ultimate strategy and tactics. And because of that, we can be allies, we can be partners in this work, even if it means we don't work together often. We can still support each other, encourage each other, be encouraged by each other. And recognize that actually, to make the kind of change we're trying to make here to win the kind of fight we're in. We actually need a whole lot more diversity in our coalition. We need a whole lot more unlikely allies in this work.

John Fiege

Yeah, well, I think now you're channeling that deep humility of Jesus. You know, there's a lot of ways you could answer that question of like, what the secular movement could learn. And, you know, you choose to say, have patience with us and don't give up on anyone. You know, that is a deeply humble answer. It's extremely consistent with with everything else that you talk about.

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Well, it's also rooted in the recognition that I think we need a healthy dose of humility in this work Evangelicals. Boy, we've really been sitting on our hands for a long time. And we've really exacerbated this problem. And I think we need to own that. So I think that humility comes from an honest reckoning with my own community's culpability in where we are now. So I don't want to cheer too loudly and say, "Hey, we're here. Include us!" I think we need some humility to say, "Hey, thanks for thanks for carrying that load for us for the last 30-40 years. I'm really, really sorry, you had to do that alone." We're here now and we're trying to work together.

John Fiege

So I want to go back to that young Kyle growing up on the shores of Lake Michigan, who was horrified by the idea of vegetarianism and environmental concern. What would you say to him now? And what would you want him to learn about our relationship to the rest of life on the planet?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

I think I would tell him to have some humility. To have some patience, to recognize that there is a whole lot out there that can teach him something about what it means to be a better person, to be a better Christian. I would tell him, despite what he may think he doesn't have all the answers, he doesn't have it all figured out. And that, rather than being a weakness, listening to those who are different from you, who see the world differently than you, actively listening to them with curiosity, is a strength. It doesn't have to be a sign of weakness. And that his understanding of the Christian story, the story of God's work in the world, is pretty narrow. And that God is inviting him to expand his understanding of how God is working in the world, and how God is calling him to partner in that work. So to engage in that invitation, not with fear, but with humility and with eagerness, because God wants to expand his horizons pretty significantly. And that can be scary. But it's also faithful. And it can be really exciting, and it can open doors, to opportunities to friendships and relationships that he can't even imagine.

John Fiege

Right? Well, that's really beautiful and again steeped in a really deep sense of humility. I've asked you to bring a quotation to read that's been particularly meaningful in your journey of life. Could you end the show by reading what you brought and telling the story of its significance to you?

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Sure, yeah. So this is a poem by Wendell Berry, called "The Piece of Wild Things." "When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." This poem has meant a lot to me over the years, I especially like the the phrase "day-blind stars." So beautiful. I think it speaks to this reality that there is a hope that is kind of just beyond our reach, just beyond our perception, but there nonetheless. And I think that's central to the teachings of Christianity, and to scripture that because of Christ and what He has done and because of what God's ultimate future is for the world, there is hope. Even though we can't see it, even though it's just beyond our reach, even though the headlines scream, otherwise, there is a grounding hope that can route the work that we do in something solid. And then just the grace of the world. He rests "in the grace of the world, and am free." You know, I talked earlier about the sanctity of creation, how creation is sacred, imbued with goodness from God. There is grace to be received in the world. I love how the Orthodox tradition of Christianity talks about all of creation as a sacrament, and a sacrament being the visible expression of an invisible grace. I think they're onto something, that creation extends to us something that God wants us to have peace, belonging, grace. I really love that.

John Fiege

Yet, it makes me think of your advice, to your younger self to be to embrace humility. You know, I think of, what is there in the world that we feel more familiar with in the blue sky? It's part of who we are. But then Wendell Berry's words of the "day-blind stars," you're like, "Oh, right! I'm looking at stars too. I just can't see them." And it reminds us that like, you know, do we do we trust our eyes too much in and do we use our eyes rather than our imaginations? Because during the day we need to use our imagination to see the stars beyond the blue sky. But that doesn't mean they're not there. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Kyle! It's been really amazing!

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast!

John Fiege

Awesome! Well, great. It's just, I was really excited to talk through all this stuff and there's just so much here. I'm really excited about what you're doing.

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap

Thank you.

John Fiege

And I wish you all the best in everything you're doing!

Outro

John Fiege

Thank you so much to Kyle Meyaard-Schaap. Go to our website at ChrysalisPodcast.org to see the poem Kyle read and check out the book recommendations and other resources related to our conversation.

Chrysalis is produced and edited by Gabriela Cordoba Vivas; with music by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas, design by Unai Reglero, and mixing by Juan Garcia. Isabella Nurt is our social media producer and assistant editor, Shubh Jain is our web developer and assistant editor, and Arianna Lone is our editing intern.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Kyle, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. You can subscribe to Chrysalis on Substack and contact me anytime at ChrysalisPodcast.org.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnfiege.substack.com

View Details

“Forthright but also full of grace”: that could be a mantra for how we should all live our lives. It’s also how Jacqui Patterson has described her ideal as she fights for environmental justice in a world that can feel like it’s submerged completely in environmental injustice.

From the South Side of Chicago, to Jamaica, to South Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, Jacqui has continually asked what deep, transformative change looks like. She grounds her theory of change in community-led advocacy. She envisions a world of eco-communities and works with real communities across the country who have already created elements of these utopian visions.

But never does she lose sight of climate change and environmental exploitation as multipliers of injustice.

Jacqui Patterson directed the Environmental and Climate Justice Program at NAACP from 2009 to 2021. Most recently, she is Founder and Executive Director of The Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership.

I’ve had the great privilege of knowing Jacqui for the last few years, and she’s an advisor on my current documentary film in post production, called Raising Aniya.

In our conversation, Jacqui discusses the origins of the environmental justice movement and the importance of community-led activism, and she charts her path to a life devoted to the struggle for environmental justice.

This is the first episode of the Chrysalis podcast! You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Jacqui Patterson

Jacqui Patterson is the Founder and Executive Director at The Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership. Since 2007, Jacqui has served as coordinator & co-founder of Women of Color United. She directed of the Environmental and Climate Justice Program at NAACP from 2009 to 2021.

Jacqui has worked as a researcher, program manager, coordinator, advocate and activist working on women‘s rights, violence against women, HIV&AIDS, racial justice, economic justice, and environmental and climate justice. Jacqui served as a Senior Women’s Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid where she integrated a women’s rights lens for the issues of food rights, macroeconomics, and climate change as well as the intersection of violence against women and HIV&AIDS. Previously, she served as Assistant Vice-President of HIV/AIDS Programs for IMA World Health providing management and technical assistance to medical facilities and programs in 23 countries in Africa and the Caribbean. Jacqui served as the Outreach Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Research Coordinator for Johns Hopkins University. She also served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica, West Indies.

Jacqui holds a master’s degree in social work from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves on the Steering Committee for Interfaith Moral Action on Climate, Advisory Board for Center for Earth Ethics as well as on the Boards of Directors for the Institute of the Black World, The Hive: Gender and Climate Justice Fund, the American Society of Adaptation Professionals, Greenprint Partners, Bill Anderson Fund and the National Black Workers Center.

Quotations Read by Jacqui Patterson

“If you come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because, you know, and feel that your liberation is bound to mine, let’s walk together.” - Lilla Watson

“you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land” - From "Home" by Warsan Shire

“If one of us is oppressed, none of us are free.” - Unknown

“the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.” - Che Guevara

Recommended Readings & Media

Transcription

Intro

John Fiege

But never does she lose sight of climate change and environmental exploitation as multipliers of injustice.

Jacqui Patterson

For example, if a child is having a hard time paying attention in school, because lead and manganese are some of the toxins that come out of these, these smokestacks, or if a child is having a heart is not able to go to school on poor air quality days, or if the school that 71% of African Americans live in counties in violation of air pollution standards, and an African American family making $50,000 a year is more likely to live next to a toxic facility than the white American family making $15,000 a year. And we know that. But yeah, then on average, if you're living next to a toxic facility, your property values are significantly lower, and property values go directly into funding our school system. So if you have all of these challenges with being in school in the first place, learning in school, and then the school itself doesn't have the level of quality of other schools, then studies show that if you're not on grade level, by the third grade, you're more likely to enter into the school to prison pipeline.

John Fiege

I’m John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.

Jacqui Patterson directed the Environmental and Climate Justice Program at NAACP from 2009 to 2021. Most recently, she is founder and executive director of The Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership. I’ve had the great privilege of knowing Jacqui for the last few years, and she’s an advisor on my current documentary film in post production, called Raising Aniya.

Here is Jacqui Patterson.

Conversation

John Fiege

You grew up on the South Side of Chicago. Could you start by talking a bit about the neighborhood where you grew up how that shaped you and you know, being an urban environment, how you viewed your relationship to the rest of nature?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, growing up on the South Side of Chicago, been an area where it was, there was lots of, of trees, there was lots of I was just talking with someone yesterday about how how we would get excited when we would see a Blue Jay or a Robin in our trees, there were squirrels, there was an occasional rabbit, which was very exciting. And, and there was a lot like summers were all about being outside. Winters were moderately about being outside

John Fiege

If there was snow

Jacqui Patterson

Exactly. Only if there's snow. And otherwise it was being huddled inside and and at the same time, there was the other side's being to being born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, which is that it was a gang land area with the Black P Stone Nation and the El Rukns. As the main gangs and the pressure on boys to to affiliate and the guns, as you hear the challenges you would have. So being outside was also challenged by that as well. I mean, it didn't, I don't remember it being kind of a constant thing, but I don't remember it necessarily meaning that we didn't go outside but I do remember a couple of times where, where, where there were times when they were kind of fights or so forth, it would be inside. So to put my dad was from Jamaica, so we took a trip, we went to the park often and my dad was definitely big on the outdoors. And so we would go to the park frequently, both our local park as well as sometimes going to a national park to hike.

John Fiege

Oh, awesome. And, you know, that must impact your view of what the environment is to when you, you know, you see the birds in the trees and those beautiful, tree lined streets of South Side of Chicago. And at the same time, there's this, like, this potentially dangerous environment you're dealing with sometimes as well.

Jacqui Patterson

Yes, it definitely, definitely makes it a mixed situation. It reminds me of when I was at a conference of the Power Shift Network, I was moderating a panel with youth. And, and this person who was on the panel, I mean, it was a real striking and moving moment because the person was on the panel stood up and she said, You know, I would like for me being you know, I would love to be able to have the luxury to go to the park and so forth. But for me just surviving was the objective and and if I can get beyond just focusing on survival to be able to go to the park, you know, that would be a good day. And she actually started crying while she was saying that because I think it was such an emotional moment to be attacked about the very thing that you know, about the very thing that that kind of puts in stark relief, the difference in realities and what's what's kind of normal to other people would be a luxury to her.

John Fiege

And survival survival is a prerequisite for enjoying the world

Jacqui Patterson

exactly, exactly.

John Fiege

Well, not not only is your father from Jamaica, but you spent time in the Peace Corps in Jamaica. Yeah, which I find really, I find so interesting, because not many Peace Corps volunteers work in a country so close to their roots. Can you can you tell me about the path? This this young girl from the South Side of Chicago took to Jamaica and and how that experience influenced you?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, sure. Um, I grew up I grew up very active in the church, we'd be in the church like five days out of the week, during the summer. And, and during the winter, this at least a couple of times weekly. When during the summer, so I was always a Sunday school teacher and during the summer, I was a vacation Bible school teacher and and as I decided on my career path, I decided I wanted to be a teacher. And so and then I was watching TV one day and saw this commercial about the shortage of special education teachers. Oh, I could do that. And I decided to do that as well. And so after I, long story short, I was in Boston going to school for undergrad at Boston University. And it was. And that was when I first started to really get involved around social justice. I was working in a shelter for homeless people who were unhoused in Boston, and then also at the same time getting involved in the Housing Now movement there. Anyway, then I fast forward to deciding after I graduated to go to Peace Corps, what was interesting there in terms of the time between me going to Peace Corps and a place that I know is that to make us known was the recruiter was telling me that Jamaica was I had actually wanted to go to a place that where I could learn Spanish or French, or some other language, you know. And so she was she really put a hard pressure on me to go to Jamaica, because it has a high rate of attrition of people dropping out. And, and so she also needed like someone who was kind of specialized in special education, and it's a little bit at the back then it was almost rare to be able to do something that's so aligned with your actual career that I'd like there was someone there in my group who was a drama major in school, and she ended up being a bananas extension officer with the Agriculture Department. So it's kind of funny. So anyway, she says, Yeah, so all of that is what led to me being in in Jamaica.

John Fiege

What did you see there and experience that you can connect with what you did later, you know, what you're doing now and what you did later with your work?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, so a couple things. One is, as a special education teacher in the parish of St. Thomas one situation arose where there was a whole group of three year olds who had hearing impairments because, you know, a little bit over three years ago, almost four years ago, they had an outbreak of rubella. And I guess when a mom has rubella, then it's more likely for her child to be born with a hearing impairment. And so, so I ended up being because I had taken one sign language class in undergrad, I ended up being a sign language teacher to these, these, these parents and their children, it was like a parent child group, and so helping them to be able to communicate. And so both that in and other kind of situations of people with special needs, there are who are differently abled was just struck me in terms of being a systemic issue, kind of people not having either choices and not having resources to live a thriving life, in those circumstances of being differently abled made me really think about the prevention aspect, you know, and so I, I started to decide I was coming, come back and go into, into public health, and also do a double degree one in public health, on the technical side of things, as well as one in social work, but macro level social work, to learn about community organizing, because at that point, point, it was just clear that important to community voice, community power community leadership, parallel, or, you know, at the same time, I was also kind of in Jamaica, just observing the circumstances in terms of, you know, what led there to be not the resources to have to have the rubella vaccine in a place that is so beautiful, so, so much possibility for people to be able to, to a to have the, the whether it's that natural resources to eat or the natural resources to, to provide energy for the country and all of these different things. And then also the the natural beauty that attracts, you know, millions of tourists there with all of the billions of dollars that are coming with with that. And yet we have communities where the you know, people are living in abject poverty. And so, so, so seeing that, watching films like Life and Debt that talked about structural adjustment programs, and then and then reading books, like How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, I started to really understand some of these systemic issues as well. So that was an important kind of politicization. And then the last thing I'll say is also I was there I was in a community where the water supply was contaminated by Shell Oil and the community had to push for, for justice and that situation, but in that situation, it was definitely a David and Goliath, where the community ended up getting as part of their settlement a series of ventilated improve pit latrines for the community, as well as some money given to the school for three Rs program. So that was the settlement

John Fiege

in exchange for a billions of dollars worth of oil,

Jacqui Patterson

and in exchange for having their water supply contaminated, drinking poison for several, yeah, I mean, whatever long term illnesses that was that was caused. And so these were the so these are the things these are the lessons I learned in my short time in Peace Corps, they really kind of all all contributed to the trajectory of my life since then

John Fiege

I find that so interesting, when there's something there's some short period of time when in when you're young, and you can find in that period of time, so many seeds that germinated later in your life. And when you're talking about Jamaican, like, I'm hearing like all of the elements of your later work. It's so interesting.

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, it is fascinating.

John Fiege

So I've heard you say that climate change is a multiplier of injustice, which is, which is really beautifully succinct. Can you explain what that means?

Jacqui Patterson

Absolutely. So both on the on the the whole climate continuum, we think about in terms of the drivers of climate change, and the impacts of climate change. on the driver side, you have all of the polluting practices that contribute to the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. And so the fact that these facilities are disproportionately located in BIPOC communities, whether it's coal plants, or or oil and gas refineries, or other or fracking, or it's even near roadway, air pollution, and air in the ways that that impacts all of those are disproportionately located in, in in BIPOC communities and also in trash incineration, and landfills and so forth. And I could make more, agricultural, like confined animal feeding operations, etc. So with all of those being disproportionately located communities of color, it's not only that they're emitting greenhouse gases, but they're all also emitting pollutants that that also harm that compound harm to the public health and well being of those communities. And so whether it's the sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, which is tied to asthma rates, and African American children are three to five times more likely to go to the hospital for asthma attack two to three times more likely to die of an asthma attack, or it is the mercury which is known to be an endocrine disruptor. And we know that low birth weights, infant mortality, etc, are much higher, for example, in African American communities and beyond. So there's just so many examples of these negative health impacts. But then on top of it all, we talk about multiplier as well, it's a multiplier of a multiplicity of issues. And so, for example, if a child is having a hard time paying attention in school because lead and manganese are some of the toxins that come out of these, these smokestacks, or if a child is having is not able to go to school on poor air quality days, or if the school, 71% of African Americans live in counties in violation of air pollution standards, and an African American family making $50,000 a year is more likely to live next to a toxic facility than the white American family making $15,000 a year and we know that then on average, if you're living next to a toxic facility, your property values are significantly lower and property values go directly into funding our school system. So if you have all of these challenges with being in school in the first place, learning in school, and then the school itself doesn't have the level of quality of other schools, then studies show that if you're not on grade level by the third grade, you're more likely to enter into the school to prison pipeline. So we see all of these interconnected, you know, multiplier issues, and then a multiplicity of issues that they get exacerbated. And so these are, and that's just one scenario. That is an example when we talk about the gender, gender and justice that already exist, and then on the pipelines, along the lines of the pipeline, there's a high rate of sexual assault of Indigenous women in particular, along those pipelines. Also, around the man camps that are propped up around these oil and gas rigs, there is a high rate of missing and murdered Indigenous women, there's a drug trade that's come up, there's trafficking that that happens in those areas. And, just a known level that you know that you can when googled one can see all the different statistics and stories around this. And so that's just on the driver side of the continuum. And then we go on the other side in terms of the impact. We know that climate change that, for example, when we talk about the increase in frequency and severity of extreme weather events, that women are more likely to experience violence against women after disasters. Whether it's, yeah, so we saw that with the earthquake in Gujarat, the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, for sure. And even the BP oil drilling disaster where I was down there and that the, the police blotters showed a four fold increase in domestic violence in one particular area, I was sitting in Alabama, and we look at place after place, it was the same thing. And they even though the BP oil drilling disaster wasn't caused by climate change, it also was on the other driver's side of the continuum as well. So anyway, so then, then, when we talk about the the shifts in agricultural yield, we know that already, for example, 26% of African American families are food insecure. And when we have shift in agricultural yields that mean that healthy nutritious foods are going to be even more inaccessible and less affordable, than that just exacerbates what's already a bad situation for for African American families who too often live in communities where it's easier to get a Dorito or a Cheeto or Frito than kiwi or quinoa or anything. So when we, when we see that then we also see how these various chronic health conditions that are that are causing premature deaths and shorten our very life expectancy as a people. And then that has made us even more vulnerable to the impacts of of COVID-19 and has contributed to our high rates of mortality. Then when we talk about sea level rise, also communities that are less likely to be homeowners, we know that 44% of African Americans are homeowners versus 75% of white Americans, for example. And so when when you know when you have when you need to move or even impacted by disasters, all of that, being in a homeowner, you know, when you have equity you have in not only do you have equity in your home, conceivably, but you're also also some of the aid from FEMA and so forth is directly tied to being a homeowner and the work of relocation is still emerging and how that's going to be financed and what the mechanisms are going to be. But

John Fiege

I wonder who I wonder who wrote those, those rules?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, as I say, we can pretty much rest assured that

John Fiege

they were homeowners at least,

Jacqui Patterson

yeah, that's really something. So all of these things. Oh, and then finally, I'll just say to as it relates to sea level rise, combined with, combined with the frequency and severity of extreme weather events is the fact that even after we think we find out that the levee fortification is, like so many other things was tied to property values after Hurricane Katrina, where they decided to to fortify all these levees in Louisiana. they used a formula to decide which levees they were going to be fortifying first. And it was based on what the economic impact would be if the levy was overtaken, which literally legislates or institutionalizes the the disregard for the people who are the most vulnerable, just literally by definition, by design.

John Fiege

Early on in the COVID pandemic, you wrote an article for Color Lines, that that connects the pandemic to climate justice, among other things. So you write: "Centuries of racist policy and practice have shaped the neighborhoods we live in, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, our access to education and justice, and the health care we receive (or don’t). Layers of harm, generation after generation, alter our bodies at the molecular level and even the genes we pass on to our children. Those harms, past and present, render us more vulnerable to the coronavirus—and also to the longer-term crises caused by climate change." Wow, it's really amazing how you can connect dots and wrap so much into this single paragraph. Can you talk about the importance of seeing whole systems, rather than separating out these interconnected issues in order to envision what you call deep transformative change?

Jacqui Patterson

Yes, absolutely. So when we have a system that, as I said before, is doing exactly what it was designed to do by those who, as you said, designed it. And, and when we continue to try to tweak a system, which at its core has a different intention, then then what we should be seeking, which is literally liberty and justice for all, then then we have to think transformation rather than than reform. But we have a system that means that, that certain people are only more likely to live in certain communities when you have a system that says that those communities are, by definition, are the communities that are the asthma clusters, the cancer clusters, the communities where the life expectancy is shorter, too often by decades, sometimes by almost a lifetime, when we talk about infant mortality, and and, and so forth. So when we talk when we have a system where before African Americans were emancipated from slavery, there were policies that enabled white people to be able to access these grants for land for those for schools, or for farming or otherwise. So and when African Americans were emancipated, not only had they put in this in slave labor, that that to build a country that was completely uncompensated, but also didn't even have the legal rights to be able to write legal wills to pass down their property. And so not only do we have white Americans who, for whom, African Americans were part of the, their actual generational wealth, but then on top of it all, they were given all these additional aids by by the government system. And so it's clear why at this point, we have white wealth at $171,000 on average, per household, African American wealth at $17,000 per household. And then yeah, there will be a layer gender on top of it all, we have African American female headed households with the average wealth of $5. And so if we just continue to try to tweak a system that's doing exactly what it was designed to do in the first place, you know, now 400 years after the transatlantic slave trade, this is where we are. So what's going to be the increments of change? And what what, what century will there be equality if we don't actually do something transformational now?

John Fiege

Yeah, I, I talk a lot about the problem with how we've set up environmental issues where, you know, if somebody wants to learn about why we have environmental problems, they're often told to go study science or to go study economics. But the best place to start really is American history. You can't separate how the systems were built from the problems they've caused, and to pretend that we can address them without acknowledging and confronting those those things is so delusional.

Jacqui Patterson

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you.

John Fiege

So to talk about the NAACP and the roots of the environmental justice movement. Many people consider the birthplace of the environmental justice movement to be in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982, when 500 people were arrested, protesting the siting of a toxic waste dump for PCB laden soil and a county that was predominantly African American, and one of the poorest counties in the state. Among the coalition of community members of the Civil Rights Organizations, was the NAACP and Reverend Benjamin Chavez, who later became the executive director of NAACP. Can you talk about the importance of this moment, both for the movement and the NAACP?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, thank you. Um, yes. So one thing that is important about that, that the rise The movement in its inception is the power of the people and the importance of frontline community leadership, it was never going to be some organization or some entity that's outside of the community looking at and seeing this is wrong. And then, you know, organizing a plan and in and so forth, it was the power of the people that that really unsurface the situation that that the push for the type of change that they need to have and, and that we all need to have. And really gave rise to this movement. And so it needs to kind of go as it started in terms of the movement. And this is why we're always pushing for frontline community leadership. And so for us, that situation was critical around the the roots of the problem and the depth of the problem. And it was critical around the, in terms of just like the extreme level of contamination and so forth in the health impacts and so forth. And it was also critical in terms of the method and the ethos behind the solution of the problem and addressing it. And so for us, it just means that we, but it also was critical in terms of how long it took. And we often now when I'm doing presentations often show this kind of four image slide of three, of four toxic situations, the Flint water crisis, the Chicago Indiana arsenic and lead crisis and Eight Mile Alabama Mercaptan oil spill and then I show the Porter Ranch gas spill that happened and talk about how you know for each of the other situation it was they were decades, you know, decades and still seeking justice. Before the Porter Ranch gas spill, it was literally within a matter of months there was kept within a matter of less than a year that they were they were given $4 million in damages to this white wealthier white community versus decades and hundreds of 1000s of dollars at best for these other communities.

John Fiege

Yeah, well, the coalition is the coalition around that event was, was incredible. And, you know, this kind of genealogy of civil rights within environmental justice, it seems to really be you know, NAACP is a is a huge national organization, just like the big environmental organizations. But do you see that it's kind of history and valuing and ability to work with local groups on the ground changes the way this giant national organization interacts with communities?

Jacqui Patterson

I do. So for one thing, one of the things that has that drew me to the work and has kept me at the NAACP is the fact that we are accountable first and foremost to our frontline community leadership and so that that being the marching orders for for us as a program and for the association really does set it apart from from other organizations in that sense, like we do things because our state and local branches think that they are important. And so that's quite different than if you are setting an agenda and then you're deploying all of these, these these chapters to do like some other large national organizations. And so but but when we're when we're working in the environmental climate justice program, for example, we're we're out there in the branches and we're saying, like, let's, let's do a visioning session, what do you want for your community, and then now, well, we can help with political education, we can help developing a strategy. We can walk alongside you once you have your action plan of what you want to do and help connect you to resources and so forth. So that model of like, it's about what you want for your community. And then we kind of see the patterns of what people are interested in and what they're facing. And then we roll that up into a national agenda that we get res ources for on behalf of the units and that we then advocate for at the federal policy level as well. So if a community might be working on, you know, a lead crisis in their backyard, we might be helping them with how to deal with that. Then at the at the federal level, we're working on the lead and copper rule under the Clean Air Act and so forth. So that's always kind of a corresponding national agenda, but it corresponds with the leadership of our state and local units.

John Fiege

Oh, that's, that's interesting. And it's such so important. Always going back to that. Yeah, accountability to the communities. So key. So can you talk a bit about your theory of change and the work you're doing, and maybe first describe what a theory of change is? And then how your theory of change has shifted over time as you've engaged ever more deeply in this work?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, thank you. So, first, the theory of change is exactly what the words imply, is the theory of how change happens in our world. So for us, and it's interesting to even when we were kind of like, formally crafting our theory of change, there was kind of the difference between the change that's needed, and how do we get there. And then there's also kind of models and theories of change that were more granular, but our broader theory of change is rooted in the just transition framework that we work with the Climate Justice Alliance, and others facilitated Movement Generation, when we, when we talk about the just transition framework, we are moving from a society that is rooted in exploitation, domination, extraction, and enclosure of wealth and power militarism, as a vehicle to do it. And so moving from that, to what we consider is a living economy, versus an extractive economy, a living economy that's rooted in principles of caring, caring for the sacred cooperation. And really, kind of honoring the earth and honoring each other, as well as really rooting it all in deep democracy. And so, for us, that means that the work that we do, in terms of how we get there is around visioning, starting with a visioning, visioning of our communities and then helping with political education so that if a community has a certain vision, then thinking about how they get there is rooted in understanding how it fits in with this broader context. And then three is then working with the community to develop a strategy to advance change. And then four is then working with communities on developing an action plan based on that strategy and their understanding of the political education, but rooted in their vision, and then we accompany folks through achieving that action plan helping along the way with connecting them to formational, technical, financial resources and so forth. And and so our overarching work as a national program is, is is around, you know, all starts and ends with with that with our community vision. And then we also work on the types of policy changes that need to shift the system. And we also work on narrative shifts, because too often narrative dictates what's happening from the very beginning, in terms of this false narrative of scarcity that has pushed so much of this notion that there's an inverse relationship between my well being and your well being I can only be well if you're not well because there's only so much to go around and so that has pervaded so much of this decision making and actions that we see and even down to, you know, our kind of extremely divided political system it is so based on that people feeling threatened people feeling fear people feeling whether it's the immigration, or it's this notion of Black Lives Matter, kind of meaning that other lives don't. So...so all of this so, so yes, a narrative shift is a critical piece as well as the policy change. And again, all rooted in the vision of our communities.

John Fiege

Yeah, awesome. Yeah. And you know, as you can imagine, you know, I'm super interested in narrative and environmental storytelling and how we're telling the stories that matter. And so that really caught my eye when you talked about controlling the narrative. Can you give maybe an example of like, what does controlling the narrative mean? What does that look like?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, I'll give an example on the, the problem up to till now in terms of some of the ways of the narrative has been controlled a wedge resulted in and then on the other side, so we have everything from, you know, at that end, again with African American folks, the ways that the narratives that have been advanced, whether it's the rise of the term super predator, or the ways that the black men have been considered to be an enemy or something to be feared, or someone to be feared, and though, and how that has led to in black folks in general, but definitely black men, and how that that led has led to profiling. And then that led to, to kind of this criminalization as well as police brutality and what has resulted in state sponsored violence. I talk about how, in the context of Hurricane Katrina, how there is this image that I show where it's two white couple, and they're in these floodwaters, and then there's African American, male in floodwaters and it's the same day. Associated Press is the outlet telling the story in both cases, but the caption with the two white people is, you know, "Two residents wade through chesty floodwaters after 'finding' bread and soda in the grocery store." With African American young man it says "A young man waves through testy floodwaters after looting a grocery store." And so that kind of characterization and a difference of it is exactly what leads to this racial profiling. And then leads to that criminalization and then to, for group of families on the Danziger bridge, where they were crossing in again, trying to find food, trying to find relatives, they were going back into New Orleans, and someone called the police on them and said that they wer e, you know, probably looking to loot and so they were unarmed and the police encountered them on the Danziger bridge and killed some of them as a result so that racial profiling that image of those two folks that you know, seemingly just an image in a newspaper but what it contributes to a narrative that certain people are up to no good and so we've seen how these days they're talking about living while black all the ways, I just myself I'm staying at an Airbnb in Florida and I went outside to, anyway there's some construction going on and so they left a package in the front that they're supposed to bring around to the back anyway, so I had to go under the construction tape to get the package and as I'm walking out I hear this voice go, May I help you? And it was this lady across the street who thought that I was stealing the package I mean, so and the irony was that I had met her like a couple days ago and had a conversation with her and she just didn't remember it. So but unfortunately but so the other day there was a whole another situation with another package and I walked around the neighborhood and I saw the packages, it had been delivered to another neighbor but I didn't want to kind of walk up and look at them for sure and didn't even want to knock on the door because, and so I called the person who owns the Airbnb and I'm like, do you know the lady who lives a couple doors down you know, and then there was a whole long two hour long process where she was trying to get Jonathan the real estate age all these different things you know, just so that I could get my my packages there on this door a couple of days back. So this is the kind of difference in life, you know that and reality but that's just you know, but that could have fatal effects or someone saw me skulking around it was they would have characterized it, and, you know, considered themselves to be defending their property, and people have the right to do that. And these, you know, again, with our system, this is what results and so, so all of this go on on the negative side of narrative, but and the importance of why, you know, and then when we talk about environment, this notion of 'job killing regulations' and, and again, that's based on scarcity assuming that like the only way that people will be able to work is that if they work at least jobs that also are fatal for other like people killing pollution, you know, the post job killing regulations and so we as communities are reframing to say it is possible for us to have all the jobs that we want, it is possible for us to have it in the context of clean air, clean water. And what we, what we do often is to do that by saying that it's already happening, here's where it's happening. And it's possible for us to take this to scale.

John Fiege

Well, how much of that taking back the narrative is, I mean, there's, you know, your example of Hurricane Katrina and, and the AP captions on the photos, you know, that kind of ties into this, the myth of objective journalism, and kind of these outside folks who are building a narrative that you're trying to counter, but in some ways, I'm wondering how much you have to reformulate the narrative from within your own ranks. You know, I'm thinking about early on environmental justice movement. You know, there were some communities that were pushing back against some environmental regulations, because they were concerned that the jobs in these communities were going to be reduced or or go away. And, you know, even today, we're seeing, you know, pushback from unions around the shift to to electric vehicles, because it's there gonna be fewer jobs involved. So what is that? How do you navigate that of like, people who are on your side, are also buying into some of these narratives?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of what I just said, is really helping people to see how how all of it is possible. So that's true for whoever's on whatever side is the importance of that. And so we have, for example, put together the Black Labor Initiative on Just Transition. And, and for that initiative, we work with folks who stand to be impacted by these job shifts, that will happen and we say, okay, we need to make sure that we're supporting you who is impacted, and that you're in the driver's seat. So it's not, that's not something that's happening to you, but you're saying, here's what's happening, you know, in terms of the the needs of the earth, in our communities, and here's how I'm going to be impacted. If I don't say, Alright, this is what I want, that's going to allow us to have clean air clean water, and allow me to have a livelihood at the standard that I need to support my family. And so then both kind of making sure that people are in the driver's seat, and we're not just trying to tell them that this is better, they're actually determining that for themselves, and we're supporting that, but then also, so they, they will also be the ones who are able to educate and inform their, their peers as well. So, that's definitely what's most important, working with working with people to be able to self actualize whatever enlightenment might come, and what the path is.

John Fiege

So that that's what I hear you saying is that's, that's the key element of taking back the narrative and controlling the narrative is, is telling that story within your community and having that spread. Is that accurate?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, making sure that the community themselves kind of generate the story, like really being in dialogue with the community and have having that conversation, which are always always right, always kind of results in, in the truth versus, versus people kind of parroting what's been told to them. And so for us, it's all about an organic process.

John Fiege

Ok. That's awesome. Great. So, in in 2013, you released a report, a report called "And the People Shall Lead" which which is a great title. And it has, it has a subtitle, "Centralizing Frontline Community Leadership, and the Movement Towards a Sustainable Planet." So the report addresses working with big national environmental groups or big greens as you call them here. And you open the report this way: "How often do we hear frontline communities say, “We refuse to work with Big Green A until we hear an apology for past wrongs and a commitment to a fundamental change in how they operate” Or, “Why would I want to work with Big Green B? They will take the credit for the work I do!” Or, “I’ll never work with Big Green C again. They have no respect for my culture.” At the same time, we often hear mainstream enviros speak with angst, “We want to work more with grassroots groups but we don’t know how to engage them.” Or, “We reached out, and they didn’t respond.” Or, “This plant is bad for this community but they just don’t get it! We are trying to help them.” So that really cuts to the chase and shines a light on on the history of the kind of rocky relationship between white led and Black and brown led organizations when it comes to environmental justice. What has changed and what hasn't changed since 2013?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, thank you. Oh, that brings back memories. I haven't. Yeah, so what has changed is that those questions are less happening behind closed doors, particularly on the grassroots side. And also, what has also changed is that there have been formations that have been put together to deal directly with this issue, like the Building Equity and Alignment, no, Building Equity and Alignment for Impact one way, or like the B...Yep, that's exactly the B--Building Equity and Alignment for Impact, which is a combination of kind of these large green organizations, frontline grassroots groups, and philanthropy coming together to talk about to talk about these challenges, and how do we build more alignment recognizing that, yeah, that we know, we need it sorely. And so trying to work through some of those challenges that have been surfaced. But recognizing that, that, that the the power is in the collaboration and saying that we have to do this, we have to, we have to do this. And so that has changed, recognizing that and, and the formations to deal with it. And also certainly, what's also changed is the fact that philanthropy is supporting the need for that shift, and supporting the spaces to help to bridge those challenges. And that philanthropy is also recognizing that continuing to put, you know, millions upon millions of dollars and resources in the hands of only in the hands of big green organizations is actually exacerbating some of those dynamics and challenges. And there's a lot more of an effort to support frontline grassroots groups. So all of those things have changed, as well as the urgency of the climate clock, that it hasn't changed, but it's become much more well known. And, and therefore, as Martin Luther King says, "People are feeling the fierce urgency of now" in terms of the the nature of a critical this of kind of getting it together. So not to say that in some ways, all those things have shifted. And, and, and some and and the very same things are still being said at the same time. You know what I mean?

John Fiege

Right

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, so the problems persist, but at least there's an acknowledgement of them, which is the first step and some, some steps in the right direction.

John Fiege

Right. It's a process. Always a process.

Jacqui Patterson

Exactly Yes.

John Fiege

So what does antiracism look like in the environmental movement?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, in the environmental movement, it means that across the board and all the work that we do around the environment, we have to acknowledge and intersectionally address the impacts of racism. I famously talked about when I was doing a talk for a funder, a funder ask me to do a talk to a group of solar, like solar industry, folks. And when I gave my slides, the funder was like, "Yeah, we just want you to focus on solar, you know, and on energy. And so, so I, I said, so after kind of going back and forth with them, I was like, Alright, I'm not gonna use slides, and I'm renaming my talk. Black Lives Matter, Energy Democracy in the NAACP Civil Rights Agenda, and after I gave the talk like people, like it was kind of a well, it was an exponentially better received talk than if I had just I don't know what they what even just talking about this would mean in the context of, you know, the reality of life. But but but, but the folks in the industry really saw a new purpose and what they were seeing doing and political purpose and what they were doing, and they felt brought meaning to the work that they do. And so, so, so in some, it's first of all, kind of understanding that a) how how racism impacts how it impacts environment, environmental work and environment in the environment and b) understanding that, and that the very same systemic underpinnings that are driving climate change, are rooted in racism and so forth, and that we and if we don't kind of address these issues at their roots, we we won't be able to address climate change. And so that that's another piece that people need to understand.

John Fiege

Can you talk about your work across the international borders and how it fits into what you're doing here in the US?

Jacqui Patterson

Sure. Yeah. When we first went to actually one of the first things that I did, when I joined the NAACP, actually, I was already I was already going to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties in Copenhagen, before I joined the staff and so so I ended up going in kind of this hybrid role of kind of starting to join the end up starting to be a staff member of the NAACP and already planning to go as part of this project I'd started through Women of Color United looking at the intersection of gender and climate. And at that UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties will call it COP that I first encountered the Panafrican Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), and and I had been my work my work leading to working with NAACP had been International, that's the work that I do so I always had that international orientation and seeing how things are connected and so forth. But and in the context of connecting with the PACJA, done other international groups, we now have a memorandum of agreement with PACJA,. And being a part of the US Climate Action Network, which is part of the Global Climate Action Network, we we see the connections between US policies, domestic and quote unquote, foreign policy, and and everything from at those UN climate talks. Historically, no matter what administration the US has played an obstructive role always wanting to kind of commit as little as possible from an national standpoint, but then that also impacts the level of commitment across the board, if you have one group bringing it down, it kind of waters down the the teeth and the aspirations and the ambition in the in the agreements. And so recognizing that we need to be there as us voters to hold the delegation that's there to you and climate talks accountable for, for not weighing down because we can't like if we even if we all in the US stopped all of our emissions tomorrow, we're still in a globe. And if we're kind of weighing down the rest of the processes, then other people's a missions like yeah, we are 25% of the global emissions. So it would definitely have a significant impact. But we need to we need everybody to stop emitting in order for us to as a as a world to advance. And so the US has to be there making commitments on its own part, and it has to push for ambition with all the industrialized nations who are driving climate change for us all to be able to survive and thrive. So that's one thing. We in our connection with the Panfrican Climate Justice Alliance, we in our storytelling that we've done since then,we go there for those UN climate talks. We were in Nairobi for those conversations they've come here, and what's emerged as the story of our connections are like the same ways that countries in the Global South and BIPOC communities in the global north are least responsible for climate change. We all share... We all share the fact that we're at least responsible and we all share the fact that we're most impacted. And we all share the fact that we're the least politically powerful in terms of the decision making thats had, so we have our organizing as a bloc to say, you know, we, as global Afro descendant, leaders on environmental and climate justice, want to have a common agenda so that we are, we're pushing in concert and building power of as a global majority, in terms of BIPOC folks. And so with that, that means that we like even as I push for something here, or if our if our communities and movement here push for like stopping the burning of coal, then at the same time, we're pushing to stop global exports of coal. And at the same time, countries in Sub Saharan Africa are pushing to stop the global imports of coal. So we really we deal at all sides of that, that continuum. So those are just some...and then I'll just end with another example of kind of those connections as well. So as we talk about immigration policy, again, US being 4% of the population, but 25% of the emissions that drive climate change. But yet we have these punitive immigration policies so that when people are driven out of their nations because of disaster, or because their breadbasket has dried up as a result of our actions, on climate me on on emissions, but also our kind of imperialist actions, and the ways that the structural adjustment programs that others have made, have made those nations in, you know, uninhabitable, in some cases in some of the communities, then instead of kind of offering refuge in sanctuary, we're putting people in cages. And so while we work on better immigration policies to really so that not just, you know, so we're taking responsibility and being accountable for the actions that are driven people from their nations, but at the very least, but ideally, just because people need need they their need, and we and we have abundance, again, pushing back on that false narrative of scarcity. But then at the same time, we're also pushing for the types of policies that allow countries to be self sufficient, and able to address the impacts of climate change or avoid climate change in the first place. So through the US commitments to the UNFCCC and so forth, and that we're helping the to work with our kind of partners in the Global South, to be able to have nations where we where people don't have to kind of flee in order to survive. And I'll just end with a quote from, Warsan Shire, which is... Somali...a Kenyan, a Somali born Kenyan poet. Anyway, she says, "You have to understand that no one puts their children in a boat. Unless the water is safer than the land."

John Fiege

Wow. That's a good punctuation mark. Yeah, it makes me think back to what you were saying earlier about whole systems and the absolutely importance and importance of thinking in terms of whole systems. So how is your work change since the killing of George Floyd and the blossoming of the movement for Black Lives?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, for one is gotten more, we've been just crushed by by demands that so that's one thing. And not only, the full the fulfilling the demands is kind of the least of it in terms of capacity, because we, for the most part, don't even get there. But uh, but just fielding all of their demands, as is so many and trying to filter out which ones are from people who are pushing or are performative, because you know, they look good, which ones are people who are trying to do something because a funder is saying that they need to do this,

John Fiege

What are folks asking of you?

Jacqui Patterson

It's everything from just wanting to quote unquote, pick our brains. Like, "Here's what's going on in my company," like sometimes it's corporations sometimes is organizations. "Here's what's going on in my organization. Here's what I'm planning to do. Can you give them feedback on it?" That kind of thing. A lot of times is wanting people wanting us to come and speak, you know, just kind of help to educate folks. So that's another thing. Sometimes it's wanting us to recommend consultants, which is another thing. Giving feedback on on documents. And sometimes it seems like it's just so people want to be able to say that they talk to us, so it's just kind of wanting to have a conversation. Um, and then a lot of people wanting us to join, whether it's advisory groups or boards or steering committees or all these other things, because so various, various things.

John Fiege

A lot of things that are asking for a lot of time.

Jacqui Patterson

Yes, definitely. So there's that. On the other side, though. Some, some, some groups have come and they've said, Oh, now what you said, we see what you were saying all these years ago, and are kind of pulling, you know, dusting off some memo that I may have written way back way back when say, and actually taking it seriously now. So that's been interesting. And so that, so so on a positive side, there are there are organizations, companies and so forth that are making concrete commitments as a result of what has come. Yes. And so some folks are going beyond the statements and shifted their funding priorities shifting the way that they do the work integrating, at least a more anti racist frame into the work that they do. So that kind of enlightenment and action has definitely moved the ball in an important way. For sure.

John Fiege

So social movements often focus on what's wrong and what needs to change. But sometimes, they don't spend enough time imagining what could be, and getting people excited about those dreams of alternative possibilities. I've heard you talk about creating eco communities and locally controlled sustainable food and energy systems, with the potential for communities to become the owners and beneficiaries of local distributed generation and micro grid energy systems. I personally really love this kind of thinking, can you talk about some of these specific regenerative, self reliant eco-community ideas? And in how you think about what might be called utopian visions?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, definitely. So first, as I was talking about before, in terms of the type of societal shifts that we need, we know that the way each and every one of the systems around the commons are designed have been problematic, and not delivering universally what's needed. And, at best, and then at worst, actually causing harm in the generation and the delivery of, of whatever the good is. So we talk about our energy systems, we're saying we need to shift to, to more energy efficiency, to clean energy. And we need to have a distributed system of doing so we know that not only you know, whether we've we've already talked about extensively in terms of the pollution and so forth, but the energy sector, but the other thing that's important to note is the is the the energy companies in the millions...the billions of dollars in profits that they've made and how they've, they've invested that in, and not only anti-regulatory lobbying, and anti clean energy lobbying, but also invested in groups like ALEC, that push on voter suppression, water privatization, school privatization, prison privatization, etc. And so for us, when we talk about the alternative, it is about making sure that there's affordable and accessible energy for all and it's about making sure that that becomes the focus of the energy sector, versus the focus now which is on, again enclosure of wealth and power to the tune of billions of dollars. And so that's why we feel like the whole sector needs to shift. And so that's just a little bit of background there. And so we we've been able to lift up the stories where people are developing, whether it's micro grids, or even larger grids in for example, on Navajo Nation. They're replacing the Navajo Generating Station, which was one of the largest, most polluting coal fired power plants in the country, and now they have a Navajo Nation owned a solar farm. That is creating energy in a way that don't pollute, and it is owned and operated by the Navajo Nation.

John Fiege

That's awesome.

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, that's awesome.

John Fiege

One thing that's exciting to me about the green new deal and similar ideas that came before it is, is the possibility for labor and sustainability to be on the same side for issues rather than constantly to be pitted against one another. What are your thoughts about how labor and justice and environment can can build solidarity as as we move into this new era?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, so we put together this Black Labor Initiative on Just Transition for that very reason. So that we are all talking together at the same table with a common agenda, we were speaking at the coalition of Black Trade Union this meeting a couple of years ago. And when someone asked us about the Cold Blooded Report, and we spoke on that, then someone raised their hand in the audience, and they were like, "Well, we're from the United Mine Workers of America. And we kind of take exception to this Cold Blooded framing." And so we really had a chat about that. And understood where they were coming from, and really kind of talk about how we had reached out to them, we put together the Black Labor Initiative on Just Transition a couple of years before. And we would love if they consider coming back to the table there. And so they they did, and we really had a great conversation that resulted in...I was going literally from that meeting, to a meeting of the 100% Building Blocks, which is being put together by this 100% Renewable Network. And so as one of the authors of the Building Blocks, I really pushed hard for us to have a building block that's dedicated to labor. And it was out of that conversation that I said, we need to have, like, right alongside the renewable portfolio standards and the energy efficiency standards we need to have in just right in tandem demands for high road jobs, for pensions, and for health care for transitioning workers. Like that can be like an afterthought, and "Oh, we need to do this too." It's not like, it's like, these are the things we need to do not like we need to do this too, because that automatically is like, but no, like we like these are the things we need to do. No caveat, no qualifier. Just like these are the things; renewable portfolio, standard energy, local higher provision, disadvantaged business, enterprise division, health, you know, health care, pensions and high road jobs for transitioning workers are inextricably tied prerequisites for this transition.

John Fiege

Yeah, and that goes back to what you talked about before of rooting, the work in the dialogue with with multiple groups, multiple people, multiple stakeholders, and finding truth through that negotiation discussion, rather than imposing it in some theoretical way on top of other people. So when the internet started to roll out in the 1990s, and 2000s, there was this, what was called the digital divide. Well, you know, wealthier, whiter, more urban communities got access to computers and the Internet, poorer communities, more rural communities, communities of color, were often not at the negotiating table and left out of the digital revolution. Some people are concerned that the rapid shift to green energy could cause a similar divide. Maybe you know, you could maybe call it a "green divide." What's your view on, on how this concern is playing out? And what do you see as the key elements to understanding what's going on and what to do about it?

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah. So before what I was talking about one of the groups wiping off the dust off of a memo I had written some years ago, it was on that very thing, basically saying that, you know, how we need to have leadership of frontline groups in the new energy economy. And again, similar to what I was just saying about Black labor and labor in general, that it can't be an afterthought, like you can't continue to focus as a sole industry on quote-unquote, the low hanging fruit or this false notion that "a rising tide lifts all boats." And so that's all to say that, uh, that we need to make sure that we're working with with, with the, with the policies to make sure that we have clean energy in terms of universal access, we have to make sure that we're working with communities to make sure that they understand what the routes are to be able to access, we have to work with these regulatory agencies, whether it's for FERC, or, or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or the PCs and the PSCs, to make sure that they are, that they're holding these utilities accountable for practices that are pushing us to where we need to go as a society towards clean and efficient energy. So all of that needs to happen in concert to make sure that we don't have those kinds of separations, in terms of who acts who's accessing it, who's paying the price.

John Fiege

That your narrative doesn't get co opted by people with a furious intention for using that narrative. That's exactly ridiculous. Yeah. Well, going back to young Jackie, growing up in the south side of Chicago, how has your thinking changed since then, about who you are, and about your relationship to the rest of life on the planet?

Jacqui Patterson

Hmm. One is, I see that...for one thing I now understand in a way that I now understand the relationship between whether I turn the light switch on, you know, this, this relationship to this larger world, like this, literally the implications of turning my life switch on and were, like, tracing that back to its roots, and then tracing it out to its impacts. Similarly to, if I "throw something away" knowing know where that will go and what its impacts will be like. So now just from being that innocent child who, who didn't, who didn't have a sense of that larger world, now I see all of that. And see like my, my, the importance of my individual actions, but then the importance of my actions as a part of a collective, and the and the possibilities of a change as a change agent, and shifting from a person who kind of life happened to me, to someone who is actually able to influence what's happening in in the world in a different way. So that's a major shift. Also, just like the innocence of childhood, I was were aware of racism fairly early on, because it was a constant refrain with my mom, and so forth. My brother, and I used to kind of talk about being like all the restaurants were banned from because my mom would get into me altercations, and so I mean, it was never true, but that was our we definitely would want to go back to that restaurant and eat. And then, but then I think about now, kind of innocent moments like when my brother and I were dancing on the beach in Jamaica, and there's a picture that my mom took of it, and so you can see my dad looking on my while we are dancing. And then, but then also there were all these other people taking pictures of us. And back then it was just like an innocent moment of us dancing. And now looking back through sadly jaded eyes, I feel a) everyone, of course, assume that we were, you know, kids who were living in Jamaica. And b) that they felt like they had the right to take a picture of us and like the notion that we're like, in someone's photo album, or on their mantle from that trip to Jamaica. You know? it feels like now in the context of racism and the systemic depths of racism and dehumanization, and so forth. It feels less like this innocent sweet moment and more like a violation in that sense in a way that I, you know, it's just, it's just, yeah, but not heavily...you know what I mean, but just like...

John Fiege

The color of the light changes on on those memories.

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah, exactly. But then the other thing is now, going now, you know, having lived within a 10 mile radius of three coal fired power plants, and having done work with our communities on each and every one of those coal plants, and now having each and every one of those coal plants closed, for example. And knowing that, as a result, the communities that I grew up in are now breathing cleaner air. The work that we're doing now with the South Side of Chicago branch, which literally covers the jurisdiction of my old home, on creating jobs on doing stormwater management, all these things, and knowing that, that the dynamics that I dealt with, while I was there, innocently, and, you know, are now able to all the kids in my class who had asthma, the people at our church with COPD, that bit by bit, the work that we're doing, is making a different difference for their kids and their grandkids.

John Fiege

That must be so satisfying.

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah

John Fiege

that's connected to your actual neighborhood.

Jacqui Patterson

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

John Fiege

That's really cool. In an interview you did with Bill McKibben, you told him: "There are so many fissures in our movement. And I think a lot about how to have these conversations in a way that is forthright, but also full of grace". That's a really beautiful way of putting it. Can you talk to me a bit more about this tension between directness and grace? And and what that sounds like? And maybe it sounds like maybe this is an ongoing balancing act for you?

Jacqui Patterson

Yes, definitely. And depending on the day, and what happened that day. Oh, well, that goes..Yeah, absolutely. Because like I always try to remind myself that we're all a product of our society and so recognizing that our society is such that we were raised it a racist, sexist, whatever kind of society in any of our cut all the things that they all the ways that it slips through whether it's through microaggressions or macro aggressions or or just people not seeing it's just kind of blindness, my opposite ism and so forth. That to, to work through a system that is literally doing what it was designed to do to work through the narrative that the dominant narratives that are in our society and somehow rise above all of that and be you know, be this kind of totally open totally great, totally, you know, colorblind or whatever, antiracist, antisexist, anti whatever. It's, it's, it's a lot it's a lot to work through and work past and work beyond and then doing that while raising a child or doing that while like all the different things that you know, raising a parent in hospice are all the different things that that occupy our minds at any given moment of any given day. So I try to always keep that in my mind when I'm dealing with someone and I'm feeling the frustration rise or I'm feeling the whatever I tried. But I think that that mindset definitely is one that, especially when you yourself are having to raise a child or have someone on hospice or all the different things, and then on top of it all, you are constantly assaulted by micro and macro aggressions, like to be able to, to then to then receive all that not be kind of...anyway and then and then to be able to think about all that all of that person's going through, like that's like a whole other level of burden in some way. And so, but so it takes a lot to try to be consciously gracious in that way. And, and it takes a lot to be able to be consistently gracious in that way. So that's all to say. That it that it takes a lot of work for sure. And, and I would also just say that the privilege that I have now in this moment of being able to do more of that is because I don't have kids, because tragically, both of my parents have passed away, and you know what I mean? So, so I have a lot more space for grace. Then if I had kind of more...I don't have a partner, you know, like, so all of those things like allow a lot more space for that contemplation and that ability to be gracious in the midst of a situation that doesn't, that doesn't cater to the ability to be gracious and when you know that that microaggression, that just that those that article in the newspaper, the two people, the two images, every one of those things that you experience, when you experience them and know that they're part of this larger system, like knowing that Joan walks out and says to me, you know, may I help you? knowing that like, she could be the person that's responsible for the killing of the next Trayvon Martin not not responsible, you know?. And so, so in that moment, like, I could just be like, you know, you're the reason you know what I mean, but like, but it's her and all the system that's behind her that drove her to think that I was someone who's stealing that package. And so it that's also another kind of place of privilege is knowing that I am working on that system, you know, and so I don't have to feel powerless in the face of somebody saying that to me or experiencing that, because I know I'm working on that bigger system's change that's going to make it all hopefully better for us all, and help to educate someone like a Joan, who assumes that I'm stealing a package, you know, and so when here, so hopefully all that makes sense.

John Fiege

Yeah, totally, totally. And, you know, again, it's just, your words again, are beautifully succinct, forthright, but also full of grace, you know, how many words is six words? I feel like you really embody that. And, you know, it's so easy for us to fly in one direction of that, or the other. You know, on the one hand, I feel like what most people do is they look away, the blinders on because it's too painful, it's too difficult. It, it feels too impossible to to confront these things. And on the other side, you find people who do confront these things. And it's hard to get past the anger and frustration of confronting these things every day. Hold both of those items at once, without flying to one side of that scale or the other is so challenging. And I you know, I've known you for several years now, and I see you do it constantly. So I, I've asked you to bring a quotation to read that's been particularly meaningful on your journey in life. Could you end the show by reading what you brought and telling the story of its significance to you?

Jacqui Patterson

So one that always kind of guides me is from Lilly Watson where she says, "If you've come to help me, You're wasting your time. But if you've come because you know and feel that your liberation is bound to mind, and let's walk together." And that quote, has been one that I've carried ever since I heard it some years ago, decades ago, I would say, and it really gets to the heart of, of how we need to be oriented as a society, recognizing our interconnectedness, recognizing that unattributed quote, "if one of us is oppressed, none of us are free." Recognizing that what I've heard Tom Goldtooth from the Indigenous Environmental Network says in terms of "We're all in this river together," that ... recognizing that we ... Martin Luther King that "I can never be, what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be" like of those interconnectedness quotes really, and really, strike at the heart of what why I do what I want to do and what and what what the narrative is, that I would like to see be universal, and the reality and terms of us all seeing our connection to each other, really walking together, in that connectedness and in in, and radical love really recognizing that, that without really walking together in love with where someone's going to fall off of the path, and eventually we'll all we won't have a path to walk on.

John Fiege

And what that love that, what is that love that drives you? Um, I think,

Jacqui Patterson

I mean, I would say it's just love itself, you know what I mean? It's love for the earth love for, and that's where I mean, that's also where the grace comes from, as well. Going back to that question, is that, you know, I love Joan, even though she accused me of, you know, I love the gentleman who walked out of that forest and, you know, like, I, I feel love for, for us all and that, and that it is that, that false narrative of scarcity and that fear, that, that, that makes it a privilege, because I don't feel that fear and I don't, I don't I embrace the reality of abundance and reject the myth of scarcity. And it's a privilege to be able to do that and to be able to feel that love and I just want that for for everyone. There's another quote actually, from from Che Guevara, where he says "It might sound ridiculous, but a true revolutionary is driven by feelings of love." And it does often like...even when I hear myself say it, it sounds so like, you know, whatever, milk toast or whatever, but it's the truth. And I want it to be a universal truth because it really makes life so much more livable. And and, and, and if we all if we all embrace it, then we go from kind of some folks barely surviving to everybody thriving.

John Fiege

Yeah, that also reminds me of something Martin

Jacqui Patterson

together

John Fiege

...Yeah, right together....It also reminds me of something Martin Luther King said, I don't remember the exact words but it was something to the effect. I can remember who is talking about is like, "you don't need to like them, but you need to love them."

Jacqui Patterson

Yes Exactly

John Fiege

And, that It's, it's hard, but it's important. Great. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Jackie. It's been amazing pleasure as always.

Jacqui Patterson

Thank you. It's a pleasure as well for me.

Outro

John Fiege

Thank you so much to Jacqui Patterson. Go to our website at ChrysalisPodcast.org to see the quotations Jacqui read and check out the links to her writing and other resources related to our conversation.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Jacqui, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. You can also support us by becoming a paid subscriber on Substack. Contact me anytime at ChrysalisPodcast.org.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnfiege.substack.com

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How do we collectively steer the ship of humanity in a completely different direction, away from path that brought us to this moment of climate chaos, mass extinction, and environmental injustice? How do we build a society that is socially just and ecologically vibrant?

Join host John Fiege for conversations with a remarkable group of environmental thinkers about their paths through life. The show’s guests are great writers, artists, activists, scientists, and spiritual leaders whose stories can help guide us into new ways of relating to the rest of life on Earth.

We need culture change, not climate change, and that transformation starts with the stories we tell each other and tell ourselves.

Come be a part of the conversation!

Please share the trailer far and wide!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnfiege.substack.com

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