We’re currently witnessing a national and international uprising, demanding an end to the systemic racism that enabled the unforgivable police murder of George Floyd and many other black men and women. In support of this movement for change, we’re sharing the following series of short episodes.
Kimberlé Crenshaw on the Origins of the #SayHerName Campaign
At the Bioneers Conference in 2016, we spoke with visionary law professor and changemaker Kimberlé Crenshaw. A respected attorney, Crenshaw popularized the concept of intersectionality and was instrumental in the creation of the #SayHerName campaign to raise awareness about the many women and girls who are killed by the police.
In 2018, Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter shared a moving speech at a Bioneers Conference. Cullors is a performance artist and award-winning organizer from Los Angeles, and is one of the most effective and influential movement builders of our era. She was a key figure in the fight to force the creation of the first civilian oversight commission of the LA Sheriff’s Department, but is most widely known as one of the three original co-founders of Black Lives Matter and for her recent, best-selling book, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.
Heather McGhee on Confronting the Denial of Racism
At the Bioneers Conference in 2017, we spoke with Heather McGhee, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the organization Demos. McGhee describes how the election of Barack Obama resulted in both a racial backlash and the illusion that we were suddenly living in a post-racial society. She also shares a hopeful story that demonstrates a pathway towards healing the divisions that harm us all.
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At the Bioneers Conference in 2017, we spoke with Heather McGhee, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the organization Demos. McGhee describes how the election of Barack Obama resulted in both a racial backlash and the illusion that we were suddenly living in a post-racial society. She also shares a hopeful story that demonstrates a pathway towards healing the divisions that harm us all.
In 2018, Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter shared a moving speech at a Bioneers Conference. Cullors is a performance artist and award-winning organizer from Los Angeles, and is one of the most effective and influential movement builders of our era. She was a key figure in the fight to force the creation of the first civilian oversight commission of the LA Sheriff’s Department, but is most widely known as one of the three original co-founders of Black Lives Matter and for her recent, best-selling book, “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.”
At the Bioneers Conference in 2016, we spoke with visionary law professor and changemaker Kimberlé Crenshaw. A respected attorney, Crenshaw popularized the concept of intersectionality and was instrumental in the creation of the #SayHerName campaign to raise awareness about the many women and girls who are killed by the police.
On the journey that I’ve been on intellectually for the last decade, I started as a pessimist and have become an optimist in regards to the state of the world’s soils. The pessimistic part is that soils are degraded all around the world. We’re losing about 0.3% of our ability to feed ourselves each and every year due to degradation of the soil, the degradation of soil life – the microbes in the soil – and soil organic matter, and soil lost to erosion. 0.3% may seem like a small number; it’s probably about what we’re all getting in interest for our savings accounts. It takes a while to notice, but if you play that out over the next 100 years it adds up to 30%. We cannot afford to lose 30% of our ability to feed the world as our population increases by 50%. Those are numbers that would make Malthus proud.
That’s the problem I wrote about in Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. The book looks at the history of how societies treated their land and how that affected land would treat their descendants. Soil erosion played a role in the demise of civilizations all the way back to the earliest agricultural civilizations in the Middle East, Neolithic and Bronze Ages in Europe, Classical Greece, Rome, the southern United States, and Central America. I collated the archaeological literature, the historical literature and the modern geological literature and found that there are degraded soils in those parts of the world today. Syria and Libya are examples of places where there are Roman tax records of high harvests several thousand years ago, but where they essentially cannot feed a growing population today.
What you generally find in environmental historical textbooks is that deforestation caused erosion and degraded the land. But the real problem was the tillage that followed. It was the plow, not the axe, that degraded soils and societies around the world.
The plow is very good at controlling weeds by turning the soil over, but it also leaves the soil bare and vulnerable to erosion by wind or rain until something grows on it whether that is a weed or the next crop. The accumulated erosion adds up over time.
In the American Southeast Piedmont region – the hill country ranging from Virginia to Alabama – topsoil loss, since colonial agricultural era, ranges from 4 inches to over 10 inches. There was only about 6-12 inches of topsoil there to begin with.
David Montgomery
The early settlers and plantation owners wrote in journals telling their colleagues in Europe about how wonderful the land was for a few years, but then they had to clear more forest because they had eroded their topsoil.
If farmers in this country, in a couple hundred years, could erode virtually the entire topsoil off of a region that was one of the breadbaskets of the early American colonies, imagine what the Greeks did with 1,000 year run in Southern Greece or the Romans with the 800-year run in Central Italy. It puts into perspective the idea that accumulated soil loss could undermine civilizations.
A couple years ago the journalSustainability made the point that the soil organic matter – the soil carbon content – of many soils in North American is only about half of what it was when they were first converted from forest or prairie lands to farms. In just 100 to 200 years of farming across North America, we’ve managed to take our soil organic matter levels and drop them by 50%. These depressing trends are happening in civilizations all over the world.
In writing the Dirt book, I synthetized about 1200 studies to understand how fast the world’s top soils are eroding. Conventional farm soils around the world are eroding about a millimeter-and-a-half a year. That means it takes 20 years to lose an inch of topsoil.
How fast does nature make soil? It takes about 1,000 years, based on the global average. The USDA says 500 years. So, it takes centuries for nature to make an inch of topsoil, but we are losing it in decades. We are basically bleeding topsoil.
The loss of a millimeter a year means that you could lose topsoil on a typical hillside in just 500 to 1,000 years. The average longevity of agricultural civilizations around the world is 1,000 years, plus or minus.
The civilizations that are exceptions to this trend are those based along the Nile, the Tigress and the Euphrates, the Indus, the Brahma Putra, and the big rivers of lowland China. Why have people been able to plow for thousands of years productively in those places? Because they’re on big flood plains, and floods deposit silt and clay. Nature rebuilds the fertility year after year unless you build levies or dams.
Egypt is now the biggest user of nitrogen fertilizer in that part of the world. They used to farm for thousands of years without it, but when they built the Aswan High Dam they shut off their silt supply.
In writing Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, I struggled with these questions: Is soil restoration possible? Can we actually reverse the historical pattern of land degradation? I learned watching what my wife, Anne Biklé, did to our yard in urban Seattle. She’s a gardener who started with 1% organic matter in the soil and built it up to 10% in about 10 years. That is almost a percent a year.
When we saw that she could dramatically restore soil in less than a decade, we asked ourselves, “Could this be done at scale on operational farms?”
We found the answer by visiting farmers around the world who had done to their soil something similar to what Anne had done. They followed the principles of conservation agriculture. They did not disturb the soil by plowing. They always maintained living plants in the soil by planting cover crops, and they planted a diversity of crops whether in their cover crops or in their cash crops. Those are the common elements. Those three things are a recipe for feeding the microbial life in the soil.
Those practices define an essentially new agricultural philosophy that is contrary to what is being taught in major agronomy schools, which is full tillage, lots of agrochemicals, and specializing in one or two crops; the exact opposite of all three points.
These general principles translated to different settings around the world, but the specific practices that farmers were using were different. The farmers we visited in Ghana did not use the same practices as the farmers we visited in North Dakota. They have different climates, different soils and different crops, but they tailored those basic principles to their farms.
Dwayne Beck operatesDakota Lakes Research Farm in collaboration with South Dakota State University. By adopting no-till, cover crops and complex rotations, he was able to get his conventional farmers to reduce their use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides by more than 50%. That’s a huge change. These are not organic farmers. What happened to their yields when they reduced their agrochemical use? Their yields went up not down. This is not a conflict between the economy of farm profits and the environment. These interests start to align in the context of conservation agriculture.
I visitedKofi Boa in Ghana in equatorial West Africa. He taught the farmers in his area to go from the traditional slash and burn farming to using no-till with cover crops. They don’t use agrochemicals for the simple reason that they don’t have the money to buy them. This is why thegreen revolution did not work for subsistence farmers around the world. It’s the wrong business model for them.
Kofi teaches his people a style of agriculture that involves growing a polyculture in their fields with minimal soil disturbance [by reducing and eliminating plowing]. They cut erosion by a factor of twenty. Their corn yield tripled and their cowpea yields doubled. They got better yield returns doing conservation agriculture than they did with green revolution practices.
David Brandt from Brandt Family Farm in Ohio grows corn, wheat and soybeans for the North American commodity crop markets. He also grows a very diverse mixture of cover crops in between his cash crops.
David walked me through the economics of his operation and his neighbor’s operation. His neighbor has glyphosate-resistant weeds in his fields. He is using full tillage, 200 pounds of nitrogen per acre and two-and-a-half quarts of Roundup per acre at a total cost of $500 an acre. He is harvesting a hundred bushels an acre at $4 a bushel. He is losing $100 an acre.
On the other hand, David Brandt has been doing no-till for 44 years. He then moved into cover crops. He’s not an organic farmer, but he hardly uses any fertilizer or pesticides. He’s reduced nitrogen use to about an eighth of his previous use. He’s using a little over a third of the Roundup. As a result, he is spending less money. He made $400 an acre while his neighbors lost $100 an acre.
This is the kind of math that made me optimistic that we could actually change conventional farming into more regenerative practices. David Brandt is successful because he has built up the health of his soil by following the principles of regenerative agriculture.
Gabe Brown is adding another element to those practices by bringing livestock into the equation. His cows grazed the cover crops in the field which he then planted as his market garden for farmers’ markets. Gabe’s another one of these organic-ish farmers who’s weaned himself off of agrochemicals, and he’s done it because he doesn’t like writing checks to the fertilizer dealer. He’s figured out a better way to farm by improving his soil. There is data that seems to back up his claims that the food he grows using regenerative agricultural principles is more nutrient dense. This may not just be good for the land, it may be good for people as well.
The benefits of rebuilding healthy, fertile soil are higher farmer profits, comparable yields, less fertilizer, less pesticide, less fossil fuel use, and an increase in soil carbon and water retention with less off-site pollution.
Anne and I came up with a slogan that we hope everyone will repeat and spread around the world, “Ditch the plow, cover up, and grow diversity.” Those three principles work as a recipe for rebuilding the health of the land.
I’m hopeful that we are poised to pull off, at a global scale, what I like to call the fifth agricultural revolution to bring life back to our agricultural land. I talk about the other four inGrowing a Revolution.
If we bring soil back to life, we are taking carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it in the ground. The magnitude of what could be done with that in regards to mitigating climate change is highly debated in scientific circles, but what’s not debated is that it would be a damn good thing to do as much as possible as soon as we can.
Jane Fonda’s final Washington, D.C. Fire Drill Friday was a huge success, with a crowd that grew from the first gathering of about 40 people to several hundred activists, citizens, youth, elders, families, celebrities, and community leaders from all over the country protesting the lack of action on climate change. Thanks to Jane and her friends’ star power, the Fire Drill Fridays civil disobedience captured extensive news coverage, from Facebook and Twitter to The Washington Post. But most of our local protests don’t have this kind of media draw, so people may wonder: What difference does civil disobedience make?
At a time in this country when our social institutions are failing us, politicians are spineless, our elections are rigged, and our government has been bought by big business, people are showing up en masse to protest this corruption. Civil disobedience is on the rise, and whether or not our leaders are listening, the market is. It is not the episodic call for consumer boycotts that has the financial markets’ attention, but a fundamental shift in the material risk a company faces when it does not have the social license to operate.
Social license and social risk are the terms the financial markets use to describe the social conflicts — protests, demonstrations, boycotts, and civil disobedience — that occur when people organize to get their voices heard. Social license is what we give companies when their operations improve our welfare and the well-being of our communities. Social risk is what a company incurs when people no longer see a benefit or actually see harm in what the company does. Material risk, whether it is legal, technical, social, or environmental, means the risk is so significant it will damage profits or the financial viability of the company. Once a risk becomes material, it must be reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it must be disclosed to investors, and it sets the cost of capital. Whether you are a company or individual, the cost of capital is what you pay to use or borrow someone’s money. The ability to repay the money is what drives the interest rate. So the cost of capital should go up if you or the project is risky; less risk means lower interest.
Over the past three decades, investment practices have been shifting as more and more focus is given to companies’ impact on long-term sustainability and companies’ generation of positive social and environmental impact. This trend is called ESG investing — where environment, social impact, and governance are three pillars of analysis that are applied to companies in addition to profit. Social performance includes concerns such as equal pay, diversity, CEO pay, human rights, and community engagement. In 1998, ESG funds totaled $639 billion AUM (assets under management). By 2018, the AUM total was over $12 trillion, meaning that $1 in every $4 invested is in ESG management.
In August of 2016 I was asked by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to lead their investor engagement strategy for the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a project being developed by Energy Transfer Partners. While DAPL put social risk on the financial community’s radar, it also put the power of social media front and center in today’s civil society.
EFFECTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA: In 2013, the share of Americans who received their news on a mobile device was 54%. In 2018 it was 72%. Community organizing and networking can be seen keeping pace. In 2015, the First Nations in Canada launched protests against the large-scale extractive projects that were being conducted on their lands. At that time, their website, Idle No More, had 300,000 hits in five days. When the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe launched its protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, the tribal website had over 1.5 million hits in two weeks. This did not include hits for protest partners such as Stop Fossil Fuels, 350.org, Break Mega Banks, or the freestanding DAPL website. The power of social media is growing. It was the organizing force behind the #NoDAPL Day of Action, coordinating 500 NGOs and 300 events across all 50 states and numerous international cities including Kyoto, London, Sydney, Paris, and Marrakesh.
SOCIAL COSTS, MATERIAL LOSS: On June 23, 2017, a Yahoo Finance headline read, “Avoid Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) Stock Until This Is Resolved.” The accompanying article said: “ETP stock is down more than 60% since its 2014 highs, less because of oil’s pullback, and more because of the rhetoric associated with the Dakota Access pipeline.” First Peoples Worldwide Investor Engagement Center, a collaboration between Leeds Business School and the American Indian Law Clinic at the University of Colorado, conducted an event study to track ETP stock over the course of the protests. Not only did ETP stock lose 60% of its value, which it still has not recovered, but the event study found that ETP lost an additional $7.5 billion on the DAPL project. One investor sued and other investors with a combined worth of $1.7 trillion in AUM signed statements demanding full disclosure of social risk and social costs.
No other event in the 21st century has done more to demonstrate how social risk can become material risk than DAPL. Material ESG factors should be factored into pricing securities, and bank lending should take into account the higher probability of lower and more variable returns. ETP was not alone in its failure to recognize the social risk inherent with the DAPL project. The 17 banks that were financing DAPL lost over $4.4 billion in account closures, causing three of the banks — BNP, DNB, and ING — to pull their loans.
The kind of detailed research that was done on DAPL is not the norm. We need investors to more routinely have access to much better ESG data like the research done on DAPL. However, there is growing evidence that social risk has concreate implications for the value of companies. From the hundreds or thousands of local protests to the sites of major social conflict, the aggregate impact of social risk is becoming material:
A mining company loses between $20 and $30 million a week when its site is delayed or shut down.
In 2018 there was $25 billion in mining assets lost due to operations being tied up or shut down by community protests.
The risk portfolios for extractive and land-based companies show that 73% of company risk and delays are nontechnical, meaning community protests, boycotts that result in operational delays, or shutdowns.
Social risk is now rated the number one greatest risk to extractive companies, according to professional services firm Ernst and Young.
As we see today, when a government fails to uphold the rule of law, or inadequately regulates corporations in the first place, when benefits accrue to only a few, when people are disenfranchised from decisions that impact their lives — there is something you can do about it: Protest, protest, protest.
The following letter was written by john a. powell, director of UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute. It is reposted with permission from the Othering & Belonging Institute’s website.powell is also a member of the Bioneers Board of Directors and has spoken at the Bioneers conference numerous times.
I’m writing firstly to express my sincere condolences to the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the many others who have been killed in recent months at the hands of police and related violence, including the protesters who lost their lives over the weekend around the country demanding their voices be heard, and their grievances be addressed.
I also want to acknowledge the profound grief and trauma being experienced particularly in Black communities which, after centuries of struggle for freedom and equality, have seen the struggle move with fits and starts. Now we are in a situation where many of the country’s resources are being used to terrorize the Black community and others who would stand up for justice. With the collective trauma that the nation is facing, it is more than understandable to despair.
john a. powell
And yet, we must resist this inclination. Not only because there are glimmers of hope and cracks in the solid wall of injustice and hatred, but also because our care for the world calls on us to keep the struggle for love and humanity alive. This does not mean we do not despair, feel pain, and just get tired. But these feelings are only part of who we are and who we insist on becoming. We must acknowledge our pain and embrace hope at the same time.
It is not surprising in a country that has a long history of anti-Black racism, fear of Black bodies and a criminal justice system that does not see the humanity of Black and Brown people that there will be a continued killing of Blacks with impunity. There was some hope that if these killings could be recorded, their frequency would slow down, if not end. But this would only be true if police who murder Blacks were punished by the state. In most cases they were not.
Also: Listen to prof. powell speak on the murder of George Floyd in this podcast
Social unrest resulting from the massive inequalities experienced in Black communities, ignited almost always by state violence, has been with me my entire life. I was 20 years old at the time of the uprising in my home city of Detroit in 1967. It took place over many days, left many people dead, and was just one of the dozens of similar events that erupted in cities around the country that year prompting President Johnson to form what would be called the Kerner Commission to investigate the root causes of the unrest.
The findings of the commission—poor housing and schools, high unemployment, police violence and lack of accountability, and others—still apply today. If we just take the last point on the relationship of the police to the Black community, some of the recent events we’ve witnessed reveal something interesting on how the perpetrators understand the nature of those relationships.
In the case of Amy Cooper, the white woman who called the police on a Black man in Central Park after he asked her to leash her dog, just take note of what she did.
She threatened and then acted on the threat to call the police. She said an African American man was threatening her, which he wasn’t. She was in fact threatening him. She could only do that because of the history that we all share.
She believed she could summon the police to bring the raft of the state onto the body of a Black man. She knew that being a Black man or woman alone could expose you to racialized state violence, especially where white women are concerned. But how did she know that? Where did she learn that she had the ability to call the police, lie, and potentially have a Black man beaten, arrested, or even killed for merely asking that she follow the rules?
Black people have known for generations the danger of standing up to white people even to exercise what should be basic rights. Whites have the power of the state to protect their prerogatives no matter how small or petty. But the white community often denies this reality. Amy did not just acknowledge it, she threatened, then tried to use it.
In the case of George Floyd, how did the police know they could kill a Black man, on camera, and in such cavalier fashion as demonstrated by the posture of the officer who was suffocating his victim, and not have to answer for it?
He kneels with his knee on George’s neck for more than 8 minutes while being filmed and ignoring the pleas of George and bystanders. The witnesses and cameras are of no concern. Like Amy, he knows he can call on the state to protect him in the killing of Black bodies when a police officer is involved. He is doing his job, and Blacks are expendable.
The brutal murder of Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged down a road in Georgia is another example of this understanding. The perpetrators went more than two months without being arrested, until video surfaced revealing the shocking nature of the crime.
And in case one thinks that the solution is for Black people to stay home, just remember how the life of Breonna Taylor was cut short while she was sleeping in her house with her boyfriend. The only charge brought in that case thus far was not against the police who shot Breonna 8 times while firing 20 rounds of bullets, but against Breonna’s boyfriend who tried to protect her and himself from unannounced intruders.
What these cases reveal is that yes, police officers, but even liberal whites like Amy Cooper, understand how the relationship between institutions and different racial groups truly functions. They are cognizant of the role police play as an instrument to protect white society, and to harm Black and Brown bodies, even if that reality goes against official narratives and codes of ethics.
So, where are the glimmers of hope I mentioned earlier?
In each of those cases with the exception of Breonna’s, we witnessed subsequent actions taken against the perpetrators, contrary to how prevailing logic until now has played out. Amy lost her job and was widely censured almost immediately. The two men who killed Ahmaud Arbery were finally arrested, and their actions widely denounced, even by the right-wing governor of Georgia and many conservative officials. And perhaps most significant were the subsequent actions to the murder of George Floyd.
In that case, the four police officers involved in George’s murder were fired within a day of the killing, even before demonstrations erupted. The mayor of Minneapolis and governor of Minnesota expressed shock and demanded justice. The mayor in one of his press conferences had to fight back tears as he described what the police had done. Police chiefs and police unions, which typically form a blue shield to protect their officers from the consequences of their crimes, issued a flurry of statements denouncing those responsible for his killing. And then just four days after the killing, one of the officers was arrested and charged with murder.
We’re even witnessing similar reactions and statements of solidarity from corporations, and international figures. A number of the major tech companies have expressed disgust. The head of Target, after having a store looted, expressed support for the demonstrators. The Prime Minister of Canada spoke passionately about addressing not prejudice, or implicit bias, not even racism, but specifically anti-Black racism. While the Black community has raised its voice to say enough, their voices have been joined by other voices and other communities in many parts of the United States, and indeed the world.
The extent and expediency in which these actions were taken are unprecedented. While there remains strong anti-Black sentiments in our governments and institutions, led by the White House, there is a crack, a glimmer.
To be clear, I’m not saying this is enough. The work is far from over in the larger goal of creating a just society where institutions, including the police, serve all people. What I am saying is that fissures are beginning to appear in the system. And when cracks start to show, we have to keep on hammering.
We also have to recognize that we are in a country where anti-Black racism runs deep, and there is much suffering visited upon Black people. My family and I have been the subjects of white violence against Blacks. Sometimes the violence is physical. Sometimes it is emotional. Often it is both. And yet, there is a glimmer. We must hold on to that as well.
This requires acknowledging and welcoming all those who truly stand for a country where all people count. This may be difficult. And it is understandable if some reject this or are not quite ready. But this is how we gain power. This is how we support humanity. This is how we nurture love. This is how we build belonging.
When we experience injustices like those that the people of our country are currently responding to in the streets, we should be upset. There will be more police brutality and killing as the police and military is egged on by Trump’s call for dominance. We should protest. We should organize. We should demand that police departments across the country be held accountable when they violate the law.
But we also need to remember that policing is but a single component of the larger system of oppression so acutely felt in the Black community. That means we simultaneously need to continue to fight for housing justice, school reforms and integration, job opportunities, and healthy neighborhoods. We are not just fighting for justice in our relationship with the police. We are fighting for the full humanity of Black people.
If we get fatalistic, if we believe nothing will ever change and give up, then we’ve sealed that fate. But if we recognize this moment as an opportunity to invite new people into our movements and propel forward with unstoppable force, then we can cause that wall of injustice to crumble, and replace it with a system that works for all of us. We can build a circle of humanity where no one is outside.
This article contains the content from the 6/04/2020 Bioneers Pulse newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter straight to your inbox!
Bioneers stands in solidarity with Black communities and allies who are collectively rising up in resistance to systemic racism and state-sanctioned violence against Black lives. The unforgiveable murder of George Floyd and so many others is not evidence of a broken system as much as the direct legacy of a nation built on colonization, genocide and slavery, evidence of a system working as initially designed. It is well past time for change and it is incumbent upon us all to work to dismantle white supremacy towards a just and equitable society.
“The city I live in has been alive with resistance. People have been in the streets. Hundreds have been arrested. And thousands now have faced tear gas, rubber bullets, and police violence while protesting.”
These are the words of activist Arielle Klagsbrun, not in response to the protests taking place in recent weeks, but in response to the Ferguson protests that took place nearly six years ago. Despite the relentless efforts of activists and organizers within the movement to dismantle systemic racism, it is all too clear that progress toward racial justice has been painfully slow at the cost of innocent human lives.
Thousands of individuals and organizations have been pouring their hearts and souls into this work for so long. As professor, scholar (and Bioneers board member) john a. powell suggests in a recent essay for the Othering and Belonging Institute, “…fissures are beginning to appear in the system. And when cracks start to show, we have to keep on hammering.”
This week, we lift up and highlight voices within our community for clarity and guidance as we seek to tear down the systems that have allowed — and encouraged — systemic racism and violence to persist.
Black Lives Matter Co-Founder: Protests Are the Result of “Police Terror with No Accountability”
“We have created a system that overrelies on law enforcement and prioritizes their money, their budget, their needs over everything else,” says Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter and Reform L.A. Jails.
“I think these protests are massive in a way that we haven’t seen them in years, for a number of reasons. Number one, we’ve had to live under four years of a Trump regime that has completely devastated communities financially, spiritually, emotionally. And number two, we have dealt with years of police brutality, police violence and police terror, with no accountability whatsoever. And this generation is tired. Enough is enough.”
We’re in a Moment of Collective Trauma. But There are Glimmers of Hope.
In this recent essay, professor john a. powell acknowledges “the profound grief and trauma being experienced particularly in Black communities which, after centuries of struggle for freedom and equality, have seen the struggle move with fits and starts.”
But he says we must acknowledge our pain and embrace our hope at the same time, and let our care for the world guide us to create a better one together.
Backlash Moment: Converging at the Crossroads of Identity and Justice | Kimberlé Crenshaw
When Donald Trump rode a wave of white anxiety into the White House, it was part of a backlash to the Obama presidency, one that revealed an increasingly explicit white nationalism and revived an overtly exclusionary agenda: roll back rights and protections for people of color, immigrants, Muslims, women, and gay and transgender people. Then came the backlash to the backlash: a rapidly spreading awakening that all these peoples, movements and struggles are actually connected in one story. Visionary law professor and change-maker Kimberlé Crenshaw shows that it’s only at the crossroads of our many identities that will we will find a story big enough to embrace the diversity and complexity of our globalized 21st century world.
Arielle Klagsbrun – Open Letter from Ferguson Protestors and Allies | Bioneers
In this video from the Bioneers archive, a leader of the “Take Back Saint Louis” campaign, which seeks to remove tax incentives to corporations profiting from climate change, reads “An American Horror Story — Open Letter from Ferguson Protestors and Allies.” Unfortunately, this message still resonates today.
As Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) share their lived experiences of oppression and discrimination — as well as their wisdom for moving forward to dismantle the systems that perpetuate it — the value of listening to these voices right now cannot be overstated. Here are a few of so many inspiring BIPOC organizers and leaders that you should be paying attention to.
Patrisse Cullors, best known for being a co-founding partner of the Black Lives Matter movement, also wrote the New York Times best-selling book, “When They Call You a Terrorist.”
Kimberlé Crenshaw is the executive director of the African American Policy forum and the host of their podcast, Intersectionality Matters!
The Audre Lorde Project is a community organizing center for LGBT and gender non-conforming people of color.
Code Switch is an NPR podcast hosted by a multi-racial, multi-generational team of journalists. Their episodes span overlapping themes of race, ethnicity and culture, how they play out in our lives and communities, and how all of this is shifting.
PolicyLink is a national research and action institute advancing racial and economic equity by Lifting Up What Works®.
Dr. Rupa Marya is a doctor, professor and leading activist whose work connects medicine with social justice.
The Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, directed by professor john a. powell, advances research, policy, & communications in order to realize a world where all belong.
Anti-Racist Research Policy Center convenesvaried specialists to figure out novel and practical ways to understand, explain, and solve seemingly intractable problems of racial inequity and injustice.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971, combats hate, intolerance, and discrimination through education and litigation.
Repairers of the Breach is a nonprofit organization that seeks to build a moral agenda rooted in a framework that uplifts our deepest moral and constitutional values to redeem the heart and soul of our country.
Color of Change is an online racial justice organization that designs campaigns powerful enough to end practices that unfairly hold Black people back, & champion solutions that move us all forward.
Maya Wiley is a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, as well as a University professor at the New School in NYC.
Dream Corps closes prison doors and opens doors of opportunity. This nonprofit organization brings people together across racial, social, and partisan lines to create a future with freedom and dignity for all.
White Awake is a network of people combatting white supremacy by focusing on educational resources and spiritual practices designed to engage people who’ve been socially categorized as “white” in the creation of a just and sustainable society.
How to Support the Protesters Demanding Justice for George Floyd
This Teen Vogue article shares important resources — such as bail funds and organizations to know about — for helping protesters in need, along with further tools for getting involved and making your voice heard.
From Democracy Now!: “‘America’s Moment of Reckoning’: Cornel West Says Nationwide Uprising Is Sign of ‘Empire Imploding’” | As thousands from coast to coast took to the streets this weekend to protest the state-sanctioned killing of Black people, and the nation faces its largest public health crisis in generations and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, professor Cornel West calls the U.S. a “predatory capitalist civilization obsessed with money, money, money.”
From MSNBC: “Nikole Hannah-Jones: Black Americans are ‘demanding their full citizenship’” | Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones and New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb discuss policing’s roots in slave patrols and enforcement of white supremacy during Reconstruction.
From the New Yorker archives: “Letter from a Region in My Mind” | This essay by James Baldwin opens with a thematic quote from 1962: “Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.”
Bill McDorman is the founder of a number of small regional seed companies and seed organizations and the former Director of Native Seeds/ SEARCH. He is currently the co-founder and Director of the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance working to connect communities with locally adapted seeds. McDorman was interviewed by Bioneers Restorative Food Systems Director Arty Mangan.
Arty: Why is genetic diversity in seeds important?
Bill: The strength of any ecosystem is its diversity. Drought-tolerant varieties will make it through the droughts and flood tolerant varieties will make it through the floods. But if we’re only planting a handful of varieties worldwide, conditions don’t have to change much before we lose huge parts of the food system either to diseases or the climatic conditions.
According to the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization, by 1990 compared to 100 years prior, about 90% of the food plant diversity that was planted in farms and gardens was gone.
For the majority of the food being produced worldwide, everyone is growing the same 10%. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t huge diversity still available all over the world, it’s just that it’s not being grown very much, and a lot of it isn’t being grown at all.
To face climate change with a 90% decrease in diversity just doesn’t make sense. Even if we got it all back, we may not have enough to deal with some of the environmental and climatic changes that have been unleashed, but at least, we need to start working on diversity as a primary aspect for developing resilience in the food system.
Arty: How has plant breeding changed over time?
Bill: We have a delusional scientific community that thinks they have the answers by being able to speed up breeding with genetic engineering, but it just hasn’t worked. You can genetically engineer single genes now, but single-gene traits don’t cover heat tolerance, or drought tolerance, or some of the other things that we’re facing. Generally, it’s been used to increase chemical sales by engineering plants to be resistant to herbicides. That’s the vast majority of all the genetic engineering. Even more destructive is the idea that that kind of science will save us.
It takes $150 million to release a new variety and that can only be done in highly centralized locations. 100 years ago, as Dr. Bill Tracy of the University of Wisconsin in Madison says, we had millions of plant breeders breeding for every crop in every microclimate all over the planet for every kind of disease and for every kind of cultural and flavor need. That’s what we had in 1900. Now we have a handful of professional breeders breeding crops for high profit and yield only in the places that they grow best. That’s a recipe for disaster.
I’ve never said that genetic engineering may not have a breakthrough someday that saves us. I don’t know about that. I’m too much of a scientist to say never. But what I do know is that with the $150 million it takes to create one new crop, we could teach seed schools in all 50 states. I could create hundreds of new, small, bioregional seed companies; thousands of seed libraries; tens of thousands of seed exchanges; and re-engage the population in a beautiful ritual that’s been the foundation of civilization. We should be putting all our resources into going back and using the tried-and-true system that we’ve had for 10,000 years.
Bill McDorman leading a seed school
Arty: 100 years ago, there were a million grassroots seed breeders; 50 years ago, 1,000 small companies producing seeds for sale; today, four companies control 60% of the seeds sales. Those are the same companies who produce all of the agro-chemical sales. Why isn’t that level of consolidation being challenged in the courts as a monopoly?
Bill: Because we’re in late-stage monopoly capitalism. The large corporations have totally co-opted the government. They’re writing their own checks, and they’ll bail themselves out if they have to. Bernie Sanders is right. We don’t just need a new president; we need to upend the whole way we think about the system. I’m afraid it’s not going to happen just through education and gatherings. It’ll probably take a serious disruption for people to actually realize that the food system is only three days deep. Even the local organic food system, which is being highly industrialized, is not going to save them.
Dr. Carol Deppe, who taught genetics at Harvard for 25 years, in her book How to Breed Your Own Backyard Garden Vegetables, said that until recently all farmers and gardeners saved their own seeds. The only kind of plant breeding was amateur plant breeding. We created most of what we eat from wild plants that are largely inedible. That happened over roughly a 10,000-year period by people who were saving their own seeds and had no idea of genetics. Much of it happened before Gregor Mendel [founder of the modern science of genetics]. It happened in a natural culturally driven process largely by indigenous women.
We are hugely indebted to them. We don’t have time to recreate what they’ve done. We should save what we have. We should go back to the kinds of processes that are low-carbon input, decentralized, and shorten our supply lines; all these things can be done.
Seeds are self-replicating. They can take information on each life cycle and change themselves each generation. It’s an intelligent, self-replicating system. You can take a pocketful of seeds anywhere on the planet and start a whole new agriculture.
Arty: For 10,000 years, farmers bred seeds working with the genetics that their ancestors developed and now biotech companies genetically alter seeds, place patents on them and legally own all the genetic development that was previously in the commons.
Bill: Vandana Shiva said the most compelling thing about that that I’ve ever heard. She said that kind of thinking is the same as believing that people had the right to sail a ship from Spain to the New World and plant a flag in the beach and say, “I claim all of North America for Spain.”
Arty: She identifies DNA as the latest arena of colonization. Explain how utility patents are being used.
Bill: The basic thing to understand is that, until relatively recently, patenting seed-producing plants was never allowed. It’s an abhorrent thought to peoples around the world. Seeds were held in common. The original Plant Patent Act happened in the United States in 1930 after 40 years of lobbying by the American Seed Trade Association, which was one of the first trade associations. They exempted seed-producing plants. Only cloned plants like fruit trees and ornamentals could be patented. Everybody knew that farmers should be able to grow and save their own seeds. That’s how the system works. There was a deep understanding about that.
Then 40 more years of lobbying got the Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA) passed in Congress in 1970. That was not patenting per se. It is not run through the Patent and Trade Office; it’s a program in the USDA. The PVPA allowed an exemption for farmers to save their own seeds and for breeders to use any kind of seed to breed new varieties. It gave a 20-year protection to somebody who came up with a new variety. It said that no one else will be able to sell that variety or the traits that you found in it for 20 years unless they pay a royalty.
You can find those varieties in seed catalogs, even organic seed catalogs, with the moniker PVP. After 10 years of the industry filing lawsuits, the Supreme Court finally ruled that plants can be patented. In fact, “anything under the sun that is made by man” is patentable, that’s a direct quote out of the majority opinion written by Clarence Thomas, of all people, who had worked for Monsanto as an attorney at one point in his career.
After that, if you look at the graph, the number of seed companies that were purchased, largely by pharmaceutical and chemical companies, went up in the hockey stick exponential curve. We went from maybe 20,000 independent entities to, as you said, four that now control 60% of the world’s seeds.
I believe it was Joy Hought, who succeeded me as director of Native Seeds/ SEARCH, who said when you choose a variety, you’re choosing a whole agricultural system. Patents are a tool of industrialized agricultural monopolies.
Arty: The corporate seed industry claims that patents are necessary for innovation.
Bill: That’s a delusion on an unbelievable scale. I was at the UN with groups that were representing 55 million smallholder farmers around the world who have what’s left of the world’s diversity growing on their farms. A lot of it has been moved to seed banks that are underfunded and are falling apart. Millions of varieties have been there for 40 years and are dying. The Global North wants access to all that living genetic diversity. Those varieties have been created from wild plants historically by small farmers, and their descendants today are stewarding them. Those farmers know that corporate “innovation” leads to monopolistic control of seeds, poverty and starvation.
Sure, corporate innovation has increased yields. But yield at the expense of destroying whole communities and ecosystems is a pretty narrow definition of yield.
Small farmers are organizing and are going to take their seeds and refuse to participate in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture because they just don’t believe it anymore. There’s no benefit sharing; the whole thing has just been a rip-off. The corporations take the small farmer’s varieties, patent them, and then say they own them. They make it illegal for small farmers to grow their own seeds.
Arty: What are some utility patents that are egregious in terms of their claims?
Bill: There’s a color purple in lettuce that’s been patented. If we had a rational patent system, they would never allow that because it’s too wide; it’s too undefined. Plant breeder Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed says, “I’ve got 20 purple lettuces growing. I don’t know which ones are illegal now and which ones aren’t. Why should they be illegal after the fact, if I had them in the public domain before they patented them?”
We’re starting to see utility patents creep into our organic seed catalogs. Organic farmers are good people who want to do the right thing, but forty percent of the lettuces in Johnny’s catalog carry utility patents. In a sense, farmers are not farming anymore; they’re sharecropping. They don’t own the seeds. They’re just borrowing the seeds from the seed companies. Legally, you can’t even let those plants go to seed. I called Johnny’s to talk to them about it, and I got banned from customer service. I just kept asking. I was nice.
When you look at that 10,000-year arc of adapting plants to a location and think about the potential to exponentially increase supply of seeds everywhere, it’s just the biggest rip-off to keep people from saving seeds. I learned this at the United Nations that the corporate aim is to have everything patented before anybody even knows it happens.
Arty: What are some of the strategies to push back against this kind of corporate bio-piracy?
Bill: Save seeds wherever you are, and get everybody everywhere doing that. We don’t have the money to fight the world’s biggest corporations, but we don’t have to as long as we have our own seed system operating underneath the corporate system. They closed down a seed library in Pennsylvania, but we worked with them to make sure that seed libraries can be open.
Every bit of local food should be grown with local seeds. That’s a big change we could all make. That’s number one. There’s an organic local food movement in the Bay Area. My guess is that 90% of those seeds are not coming from California but are coming from Johnny’s or High Mowing or Territorial who contract to have seeds grown in China.
Number two is just be aware of the utility patents. When you buy seeds – if you’re still buying seeds – find out if they’re utility patented or not. If they’re selling utility patented seeds, ask them why. I think that kind of awareness aimed at Johnny’s would be the only thing that could make them change.
We have a sticker that we give away for free that says Grown with Local Seeds. That should be on every piece of produce in the farmers’ market so people know that these people are actually doing the right thing with their seeds as well as with their growing practices.
Arty: Is there a legal mechanism that grassroots seed breeders can use to put varieties into the public domain and protect them from being patented?
Bill: There’s questions about it legally because when you’re going up against some of the world’s largest corporations in a court case, it may not hold up. But after years of research, Jack Kloppenburg helped spearhead the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) where you can register new varieties. It does not cover all the heirlooms and the landrace varieties, those cannot be protected by OSSI. To register, it has to be a new variety that is uniform, distinct, and somewhat stable – the same kinds of requirements for regular breeding protection.
There are 200 to 300 varieties that plant breeders have registered with OSSI. It’s a grassroots movement. Jack has been meeting with people from the alternative seed movement in Europe and they are ready to adopt it. European Union law and the European Patent Office have both agreed not to allow patents on anything that is created using traditional biological breeding methods. The only things allowed to be patented as a new invention would be genetically engineered seeds.
Arty: How is the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance working to protect seed sovereignty?
Bill: Our whole thing is to inspire, educate, and try to recreate a network of people in our region like we had in the 1900’s. We chose one region because it’s easier to pass seeds around and we all speak the same language. The bioregional development of the grassroots seed movement is going to be so important.
We teach seed schools. We’ve done about 60 programs in 10 years and graduated about 1500 students. We’ve trained 130 seed teachers to teach their own seed schools. We give all of our information and data away, so our seed teachers can go and replicate what we’re doing. They’re starting to do that in their own communities now. We’re really proud of that. That’s the only way we’ll exponentially grow this.
We went to Rome for the international treaty. We were the first grassroots representative at that international treaty meeting since the treaty was signed. We represent smallholder farmers from the United States. Before we became involved, only big corporations were represented.
We need a grassroots movement to save agro-biodiversity in order to be sustainable and to face the storms that we will be encountering. Nobody is coming to save us. Our vice president doesn’t even believe in evolution. We’re the only people who can do this. We need millions of people growing and saving seeds right where they are to get millions of new varieties that are adapted to that place. That’s diversity. The more people we get involved, the more diversity we’ll have. No top-down, centralized institution will have the time, energy, money or vision to do that. It’s up to us.
This article was originally posted by Democracy Now! Democracy Now! is an independent news program that features a diversity of voices speaking for themselves, providing a unique and sometimes provocative perspective on global events.
As thousands in Los Angeles continue to protest against police brutality and face mass arrests, Mayor Eric Garcetti is facing criticism for increasing the budget for the Los Angeles Police Department. Organizers have called on the City Council to enact a People’s Budget that slashes money for police and invests in services for the community instead. “We have created a system that overrelies on law enforcement and prioritizes their money, their budget, their needs over everything else,” says Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, and Reform L.A. Jails. “Now is the time that we redirect resources back into our communities.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we go now to Los Angeles, where protesters took to the streets of downtown and Hollywood on Monday, another day of mass protests against police brutality and the murder of George Floyd. Demonstrators briefly shut down the 405 Freeway in West L.A. In Van Nuys, looting broke out near a peaceful protest organized by students.
Monday marked the third night of a countywide curfew in Los Angeles, where protests have been widespread and resulted in thousands of arrests. The wealthy enclaves of Beverly Hills and Santa Monica set 1 p.m. curfews after protests reached their neighborhoods. On Sunday, hundreds were arrested in a mass protest in Santa Monica that left many storefronts destroyed.
Calls are growing for the firing of the LAPD chief, Michel Moore, who said Monday that looters were as responsible for George Floyd’s death as the police officers who killed him.
POLICE CHIEF MICHEL MOORE: We didn’t have protests last night; we had criminal acts. We didn’t have people mourning the death of this man, George Floyd; we had people capitalizing. His death is on their hands as much as it is those officers.
AMY GOODMAN: The Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore has since apologized for his statements. Mayor Eric Garcetti tweeted, “The responsibility for George Floyd’s death rests solely with the police officers involved. Chief Moore regrets the words he chose this evening and has clarified them.”
This comes as Mayor Garcetti is facing criticism for increasing funding for the Los Angeles Police Department in a budget for the coming fiscal year. Community members are demanding the City Council act to enact a People’s Budget that slashes money for police and invests in services for the community instead.
Well, for more, we’re going to Los Angeles, where we’re joined by Patrisse Cullors, political strategist, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, founder of Reform L.A. Jails. She’s the co-author of When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Patrisse. It’s great to have you with us. Can you respond first to the death of George Floyd and then to the massive anti-police brutality protests and the police response?
Patrisse Cullors
PATRISSE CULLORS: Sure. It’s really good to be here, Amy, and thank you so much for having me on.
I think, you know, I just start with my deep condolences to George Floyd’s family and the community of Minneapolis. Once again, we see the devastation and the impact of the killing and torture of Black communities. And so, I just want to start there.
I think these protests are massive in a way that we haven’t seen them in years, for a number of reasons. Number one, we’ve had to live under four years of a Trump regime that has completely devastated communities financially, spiritually, emotionally. And number two, we have still dealt with years of police brutality, police violence and police terror, with no accountability whatsoever. And this generation is tired. Enough is enough.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Patrisse Cullors, you recently went back and watched some footage of the 1992 Rodney King uprising. What struck you the most about those events?
PATRISSE CULLORS: Well, I think it’s — you know, there’s two things happening in our city right now, in Los Angeles. One is massive protest in solidarity with Minneapolis, but also talking about what’s happening in our own town. There’s been 601 deaths since 2012, involved specifically with police officers killing civilians. And we have had a DA here, Jackie Lacey, who has not prosecuted a single officer and has been largely unaccountable to the community. And as Amy said earlier, 54% of L.A. city’s budget is actually LAPD’s budget. And the community is over false promises. We’re over having to deal with elected officials who, instead of listening to Black pain and grief, send out the National Guard, you know, create more havoc in our communities.
AMY GOODMAN: Patrisse Cullors, can you talk about the budget that has just been unveiled, and what you’re demanding, where you think money needs to be spent at this point, and also where you see these protests going?
PATRISSE CULLORS: Sure. Our local chapter, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, led by Melina Abdullah, really has been the group that has been focusing on the city budget specifically. For years, we have seen the unveiling of a city budget, and it has always prioritized LAPD’s money first, and it’s deprioritized everything else, all the social services that our communities need.
So, what we’re asking for is a slashing of LAPD’s budget. We don’t believe that LAPD needs that much money. Really, the national demand, as you’ll see, is a defunding of law enforcement. Minneapolis is calling for it. Los Angeles is calling for it. Chicago is calling for it. D.C. is calling for it. We have created a system that overrelies on law enforcement and prioritizes their money, their budget, their needs over everything else. Now is the time that we redirect resources back into our communities.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Patrisse Cullors, I’m wondering — the response of the police in many of these cities now, we’re seeing increasing aggressive moves by police, whether it’s in New York or in Louisville or in other cities, against peaceful demonstrators. To what extent do you feel that the police across the country, many of them, have been emboldened by the language and the demeanor of President Trump over these last four years, that they feel that they have basically the backing of the White House, if they have to —
PATRISSE CULLORS: Absolutely.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — exert much more authoritarian force in their local cities?
PATRISSE CULLORS: Absolutely. I mean, we know Trump’s history. We know how he has impacted just by way of how he communicates, just how he uses the media to stoke fear in mostly white, affluent communities. He’s aligned himself historically with the police, being law and order. He just went on the news yesterday telling people that he’s going to send the military into cities. This is a man who would encourage people being beat up, counterprotesters that would come into his rallies when he was running for president. This is the man who told law enforcement at a huge law enforcement conference that they should be beating up people. And we know that he is in complete agreement with law enforcement terrorizing and using aggressive tactics like rubber bullets, like tear gas.
On Saturday, at our protest that we launched, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, along with Build Power, for two hours, it was full of passion, full of love, and we marched together. The minute that march got violent is when the police showed up. They started shooting into the crowd rubber bullets. They started batoning people. It was disturbing, and it was scary. And it was so obvious that they feel emboldened right now.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you respond, Patrisse, to police officers showing solidarity with the protesters? On Monday, you have one of New York City’s top officers, Terence Monahan, taking a knee, hugging a protester during a rally in Washington Square Park. In Flint, Michigan, the Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson marched with protesters on Saturday. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, Police Chief Andrew Smith condemned the killing of George Floyd and walked with protesters. And we’re seeing this amidst the tear-gassing, amidst the shooting, amidst the pepper-spraying and the massive number of thousands of arrests. Your comments?
PATRISSE CULLORS: It’s like a really frightening abusive relationship. It’s when you’re in an abusive relationship, and the partner is gaslighting you and telling you that “Everything that you’re feeling is not true, and look what I’m doing for you.” It’s not acceptable behavior, honestly. You’re either going to be in solidarity with the community and stop brutalizing us, or you’re going to continue to do what you’ve been doing and business as usual. But there’s no half-stepping.
Taking a knee, marching with protesters, that doesn’t actually change the structure, doesn’t change our system that we live in, which is a system that continues to violate the rights of Black people, continues to kill Black people, hunt Black people and traumatize Black people. That’s what law enforcement has done for years. And these new acts of solidarity are — they don’t sit well with many of us.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you — we talked to you about the film Bedlam, which very much focused on you, Patrisse, and your brother Monte. So, all of these mass protests are taking place amidst the pandemic. They could be super-spreading events, the horror of what could happen, and particularly impacting Black and Latino and Native American communities. And I’m wondering, actually, what has happened with your brother Monte, who lives with schizoaffective disorder since he was a teenager, in the midst of all this — the pandemic, the police brutality protests.
PATRISSE CULLORS: Well, we were lucky enough to get Monte off the streets last fall. And he was hospitalized for quite a bit of time, as I received conservatorship of him. And he ended up going to a mental health facility, so that’s where he’s at now. The facility has not experienced a COVID-19 outbreak, although there has been some COVID-19 patients. He is doing well right now, and he is safe. And that feels really important to me, especially given what’s happening right now.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Patrisse, I wanted to ask you — I don’t know if you can answer this from your perspective, but I’ve been noticing in the reports that have been coming out about the protests and also about some of the looting and the vandalism that’s broken out, that it’s not just occurring in the major cities, but, for instance, in the Chicago suburbs. Faraway suburbs from the major city, like Aurora, Cicero and others, have also seen strange incidents of looting that have gone on. Do you have some concern that there may be some attempts to actually — deliberate attempts to provoke violence, to stir up greater animosity among some sectors of the American community?
PATRISSE CULLORS: Absolutely. We know that there are three sets of folks who are out in the streets. There are protesters, those of us who are fighting against police brutality and police terror. There are white supremacists, those who are exploiting Black pain in this moment and really trying to undermine our protests. And then there’s police, who sometimes act as protesters, so undercovers, and also uniformed officers, who have created significant amount of distress and havoc and confusion in protests. We have to be careful when we’re protesting, both with COVID-19 but also because there are times where there’s agent provocateurs and there’s different people who have a different agenda than what our movement actually has.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you, Patrisse, for joining us, Patrisse Cullors, political strategist, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, founder of Reform L.A. Jails. She is the author of When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.
The following essay was written by author and Bioneers Senior Producer J.P. Harpignies. The views and opinions expressed are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Bioneers.
The last several months the term “mutual aid” has come up quite a bit in public discourse to describe the wide range of neighborhood/community-based altruistic behaviors that have arisen in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The contrast between this outpouring of so many inspiring, grassroots acts of solidarity with the also widespread manifestation of extremely selfish behaviors has reminded me of the ideological battle that prompted a remarkable historic figure, the aristocratic Russian anarchist activist/philosopher/scientist/naturalist/geographer/biologist, etc, Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin, to pen a now infrequently read but, in my view, absolutely seminal text, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, in 1902.
Kropotkin has not been totally forgotten. His name comes up on occasion in articles when a writer seeks to excavate the roots of the concept of mutual aid, and scholarly books about him appear once in a while, but, by and large, he’s read by very few people these days, and he’s hardly known to younger generations. This wasn’t always so. In the early 20th Century, even though he was an anarchist revolutionary who spent time in prisons, he was also an international intellectual superstar. Oscar Wilde even described him as “a beautiful white Christ.”
One reason I wanted to pen this little homage to him here on the Bioneers site is that I think a strong case can be made that he is the single most important forebear of so many of the themes that are central to our own work. Kropotkin’s ideas laid a very solid, rigorous intellectual foundation for a great many of the most progressive socio-political tendencies of the 20th and now the early 21st century, from awakened ecological awareness to a respect for Indigenous life-ways to an emphasis on egalitarian relationships and cooperative, decentralized economic systems. When our great friend Jeremy Narby discusses “Intelligence in Nature” or our allies at the New Economy Coalition advocate worker ownership of enterprises, just to cite two random examples out of so many in the Bioneers community I could cite, they are standing on Kropotkin’s shoulders. In fact the entire “green” movement owes a huge debt to the anarchist prince.
Kropotkin did not invent the concept of mutual aid and was not the first European thinker to emphasize cooperation among animals. Such illustrious figures as Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt had discussed it here and there, and the German/Russian zoologist Karl Fedorovich Kessler (1815 – 1881) who was a strong advocate of the importance of cooperation within animal species had a profound influence on Kropotkin, but Kropotkin built on these antecedents to develop a much broader theory of the fundamental role of cooperation in all of evolution and in human social development, so he became the figure whose name is forever intimately tied to the concept of mutual aid.
Today those who recognize Kropotkin’s name at all think of him first and foremost as an anarchist activist and philosopher, but while he was clearly that, people have forgotten that he was a great scientific observer and thinker in many different disciplines, one who has not gotten his proper due in the history of science. In my view it is in his critique and demolition of “Social Darwinism” that he made his greatest contribution, the one that resonates most strongly with contemporary ecological consciousness and social justice movements, because we are still very much locked in battle with contemporary proponents of variants of social Darwinism.
Kropotkin enthusiastically embraced Darwin’s basic tenets about evolution and natural selection, but he felt that the (unfortunately predominant) wing of Darwin’s followers known as “social Darwinists” (most prominently Francis Galton) had in fact distorted Darwin’s legacy by overemphasizing the role of savage competition to the exclusion of the equally important factor of cooperation in securing the survival of species. These thinkers were, in Kropotkin’s view, not only misguided but dangerous because their ideas were invoked by capitalists and authoritarians as justifications for a brutally competitive society, rigid hierarchies and grotesque levels of inequality. His attack on these thinkers echoed the earlier fundamental philosophical battle between Hobbes’ pessimism and Rousseau’s optimism as regards human nature, which helped define the core right/left ideological divide in Western thought for at least two centuries, but, unlike Rousseau, Kropotkin was able to build his views of evolution and of human nature on a solid scientific foundation.
His extensive and detailed observations of myriad animals in his geographic mapping expeditions, especially to Siberia, revealed to him just how critical cooperative and often altruistic behaviors were in the preservation of a given species, and that these were not purely reducible to “instinct.” He was a century ahead of his time in recognizing that various forms of intelligence, adaptation, and decision-making permeated the natural world, and that humans were not separate from the continuum of the web of life. So his social utopianism (while, in my personal, subjective view, most likely unattainable in a pure form in a world with 7 to 11 billion people on it) was grounded in a rigorous observation of nature.
Kropotkin was really the first Western thinker to build a cogent theoretical edifice based on extensive evidence that convincingly argued that cooperation was at least equal to competition as a fundamental cornerstone in evolution and that a capacity for cooperation was in fact the key factor to a given species’ success. This is a view that remained marginal until just the last couple of decades but that is now far more accepted by many in the scientific mainstream as more and more research on animal (and plant and fungal!) cooperation, symbiosis and intelligence emerges almost weekly. Over the years we have had such renowned figures as Jane Goodall, Carl Safina, Paul Stamets, Lynn Margulis, Monica Gagliano, and the aforementioned Jeremy Narby discuss different aspects of this type of research at the Bioneers Conference.
And, most relevant to this discussion, Kropotkin felt that this far more holistic grasp of evolutionary mechanisms had immense implications for human societies, and that, while of course strong competitive urges existed in all of us, a sophisticated understanding of nature had to lead us to believe that cooperation and free, mutual exchange should be the central organizing principles of human communities. He argued that most Indigenous cultures and early societies were mostly so structured, and that the hyper-competitive, selfish, hierarchical, exploitive socio-economic models promoted by social Darwinists and robber baron capitalists were recent aberrations that needed to be relegated to the “trash heap of history.”
So as we seek to navigate our way through the enormous crises we are currently in the midst of, from the pandemic to climate change to ever more glaring inequality and injustice to the unraveling of so many of our institutions and social norms to the global rise of far right authoritarian political forces, and we see flickers of hope pointing toward a far more harmonious, life-affirming civilization in the remarkable groundswell of grassroots altruism, solidarity and cooperation we are witnessing around the world, let’s take a moment to honor one of the great ancestors who helped point the way to a far more satisfying and accurate understanding of our place in the web of life and, one has to hope, ultimately to far more humane social structures, Prince Kropotkin.
The following essay was written by author and Bioneers Senior Producer J.P. Harpignies. The views and opinions expressed are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Bioneers.
For the past fifteen or so years Amazonian shamanism and the use of ayahuasca have elicited a great deal of interest around the world. This has encouraged a growing number of Europeans and North Americans motivated by a spiritual quest or a desire to seek healing or by simple curiosity to travel to the Amazon region. This wave of travelers is reminiscent in some ways of the hordes of young seekers who flocked to India in the 1970s.
The birth of a broad-based environmental movement, anti-colonial struggles, and a growing thirst for more visceral, holistic spiritual teachings all also contributed to a surge of interest in the worldviews and practices of “first peoples,” many of whom, paradoxically, were being threatened with cultural extinction or at the very least facing profound crises as modernity and the worst aspects of economic globalization bore down on their ancestral lands.
No one knows exactly how old Amazonian shamanic traditions are, but it’s a safe bet that they are many hundreds of years old, perhaps a millennium, perhaps far more, and their cultural antecedents and precursors certainly go back several thousand years. There are very few places on earth where one can find unbroken links to such an ancient shamanic tradition, and one that is still very much alive and dynamic. Many in the industrialized world feel alienated from the dominant contemporary ideologies and belief systems that have severed our sense of connection to the natural world and contributed to the unprecedented global ecological crisis we are in the midst of. The worldviews of indigenous peoples characterized by their profound respect for the entire web of life and by a belief in the possibility of direct, intimate engagement with the “spirits” that animate the world, is therefore very attractive to many of us.
Amazonian shamanism had until the 1980s, outside of some small circles of adventurous anthropologists and ethno-botanists, remained largely unknown beyond the Amazon Basin. That said, indigenous Amazonian shamanic healing practices had already spread beyond native groups into “mestizo” communities in the region starting in the early part of the 20 th Century, and at least three syncretic Brazilian churches whose founders had been exposed to the use of ayahuasca while working in the jungle and for whom that plant is a central sacrament, were founded long before the 1980s. All these new faiths, legally recognized by the Brazilian government, are thriving today. The two biggest, the Santo Daimé, founded in the 1930s, and the Uniao do Vegetal (UDV), founded in 1961, have spread internationally, opening new congregations in several locales in the “global North.” Also, the extraordinary and highly influential professor of botany at Harvard, Richard Evans Schultes, had done extensive research and solo traveling in the deep Amazon during the 1940s, and William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg had both ventured to the region to seek out ayahuasca experiences in the 1950s (with pretty awful results). The anthropologist Michael Harner had done some more serious research on the region’s shamanic traditions in the 1960s, and slowly at first other researchers, explorers and travelers began trickling into the Amazon and publishing reports and accounts of their experiences. But despite all these forays, these traditions had remained largely unknown until roughly a quarter century ago, and have only become more widely known in the last 15 or so years.
The newfound global popularity of this hitherto obscure set of beliefs and practices, and this will surprise no one, has had both positive and destructive effects. On the one hand, as Jeremy Narby, has remarked, this is the first time since the arrival of Europeans in the “New World” that some outsiders have come to native peoples’ territories not to massacre and subjugate them, steal their land and pillage their resources, but to learn from them.
The global popularity of and interest in ayahuasca seems to be continuing its extraordinary expansion. Back in 2009 the immensely popular film Avatar was obviously heavily based on ayahuasca-induced visionary states. The sacred tree at the core of the film’s plot was even called Aya (!), but this all went over the head of nearly all those who saw the film because very few people in the general population had heard of ayahuasca then. Today though, mainstream magazines from the prestigious New Yorker to Hollywood rags that report on stars who have taken the brew, have all featured articles about ayahuasca. Hip comedians on late night television occasionally make jokes about it. More and more retreat centers are opening throughout Latin America, even beyond the Amazon region, varying enormously in price, ranging from the very rustic to the ultra luxurious. On any given Saturday night in a major North American city, a dozen or so underground ayahuasca-based ceremonies are most likely taking place, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true to a slightly lesser extent in Europe and in some corners of Asia.
This proliferation has made some of us worry about a wide range of potential problems, from the odds of eventual aggressive crackdowns by authorities to the problem of over-harvesting and depleting wild ayahuasca in the Amazon; to the emergence of more and more self-appointed, poorly trained ceremony leaders with the accompanying increased risks to attendees; to the rise of ever more half-baked ideologies generated by over enthusiastic neophytes suffering from the spiritual inflation that can accompany visionary drug use, etc., etc.
We also know that our rapidly “globalizing” planet is undergoing rapid and highly disruptive changes. The ever-growing, insatiable hunger for raw materials in “developing” countries is causing massive environmental and socio-cultural damage, and indigenous peoples are very often the main victims of these immensely powerful predatory forces. The Amazon’s forest is shrinking, and while some tribal groups have managed to organize themselves fairly effectively to defend their ancestral lands and to manage their social, cultural and political life and their “modernization” according to their own agendas, in general indigenous Amazonians are either facing difficult crises, being buffeted by forces beyond their control, or facing outright cultural extinction.
Under these conditions, it’s almost impossible to find any sort of “pure” shamanism practiced even by isolated groups. Nearly all the contemporary practitioners of Amazonian shamanism have, to varying degrees, long been affected and influenced by the onslaught of modernity to their region. These ancient techniques and beliefs have been colliding with and adapting to the modern world in a wide variety of ways, so strangers coming to seek wisdom in some sort of idealized, untainted form are sure to be disappointed, and all visitors will inevitably run into a slew of intense socio-economic, environmental and cultural contradictions, not to mention the communication problems inherent in trying to reconcile very different ways of seeing the world. And the mere presence of these large numbers of visitors is adding to the disruption of local life. Their money and possessions and (perceived) sexual looseness can’t help but engender temptations in such a poor part of the world.
So, on the one hand Amazonian spirituality has never received as much attention and respect, as there are now quite a number of shamans leaving the region to lead underground ceremonies in Europe, North America and Asia, and there are even some serious international academic colloquia and conferences on ayahuasca, etc. It’s an extraordinary global diffusion of a hitherto purely regional phenomenon. On the other hand, though, the massive dislocations caused by globalization and the existential threats to the integrity of the biosphere are threatening the very existence of many indigenous peoples and if not the outright extinction at least the dramatic mutation of their cultural and spiritual practices, and the popularity of Amazonian shamanism is itself a contributor to this disruption (there have in fact even been some recent Ph.D. theses penned on the complex effects of “ayahuasca tourism” in the Amazon). These shamanic traditions are not going to disappear, but there is no doubt that they are rapidly changing and becoming hybridized.
I feel that I have to offer some words of caution to those excited by the fascinating world of shamanic practices who might be considering dropping everything and heading down to the Amazon. First it’s important to bear in mind that these traditions have been created by cultures radically different than ours, by people living in an incredibly challenging environment, so their worldviews and moral codes often vary substantially from ours. Any apprentice shaman will eventually bump up against some aspects of “black magic” that are fairly common in the ayahuasquero’s world, and very few modern Westerners are psychologically equipped to handle this sort of menace effectively.
Even those who are just going to the Amazon for a more limited experience of ayahuasca can often encounter a variety of problems. The extreme poverty I mentioned earlier as well as the legacy of racism and oppression and the level of deforestation and environmental degradation generate intense contradictions, and travelers should be prepared to navigate them. Also, the seduction of naïve young “gringas,” made even more impressionable and vulnerable under the sway of ayahuasca (one effect of which is to open the heart), by shamans and their apprentices, is in all honesty an epidemic, almost more of a norm than an exception. Because the region is changing so rapidly and dramatically, even some hitherto reputable shamans can become less reliable. Some retreat centers can become so popular with visitors that the local resources are overtaxed, the quality of attention afforded to individual seekers declines, and the spiritual integrity of the entire enterprise deteriorates.
This doesn’t at all mean that one shouldn’t visit the Amazon and that positive experiences there aren’t possible, but for those who are considering such a journey, it is important not to depend on any one book, even the best among them, because books are already a few years old by the time we read them, and the places and people described within them may have changed in the interim. Before choosing a particular retreat center and/or shaman to visit, it is wise to seek information and objective, unbiased first-hand reports that are as recent and reliable as possible.
So, yes, Amazonian shamanism is one of humanity’s great spiritual traditions, and currently an especially vibrant one that seems to be resonating globally. One can find within its folds deep wisdom, a sense of profound connection to the underlying “intelligence” in evolution and nature, some highly effective physical and psycho-spiritual healing modalities, and even authentic mystical experiences, but it is not a path free of risks, so those who want to engage with it should exert common sense and sound judgment and keep their eyes open and their intuition sharp.
Those who seek to maintain traditions in a state of pristine, unadulterated “purity” are almost always fighting a losing battle, especially in a world as rapidly mutating as ours, where, for example, “world music” features every type of fusion and mixture one can conceive of, and electronic communication penetrates to every nook and cranny of the planet. In fact change is a constant in the flow of life, and cultures have always borrowed and influenced each other. The use of ayahuasca and the spiritual beliefs associated with it most likely began with one tribal group who passed it on to another, and then to others who all probably tweaked the cosmologies and practices. Today most indigenous ayahuasqueros incorporate Christian iconography in their rituals, and, as we saw earlier, the Brazilian ayahuasca-using churches, inspired by indigenous ayahuasca use, developed their own syncretic sets of practices and their own theologies. This is the way of cultural phenomena, but the rate of disruption and change is far faster today. We are seeing ever more hybrid uses of ayahuasca as it penetrates into new populations and it interfaces with existing systems of thought and spiritual practices. Some of those fusions may turn out to be interesting and promising, many are likely to be failures or plainly silly, some may be dangerous, but there is no stopping it at this point and where it will all end up is impossible to predict.
Paradoxically, in my opinion this makes rigorous accounts of Amazonian shamanism in its “classical” forms even more precious because it really helps to have a “baseline” to compare all these new forms of ayahuasca use and this pullulation of “neo-shamanic” experiments with the long-lived traditions of the indigenous peoples who engendered them. It is inevitable that people will innovate and experiment, and cultures evolve even when their members are trying to keep them the same, but if one is a serious person, it is best to at the very least be deeply informed by the spirit and the gravitas and the rigor of those original traditions’ practices, or one’s experiments are likely to lack depth and substance and to be short-lived and of little value.
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