History of u. S. Navy. Book tv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors. Television for serious readers. And now is wen stevenson. Thank you so much for coming out. We are happy to have you at book court. We are happy that Wen Stephenson is out talking about his book, what were fighting for now is each other. And we also tonight doing this event with the nation and 350. Org and we have a few folks from those organization who is are going to talk to you before we hear from wen. His book is about his Climate Change. He is going to be talking to us and after that, we will have a questionandanswer period and we will have a chance to mingle. Im going to turn it over to roane carey from 350. Org so make him welcome. [applause] hi, everybody, i will take kelly too, its a good irish name too like carey. Wen was a fantastic writer to our magazine. Weve always had good writing and reporting on climate. Wen brought some additional strength and power in just three ways hes been really great. First and crucially pointed out theres no thing of Climate Change justice, you cant have one without the other. Issues of race and class and poverty have to be a part of the movement of Climate Change. If you dont fight for social justice, then you cant fight for Climate Justice. The second thing that wen has been wonderful about is in his reporting. This is a movement of people fighting for change and he has written wonderfully of people in places all over the country from manchester, texas, mostly poorworking class, Latino Community surrounded by Oil Refineries where people have been suffering environmental racism for many years and they know what environmental racism is but theyre also be aware of the threat of Climate Change and hes reported from tarsons blackaid and the First Nations in canada, so thats been a wonderful contribution too. And the third thing wen has done, which is wonderful, he pointed out connections between radical movements of the past that seemed impossible or crazy and how connect to the current movements. The first piece he wrote for us of fare. Wrote walden and a naturalist and wen pointed out that he was a radical abolitionist and he fought for that and that was a major part of his life and one of his great writings and a lot of abolitionists thought he was gone crazy. Nonsense, its a political principle that we are obliged to follow. In a great article for us he pointed out that green peace piece of their name. They went to alaska back in 1971 and another sort of connection as a special nation connection for us is he has written about windle barry, farmer, poet, environmentalist from kentucky wrote against coal minding and how it destroys the land and a wonderful essay, you can Read Everything about the principles of the justice and Climate Movement and wen wrote a beautiful essay on his own where he talks about windle barry. And the final thing i would say wen is a wonderful writer, theres a kind of ease, you feel like youre sitting next to a brother or friend in a coffee shop. If you have ever tryied to tried to write or editor, you know how hard this is. Im going to pass it to may boveve. Yeah. [applause] hi, everybody, happy to be here. I first heard about wen many, many times, we actually had a chance before of any kind o. Sitting our first conversation at a coal mind in massachusetts. Tonight a lot of what we are going to be concentrating on, its nice to reflect that thats how we met. Im happy to say, i think, i hope wen agrees, theres more momentum in the Climate Change movement now than i think weve ever experienced. Wen asked me to say a couple of words of some of the action that is are coming up and i will do that briefly and then we will get to hear from him directly. I think part of the reason for this momentum comes from allies. Who ever thought the pope. The economy is actually starting to shift in some ways around Climate Change. We didnt see this coming and some governments are starting to take action. Its not enough and its frankly too late but its the kind of shift we always knew we needed. Theres four moments i want to call peoples attention to tonight. The first is in the case week on wednesday, october 14th, a series of action around the country is peoples climate mobilization. The seed is planted tonight and you want to do something immediately within a week. Thats one of the first opportunities an thats part of series of actions that represents coming together as movements and unions and local groups to National Groups and many more. The second is around the United Nations climate talks which start in paris in the beginning of december, this is in many ways can be understood as a score card of the movement and where actions are. Its a moment only but it is important and its a place to gauge our progress and there will be distributed action november 20th, 29th. This is probably most relevant to tonights conversation. Going to be a series of event to focus on the fact that no math what World Leaders agree to do in paris or dont agree to do in paris. The movement is about continuing and trying to build a kind of solutions and new economy we need. So april will be a movement at the socalled bombs if theyre built, we will see monumental rise and beyond. Three moments to mark. Many people in this room are Movement Leaders and many know about them. Hopefully for some of you who want today learn about this book, these are some ways to get involved. With that, thank you very much, and great to be here. [applause] okay. Hi im wen. Hi. Thank you roane, thank you, may. Thank you, everybody. There really ant words to thank roane and may. Not only the nation made really made the book possible, the writing, so much of the writing that i did for the nation really the book grew out of those articles but also, i mean, my friendships, my working along side of the folks at 350. Org was really central to my experience as ive gone deep into the Climate Movement, so yeah, im going to talk for maybe about 30 minutes and im going to maybe a tiny bit longer, im going to read a little bit from the book and then and then i want to introduce some friends of mine, actually some folks that are in the book that are here tonight and then we will do some some questions, you know, from all of you, and you could direct questions to me and to them as well. So i guess the first thing i want to say is that i really dont want to be here tonight. I mean, i really dont want to be here tonight. I wish to god we didnt have to do this sort of thing. But theres a very specific reason why i dont want to be here tonight and that is because my 11yearold daughter who is in sixth grade, her class today a field trip to walden pond and its a tradition in our town. I live about 56 miles down the road from walden pond and in fact, the prologue of the book, the fist first was a walk from walden pond to my house. So its a tradition that six grades ride their bikes in walden pond. Four years ago, with my son hes 15 now, i did that with his class, i was one of the parents chaperons. It was special. Today i could not accompany my daughter to walden pond because i had to come down here and launch a book that started with a walk to walden pond. [laughter] and, you know, its a book about what were doing to her world what weve already done to it to my sons world and to all of our kids everywhere. And so i guess i just want to say that grace and duncan if you ever watch this video one of these days, this is for you. So in the number of 2012 approximately 80 , 80 of the socalled permanent Arctic Sea Ice was gone. Melted. 80 as measured by volume. The speed at which the arctic is melting greatly exceeds what the models predicted and climate scientists will tell you that theyre pretty sure that the stability of the Global Climate system largely depends on the arctic, 80 . Its not coming back. Not on any time scale that matters to our civilization. This is really happening. The arctic and the glaziers are melting. The oceans are rising and ocidifiying. Great forest dying, the heat waves are intensifying, the farms savannahs and people are dying, mass extinction is unfolding and all of it sooner than faster than science predicted. The window in which to prevent the worst scenarios is before our eyes, and the fossilfuel industry which holds the fate of humanity in carbon reserves has doubled down economically and politically on all this destruction. We face an unprecedented situation a radical situation, it requires a radical response, a serious response. So this is a book about waking up, its about waking up individually and collectively to the climate catastrophe that is upon us. Some people have a hard time with that statement, me calling catastrophe. I dont know, when you lose 80 of the arctic, to me that qualifies as a catastrophe. Its about waking up to it intellectually, morally, spiritually, the most fundamental threat that humanity has really ever faced. And its about some of the remarkable people. Those, you know, that ive come to know and at times worked along side. New american radicals in the struggle to build a Stronger Movement from Climate Justice in this country. A movement thats less like environmentalism like we know it and more like the human rights and social Justice Movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, a movement for human solidarity, of course, any books like this, any discussion like this must begin by acknowledging the science and the sheer lateness of the hour. You know, theres a good reason to believe that even a rise of 2degrees celsius above the average, internationally agreed upon at red line will result in quote, disastrous consequences beyond control. You know, catastrophic warming, i would say by any humane definition is virtually certain, indeed, its already happening, because even in the very near term what is catastrophic depends on where you live and how poor you are and more often than not the color of your skin. If youre one of the billions of people that live in bangladesh to louisiana, to certain parts of new york city, even one degree can mean catastrophe. So the question now is not whether were going to quote, stop Global Warming or stop the crisis, it is where humanity would act quickly and decisively enough to salvage civilization itself in any form worth salvages, whether any kind of stable humane and just future, any kind of just society is still possible, and it is. It should be still possible. What the worlds climate and Energy Experts want us to understand, you know, that barriers as they may seem are no longer technological or financial, theyre political, which is to say theyre more moral. So lets be clear, given what we know and have known for decades about Climate Change, in fact, given what we now know that exxon mobile has known for decades about Climate Change to deny the science, to deceive the public and obstruct any serious response to the climate catastrophe is to willfully allow the eradication and to rob people starting with the poorest and most vulnerable of the planet of their land, their homes, their livelihoods and even their lives and their childrens lives and their childrens childrens lives for profit and for political power. So theres a word for this, these are crimes, theyre crimes against the earth and they are crimes against humanity. Theyve crimes against humanity. So where does this leave us . I mean, what is the proper response to that . You know, remain calm, no scare tactics, cooler heads will prevail. Enjoy the earthday festivities, im sorry, but the cooler heads have not prevailed. It has been more than a quarter of a century since the alarm was founded, cooler heads have failed. One of the slogans from people march when people poured out of the streets of manhattan, one of the slogans was to change everything, we need everyone, and i could not agree more. I mean, in some ways that is what this book is about. But to really change everything, first, we have to acknowledge that, you know, the Mainstream Environmental Movement and the corporate controlled political system through which it has tried to work for decades has failed. And that perhaps it could only have failed. Weve already lost the climate fight, if that means solving the Climate Crisis and saving the world we know, that it was lost before we began because it got started so late. That its time now to fight like theres nothing left to lose but our humanity. You know, where does the courage and commitment and sacrifice for that kind of a fight, for the radical movement that we need, a kind of movement that has changed the course of history in the past, that has made seemingly impossible, you know, possible, where does that come from . And what ive found in the stories of those profiled in this book and many other people that i know is that the climate struggle like so many struggles of the past is essentially in a way a spiritual struggle, that there is a spiritual crisis at the heart of the Climate Crisis because it forces us to confront the deepest, most difficult questions about ourselves. The climate catastrophe is so fundamental that it strikes to the root of who we are. Its a radical situation and it requires a radical response. The not radical necessarily in the conventional sense of ideology, rather it confronts us with a radical necessity, a moral necessity. It requires us to wake up, you know, sometimes to lay everything on the line, our relationships, our reputations, our careers, our bodies, maybe even our lives. And so this book represents no more and no less than my own search for the moral and spiritual wellstring of that kind of courage and commitment and my search for what the very idea of Climate Justice at this late hour may yet be. So i want to read from the first few pages, the opening pages of chapter 3 of the book, which is called organizing for survival and it grows out of grew out of article of the nation, to occupy Climate Justice and the other one called, what was it called, the web title and then theres the print title. So it was called ground zero of Climate Justice, about west port author, texas and a man named hilton kelly. Hilton kelly stood smiling in the clear april sunshine outside of kellys kitchen in port author, texas, his beloved hometown and extended his hand, a bigframed man with generous gentle eyes, kelly was 53 years old when i met him in the spring of 2014. The sign on the small corner restaurant Red Delicious homecooked food but kellys kitchen was no longer serving. Kelly had opened up in 2010 and managed to keep it running for two and a half years. It was going fairly well, but the town doesnt get a lot of foot traffic on the side of port author anymore. Kellys kitchen was the only standing just two blocks the gulf coast citys main downtown. In every direction were more vacant lots, windows brown blown out and the weekends and friday was ghostly and quiet. It was traffic up and down Austin Avenue here. Kelly invited me inside and we sat in one of the tables which he rented out for private parties and there was even a dance floor with disco ball. Thats not all that went on at kellys kitchen. The space doubled at the office of the community in power and Development Association or seda, Environmental Organization that kelly founded in 2000 soon after returning to port author from california where he was working in the movie industry where he was working as a stuntman h. He received the prize for active activeism. Kelly has met president obama at the white house. Just a few blocks from where we sat is the historic Africanamerican Community of west port author where kelly was born and raised in the Housing Project behind two oil refiners, one owned by valero and texaco. The recently completed of the refinery, which kellys group fought against made it the largest in the nation more than doubled capacity to 600,000 barrels of crude per day. Near by are 5 more petro chemical plans. Poor author is on the receiving in pipeline, cutting through east texas communities when operational in january 2014. But the industry had brought a few jobs to west port author where unemployment was over 15 . Many workers commute to the plants and Economic Development has moved north since the 80s along with white flight to midcounty areas where youll find a sudden explosion of malls, bigbox stores, hotels and theme restaurants with busy parking lots. Yet the economic abandonment of the downtown area in west port author and the shadow of one of the Profitable Industries isnt even the whole story. Theres also the pollution. As much as he can he documents the event with photos and videos. Some times it is really pension to the point it stings the nose and eyes. There is the constant daytoday toxic menace in the air. It is not always what you see. It is what you dont see. A lot of these gases are very dangerous, sometimes newcomers will smell it and you cant because we are desensitized to it. Kelly offered to show me around and give me a tour of the west side. Community where he grew up. I knew about his accomplishments, how they successfully pressured them to install stateoftheart equipment to install toxic emissions and pay for Community Development center and a ladder to fund a new health plan. It is more than an Environmental Justice group. Mission is to educate, and power and revitalize the Community Working especially with young people. I knew that chile has made a real difference since returning home but before we left kellys kitchens, we need to ask him about another threat. One that given arthurs economic, racial marginal is asian, its proximity to dangerous petrochemical infrastructure and its location on the golf. Could ultimately be the most devastating of all. Yes, he answered, we are seeing some impact of Climate Change in iraq in here as a matter of fact, rising sea level washed out parts of highway 87 between port arthur and galveston. The ferocity of hurricanes from katrina and rita has shaken port kearny and port arthur natives like him. The whisper the worst of katrina but rita came very soon after that and we got hit hard. A lot of the houses are gone. You can still see the fema tarps on some of the truth today. A lot of homes that were once inhabited and are now abandoned because federal dollars cannot come soon enough. Residents of port arthur havent faced the kind of epic flooding seen in new orleans and with hurricane ike they came close. Ike brought in a huge surge that reached the top of our 100 year levee but didnt reach it. The roof of the sole office was torn off. The rainbow just poured in and destroyed everything. I had heard about port arthur. Wellknown to Environmental Justice advocates as one of the most egregious sacrifices but nothing prepared me for the physical reality of the place, at the cannes, all but forgotten urban men skate inhabited by struggling and precariously resilient community. As you drive west end north out of downtown the refineries stretch for miles. It is towering over you like something out of a dystopian Science Fiction and yet this is not some futuristic scenario. It is here and now. The same smokestacks that are poisoning the inhabitants of port arthur are part of a Global Fossil fuel infrastructure that has trapped this in its political and economic groups threatening civilization and the future of life on earth, threading not only the children of port arthur but everyones children everywhere including my own. Here is the thing. If you live in West Port Arthur and taught to commissions the ruined your health or your child cant go to school because she cant breathe or you cant find a job to feed your kids and see no way out of the projects or all of the above, you are probably not thinking about future catastrophe, you are living in one. What is true of port arthurs to across the gulf coast and the continent and the worlds. The struggle for Climate Justice is a struggle at the crossroads of historic and present in justices and looming catastrophe that will prove to be allowed to unfold and checked the mother of all the injustices because the disaster unfolding now will not only compound the suffering of those already oppressed and already, pounding it but may very well foreclose any hope of economic stability and social justice for current and future generationss. Y n does the term Climate Justice barely register in the american conversation about Climate Change . Even, and i am afraid to say, on the left . Hilton drove meat around his Old Neighborhood on a beautiful day, showed me a Housing Project where he ran around, played as a kid, the line of a big refinery. Should beware i went to school, should be the church, where he had his first organizing meetings when he came back in that home. It was a great day and i will never forget it. It was clear, he emphasized it was port arthur, the Great Community to live in a nuclear the way he interacted with people, it was a Real Community so the next morning i went on my own and drove around downtown and the west side of port arthur on my own and it was overcast and the gray light alters the mood of the day before and i was overcome by a need to see the ocean across from coastal marshes on the louisiana side. So i drove out of port arthur on highway 82 passing more petrochemical plants all lay and stopped after half an hour on a roll of the houses built on sturdy pilingss. I stood on a strip of sand and the gulf of mexico laughed at my feet. The wind in my face came fresh and welcome but on the whole ricin down the coast with the platforms. There was no escape. I got back in the car, turned the ignition, no escape. Heading back into port arthur, the wide channel at the mouth of the lake, drove over Martin Luther king jr. Memorial bridge and crested its steep ascent, port arthur came into the you. The bull lara and motive but refineries spread out in front of me, the dystopian petrochemical landscape stretched into the distance and i caught my breath as i descended. So what are we fighting for . What are any of us who care about Climate Justice really fighting for . It seems movements often reach a critical juncture at which unity, the need to come together around common principles and a common struggle and a common understanding of what the struggle is about becomes all important. If not unity exactly, which may in fact be impossible for any movement big enough and broad enough to be powerful than at least Something Like solidarity. So i ask again at this late hour, what are we fighting for . There are those including among climate experts and advocates who dont like to talk about justice. They dont like to talk about inequality whether economic or social or sexual, you name it. They dont like to talk about the distribution of wealth. And the national level, the global level, where pope francis has recently reminded us powerfully that we know the developing world the vast majority of the World Population a massive ecological and climate debt that women bear the burden, the most vulnerable are women, and women of color. I dont like to talk about these things either. They put me on the spot. It is uncomfortable to talk about the structural forms of oppression that lie at the root of this crisis and prevent us from honestly addressing it. Especially when if you are like me you have benefited most with a you really wanted to or not, from these very systems. End if i am serious about justice and if i am serious about climate, morally serious, then i have to face these things. The truth is, i believe, that given what is coming, fights for social justice and was a real democracy matter more than ever. When we stare at the climate reality looking down at us, we see the storms that we and our childrens generation are heading into, scarcity, incidently, conflict, and what those with wealth and power are willing to do to hold on to that wealth and power it matters all the more what kind of a government, what kind of democracy, what kind of constitution, what kind of society we have as we head into that future. So yes. I want to end with a few pages near the end of the book. I dont know, they are about a radical preacher. On april 4th, 1967, the rev. Dr. Martin luther king jr. Rose to speak from the pulpit of the Riverside Church in manhattan and delivered what was perhaps the boldest, most radical speech of his too short life. Daring to denounce the war in vietnam as a national sin eating away at the american soul and to prophetically proclaimed the wars inseparable be from struggles for racial and Economic Justice, he knew he would alienate, maybe even lose some of his strong allies many of whom were not yet willing to break Lyndon Johnson and the pro word liberal establishment. People would ask him why are you speaking about the war, dr. King . Peace and civil rights dont mix. When he heard this keenan said that daying said that day he was, quote, greatly saddened this means the inquiries dont really know me or my calling or my commitment, that of a christian preacher. King had just written his final book, where do we go from here, chaos or community, to be published that june. In those pages, it had speeches during the last two years, king struggled to reinvigorate and reunite the Civil Rights Movement which was coming up part of the scenes over separatism, integration and how hard to push for Economic Justice against the war in vietnam and often cast as a soothing moderates, it is important to remember just how radical king was the specialty at the end of his life, establishment critics including the naacp thought that he should keep his focus on race and civil rights and not stick his nose into what they consider the, quote, separate issues of labor, poverty and most of all the war. But king understood all these issues were at a profound level interconnected. He saw their intersection. He knew as he wrote in a birmingham jail cell in 1963 that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. He saw systemic evil engine do it required a systemic solution. He saw and argued forcefully that the, quote, and holy trinity of racism, poverty and war were at the route one and the same. They are all forms of violence but they all grow from quote batmans inhumanity to man and can only be defeated by what king called the genuine revolution of values. Riverside church declared this call for a worldwide solution that lifts neighborly concerns beyond ones tried, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This often misunderstood, misinterpreted concept he goes un so readily dismissed by that nietzsches of the worlds, as a weekend coward the force has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of men. Of course it is easy for me to stand here and quote Martin Luther king. And feel good about myself for doing so. That there is nothing easy about the path that he showed us or the gospel that he preached. We invoke king need to ask ourselves if we are really ready to walk in his footsteps. King was a radical and a revolutionary, ready to give his life in the cause of justice. When those of us who appropriate his words say the same, then maybe can claim some tiny portion of his legacy. The title of kings last book poses the question facing us now. Where do we go from here . Chaos or community . We know that the crimes perpetrated on the planet today are a form of violence against our fellow human beings, profound racial and economic and generational in justice on a global scale. We know that if we are going to have a movement powerful enough to confront this has to come together across our cultural, racial, economic and generational divide. Even our ideological divide. Nothing about that task is easy but if there is to be any hope of such solidarity than Climate Justice will need to be defined broadly enough, inclusive lee enough to encompass everyone not only our own communities, not only our own children, my own children, but everyone everywhere including generations not yet born. In order to keep even the possibility of justice alive on earth we have to fight for the person sitting next to us and the person living next door to us, for the person across town and across the tracks from us, for the person across the continent and across the ocean from us because what we are fighting for now is each other because we are fighting for our humanity. That is what solidarity is. That is what love looks like. Not simply a fight for our own survival. There are aggressive and dystopian forms of survival that arent worth fighting for. Indeed that would be worth fighting against. Showers is now a fight for survival and a fight for justice. For the survival of the possibility of justice and some legitimate hope for what king called the beloved community. Even as we struggle, justice survives. Our fight is against chaos and for community. It we cannot wait. At Riverside Church king spoke words that would appear in the final paragraph of that final book. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late over the bleached bones and a jumble residue of numerous civilizations are written the prophetic words too late. Is it . Too late . Remember that 80 . Read we know what the science says. What does your conscience say . What does too late even mean . Too late for what . Even in the face of all we now know will it ever be too late to hold on to some kind of faith in human decency . Will it be too late to hold on to some kind of hope, however irrational it may seem in our fellow human beings or to love our brothers and sisters on this earth . Because these things, faith, hope and love are every bit as real as the science. Every bit as real as the co2 in the hemisphere and the carbon in the ground, as real as low melting arctic and acidifying devotionocean. As dr. King new, these are the stuff of real movements, the kind of radical transformers of movements that change the course of history in assets and maybe, just maybe might change again. If enough of us are willing to fight, fight hard enough, and fight lovingly enough and never give up. If we are willing to engage in a struggle, this radical and loving struggle for each other. Thank you. The [applause] thank you. So. As promised before we get started with any questions, i think we have 20 minutes or so for questions, i want to introduce three people who are here tonight who are actually in the book. Some of the people. The epigraph at the end of the book is from henry david thoreau, let your life be a counterfriction to stop the machine. Let your life be a counterfriction to stop the machine, from civil disobedience. I had the privilege of getting to know over the last few years a few of the people out of many in this movement who have actually tried to give those words so when i introduce you, would you stand up and stand up here and all three of you, so first j. Ohara. [applause] a friend of mine, actually. The projector is right in your eyes, right . If we can, that would be great. We are obviously not using it. So j. Is a quaker. He will tell you, he is a quaker, full stop. He refuses any other labels. Just a quaker. He doesnt want to be called an environmentalist or climate activist or Climate Justice activist or anything like that. Just a quaker. I have to tell you when he first told me that i saw how serious he was about that and it took me awhile to get my head around that concept. A quaker. Ceso j. Along with fellow might have heard of you have to shut it down. They risked prison putting their own bodies in the way of but 680 some odd foot coal freighter carrying 40,000 tons of West Virginia mountain top removed coal to the breaking point power station in somerset, largest coal plant in new england and largest source of Carbon Emissions in the northeast, by entering their small wooden lobster boat which they named the henry david t. In its path so that it couldnt dock in the loading pier. So all along the way, every step of the way supporting them in every way from logistically to spiritually, there deer friend and mine, mar lola markham. [applause] marla is from missouri. My mother is with me. She is a seminary trained United Methodist minister who decided not to become ordained a. She left that have to go full time into climate organizing. Dont know when that was. 2005, 6, some time. And really she is one of the corps organizers of the massachusetts pressers climate and she was right there with can and j. Every step ofken and j. Every step of the way supporting them. Ken and jay went to trial, they were able to use the necessity defense. They became the first climate activists in this country to have the necessity defense approved by the judge and go to trial using it but what happened was the d. A. Was actually on their side and so not only dropped the charges that came out and gave a speech to the media saying actually about the failure of our Political Leadership on climate how he was going to march in the peoples climate march in two weeks with them, that became a little bit of a story and one of the activists in our area who helped them on that trial because he had some experience at trial was a guy you might have heard of named kent d. Christopher. [applause]. Ken ward, have now, and this is in the book, the story came together have now launched something which they can tell you a little bit about and what the principals are behind it and just briefly, you know, we can take questions. [inaudible] so grows out of our experience, collective experience, the four of us trying to and maybe successfully if people are going to put it in a book, trying and encapsulate what principle, moral civil disobidience where we put our lyes in the lives the way of the machine to deal with the kind of crisis. The center is to have backup activists who are willing and excited to enguadalajara in engage in that sort of practice and bringing financial, legal, spiritual resources and resources to support people at whatever phase, whether its brainstorming an idea that they are ready to commit or headed to trial in the coming in the near future. Thats the nutshell of the center. You want to talk about that both in q a and afterwards. Thank you, jay. Maybe you guys can come over here and then if people people have questions for you. Did you say that, thats their tag line. Weve got your back. So, yeah, anybody has any questions for me or about anything . I have a question. One of the issues thats so difficult with climate its hard to see, you have the oil spills and that sort of thing, but the latest thing with volkswagen, spew all of the stuff, well, we cant see it, we can die from it but one of the things thats great about these groups like do disobedience group is that you at least bring some pictures, only because you see conflict between the machine and people who are actively but at least it gives people something to focus on and then hopefully we can deal with the issues because one of the things, i think, with the climate is that its really hard when you cant point to, i mean, the oil spills, other than that we dont have a lot of things to point to and, i guess, my question is, given that thats the case, what attempts other than the machine versus the activists can we do in order to further the cause, so to speak . Who wants this one . I mean, i would just sure, i was just going to say that i want to point out that actually we can see it now, climate, its very visible and impact on peoples lives, so even here in new york city, other neighborhoods that were affected by sandy, you saw Climate Change. That storm surge was superpowered by record warm ocean and temperatures and so on. And so all over the country, whether its in california or South Carolina or wherever, its visible. That doesnt necessarily mean that the media are doing as much as we can to be making it visible to people but its there on the part of the activist versus the machine, i love that. That is exactly what they are doing. Direct action and the sort of things that tim and jay did, it draws the bright line. It makes visible for the rest of us for society exactly whats at stake, you know, what the lines are. And i dont know, instead of me going about that, maybe one of ewe want to speak to that. All right. Great. I will add to it that while i think it is visible, certainly for the people that are directly impacted right now, its also quite possible to not see it, to look away and i think thats what your question gets at that, you know, for people that can come to a book event in brooklyn like our lives are not catastrophic right now and its easy to not look at the catastrophe and i think that that is where civil disobidience can dram atize the same way with civil rights with segregation. Its separate water fountians, whats the big deal . Until people started violating that code of the jim south. So once people stepped outside of those rules, it became clear that that was a system on violence and it was the images that people getting head beaten in lunch counters and the subtle violence that was at the root of segregation and so we can look at Something LikeClimate Change which is inherently a form of violence against the young. Its a form of violence and those are all relative terms. Were already seeing some of the impacts now coming from the generations that came before us and all of us are reaping sop degree of privilege at the expense of us that are going to come after us. So i think particularly when young people engage in civil disobidience it dramatizes the situation, the only way that were going to stay on this path, the only way that we are going to maintain the status quo of the society is to put these people in prison, violence against the young people. That dramatizes with the reality in the Climate Crisis. Yes, you. Yes. [inaudible] im getting ive always paid attention, ive always been aware. Right now im reaching a personal point where my commitment is getting deeper and im noticing its very clear to me a life circle of people and colleagues and friends and i can say that there are few other people in that same position and were not at all like you, were not activists, were mostly artists, film makers and that kind of thing and whats radical for us, well, i have to give up eating meat. I have to start making choices that align but im wondering what your personal tipping points are, most people arent born activists and particularly you wen, i saw that you had like a turning point. So any of you are willing to speak to that, i want to start sharing them with my friends because people, someone gave me and i started reading it and it was great, im telling people how great it is. Its very [laughter] but anyway, interesting turning points because some of my friends are at the shifting point. I just want to point out theres a great book full of stories with turning points. [laughter] ill just very briefly say im really glad you brought that up, totally, totally. My book, the prologue, you know, theres some, you know, deviousness to this. It begins with a personal awareness, its a conversion story, you know. Its my story and its where i introduced this idea of there being a kind of spiritual crisis at the heart of this that people go through, what i noticed, this is kind of for me the revaluations for me in my reporting of this book, is how many of the people that i encountered in this movement, people that are the most committed to it have been through that. They have had their dark knight of the soul and emerged on the other side somehow stronger and ready to take action. Obviously, not everybody goes through that or can or whatever, so the stories that people have it can be very instructive and very inspirational, i dont know, did any of you want to speak to that . So briefly, the i always grew up assuming that i was going to have a little girl because its what we do in my family, it seems. I come from some very strong women, im named after my grandmother, when she divorceed my grandfather, custody was award today my grandfather and she was convinced that her daughters were not going to have the best future they could have if they were going to grow up with their father and she took them in the middle of the night. Back then if you ran they could get away and they did. When my mother was a junior in high school, when it was time for the boys to go to biology and the girls to go to typing class, my mother marched to the school and said that no daughter of mine is going to type. My mother went to biology class. When she graduated she went to nursing training. She marched into a lot of places on my behalf and said, thats not what my daughter is going to do. When i got to the point in my life when had my own, we need to make sure that the best generation has a better life. I realized that i was going to have to do that for someone elses daughter and not for my own because i felt so called to do this work that i felt everybody makes their own choice, but for me i felt certain that i couldnt be a really good mother that i would want to be and do the work that im called to do in this world, and so i think for everybody the moment is different, but i actually think when you really get there the moment is also that personal and and you make that choice or whatever choice it is that you make and you figure out what life looks like next. [applause] time for one more question. One more. Okay. One more question. Duncan, yeah. So i worry. I think about when we talk about intersecting movements and the scope of the problem, i think the king speech in 1967 is really compelling but not at the height of his political potency. The height was in the 60s to focus on legal segregation and not the interlocking web of poverty and militarism. When we talk about movements that need to involve everybody, the very few cases that we have of movement that are truly massive, the Largest Movement in World History and reached the peak of its power, the military industrial complex, like the 80s, and i wonder as we think about the intersections, do we end up how do we obtain that clarity that actually does bring people who arent engaging, arent ready to engage with every last dimension of the problem and actually get everybody because i dont think everybody is at that point and we do need as many people as we think we do. It seems like we actually do need some focus. So my question is, what movements in the past do you think were able to make those connections and be successful in mobilizing at the scale we need. You need to write your own book actually. Yeah. I dont know about the which historical movements in the past. I mean, i guess, i have taken inspiration from the abolition ist movement. I try not to write real tight analogies to pass historical movement, im just looking for inspiration from them. I guess i try to get what youre talking about here. I agree a lot of what youre saying and see where youve coming from that. You can break down the climate struggle to different components and the the overwriting kind of urgency is keeping carbon on the ground. If we dont keep it within a time friend, you know, its unimaginable, yet at the same time in order to do that, currently the political system that we have completely incapable of doing that. It has proven itself completely incapable of doing that. So to me the challenge of keeping enough carbon in the ground is one and the same with fundamentally changing the political system, right . And if you if you say to yourself, well, my god, then its hopeless, how are we ever able going to do that in time, well, whats the alternative. Then we need to be honest with ourselves and what the consequences are of not taking on that challenge, you know. So there is one person actually in our political system if you can call them right now who is actually speaking in terms of a political revolution. [laughter] obviously bernie sanders. But that is exactly right, you know, what hes saying. Anyone else wants to run with this . This is the last question. I just want to address the points in your question where you say that 67 and the river side speech was not the peak of dr. Kings power, but i dont think it was a coincidence that he was killed a year later for giving that speech. I think its a question of what we measure as the power of like is the numbers that were involved in the antinuclear movement, the measurement of power. Is the legislation that dr. King produce it had peak of his power or was it threatening the fundamentals of a power structure to the point that that power structure decided that he needed to die. Thats where he was actually more powerful and most dangerous to power. So, yeah, i think theres a way in which like our movement likes to judge success based on certain tangible things, but when we come to like deep fundamental change, it gets a lot harder to measure that. I would just add one more thing in terms of asking which of our movements in the past have achieved this, none of our movements in the past have fully achieved their goals. They havent been fully successful, so i actually dont want to be limited by that. I want to learn from them and i want us to make our own sort of Movement Innovation movement. Somebody recently told me that we needed to make sure idealism didnt get in the way of the movement and we started thinking like that, i think weve let go of the world that we actually know we need to build. Thank you, marla. Okay. Actually i have one more thing and its not necessarily going to be eloquent, on that question, you know, kind of narrow political sense king was no longer at the height of his power, but in terms of his speech he was at the xenus, you know t the power has far outlasted that particular historical moment and i guess thats why i kind of end my book with it. So anyway, thanks. [applause] thank you all, wen will be signing books. We have some food and drinks and please enjoy. And thank you, wen. [applause] [inaudible conversations] book tv tapes hundreds of author programs throughout the country all year long. Here is a look of all of the events we are doing this week. That evening were also at the w hotel in washington, d. C. For former defense secretary robert gates talk about leadership in the public and private sectors. Wednesday, its back to washington for jesse of the lives of slaves in the white house at busboys and poets, then on saturday, just a couple of miles in our studios in washington, we will be covering two programs at politics and pro stores. First founder looks at racism in america from a christian perspective and later that evening david will remember his decision to turn in his brother, thats a look at some of the author programs book tv will be covering this week. Look for them to air in the near future in book tv on cspan2. David pietrusza, 1932, the rice of hitler and fdr. Give us an idea what it was like in 1932 . It was a mess. People were being stopped for foreclosing on mortgages and violence in the midwest, there