00:12:20.180Right. So I think that part of that decolonization is removing the imperial structure of medicine.
00:12:26.660So a physician trained in Western medicine is really good at certain things,
00:12:31.540And we're really bad at other things. Like we have very limited understanding of how the mind and body interact. We have very little understanding of how social structures impact illness. We have very little understanding of how cosmologies, like people's understanding of who they are and why they're sick and what medicine means and how they get well.
00:12:56.320that these are things that have profound and subtle effects on the body, we have very little
00:13:02.360understanding of how plant medicines work to support health and how traditional medicines
00:13:08.840work to support health, traditional medicines from around the world. And so that being said,
00:13:14.500I think if you think of colonialism as a system where power is centralized for the purpose of
00:13:20.500exploiting resources to concentrate the profits of those resources in the hands of very few people,
00:13:27.580often pulling wealth away from the communities, like extracting that wealth off to like some
00:13:33.700remote location. The power in that system is not within the hands of obviously those who are
00:13:40.400colonized, the vast majority. If you look at the wealth inequality that has been really driven
00:13:46.800through neoliberal policy around the world, but especially you see it here in the United States,
00:13:52.940very profoundly here in the Bay Area, that it's the same structure. Colonialism isn't simply just
00:13:58.680brown and black people being oppressed by white people around the world. It's happening within
00:14:03.260societies. It's happening all over us, all around us. And so decolonizing is really, to me, I see it
00:14:11.300is a system of decentralizing that power, of localizing that power, and reconnecting those
00:14:18.240things that have been divided and conquered. And for me, that really is reconnecting ourselves to
00:14:23.720the earth, ourselves to each other, and ourselves inside our bodies, like understanding who we are
00:14:28.680and what medicines work for us and what medicines don't. And I think that science and Western
00:14:33.840medicine have given us a lot and should be used. I'm not at all someone who's willing or
00:14:39.020interested in throwing away those powerful tools that can be available to us. I also believe that
00:14:45.660there are other modalities that are equally powerful in different contexts, and sometimes
00:14:51.140in the same context, and that those things should be integrated and really brought to bear on how
00:14:57.540people are able to heal. Thank you for that, Rupa. Now, I know that many of us are familiar
00:15:05.640with the horrors of our current healthcare model, given that over half of all Americans
00:15:11.860struggle with healthcare costs. So I'd like to transition into a conversation on medical debt
00:15:17.820and the for-profit sector of medicine. Perhaps you can begin by sharing the pervasiveness of
00:15:24.720the for-profit sector of medicine, or why you think there is such an aversion to enacting
00:15:30.620mass healthcare reform, despite the reality that our medical system is devoted to profit
00:15:35.940above anything else? We have been divided and conquered in our minds and in the space of our
00:15:45.900imagination. So when I was in medical school at Georgetown University and I was in an ethics class
00:15:53.060and I raised my hand and I said, does anyone else here see an ethical problem with being involved
00:15:59.680in a medical system that is for profit. And everyone turned and looked at me like,
00:16:05.360who is this person from California? And I realized like, no, that is actually a central
00:16:11.460core belief for me is that if you are making a profit off of people's suffering, you are
00:16:17.760involved in very tricky, unsavory business. And so the very issue of providing people with such
00:16:26.640a basic need, which is to be able to see a doctor or a nurse, a healthcare provider when people need
00:16:33.900it, and to be able to see someone to help them maintain their wellness and their lives, this to
00:16:40.160me should not be a for-profit industry. This should be a service, a public service. And so I have seen
00:16:47.560many families across all walks of life and from all sides of the political spectrum run into
00:16:55.920medical bankruptcy when someone got really sick and they're in the hospital for six months or
00:17:01.980they're in a nursing home for three years and their family goes bankrupt. It is the number
00:17:09.220one cause of bankruptcy, personal bankruptcy in the United States, which to me is criminal that
00:17:15.100we have a society that is so wealthy and cannot manage to find a way to take care of its own
00:17:23.860people. And so I am a big fan of Medicare for all. I'm very excited that I just got appointed
00:17:30.320by Governor Newsom to sit as a commissioner on this Healthy California for All Commission,
00:17:36.860which is to find a way to bring universal healthcare to all of California. And so I
00:17:42.980have a very deep belief that we can do this. We have to restructure our priorities. But I think
00:17:48.720that it is something that all people deserve. All people deserve it.
00:17:56.000Rupa, I absolutely agree that all people deserve healthcare. It's ridiculous that when our people
00:18:02.520are trying to heal from an injury or illness, they also have to deal with the stress of debt.
00:18:07.840I mean, how are people supposed to heal well with the stress and the inflammation and all that it
00:18:12.740brings. It's insanity. It's just a really insane system. And well, anyways, before I go down that
00:18:22.160rabbit hole, I want to go back to this presentation that I revisited that you gave at
00:18:30.860Bioneers in 2017, where you discussed the free community clinic where you helped support at
00:18:36.780Standing Rock. And you shared how the space for the clinic was radically different than
00:18:41.160what we're used to. The exam rooms were big enough to fit a whole family. There was to be a
00:18:46.440ceremonial space, a children's space, an elder's space, and classrooms all within the clinic.
00:18:52.820And this got me thinking about what it would look like if we centered health in our national dialogue.
00:18:59.560So I'm curious to ask, what do you think society would look like if the pursuit of health was the
00:19:05.100foundation of our organizing? Well, I think we would not be spending as much money on the military
00:19:11.480and that would actually free up a lot of budget to do some very exciting things.
00:19:16.080I think if we centered health and wellness, we would not allow the toxic pollution. We do allow
00:19:23.280right now, basically right now, industry runs our public health in this country. Industry dictates
00:19:28.660what the public is exposed to, what the legal limits are of exposures. Lawmakers are in the
00:19:35.560pockets of these industries, which I've seen here in our own Oakland. People who are apparently
00:19:40.900progressive candidates are being supported by the same polluters. The second largest air
00:19:46.760polluter in the Bay Area is the AB&I Foundry. And so these corporations are buying off our
00:19:53.920politicians. That should be illegal. The health of the people and the wellness of all people should
00:19:59.620be our guiding light in principles and the health of the earth and the health of the soils and the
00:20:06.520health of the water. And so these things are things that I would say that indigenous peoples
00:20:12.540around the world know and our California tribal people know. And so I would love to see a way
00:20:19.640where we would prioritize that as our guiding light
00:20:23.460and really shape everything around that.
00:20:26.780Because then our cities would become more livable.
00:20:45.160So people don't have to drive their cars.0.77
00:20:47.060Imagine what that would do for fossil fuel use.
00:20:49.640But we don't do that because we allow those industries, so we allow the Google buses to run through San Francisco and completely change, you know, fuel the housing crisis, essentially.
00:20:58.820We allow these, you know, corporate buses and corporations to dictate how public life will be.
00:21:05.060It would be amazing to have health be that guiding light instead.
00:21:09.340I'm thinking about some of the incredibly harmful and abusive parts of western medicine
00:21:16.340especially its history of involuntary testing and forced sterilization in some ways it seems
00:21:22.940like the medical field hasn't been forced to reckon with these injustices because it is such
00:21:28.440a vital field that we are almost all dependent on so I'm wondering if you could discuss what
00:21:34.920you think proper reparations from the medical community should look like?
00:21:40.000Yes. So medicine has been used as a tool of empire since the beginning of the colonial project
00:21:48.220in Africa, in Asia, and here in the Americas to the indigenous peoples. Absolutely, there needs
00:21:57.080to be reparations and accountability, because that violence is a part of our history.
00:22:05.320And when you look at the current dynamics within the medical institutions, and you see how medical
00:22:14.260racism still exists, whether it's conscious or unconscious, it's criminal. And I don't think
00:22:21.140that if we do not contend with our past, there's no way we can heal our present or go into the
00:22:27.900future with any different outcomes. So absolutely, medicine has been weaponized against oppressed
00:22:35.860peoples. And we need to repair that and be accountable to that and change it because those
00:22:43.100systems are still in place. It might not be happening the same way. The forced sterilization
00:22:48.160of indigenous women performed by doctors of the IHS in the United States up until the 1970s.
00:22:55.980That is not happening today, but that system was never held to account for the violence,
00:23:03.060the eugenics and the violence that was practiced by licensed physicians. So absolutely, we need to0.75
00:23:09.580be accountable and we need to repair. And that's where Western medicine, as a practitioner of
00:23:16.240Western medicine with a eye for decolonizing. For me, it's always, you know, I hold my training
00:23:24.640with a great deal of respect and also a degree of skepticism to try to understand the best way
00:23:30.720and the best thing I can do for a particular patient. And as we're talking about reparations,
00:23:36.860I'm curious what these reparations would actually look like. What would tangible forms of reparations
00:23:43.160be? Oh, God, how do you repair testing on someone without their knowledge? I mean, that's like,
00:23:51.960that's like Nuremberg trials, you know, that's the stuff of Nazi Germany. How do you make repairs0.89
00:24:00.160for that? I don't have a sense of what that looks like. I think for California natives,
00:24:05.960I would love to see rematriation of land and sacred sites. I would love to see0.88
00:24:12.240indigenous people in charge of any industry and development in California. I'm having the
00:24:18.900capacity to veto anything that we do and the capacity to lead. So I think that, you know,
00:24:24.900reparations would take its form with every different group that has been harmed, would
00:24:31.340need to take a different form with every group. But I think that it, I think the first part to
00:24:35.680that is acknowledgement that this has happened. And that is something that I would love to see
00:24:40.960happen. And now that there are more women of color in positions of power in institutions of1.00
00:24:46.620medicine, these dialogues are coming up, which is exciting. I really agree with you that
00:24:52.220acknowledgement is a good place to begin and that there will never be a one size fits all approach
00:24:58.880or solution. Yeah. Now I'd like to turn towards your work with the Do No Harm Coalition and
00:25:06.900your commitment towards chronicling what the absence of justice does to community health.
00:25:12.840As I understand it, the coalition was formed in response to ongoing police violence in San
00:25:18.140Francisco and the 17-day hunger strike by the Frisco Five. There are so many threads to pick
00:25:24.640up here, but perhaps we can start at the beginning. What are the long-term physical and mental health
00:25:31.000outcomes of police violence? And why is it necessary to discuss police violence in context
00:25:37.200to public health? Well, the sixth leading cause of death for African-American males now between
00:25:42.480the age of 20 and 35 is police violence. So it's up there in the top 10 of things that kill young
00:25:49.340Black men in the United States. So I feel like anything that is up in the top 10 deserves1.00
00:25:54.300special attention. Not only that, it is a top killer of young Black men in this country,1.00
00:26:02.620but the process by which justice is either attained or not attained for families after0.98
00:26:08.600that person is killed really exposes, kind of widens the wound. So if the wound is the killing
00:26:15.140and there's no justice, that wound is not healed. It's actually widened. And there becomes an
00:26:21.900erosion of the very fabric of civic trust, which is needed for good governance and an operational
00:26:28.140society. And so the wound to the social body, when there is a police killing, when someone who's
00:26:34.720entrusted with public safety is actually terrorizing the public and that it's happening
00:26:39.980in such an overtly racist fashion, discriminatory fashion, then that institution that is doing that
00:26:46.840harming. It needs to be brought into proper alignment with the goals and the vision of
00:26:53.880our society. And so with police killings, I've seen firsthand how people are traumatized and
00:27:01.760how the process of trying to seek justice in a system that was never created for the justice
00:27:06.660of black and brown people, how that frustrates their healing and compounds the trauma. It
00:27:12.740re-traumatizes them. And so it feels like a very important issue for the healing of our society.
00:27:19.620Oh my baby, I've grown tired, watching, waiting, as you're decapitating all the flowers I've
00:27:43.140grown. Hours turn to colors changing. Don't you know I like to sit and watch things bloom?
00:27:58.280There's more than enough room for you here. By my side, enjoy the alchemy of springtime.
00:28:08.100In relationship to state-sponsored violence and the long-term trauma it creates, I'm thinking
00:28:15.680about the ongoing crisis at the border and the daily terror inflicted by ICE and Border Patrol.
00:28:21.980In this sense, it feels crucial to situate family as medicine. Can you speak to the importance of
00:28:28.780family reunification and how ICE and our current immigration policy is a clear example of why we
00:28:35.420must abolish these systems altogether, not merely reform them. Absolutely. So the criminalization
00:28:43.080of immigration is a recent phenomenon. So we didn't always just pick up people and lock them
00:28:48.580up or separate them from their children. And really this grew in the Obama era. And that's
00:28:55.780important to point out because it's not like, oh, we have this evil man, Trump. He of course is0.69
00:29:00.380furthering a white nationalist agenda that has been brought forth and really exposed in his
00:29:06.840henchman, Stephen Miller. But this policy of criminalizing immigration is really something
00:29:12.680that came out under Obama, who was known as the deporter-in-chief, who deported far more people
00:29:17.900than Bush I or Bush Part II. And so I think that it's really important to recognize that this
00:29:25.140system of violence is something that has been going on for a while. It's now just pushed to
00:29:30.320a head because of the white nationalism that is underpinning a lot of these moves and then the
00:29:36.680expansion of these programs. I absolutely agree that immigration should be decriminalized. I think
00:29:42.560these camps should be shut down. I think they're an abhorrency to our nation's history and to our
00:29:47.780progress as people. And I also think that these migrations are going to get more intense as1.00
00:29:53.800climate change becomes more impactful. And those groups that will be hit the hardest are the
00:30:00.320poorest. And those people are going to move. They're going to move to become secure in their
00:30:06.120ability to find food, water, and shelter. And so it is a good time to prepare ourselves for this
00:30:12.480movement that is coming. And it's already coming. So I definitely support the decriminalization
00:30:18.660of migration. It's a natural phenomenon that's been happening for thousands,0.97
00:30:23.260hundreds of thousands of years. And to find a way to, you know, absorb and really work with people
00:30:30.540and work with other countries that are struggling. So instead of being involved in meddling with
00:30:36.280Central American countries' power structures, to really let those countries thrive. You know,
00:30:41.520most people I know from Mexico who are here prefer to be in Mexico. But when our government
00:30:47.060is involved in drugs and arms trafficking, it doesn't help that society be stable.
00:30:55.040And that is something I've noticed as an agenda item of the United States in foreign policy,1.00
00:30:59.460is that it really does not want to see brown and black countries thrive. And all of the countries1.00
00:31:04.960that we are bombing currently, and for the last 20 years, have been brown and black countries.0.95
00:31:09.920So that this legacy of racism, of imperialist, racist agenda of the United States is something0.63
00:31:15.680that's being perpetuated, you know, right now.
00:31:18.820It's not something that was just there
00:32:43.580And I really resonate with how you're weaving the imaginary realm into the healing path.
00:32:51.020So thank you for speaking so clearly to this.
00:32:55.720And I know that much of your work is in direct acknowledgement of the ways in which white supremacy and colonialism are ever present in the medical field.
00:33:05.720So I'd like to talk about the challenges of addressing health disparities, particularly in terms of colonial methodologies.
00:33:13.580How are you imagining a framework that mitigates retraumatization, both in terms of research and care?
00:33:22.520Yes, I think that that's like my life work.
00:33:27.820I feel like, you know, right now we're imagining a project in partnership with poverty scholars.
00:33:34.780So homeless folks who are developing their own paths of homefulness with indigenous women here in the urban environment who are rematriating land with formerly incarcerated people who are learning organic farming techniques as a livelihood and with undocumented folks who are learning farming as well.
00:33:55.080and one of the questions we have that we're thinking about together is you know if you can
00:34:02.260give access to food training how to make your own food and land what impact does that have on health
00:34:08.420and so in that question which could have really powerful data that could be used to drive policy
00:34:15.960that question is something that has to be driven and inquired and and developed by these people
00:34:27.480who are asking the question and so instead of being a research that i do that like hey i want
00:34:35.720to study your bodies for these things that i want to know it's more of uh sitting together
00:34:41.440in a space of inquiry to say, what can we know here and how can we know it? And what are the
00:34:48.020ways of knowing that are important to us in our different capacities and in our different
00:34:54.600ways of coming here together? And so what's created is a real deep space of solidarity
00:35:01.140and inquiry into how to use different tools that might be available to us, how to rip apart tools
00:35:08.340that feel violent and intrusive and reframe them or reshape them into something that has a more
00:35:15.480liberatory energy to it. And so this is a space of really active, creative engagement. There's
00:35:22.680a wonderful book called Decolonizing Methodologies, which is about research in Indigenous communities
00:35:30.000led by Indigenous investigators. And that's a very inspiring book. And then there's the work of
00:35:36.300Tiny Garcia Poverty Scholarship. So she wrote this book, Poor People-Led Theory, Art,
00:35:42.060Words and Tears Across Mama Earth. And that book is also very inspiring for seeing what are ways
00:35:48.760we can really partner and be in service and accompany groups who are historically struggling
00:35:57.080to uplift, help uplift them in their struggles, help participate in moving the needle on the
00:36:04.400things that they need, that they identify. And so, you know, I have trouble in the health
00:36:09.640disparity space because it feels that it becomes a morbid fascination in how our bodies are being
00:36:17.320violated by the structures that are crushing them. And I'm not interested in that morbid
00:36:24.200voyeurism. I'm interested in, you know, radically redistributing power and resources.
00:36:29.780And so any way I can use my positionality to do that, I will.
00:36:39.900We've been talking about these darker areas, and I'd like to bring in some light specifically to the importance of building community-based medicine as an antidote to structural violence.
00:36:52.880How do you define community medicine, and what does it look like in terms of practices and relationship?
00:36:58.580I think it depends on the community, but it's definitely medicine that is coming up organically in a community, requested by a community, developed by a community, put together with resources by reaching across to people who might be adjacent to that community.
00:37:16.720But I think it's medicine that is derived through those relationships rather than something like a doctor or a nurse comes and administers.
00:37:26.140And it's the medicine of relating and relating in a different way.
00:37:30.680And so I think that relationships, those webs of relationships that we can reestablish and reattach
00:37:38.960have a much more profound healing impact than any imposed structure that a health system brings to
00:37:46.820your town. So I think that doctors and nurses and health workers can be extremely effective and
00:37:52.560helpful, but they should really be in service of the agenda that a community is setting and not
00:37:57.200showing up with their own agenda. And so that really is like a, you know, it's a, it's a bottom
00:38:01.680up philosophy of driving health change. And, and I think that different communities know what they
00:38:09.720need. They really know what they need. And so our job is to show up and be present and listen,
00:38:16.880and then work together in that space of the imagination to create what needs to happen,
00:38:24.040to create new models, to create new alliances and partnerships, and to bring voices to the
00:38:31.100table that haven't been a part of the dialogue around health that really should be. And so,
00:38:35.840you know, to be as wide in our net of what wellness and health really means.
00:38:39.900I love hearing that. I just had an interview with Dr. Kyle White yesterday, and we were speaking
00:38:46.300about the necessity of trust building and relationship building and consent building
00:38:52.000and transparency. And just many times when outsiders come in, even with good intentions,
00:38:59.900it can really disrupt a community. And the relationship building takes a lot longer.
00:39:05.080And I think that's why people opt out of wanting to do that when they think they have a good idea
00:39:10.060or they think they know what to do because they just want to implement their idea rather than
00:39:14.820taking the time to actually build trust, to find out what will be best for the people on the ground.
00:39:21.260Right. I mean, it's a very like Christian colonial missionary posture is to show up and try to save
00:39:28.380people. And that's what's happening right now in the climate space, which I find kind of like
00:39:33.560bittersweet and sad and scary. It's that, you know, we're here at the precipice of human existence
00:39:40.880being threatened by climate catastrophe as the end expression of the colonial project.
00:39:49.000So if you go around the world and conquer everybody who knows how to live on their lands
00:39:54.840in a balanced, ecological, sustainable way, and then impose structures, different religion,
00:40:01.920different structures, different industries on those lands that can then extract the
00:40:08.300resources from those lands. You can't live in balance. It's not balanced. It's a highly
00:40:13.860imbalanced system. And so we are here precisely because of European colonization. This is
00:40:19.960the end expression of the colonial project is climate collapse. The end expression of imperialism
00:40:25.920is climate change. And so the people who are positing the solutions right now as they're
00:40:32.260gathered in Europe, in Madrid, they're European. They're largely the global north. And it's,
00:40:39.280you know, it's striking to me to think that a system of thought that would lead us here would
00:40:44.160never be the one to actually solve the problem because the problem is a system of thought.
00:40:49.160And so how do we empower those people who knew how to be on this in their places to really seize
00:40:58.440the agenda of how we are together here on this earth because clearly this way hasn't worked
00:41:04.040it doesn't work it drives illness on every part of our on the planet and our bodies in between us
00:41:11.620and so we need to be hearing from those voices that are already speaking they've been speaking
00:41:17.700for 600 years about how to do this differently and so i really follow those voices and i i'm
00:43:55.220And it's a way that I can express some of the heavy and hard things I see when I'm sitting in the hospital with patients witnessing the things that I witness and turn it into something hopeful and heartful and healing.
00:44:11.700And so music has this powerful alchemy that way to shift our nervous system's vibration, to resonate in our bodies, to move our bodies, to elevate our perspectives, and to make us feel joy.
00:44:28.580And so I think ultimately, even though we're talking about these really heavy things, because they are heavy, underneath the challenges and kind of pushing the agendas is joy, is a desire to see people thrive, a recognition of what that looks like when people are in harmony,
00:44:49.500when people are harmonizing with their environment and other beings in their environment,
00:44:55.120what that looks and feels like and tastes like, that beauty, that joy, that power.
00:45:00.100So that to me is really, you know, inspiring.
00:45:04.060And I married a farmer for that reason, an amazing man who's a beautiful farmer.
00:45:09.320And the way he dances with the earth and the plants, it's just beautiful.
00:45:15.440And I can see his joy in how he tends the earth.
00:45:19.500And so that really is the way that music heals me.
00:45:25.100Thank you, Rupa, for sharing some of those personal pieces.
00:45:29.160And yeah, I think that the revolution needs the healing of joy.
00:45:35.140What's happening right now and what has been happening is heavy and devastating.
00:45:41.640And I was with a dear mentor, Joanna Macy, and she was at Cougar Mountain for summer solstice.
00:45:47.280And we were sitting around the campfire and she was speaking a poem. And I don't want to botch this, but I probably will. So don't quote me on this one. But it was something like, will there be singing in the end times? Yes, there will be singing about the end times or something like that.
00:46:08.640Will there be singing when the dark times come? You know, that kind of, yeah, that type of message. And I thought that was so beautiful. And I really do feel that finding joy and community is necessary for our survival.
00:46:23.800so yeah but um speaking of survival i i do want to bring up a topic that i know you're familiar
00:46:31.460with that is of climate health justice and surprisingly this is something that for the
00:46:37.120wild has yet to explicitly discuss so i wonder if you could share more about the urgency of this
00:46:43.360realm and what it means to work in the pursuit of climate health justice what does this mean
00:46:49.140in terms of protecting and repairing our water, air, and soil?
00:46:55.860So the people who have been hit first, worst, and hardest by climate change already
00:47:03.860are the same people who have been oppressed through colonization.1.00
00:47:10.000So the black, brown, poor, indigenous around the world, and it's already happening.1.00
00:47:17.700And if you think of climate change, for native Californians here, the climate has been changing since, you know, the 1700s, since the Spanish arrival.0.99
00:47:29.280When native people were taken off their lands and the soil was degraded through grazing, the grasses changed from perennial grasses to annual grasses.
00:47:44.380The waterways were rerouted for this new agriculture. Spain became Mexico, became California, the gold rush, the bounty days, the wholesale genocide of California native people. There's been climate change for a couple hundred years. And now it has accelerated.0.73
00:48:02.700And why I call that also climate change is because, you know, they set up a net basically at the mouth of the Sacramento Delta and just captured all the salmon and canned it.
00:48:13.900And within like five years, the salmon population was decimated in the early 1900s.
00:48:20.780With the loss of the salmon, the bear didn't have that phosphorus to eat and then to send out into our forests.
00:48:27.680And so you lost this natural phosphorus pump that brought all these nutrients in from the ocean up into our deltas, out into our forests.
00:48:36.440And then the grizzly bears died or were killed.
00:48:39.800And then the berries, the highway of berries that was running through California were gone.
00:48:47.620So we lost all this very complex interplay of food systems and then microbial systems and soil microbial systems that drove an incredibly stable system here in California for over 30,000 years.
00:49:05.200And so within 200 years, you can't drink the water.
00:49:14.940And, you know, young people have their colons cut out at incredible rates with inflammatory bowel disease.
00:49:21.940People are developing diabetes, they're depressed, they're suicidal.
00:49:25.140And all of these things are connected.
00:49:28.400And so you can really look, you know, sometimes people have a hard time conceptualizing climate justice.
00:49:33.460You can just look at environmental justice and racial justice and justice for indigenous people.
00:49:40.720So when someone says, well, how do I get involved in climate justice?0.90
00:49:44.240You go, show up the next time a black person is shot by the police.0.99
00:49:48.100Show up and shut down that city hall.0.99
00:49:50.200Because that violence towards that black person is the same violence that removed the indigenous people from this land.0.98
00:49:55.580And those people who were on this land knew how to run this land, knew how to be on this land.0.79
00:50:00.240And so if we're not connecting those things, we're missing the whole point.0.56
00:50:05.660And it's shocking to me that you'll see throngs of white people show up for the environmental movement. None of them show up when someone's shot by the police. None of them showed up for Jamaica, who was just shot by SFPD like two weekends ago in San Francisco, who's sitting in the ICU on his last breath, 24-year-old.
00:50:24.860And so that to me shows that people are not making the necessary connections they need to make. They're not understanding actually how we got here. So once white folks are able to understand that the violent systems of white supremacy, which are actually recreated in the environmental movement, which are recreated in our movements for justice, need to be seriously held to task and shifted so that that power structure,
00:50:50.780So that people understand you put your power behind anything that is damaging and degrading the people, the voiceless, whether that's the water, that's the young black man shot by the police, the indigenous people that are being pushed off their lands, the people who can't speak up when there's like a toxic pollutant, you know, in Richmond or, you know, the refineries or, you know, here in East Oakland.
00:51:16.000but people don't make those connections. They're out there now to save the world without saving
00:51:20.220their own neighborhoods, which is, you know, short-sighted and kind of fits with that whole
00:51:24.840savior complex that brought us here in the first place. And so how do we awaken our great white0.88
00:51:31.160sleeping friends who are committed to justice without actually showing up? So I would love to0.61
00:51:39.580see them shut down, you know, City Hall the next time someone gets shot. And then I would say,
00:51:43.880now we're ready for the climate justice movement. Yes. I love those direct, tangible asks.
00:51:50.400Thank you for planting those seeds in our imagination.
00:51:54.040Yeah. So I emailed the woman who organizes the San Francisco Women's March. And she said,
00:51:59.280Rupak, will you please bring your organization to the march this January? Or I can't remember
00:52:05.020March, whenever it was. And I said, you know, I have yet to see, you know, women in their pussy1.00
00:52:11.240hats showing up to city hall when someone shot my police. When I see that, I'm sure I can mobilize0.99
00:52:18.120all our people to show up for the women's march, but I don't see that. And I haven't seen that.
00:52:22.960And I still haven't seen that. And so what can be alienating is when there's this call
00:52:30.720that we all need to get behind. We do all need to get behind the climate movement,
00:52:35.500But to fail to understand that that movement is the same movement as fighting police terror, that's sort of the piece that needs to be connected.
00:52:44.740I'd be remiss if we didn't speak about gentrification and the health crisis, which is something that I think is not talked about nearly enough.
00:52:53.900But I know that this is an issue that Do No Harm Coalition is tackling, is this gentrification as a public health crisis.
00:53:02.000So as someone who has experienced the gentrification of the Bay firsthand, how is displacement linked to community health outside the obvious impacts of houselessness, et cetera?
00:53:14.640So when an area is gentrified, let's say like the Mission District of San Francisco, there are whole economic ecosystems that have developed stably over 50 years that become degraded.
00:53:30.060Um, so for example, young Latino kids going through the mission might not get a, a loan
00:53:36.620for going to college, a traditional loan or financial aid from a school or from a bank