00:00:33.220I remember the first time I visited Bend, Oregon, I was just completely enraptured by
00:00:38.740this place nestled between high desert plains and swaths of forest amidst the Cascade Range.
00:00:45.340Bend is home to incredible autumn colors of aspen, soft purple, lupine-filled springs,
00:00:51.500and strong riparian habitat that nourishes native sockeye.
00:00:55.320Of course, these abundant lands are almost always vulnerable to exploitative tourism, and Bend, Oregon takes this seriously, which is why Bend is a proud member of Pledge for the Wild, a group of mountain towns that support responsible tourism through the preservation of land.
00:01:12.400For the Wild wants to remind our listeners that enjoying nature through outdoor recreation and exploration requires responsibility.
00:01:19.080If you're going to travel and explore outdoor places, we hope you look into towns that are supporting their local economy, respecting the land, and caring for their service and industry workers.
00:01:30.020If you're in the area, consider supporting and visiting one of my favorite destinations, Bend, Oregon, and help protect the land by giving back at PledgeWildBend.com.
00:01:41.440Again, learn more at PledgeWildBend.com.
00:01:44.980Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today you will be hearing a conversation
00:01:53.600with Jade Begay and Julian Brave Noisecat recorded at the Bioneers Conference. Jade Begay is a
00:02:00.940filmmaker, communications strategist, impact producer, and climate justice activist. Jade's0.91
00:02:07.760work explores indigenous futurism, inclusion, and representation in the media landscape.
00:02:13.580Jade has partnered with organizations like Resource Media, United Nations Universal Access Project, 350.org, Indigenous Environmental Network, Sierra Club, Bioneers, Indigenous Climate Action, the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network,
00:02:30.980allied media projects, and tribal nations from the Arctic to the Amazon to create content,
00:02:36.820develop strategies, and storytelling campaigns to mobilize and create more engagement around
00:02:41.940these urgent, complex, and sensitive issues of our time. Jade is also the creative director at
00:02:47.980NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led organization that builds Indigenous power through decolonizing
00:02:54.400the world of philanthropy and creates direct funding opportunities for Indigenous and Native
00:02:59.120communities. Julian Brave Noisecat is director of Green New Deal Strategy at Data for Progress,
00:03:06.120a think tank, and narrative change director with the Natural History Museum. He is a correspondent
00:03:12.800for Real America with Jorge Ramos and contributing editor for Canadian Geographic. His writing has
00:03:20.260appeared in The Guardian, The Nation, The Paris Review, and many other publications.
00:03:25.220ayana here from for the wild we are live at bioneers 2019 with some pretty lovely folks
00:03:37.080one of my very besties jade begay who is joining us today and julian brave noise cat and i think
00:03:48.180because we're here sitting next to these uh seabirds on this pond that we'll just jump right
00:03:53.320into it. Let's jump into the Green New Deal first to orient ourselves. And I want to hear both of
00:03:58.540your critiques, your interest in it, and how you think it can shift our current predicament.0.80
00:04:10.100So I guess I'll just back up and just explain what the Green New Deal is. The Green New Deal
00:04:14.780is a progressive climate platform that aims to take on the twin crises of climate change
00:04:25.520and inequality in tandem. It has been crystallized most firmly in the form of a
00:04:33.580resolution that was introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey
00:04:39.760back in february and its sort of broader policy planks are still being written so i work at a
00:04:48.260think tank called data for progress and we put out a blueprint for a green new deal over a year ago
00:04:53.540in september 2018 and we're still working with a broad array of movement actors and experts and
00:05:01.280politicians, to sort of develop what these sort of really wide array of legislative actions could
00:05:10.400be under a Green New Deal. Let's talk about those legislative actions a little bit more.
00:05:16.020Can you break that down for us? It's hard to break down. So I guess there's like
00:05:22.940a lot of different sectors in the economy that contribute to emissions. And if we are serious
00:05:30.340about decarbonizing on the timeline set forward by the IPCC,
00:05:36.100which one of the big, I think it's important for people to understand
00:05:39.120that one of the big things that happened is that last October,
00:05:43.000the UN put forward its 1.5 degrees Celsius report,
00:05:47.060which if we recall, the Paris Agreement was a 2 degrees Celsius agreement.
00:05:52.060So one of the things that happened is that people saw that report,
00:05:54.980saw what the projections were scientifically about where we're headed,
00:05:58.300and the difference between a 1.5 and a 2 degrees celsius world and everybody started actually to
00:06:04.760revise their sort of policy positions about the the speed at which we need to decarbonize in order
00:06:12.820to avoid the 2 degrees celsius or sorry to to try to like hit the 1.5 degrees celsius target so one
00:06:21.440of the things that really actually happened is that like the goalposts shifted towards more
00:06:25.560ambition and that in a lot of ways is sort of the political and like expert context in which
00:06:37.960the green new deal arrived and you know in order to you know meet the the ipcc report on 1.5 degrees
00:06:46.820celsius said that we need to basically cut emissions in half by 2030 which is how you get
00:06:53.360I think a lot of people will have recalled the we have 12 years sort of line that a lot of people are putting forward.
00:07:43.180and our entire urban planning and the way in which we've built cities
00:07:48.640and entire economies and regions is rooted in highways and automobile infrastructure.
00:07:56.260So that's going to be a significant challenge.
00:07:58.360Those two in combination, actually, it's worth adding that if we do switch to electric vehicles,
00:08:05.580not only are we going to have to decarbonize the existing power sector that we have,
00:08:09.360but you also have to add all of the capacity that will be required to charge electric vehicles.
00:08:16.720So in essence, not only do you have to reach like 100% clean energy, you actually also
00:08:23.660have to grow the amount of energy that you're producing because everybody's going to be
00:08:26.840plugging their car into the grid to get, you know, energy to drive to work or whatever.
00:08:33.380So that's going to be an enormous task.
00:08:35.660In addition, we have to decarbonize or wring emissions out of the agricultural sector,
00:08:41.200The way in which we heat and put appliances into buildings, we're going to have to change that because a lot of that is built around natural gas.
00:08:51.640So we're going to have to basically electrify everything, buildings, housing.
00:08:56.740And there's also a lot of different interventions that we're going to have to make with regards to manufacturing and industry.
00:09:03.480So there are really key industrial processes that are carbon intensive.
00:09:09.820So the production of concrete, the production of steel, like a lot of these different sort of really bedrock manufacturing processes need to change.
00:09:20.720And then there's also like broader things that knit all that together, like land use planning, you know, conservation of existing sort of carbon sinks and like wildlife areas and all that sort of stuff that we're going to need to maintain and potentially even grow to, you know, get all that carbon out of the atmosphere.
00:09:36.740So when you really sort of look at the whole elephant, which I think is what the Green New Deal pushes us to do, the scale of the task and the number and permutations of things that have to change are quite remarkable.
00:09:50.960And of course, it's important to keep in mind also that even if we did enact a Green New Deal next year or 2021, it's not like you get to reverse climate change.
00:10:00.900It's not like you reverse warming or it stops, right?
00:10:02.940there's already feedback mechanisms and emissions and carbon in the atmosphere that would continue
00:10:09.580to heat the planet for the next coming decades and years. And so it is really a pretty challenging
00:10:16.080context. But I think one of the points of hope that the Green New Deal points to is that when
00:10:21.240we do all of these interventions into how we make things, into the infrastructure, into, you know,
00:10:27.860clean energy, that we can produce a lot of jobs and actually sort of achieve a more just and
00:10:33.760equitable democracy. This is sort of the notion of a just transition. So on the one hand, we have
00:10:39.160a lot of work to do, but actually if we do that work in a good way, in a fair way, in an equitable
00:10:44.960way, in a democratic way, it could actually produce a lot of good as well. One thing that
00:10:51.840sends a maybe a red flag is the right word is this idea of an entirely new infrastructure setup
00:11:01.920because to transition us into this green new deal there seems to be a lot of resources to
00:11:11.560transition everything and a lot of resources in connecting the infrastructure of a new energy
00:11:18.280program like I set up solar panels in an off the grid little cabin that I do the podcast out of
00:11:25.060usually and just seeing what it took to get water to my cabin seeing what it took to actually set
00:11:30.320up a very small solar system the amount of resources that takes is actually quite unbelievable
00:11:36.320and so I want to hear from you Jade some of the things that we need to really understand
00:11:43.600And as this bird understands, they're really, you know, calling us right now into this conversation is let's talk about the side that isn't so flashy about the Green New Deal.
00:11:58.300I want to hear your thoughts on just the immense amount of resource extraction that will have to happen in order to transition us into a different type of way of using energy.
00:12:09.020and then also you know julian brought up the narrative of the 12 years and i wonder okay
00:12:17.020and it's funny and yeah i wonder how i wonder how this urgent narrative is playing into how
00:12:29.900we're setting up systems because when we feel like we only have a decade left as this bird
00:12:35.940clearly knows then what okay I don't want to throw anything at you bird because I respect you I really
00:12:48.760So the question is, let's talk about the other side of this infrastructure debacle
00:13:07.880and how the narrative of 12 years and that urgency might be shifting the way that we go about it.
00:13:16.120Okay, we're going to friendly ask this bird to go party somewhere else.
00:24:48.620How do we wrestle with somebody who's still going to live in a sacrifice zone?
00:24:52.320There's this part of me that goes, are we still doing the same thing where some people will get the just transition and other people will live in the sacrifice zones so that some people can have renewables?
00:25:02.580I mean, that's a really good question.
00:25:04.780It's a huge question. I wish I could tell you that there would not need to be any more mining, that we would find ways to build all the things without it going through someone's backyard or community or, you know, sacred site.
00:25:23.640But I also know that that's not true. And I think that, if anything, from my perspective, the reality that the decisions we make in policy and as a society about who benefits, who are the winners and losers of different policies, is always a relevant question.
00:25:45.520who has health care who does not have health care where do we put where are police stationed where
00:25:52.440are they not stationed where do we build military installations and where we don't if anything the
00:25:59.360fact that those are relevant questions i think that that makes the conversation about you know
00:26:05.540frontline communities environmental justice communities indigenous sovereignty worker power
00:26:11.440equity justice even more pressing because those decisions and who has power and representation
00:26:20.060and who doesn't are going to remain increasingly important in a society that is trying to
00:26:27.480transition on the one hand to clean and renewable energy to transform a lot of the ways in which we
00:26:32.940do things and on the other hand is going to face the constraints and impacts of and harm i should
00:26:40.380just like say it straightforwardly of warming and those include of course and we've seen this
00:26:46.460already in in europe and elsewhere the fact that unfortunately you know climate induced migration
00:26:53.220is often accompanied by a rise in xenophobia and hate and that we're going to need to figure out
00:26:59.300ways that you know we justly bring in new people to societies that are already primed for that kind
00:27:05.980of reaction and backlash. The fact that conflict over resources is going to become an increasingly
00:27:12.440common thing and is already happening in many regions of the world. The fact that military
00:27:18.780conflict is going to become much more important. The fact that we're going to have to relocate
00:27:23.500entire cities and the way in which we do that sort of, you know, retreat from the shoreline
00:27:29.500is could either be, you know, more orderly or it could be more like Mad Max.
00:27:33.260you know those are all really really relevant questions and I think and this is where like
00:27:42.800media and structure and all those sorts of things come into play because who is at the table when
00:27:49.420we're discussing these sort of problems who has the ear of lawmakers and people in power and who
00:27:55.420is in power when those things happen is going to make an enormous enormous difference and we've
00:28:00.380seen that you know throughout history of course yeah you actually took the words out of my mouth
00:28:05.860I was gonna say yeah who's at the table and I agree my work is really involved in narrative
00:28:12.940change work I do a lot of storytelling work and really the mission or the goal with that work is
00:28:23.420to stop erasure and yeah really bring my folks indigenous people communities to these tables
00:28:34.940and so that's yeah that's kind of where I see my role fitting into this is by amplifying those
00:28:42.080voices amplifying our stories and holding like the IPC accountable when they say things like
00:28:48.500indigenous knowledge and wisdom is critical for how we navigate all of this that there's
00:28:55.840accountability there and we really mean it and we put it into policies and we put it into
00:29:01.060even the conversations we have at conferences when we know like there's resources here to be
00:29:07.080given and shared and so yeah again just I think it Julian's right that it just depends on
00:29:14.680how we're deconstructing power systems and doing that institutionally systemically so that as we
00:29:24.520continue to figure how we deal with all of the changes that we'll be seeing that there's
00:29:32.000really important voices to say like this is not going to work for us and how can we
00:29:38.500create some balance in this quote-unquote solution i would like to add i guess that there's like
00:29:45.460this has kind of been a little downer or like realism conversation but there are also
00:29:49.180sort of win-win in my view sort of scenarios here like there are there are some places where we get
00:29:55.640to both empower the the exact communities that we want to be empowered and fight climate change
00:30:03.060together and that there won't actually be necessarily like a clear zero-sum winner
00:30:07.740loser type scenario. And in large part, that actually is coming out of the fact that Indigenous0.99
00:30:12.900peoples have played, I would say, a disproportionately significant role in driving the climate
00:30:19.140conversation over the last 10, 20 years, maybe even more. I mean, the extent to which Indigenous
00:30:25.500movements have been fighting pipelines, have been calling attention more recently to the burning of
00:30:32.160the Amazon, you know, all of these sorts of things, we, you know, might only be a small portion of
00:30:37.320the overall population but i'd say that actually in the ways in which we've been engaged on this
00:30:42.820we've been a sort of leading voice a leading community and i think that's really important
00:30:48.020the examples where we might actually be able to do you know do all things for all people
00:30:52.720are i think most notably with uh to jade's point about indigenous knowledge you know there are a
00:30:59.060lot of places in the world that are going to need to be protected and conserved as carbon sinks is
00:31:04.800sort of the ugly term we use I think like more precisely just as like places that need to remain
00:31:12.080you know ecologically intact to absorb carbon to maintain ecosystems to do all that sort of work
00:31:19.060and already you know indigenous nations indigenous communities indigenous sovereignty
00:31:24.300indigenous rights are the mechanism through which you are actually going to be able to do that and
00:31:29.420people already are doing it whether that be first nations in the great bear rainforest in Canada
00:31:34.680or, you know, indigenous communities in the Amazon
00:31:37.540or, you know, many different people throughout the world.
00:32:28.480on understanding what Indigenous rights mean.
00:32:31.880I think because of just hundreds of years of erasure, there's a really big gap in just the average person's understanding of what indigenous rights mean for us.
00:32:47.660I think it's fair to say that people, even our own people, don't understand treaties and whether they're helpful or not.
00:32:54.980And so I think there's still just a lot of education that needs to happen.
00:32:58.340And that's the work that I'm really excited about doing and doing with NDN and our partners like Illuminative,
00:33:05.680bringing this knowledge, this research, this education that most American children and people were not given,
00:33:15.120giving that to them now so that we can have these bigger conversations about how indigenous rights play a role in climate justice.
00:33:24.980In the center of heaven, floating in space, spinning in circles, the hunter and the chased,
00:37:16.520They're challenges in getting to this place where we can really honor
00:37:20.540what sovereignty, what self-determination, what indigenous rights mean.
00:37:24.980I just want to build on what Jade just said because I think it's so true.
00:37:28.420And I've been a little bit guilty of producing some of the propaganda
00:37:31.820that leads to this viewpoint, but, you know,
00:37:35.040there are lots of different types of stereotypes about indigenous peoples.
00:37:39.160You know, some of the more problematic ones are about our people being,
00:37:43.580you know quote-unquote savages or barbarians but there's also you know an equally deep
00:37:50.640history of outsiders people like you know the French philosopher Rousseau viewing us as like
00:37:58.480sort of quote-unquote noble savages right and one of the sort of related stereotypes around that is
00:38:04.500that like indigenous peoples are like the first environmentalists or the first conservationists
00:38:09.280And while there is obviously a great deal of truth to the fact that our knowledge systems, our philosophies, our cosmologies, our economies were rooted in direct relationships with the land, with the water, because they had to be, you know,
00:38:26.840i think that that idea can get taken to unhelpful extremes wherein it becomes in another way still
00:38:35.300difficult to actually see native people as people and we become sort of this like fetishized
00:38:41.380caricature of you know like the avatars in like in that yeah yeah and um you know i mean i grew
00:38:50.960up in the bay area and there's obviously a fair amount of fair amount of that kind of thinking
00:38:54.340that happens in the Bay Area. And it's not completely unhelpful, because it can be a pathway
00:38:59.000for people to get more interested in our cultures and to learn more, and to turn to us more, which
00:39:04.500I think then will help them see us more as full and honestly often complicated people. But, you
00:39:11.600know, I think that as an endpoint is not where we want to be. And I think this is where culture and
00:39:18.140media and literature and film, you know, all these ways in which you have to see people not
00:39:25.780as two-dimensional signifiers, but as three-dimensional real life beings can be really
00:39:32.060helpful. So for example, you know, I grew up in Oakland. Last year, Tommy Orange wrote a
00:39:36.440Pirzo Pride's finalist book about urban Native people in Oakland, New York Times bestseller,
00:39:43.220seller a really remarkable book and pretty much none of it had anything to do with and he even
00:39:50.660has a line in a very memorable sort of passage where he talks about you know how for him like
00:39:56.040his relationship to place and land as a native person had very little to do with mountains and
00:40:02.500streams and wildlife and ancient teachings and instead had a lot more to do with you know city
00:40:07.940blocks and the BART and that sort of rhythm of of life and place and I think that you know that kind
00:40:14.020of uh conversation and realization was really helpful for people because actually like the
00:40:19.140majority of native people live in cities and people probably don't really realize or or know
00:40:23.840that so what's your thoughts on on this I don't know this might be straying from the original
00:40:29.360question but I think that point just underscores something else that's really that's going to be
00:40:35.240really important to unpack and dissect and it makes things all the more complex but yeah like
00:40:44.440native peoples aren't like just rural peoples they're urban and they live in the burbs and so
00:40:51.600I think there's just even for ourselves you know in designing yeah what what is just transition
00:40:59.520look for our own communities like we have to be thinking on all those all those levels of rural
00:41:05.840urban in between and it's complex we ourselves are dealing with a lot of internal stuff around
00:41:14.240our identities and the complexities there so it's yeah i think it's just all relevant
00:41:20.240to the conversation just because yeah we're all seeing these changes together and experiencing
00:41:26.560them and um there's yeah there's just when you say like communities need to come together and
00:41:33.560work for you know this just transition together like that it's so it's so complicated and i i just
00:41:41.120you know want to push back on this idea that all native peoples are just like out there
00:41:47.960building amazing solutions like we are you know there's so much complex stuff within within our
00:41:55.020own tribal nations within you know we're trying to get in some cases trying to decolonize our
00:42:01.460own tribal governments because they're often sometimes not on our sides not on the side of
00:42:06.300you know whatever climate justice approach or strategy there is there's some tribes that are
00:42:12.260way backwards so there's just a lot of politics there and I yeah I'm like I said I think I might
00:42:18.500be straying off in an in a new direction um and adding more complexity to the conversation but
00:42:25.240that's it's it's there and it's real yeah i mean i just want to say that i guess like humans are
00:42:30.120complicated and like you know people who survived a genocide are just as complicated as as anyone
00:42:37.540else and i think that that becomes especially relevant in a political and organizing kind of
00:42:48.320context because you know to effectively organize people to inspire people to reach people I think
00:42:55.600you have to meet them where they're at and you know I think that one of the mistakes that can
00:43:01.040happen in a number of different ideological and social and political and cultural contexts is
00:43:07.440that there can be you know we can preach to a choir that's not actually the singers who we think
00:43:13.460they are and i think that you know in order to i mean for example like jade and i do a lot of stuff
00:43:18.800on the internet and native people are like intensely i would say online like my dad who's
00:43:25.440just turned 60 this year is like one of the most online people i know and you know if we were like
00:43:30.920pretending that like the best way to reach them was through non-digital means or whatever i think
00:43:37.200we'd be missing a whole bunch of the community and so i think that like that kind of empirical
00:43:43.620realistic assessment of where people are at and how complicated things are is really important to
00:43:49.300actually create you know strategies and networks and relationships that are grounded in the truth
00:43:56.080yeah this is the juice that i was looking for because like i said it's really easy to sit in
00:44:01.680a 20 minute keynote and walk away being like yeah like we have the solution and we got it and people
00:44:07.180are going to do these things but then when you walk away from that and you start to really unravel
00:44:12.860what it would take and what what does a just transition actually look like and for who
00:44:17.360who's the externality and also what I'm hearing too is the people who are going to protect their
00:44:24.060land are the people who have a hell of willpower and a lot of creativity and a lot of willingness
00:44:31.020to be flexible and nimble and continue shifting tactics and strategies and yeah it's I don't like
00:44:40.300the word sad necessarily but knowing that not everybody will win even in a green new deal even
00:44:48.380in a quote just transition not everybody will win and having to take that in is I think really
00:44:58.000important for those of us especially that want to be involved want to be engaged want to be
00:45:03.040supportive to communities and earth communities human and otherwise
00:45:07.360for us to know both sides of the story because i can say that i for too long
00:45:12.720see that people who are so willing to learn get sold one side constantly and then think about
00:45:21.160all of the energy the resource of energy love money time that goes into things that are not
00:45:27.020discussed clearly i was just gonna say i think the reason my train of thought is kind of just
00:45:34.580like waxing and waning because it's a nice sunday and i'm feeling kind of mellow but um
00:45:41.300i was just gonna say the reason why i i brought up this complexity of like our communities and
00:45:48.140our identities is because just like you're saying the just transition is going to look different for
00:45:54.460every single community that's designing one. I've in the last three years have moved back to my
00:46:01.120my homelands my ancestral homelands and I'm often on the road for the work that I do but
00:46:08.840my experience in being in that place and reconnecting with that place-based knowledge has
00:46:15.620been I mean I know what I want like I so clearly know what I want in the next like five ten years
00:46:23.060and to design a just transition for myself and for my community.
00:46:28.100And I've understood how my specific skills in media and media production,
00:46:35.460media like art, can help with cultural revitalization or language preservation.
00:46:41.220And yeah, it's taking that localization to really make it real for me.
00:46:47.120And I think that's not everyone has the privilege of going back to their homelands.
00:46:51.980But I think, yeah, there's something there about going back to small community and prioritizing that as we learn to have some sort of balance in our lives during the climate crisis.
00:47:08.560Yes, I want global indigenous, like that's a futurism for sure that I like envision is just like global understanding of indigenous rights and solidarity.
00:47:18.440But when I imagine like into the future of what a just transition or climate justice looks for me, it's very specific to my community.
00:47:30.080I really loved hearing you say, questioning what a just transition is for Jade, because that's something really unique that I actually haven't heard.
00:47:40.900usually when I hear dress transition it feels really out there it doesn't feel internal and it
00:47:45.960doesn't feel like I'm hearing it what does it look like for me as a person what does it look
00:47:51.240like for my local community what does it look for my township what does it look for my state
00:47:55.680and really expanding out from the person first but the elections are really right around the
00:48:03.240corner and for those of us who are media makers are narrative producers it's important for us to
00:48:10.220think about that now because it feels like it's going to come up so quickly and it does make a
00:48:16.940difference we've seen what the last election did it makes our involvement is really important
00:48:22.700but i do think that people have become so bamboozled by the political mumbo jumbo i'll use
00:48:30.960those words as well that you know i i want to really speak to those folks in this conversation
00:48:38.320right now and be like yeah I want to kind of hear like meta view election thoughts and then maybe
00:48:43.900some specifics that you want to throw in for us whether that's state specific things whether that's
00:48:51.160certain resource extraction projects whether that's certain candidates to watch yeah I really
00:48:57.200just want to dive into this because I know you both are seeing it from a really strategic vantage
00:49:03.060point my meta view on elections is that they matter a lot and that there was for a long time
00:49:09.460i think on i identify as a lefty as a leftist i guess and i think for a long time there was an
00:49:15.520aversion to party politics and and and electoral politics as not where the primary work should be
00:49:26.740put, but I think that if anything, 2016 and then the election of, you know, a number of
00:49:33.540really strong progressives, most notably like AOC and the squad in 2018, you know, off the
00:49:41.160back of Bernie's 2016 presidential run, I think to me has really emphasized the importance
00:49:47.600of the party as a vehicle for politics and as a vehicle to organize and engage a large
00:49:55.980number of people. I think numbers at the end of the day do matter. Our ability to shape and
00:50:00.280influence policy and laws and to move resources around that do matter a lot. So yeah, I mean,
00:50:08.560I think elections matter. And then the second part of that as a journalist and someone who's
00:50:13.620involved in the media is that the people who basically are going to choose who the next
00:50:18.240president are uh as politics becomes increasingly national are the folks who book uh cable news
00:50:26.360and uh for the for the wild podcast right like it's the it's media makers who are gonna decide
00:50:35.280who the public gets to see and uh who's in the consideration set and who wins the nomination
00:50:41.180and all that sort of thing and obviously donald trump has made a career basically not really as
00:50:46.760a businessman but as a media figure first in new york and now you know someone who's been able to
00:50:52.240manipulate the news cycle around his own twitter feed and shenanigans constantly and i think that
00:50:59.700to a large extent if there is going to be someone who can effectively challenge and
00:51:04.760and beat him they will also need to be able to create a convincing identity and narrative
00:51:12.840and source of inspiration that'll really get people to show up at rallies and show up to vote
00:51:18.280and do all that sort of thing. And, you know, communications is sort of the most immediate way
00:51:23.460in which you do that. I mean, organizing obviously is really important too, but,
00:51:27.340you know, the primary way in which a lot of these campaigns will reach people is through the news.
00:51:33.600I mean, I don't have too much to add to that. It's pretty on point. I think the challenge that
00:51:40.560everyday folks like us are gonna have to work with navigate is that there's gonna be so much
00:51:48.660propaganda out there we just have to be extremely discerning about what we consume what we share
00:51:55.280especially in the world of twitter and social media julian and i constantly are communicating0.99
00:52:04.820about just yeah the shit that goes down on social media and how it's it's tomfoolery it's harmful0.96
00:52:13.780sometimes makes us take two steps back you know um it derails important narratives so i just think0.99
00:52:22.960in the lead up to the election yeah we just really gotta be on it about does this message
00:52:31.160about this candidate or that candidate really support us as like the left or as whatever you
00:52:39.920want to identify as as beating Trump or is it dividing the progressive left side because I
00:52:48.980definitely see more division going on especially when we're talking about social media and like
00:52:53.640the messages that that world is sharing with each other cheering from the the
00:53:00.100crowd as Jade punctuates her her thesis
00:53:23.640There's a cold fire, there's a crossfire
00:54:19.660well the about the divisiveness i do want to talk about this a little bit more because
00:54:36.120yeah of course there's the divisiveness between the quote-unquote left and right
00:54:40.280of course there's that type of divisiveness which i'm actually less interested in than the
00:54:45.880divisiveness that happens within the movement space for instance like the thing that's happening
00:54:52.820with Greta that I want to I want to dive into as an example not that I think the Greta thing
00:54:59.400I'm more interested to hear about your political views but I just want to take that as an example
00:55:03.580because it was so widely seen by probably so many of the people listening to this podcast right now
00:55:08.780where it's Greta came out people thought she was a hero but then what started happening was there
00:55:14.400was so much frustration around narrative that white European person was coming across the ocean0.86
00:55:22.540to the sailboat nonetheless yeah yeah exactly and and then and then coming to to colonize the
00:55:33.320thought process or whatever so there was all this this trauma and narrative frustration around that
00:55:38.660which I totally understand and at the same time then what I'm seeing on social media is all this
00:55:45.280anti-Greta rather than anti-ExxonMobil rather than anti the stuff that we are trying to fight for
00:55:52.160climate change sake so how do we balance yeah we do need to call out the narrative of Greta being
00:55:57.780the white savior and we also need to stay really focused and not get divided within the movement
00:56:03.160because we need to be really organized right now the choir needs to be tight not dispersed over
00:56:11.040things that aren't the bigger issue in the room but I also don't want to say that people shouldn't
00:56:17.140have been pissed about Greta but it's like how how many things can we be distracted by before we
00:56:22.100realize holy shit there's no more ice left but we are fighting about Greta and now it's really
00:56:27.580challenging around the divisiveness within the movement and Jade you had some amazing things to0.60
00:56:33.000say about the Greta situation I remember like you were like yeah this is weird stuff this is weird
00:56:38.440white savior stuff and people let's not get it twisted because we only have so many posts that
00:56:44.180we can look at a day and when social media is confusing us even more than we already are
00:56:49.080confused it's not helpful so um yeah what was happening was the media was um centering Greta
00:56:57.560and what ended up happening unfortunately was the internet went into up uproar about this young
00:57:06.860white kid who was taking up all the space and my feedback that week was write the media like
00:57:17.200stop getting mad on the internet like what to julian's point about how media is going to be
00:57:22.100an influencer like a huge influencer in who is elected write those publications to include
00:57:30.100more native folks more black folks whatever you know like it's we got super distracted and focused
00:57:37.880on I think it was a little identity politics I think it was also a conversation about representation0.99
00:57:42.940and inclusion but we weren't talking about climate justice and we weren't holding those who do the
00:57:49.920centering who do who put Greta in that position we're just shooting the messenger basically and
00:57:55.980that's not going to help any of us at the end of the day so I think if we want to if we want to
00:58:01.200continue to see our folks and our frontline communities represented we need to hold those
00:58:07.200the institutions the media organizations the news accountable to do that for us
00:58:13.360Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more. You know, the people who decide who's quoted in the publications, who's booked on cable news are not the speakers themselves. Usually it's the editors, the reporters, the publishers, the producers. And yeah, my thoughts on that situation are the same as Jade's.
00:58:37.480I guess I would also just say that there are healthy types of conflict, competition, and tension, and there's unhealthy kinds.
00:58:46.660So right now we're in the middle of a primary where we're going to decide who the Democratic nominee is for president.
00:58:53.500And in a lot of ways, that creates a window wherein organizers, activists, movements can pressure the candidates to be better than each other.
00:59:03.640And that's actually usually a very healthy kind of competition because it means that a lot of our demands that have been on the sort of fringe of what's politically possible are increasingly becoming embraced by, you know, broader number of leaders within the party.
00:59:18.840So, you know, Medicare for all is a very classic example of this where, you know, Bernie was the only person who was talking about the fact that, you know, the government should be providing health care to every single resident of this country.
00:59:32.240Now that is becoming an increasingly common position for candidates to stake out on on stage.
00:59:38.160And that's because they have to differentiate each other from differentiate themselves from each other and also have to like try to keep up with being, you know, as good as one another.
00:59:45.900the same thing can happen with the green new deal and has happened with the green new deal
00:59:49.040and i think that you know that that can just be repeated across a number of different issue areas
00:59:54.080and positions and that can be ultimately a good thing i think the questions here that are relevant
01:00:01.440are to go back to jade's point like who specifically should we be holding accountable
01:00:07.920like when we express our ire about something who should that ire specifically be directed
01:00:15.080towards and secondly you know how do you both hold tension in sort of community or among different
01:00:26.000you know professionals in a network or communities etc in a way that like doesn't erase the fact that
01:00:32.180there are tensions and that there for example in the space that i work there is going to need to
01:00:36.900be a significant change in terms of representation and power and resources between white environmentalists
01:00:43.860and people of color in the movement like that is something that is an ongoing process it needs to
01:00:48.720continue but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know we need to blow up the whole situation
01:00:54.940and people should stop talking to each other and working with each other and you know one group is
01:00:59.580completely off and always going to be sellouts which is not to say that there aren't people who
01:01:04.500are like super problematic and taking up space and resources but like you know these are complicated
01:01:10.920circumstances to navigate and i just wish that the thing is is that like social media like
01:01:16.700runs on very limited number of emotional responses like it's either like i'm gonna clap for this
01:01:22.820i'm gonna be angry at this or i'm gonna like laugh at it those are like really the only three
01:01:27.060emotions that happen on on the internet and the way that the algorithms and the platforms are
01:01:33.260sort of created uh i think it often can incentivize and reward more or less like
01:01:41.620adults to do behave badly to put it like pretty crudely like i think people get rewarded for
01:01:49.480being mean to each other far too often don't comment when they agree about something they0.98
01:01:55.440give it like a like and but like people comment when they disagree and there's crazy ass like0.76
01:02:03.780comment threads when people are upset and want to vent about and rant about something and so that's
01:02:10.600what the algorithms are gonna reward so then those are the things you see highlighted on
01:02:16.520and you know pop up in your feed more and more those kind of divisive conversations on the
01:02:23.160internet that are they getting anyone anywhere I don't know I just want to give you both this space
01:02:32.280to say anything that hasn't been said that feels alive in this moment whether it's about politics
01:02:37.340whether it's about digital organizing social media you know anything that we've touched on today but
01:02:42.700I just want to give you both the space to have a last thought before we close up shop I think that
01:02:48.860this is a very troubling time but it's also in some ways a very promising time I see a lot of
01:02:59.220different organizations and movements rising to the challenge of the moment and I think that
01:03:08.000you know that kind of work needs support in the form of you know volunteering in the form of
01:03:14.460donating you know all of that sort of stuff and so yeah i think that you know showing up to vote
01:03:21.880is important but also like if there's a local you know if you're a young person who's involved in
01:03:28.220the climate movement i think that like getting involved with the sunrise movement is like a
01:03:33.060smart thing to do if you you know are engaged in like black lives matter then like there's a number
01:03:38.920of different organizations like byp 100 that are doing great work wherever you are there is
01:03:44.260certainly like an indigenous community and i'm sure that they're still fighting to protect their
01:03:48.980rights and their land and their water and all that sort of stuff and figuring out ways to support
01:03:53.240them respectfully i think is really worthwhile so uh you know at the end of the day like not
01:03:59.000everyone has all the time to give you know some people just have like an hour or two to give every
01:04:02.920week but like with that hour or two that you can give to that this kind of work doing that in a
01:04:09.340strategic and thoughtful and impactful way i think it can make a big difference when a lot of people
01:04:14.640are doing that you had asked a question earlier ayana about do we know any groups that are
01:04:20.080modeling some of this this work around sovereignty around self-determination and