Transcripts For CSPAN2 The Mother Of All Questions 20170402

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good evening friends. Welcome to the berkeley Hillside Club. The latest in a series of events produced by the wonderful folks at berkeley arts and letters. We are very privileged to have them as a regular contributor to our cultural events here. Evan is the boss and you have him to thank you and his volunteers to thank for all of these wonderful events. [applause] how many of you have been in this hall before . Fair number. That is good. How many of you have not and have not a clue what this place is . Okay, thats great because im good to take about 30 seconds to tell you about the berkeley Hillside Club. It was founded in 1895 women who were really concerned about the plan the city fathers has for laying a Great Organization and paving reading in and says, they got physically active. We think we probably need some more of that these days. They were able to get the city to turnoff the way it has and in large measure it is just one of the most beautiful cities in this part of the country. I believe. In 1910, the gentleman under the two light spectra, famous for the architect was our president in 1910. He designed and built the first clubhouse. Unfortunately it burned down. Have his clients homes were burned as well. Much bigger than the open fire. To replace the beautiful clubhouse listed on the site, his brotherinlaw another architect named john wright felt this wonderful mop tutor revival structure. It has been our clubhouse ever since. Have a long tradition of involvement in civic activities. Live cultural activities. We do conscious and talk like this one. And dances and dinners. If youre interested in joining the Hillside Club, either a membership application in the hall or the membership rolls are currently open. It is a Great Organization to become a part of and help contribute to if you also shameless, as i have to apologize. We actually rent this hall for certain discrete events. We do not do fraternity mixers but birthday parties and memorials for, in any case keep that in mind. If youre interested rentals that hillside from. Org will get you there. I think thats all we have. If you have any electronic anointed that we tend to carry in our pockets please turn them off. If there are any empty seats available, raise your hand next to an empty seat. There are a couple of them. Are we looking for seats still . I think we are good. And i will bring evan up berkeley arts and letters, let them take over from here. Thank you very much. [applause] hi everyone. Thank you bruce. I want to thank the Hillside Club for hosting us tonight and as a regular host for our series. We generally, weve been around for seven years. Most exceptional authors and thinkers with new books. It is a process concept. We have posted everybody from heidi smith and others. You can find more about our past and Upcoming Events at berkeley arts. Org. That we are very excited to be hosting rebecca in support of her new book mother of all questions. And with her tonight we have jeff chang. Please anybody here in november when we had jeff chang . Awesome. Youre very excited like me then to have him back. [laughter] i want to thank rebecca and jeff for being here tonight. These guys are asking the hard questions for all of us. And fighting on behalf of all of our rights. I just want to get in a round of applause. [applause] so i am going to read a little bit about them and then i will get out of the way. Just in case, there are books of theirs that you do not know about you are about to find out. So rebecca is a writer historian activist and the author of 16 books about environment landscape, community art, politics, hope and memory. Including the National Bestseller men explain things to me. Hope in the dark, faraway nearby, paradise built and held them a gut getting lust, wanderlust, future walking and vigor of shadows. For which she received a guggenheim, the National Book critics circle award and a literary award. A product of the California Public Education System from kindergarten transects. [applause] she is a contributing editor and as you probably know the mother of all questions is a new collection of feminist essays. Joining rebecca as it is jeff chang. Jeff has most recently published we gonna be all right which is a total much reflection. I can mention that we have all of the books, not all of them but we have a bunch of books in the back. Amy is waving at you right now. Berkeley arts and letters is organized by both smith, a bookstore in San Francisco. We would be happy to sell you books tonight. [laughter] jeff has been extensively on culture pulses and the arts. His second book was released under the title who we be. He cofounded culture strike and color wars, color lines its he is a winner of that news prize. Who is named one of 50 visionaries for changing a world in 2016 they named him one of the 100 list of those shaping the future of american culture. Do you guys mind helping me welcome them to the stage. [applause] i did not want to spell that. I think david was laughing at me for pulling books out of my bag or something. [laughter] good evening. Hello thank you so much to evan, berkeley arts and letters, both smith staff, wonderful staff. The Hillside Club and all of you for coming out tonight. I get the honor to ask you questions tonight. Well, hiphop, right . Although i do not rap. Shall we start . We shall. The last time we got to talk you just come back if i remember correctly from Standing Rock. Was it that long ago . I went out there in september with a real sense that you know it was the center of the world and i wanted to see what was happening. It was amazing being there. I was happy i went when the weather was bonnie. I have so much admiration the people that stuck it out for the winter. It is one of those things. You know like occupy the arab spring black lives matter, nobody knew it was coming. And it is one of the things that you knowing that we are supposed to talk about this book but we could talk about this one too. We definitely will. To see, so much about Standing Rock which felt it was not there to adjust one pipeline. But to really kind of remedy in turn half the millennium, i think in meaningful ways we do not know what stan iraq has done because it will take decades to find out. But it was amazing being out there. Lets pursue that idea in a second. I also, if i remember correctly when you were coming back from north dakota, he was sitting next to a chump supporter, yes . Yes this is what happened. I have had to conversation with trump supporters. [laughter] you know my friends in nevada, new mexico and i think have had some more. It was fascinating. I do not remember. What i found fascinating was that both of them were voting for a man who was you know completely fictitious. It wasnt even a facial trump propaganda. It was there platonic trump. Who is this platonic trump to them . While i set next to a week and swabian farmer whose son had addiction problems. Which is how you know you are in america. That type of junkie and you know, he was like this was right around, was it before . He had all the scandals that were fabricated and it wasnt really you know he thought he was a much better man. He basically thought that trump is more like him than any of the evidence would suggest. Then every four years my amazing friend who organized this radical Progressive Coalition for the state of nevada, it is my sacrifice on the democracy to try and ward off evil. And i was in this kind of legal suburb about 10 miles north of downtown reno doing this and some women steadily badgering me. She was there to dig it out for trump. Alex wanted to figure out what she liked him. She had two things she was really committed to. And if there was no arguing with her about. She was convinced that immigrants were preventing the family from actually she was egyptian. Undocumented immigrants were preventing her family from legal immigration. As of the portal system was somehow tied to all of these people that walk in mexico so that you cant come. Which is completely ridiculous. Although there is a really weird kind of relationship they are. Because in some ways, you can argue that undocumented or not undocumented folks but the government approach to undocumented folks is the reason she hasnt been able to become legalized. She was legal but she wanted her family to come explained that somehow people can get paperwork to become legal immigrants because of and illegal immigrants. And they clog the system but theyre not even in the system. I think thats true because all of the resources have been moved away from naturalization. And enforcement. And that is something that has happened since the reagan administration. Before this immigration used to be about trying to get people naturalized as fast as possible. The minute she was a kind of quotas that they put in each country which for the most part, they got rid of in 1965. But still limit the number of folks that can become legalized every year. So if youre in the queue and you are filipino or mexican, it will take you 20 or 30 years to get to the head of the line so to speak. And so, she is right in a really weird way. But for the wrong reason. She also said i was literally kind of like a numbers game. Give 5 million undocumented people disappeared and 5 Million People with suddenly get immigration visas. And another thing she told me was that you know, she believed about Climate Change and donald trump was going to do all of the right things. He wasnt going to favor fossil fuel. You know and bring back things like that. So its just like, where do you get your information . Can i go bring some doorbells and handsome door hangers and escape from you . She really wanted to argue. So those my two trump supporters. Is explaining. There is variations on this. Yes. Well, i did not want, i do not want to sort of relitigate where sort of relive november. I guess i want to ask how youre feeling now. Less beholden to people didnt like Hillary Clinton because she hung out with rich and powerful people. And i was like, trump is rich and powerful people. So, i find nothing about what has happened surprising, except the beauty and intensity and courage of the resistance. I thought it might be a little bit like life after 9 11 when a lot of people were intimidated and afraid to speak up and there was this kind of patriotic pall all over the land. But people are ferociously outspoken. This is essay you wrote in the book next loudness of the now, which i really want to get into but i also wanted to talk about sort of what they comes out of and you have this beautiful essay called the short history of silence. So i was wonder if you could talk about how you think about silence as opposed to quiet. The english language is full of synonyms and words that overlap theres a real request good sense of silence in a monastic retreat and silence not listening to track noise and theres also the act of being silent which could stand for a huge amount of what feminism tried to address and theres literal being silenced, no Woman Holding positions of power in congress and the Supreme Court and the legal system, a womans testimony about being discountered of things like that, but theres also for the purposes of this this is sa, quiet was removal from. Noiseness and sigh license is enforced and you could use that as a summary condition for what feminism is trying to address. The silenting you know when the see lensing silencing when you consent or not consent to bat is happening. Thats agency, the right to vote we got in 1920, most of us and exthen had to fight for all over again in the south, and for men and women. So it was a very interesting essay. I set out to write about the way women are silencees, and realized that gender is a system of reciprocal silence. Theres a male silence as well. Men are silent in silenced in different ways than women are and you had to look the whole system as whole. One thing that is different from the book is its about as much as many and children as women and its all feminism. We talk about the ways in which women are silenced and the way that men are silenced and how theyre different . I think in particular i work at Stanford University and the brock turner case, of course, seems to illustrate some of these different things. Can you sort of unpack what you think are how the silences are overcome and different ways and what that means. I think of male silence is all the thing that men are not supposed to do and say and feel and like, and i recount a conversation with my five year almost fiveyearold nephew and his favorite colors were pink, purple and orange, and i was monitoring the pink. Knew the pink wouldnt stay with us. Asked him why he didnt like pink anymore and he now that pink was girly and he couldnt like girl things and he is not yet five. Its not coming front his parents. Its ambient. I know parent yu try to keep your sons from guns or war games but aambient. Parents dont succeed in doing it alone. Then i went shopping for any not yet born god sons the Clothing Department and the gendering of newborns clothes was shocking. Boys clothes were like it was rocket ships and astronauts and cowboys and Football Players and dinosaur and reptile. Girl were all this passive, cuddly infant stuff, kittens and pink. And boys dont cry, men not allowed to express weakness and certain feelings and i think that theres a great deal of deadness. If you go to brock turner, to be able to do something horrible to another person, whether its any kind of violence, degradation, abuse, you have to cut downure empathy, and if have written about it other places that you have to kill off partoff yourself before you can become a killing machine and theres a way mens bodies are weaponized as well. Theyre not tools of experiencal sensation, their weapons, and you see all that in the brock turner case, which then has all these interesting wrinkles when the victim spoke up in court and became maybe the most well heard rape victim ever, with that incredible letter she wrote. That really kind of turned the tables in the power dynamic. She was given a chance to have a voice. Were two an era where rape visit of victims werent supposed to appear but she hid her name and there was need from protection for shame or further threats or the story following her, and she just read this extraordinary thing that made him that just with justice, diminished him into nothing in a very powerful way. Just extraordinary. And spoke with empathy to all other victims of similar crimes, and really expressed the kin of greatness in here and a way in which, by having that voice, that empathy, that strength, she hadnt been destroyed by an act that was meant to dehumanize and destroy her. You wrote, if i may you may. Just beautiful. Violence against women is often against our voices and our stories. It is a refusal of voices and what voice means. The wright too selfdetermination, to participation, to consent or dissent, to live and participate, to interpret and narrate. Those are what it means to be human and we can talk about physical rights and Property Rights and economic rights and things like that, but the very core, having a voice is what it means to be human, and we can look at jim crow or the ive been talking about the antichinese riots in 1977 or different kinds theres a lot of ways that the dispossession of native americans, genocide, the criminalization of homosexuality. Theres immunable ways people are sigh lend. Disappearance of the disabled. But feminism has been a project of arriving at voices and its very exciting Susan Griffin is in the audience, great heroine,. [applause] and a great sort of muse role model and friend of minimum and he was part of this incredible thing which happened in the 70s and 60s, the feminists kept writing about violence. And i name a dozen works by feminists from that period that were addressing silence. They were clear what was at stake and i was the right to participate, the right to have agency to have a voice, the right to show up and thats the right to not be silenced. Theres a beautiful part of your book, wander lust, which is a meditation on your idea of walking, where you suddenly sort of shift gears up and talk about marching and women marching. Yeah. And it just sort of its a powerful chapter. Its one i use a lot with my students, and i guess i was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your journey into feminism. Male violence is what made me a feminist. Grew up in a house of it, thinking all i had to do was escape itch escaped and then when i was 19 moved to a neighborhood where that home was safe and nothing else was. There was massive street harassment. And not just like, hey, baby stuff. Thats where the implication was that you might bit raped or murdered or tortured and where i lived in constant danger, and what was outrageous for me and still is, because young women still face and it it fades away and im now past the age of harassment except for blurryeyed bums in new york city. Its really a loss of basic freedom, of the ability to move around, to be independent, to be a full participant to be a anybody of civil society, to be in public, and its really, really hard to get people to treat it as a civil rights, human rights issue. As the women are told, like, i should disguise miss as majors buy a gun, learn martial arts, never legal home, move to a white suck bush, make money and have a car, be with man at all times. The fact that youre targeted and a problem you need to solve we dont tell victims of lynchings what were your wearing . There have been some great movements and our books are writing an incredible new with a of feminism addressing male vie license with a ferocity, clarity, refusal to see ground and a kind of collective voice through social media we have never seen before. But its still hard to bet a lot of home behind the able to walk down the street without being threaten is a basic human right and one that in a great many places young women dont have and it happens to you and you dont feel safe anywhere. Its like an initiation ritual to tell you, you dont have full rights, youre a target, bills of people billions of people may hate you and want to harm you because of your gender, think about in a parking lot in an elevator, when you plan your vacations, on the campus. So its deeply damaging damagind thats male violence made me a feminist. Theres some real beautiful dialogue in your essays right the questions. On one hand youre rigor obviously debunking the narratives and the myths that silence women, and then on the other hand theres the hope thing. You sort theres a way in which i feel like a lot of your writing is about the awe and the wonder of what happens when folks come together or the awe and wonder of the Natural World, in which you see a lot of parallels between the ecosystems of the Natural World and the building of movements. Can you talk about that, the Hopey Changey thing. Well, hope never sound more like breck cereal. Its a tough moment. I think a lot of us secretly had a kind of enlightenment narrative we were progressing towards a more inclusive, humane, less prejudiced society and this election troubles those waters a little, but [laughter] i think its really important, and this is sort of a footnote to this but to remember that trump did not win a majority of the people who voted. That 55 of the electorate voted less than half of that voted for him, and then in order to win the election, we had to have massive voter disenfranchisement but i guess that 15 million would be a kind of low ball number for how many people were prevented from voting. A problem with people who can vote and dont. But lets say 15 Million People can mostly people of color, who were proevented from voting and then we need a Voting Rights movement. You reenfranchise those people. Ill get back to me main question. And then clinton doesnt win three million plus more votes. She wins eight million more votes and if we had free and Fair Elections the republicans would never again win a National Election that has taken massive corruption. It took enter Mainstream Media running from right wing spin at a private serve which theyre now owl using in the Trump Administration with some kind of shocking thing, took misogyny, the russian intervention, trump himself getting kind of kid glove treatment for a lot of for being an associate of mobsters, a liar, a woodbe rapist, and an incredible racist and et cetera. So, back to the question. I think hope is [laughter] i feel like we love your digressions. Just put a mark in the fact that these die gregs are digressions are amazing. I have had times im 700 words along on the radio and what was the question. I know on this one its the Hopey Changey thing. The question is, isty trump election a sign . And i think those people were there before, theyve been there all along itch think we need to figure out what reinforces the racism and the xenophobia and the fear, because conservative politics are really feardriven and scarcity driven and how do we tell our stories better and circulate them more broadly to reach beyond the circle that already abe with. How do we have more custom pelling stories with more compelling circulation. The hope thing is the trump election is pretty a pretty bleak event in American History but you look the arc of the American History i was born the same year the wall win down, and women have women are so profoundly unequal. There are no laws against Sexual Harassment and discrimination, and Sexual Harassment in the workplace. Marital rape is not a concept. Marriage is by law a deeply unequal relationship in which the husband becomes the owner of the wife and the ivy leagues do not admit women ask you can look at race and its equally beak and the status or queer people and theyre bleak but in idea of bioaccumulation and the way these systemly dont exist yet so in the past half century we have undergrounds a extraordinary and antisectarian revolution and the authoritarianism is against what we have accomplished and wants to undo it but it will never be 1961 again and i think these are global changes, not Just National ones itch dont think well if every i dont think the status of qur will home homophobia will not go away but there are no longerber a broad consent sunday that we can keep gay people invisible through pre repression and crimization and the denial of Climate Change in the u. S. With very little but hope for me is really about a sense not that everything is going to be fine, which is optimism and inducesive passivity just like pessimism that everything is going to be horrible and theres nothing to do about i whichs also induces passivity. Hope is a sense we dont to what is going to happen an acceptance of the true uncertainty you can understand when you see the sudden emeasurens of things like Standing Rock or occupy or black lives matter to bring up the extraordinary things in this decade. So it is the sense that what happened that we may be able to play a role in it and its worth trying. And any definition of hope and my definition of silence is not exactly the dictionary definition. A sense of possibility, an acceptance of uncertainty. Were in a time where people love their certainty more than they love possibility, and so i its almost like a language problem where people dont know how to use the sub j. Tive and say maybe if or what if or we dont know that. Think people make crazy pronouncements like this will never happen. This will happen in three months and its like, what are you, god, the prophets . People some its like they dont know their language is tonka toys when it needs to be a much more sophies fix indicated midwest sew is sophisticated methodology. You were writing about the people love their despair. They love their despair like they love their perfectionity. Its a great i love that, teddy bear of despair. The teddy bear is like alec baldwins impression of trump with the the teddy bear of despair and its a security blanket. And i wrote hope in the dark and i weapon on the road all over i went on the road all over the country for a few years after that and i met amazing people and heard Amazing Stories and overall the revenge was great but agot a certain grumpy person, usually middle age, middle class, white, who is really angry at me and partly because theres this mistaken im in berkeley so maybe this is worth saying that being miserable is a form of solidarity. And you know what . Starving people and people in war zones are not actually buoyed up with the People Living in slender in the u. S. A. Are sulking over their organic arugula sandwiches. People are really attached to their despay and is was hardhearted for trying to take it away from them and meant i didnt love suffering people. Really love ending suffering. Im really interested in being pragmatic and looking at what we can do and. Wallow is is just not the revolution. [applause] i think a lot of you out there already knew that but thats kind of what that attachment to despair is. Its also dish i came up with a bunch of descriptions. Despair as black Leather Jacket than everybody looks cool inch hope is a frilly pink dress than nonwas to way. You sea were all doomed and people say, that cant be right, youre full of it. And you say i think something amazing might come out of this and people are like, thats ridiculous. The one is just as likely as the other, but theres historical record of extraordinary unforeseen things the fall of the berlin well in 89 and the breaking occupy the east bloc. Breaking away from totalitarianism, we live in an extraordinary period and have been surprised over and over again, the way samesex marriage arrived was amazing and thats actually being realistic, pragmatic and reasonable and that extraordinary things happen and we dent foresee them and despair that hat confidence has that confidence and if think it bull shit and its really more about so much on he left is more about identity formation than doing useful work. Despairists. Yes. Its a posture. Can i throw a wrench into this with this sure. Just complicate it a little bit with a quote from somebody name rebecca solnit. You write failure of empathy and respect are central and not marginal to how we organize osite so if there central to how we organize society, how do we overcome it is the question. You know, i think there has been you look the way people are kind of walked down into what you call their empathy zones and empathize only with people like them. Not everybody but a lot of people learning to bridge differences around gender, and transidentity and orientation, nationality, et cetera. I think nat people i was very hip to critique the photo booksow remember growing up, the family of man, this attempt at a universal humanism, and i was repeating some hip post modernists attack it and my aunt born in 1947 you dont understand how fragmented we we are after the third reich and after the war and people have gotten out of their bunkers bund empathize more. And i keep mentioning, the definitions of human nature we have inherited have been social darwinists and you i just found out were an economics major. Youre an economics major. True. This idea of rational selfinterest, tasteful way of saying were all deeply selfish, and when i wrote paradise in hell most of us in a crisis revert to a default system and we well to deeply connected and you see emerging in a neurobiology, psychology, radical economics theory, a number of other fields, a real drove mission of human nature to studies of small children, et cetera, that say say that we irinharenly empath emempathyic. And empathy is unprofitable, like convince people they need to drive and you can sell them a car. If they walk everybody at best you can sell them expensive shoes but its not the same kind of market. And theres a sense in which misery and isolation makes us good consumers and theres a lot of things that market fears. Fear is really important to conservative marketing, and its what local tv news used to really one off with all the crime wave stories and things like that and theres a real assault on empathy that has been built in and the fact that a lot of people are empathic, you know and not just in theory if theres an imagine. Theres two women economists whose compound name its like gibsongraham or something. Ail in a paradise built in hell. Who made me into if you ask what kind of system we live, in most would say capitalist, but in relationship to your children, your friends, maybure church group or the nonprofits you might von for, in ways we are actually functioning in nonopportunistic, nonselfish economies and capital limp is propped it by capitalism. It creates poverty and then people feed and house and try to run free clinics to assuage that poverty. Capitalism destroys environment and the sierra club and everybody else comes out to try to protect from capitalism. The sierra club runs off of donations, so and why do people do not . Dot toes serve the selfinterest economics defines. Its like its actually a kind of idealism0 wanting things to be better that may not benefit them directly and they may never see, and i think thats really huge part of who we are, and its pragmatic and realistic and if you recognize and understand it and can harness it and Movement Building and you can change the world and people have, and gandhi did, mandela did, ella baker and the people in the Civil Rights Movement did, and people like whats the reverend in north carolina, reverend barber doing that now, and occupy was amazing, like so many of these moments, and see what a deep appetite people have for meaningful life, deep connection, capacity to care for the most vulnerable, for equality and inclusion like the response to economic collapse in argentina in 2001. So there. Thats good. Take that, rebeca solnit. The question i have in this conversation we had with amy on the democracy and color podcast and with david, we were sort of talking about the politics of love. So, the notion that empathy hopefully could lead towards an enactment of the politics of love and you through his out which was amazing and made me kind of stop in my tracks you. Said maybe its not hate that is the opposite of love. Maybe its fear that is the opposite of love and i was listening to a country song, an out i didnt know outlaw country was a thing itch found out this past weekend. And so this outlaw country song way lon jennings . A group called the flatlanders and did a song called borderless love and a lyric says its like its all too clear the fearless love and the loveless fear. And i just was like, whoa. It was pretty amazing. I have to dig that up. Ive learn a lot from country songs. After punk rock i went into country. Old country, classical country, the kind of hank william to lieu Lucinda Williams with Merle Haggard in the middle. What is the opposite is a good way to define things and we have these conventional love hate things and i wrote a kole bum about anger and what is the opposite of anger in its curiosity. Because anger is a profound kind of closemindedness and which is why its enormous presence in our culture now is so destructive. Its the closing off of empathy, but if i hate you i want to cause you harm because i dont feel what you feel and empathy means to feel into and for me its the my boundaries nor longer here, theyreon me, and the profoundly empathic and can take it all in and its partly fear that makes people shut down of their open vulnerability, the risk of getting hurt, and kind of political circles being wrong and things like that. So, yeah, i think that love and fear. And then its and i also felt looking at anger, which was fascinating, being angry is miserable but its a way to escape other miseries which is sort of fear, doubt, and the introspective miss riz. A great deal of confidence in rage, and so im interested in yeah, how do we how do we make it okay to not feel like you need hate and fear and that i think is exactly what david kim the center for love what is lovedriven politics project is about, whose name i may have slightly mangled. And he dares to use love, and i talk about done a lot of people talk about truism and empathy and find sneaky ways about it but he users the fourletter l word. Lets talk about the idea of change and revolution. You have been thinking a lot about the nature of change and have been writing about that over your entire career, and sort of what kind of revolution we need to be pushing towards. I think one thing you said is that we need to get past the idea that revolution is only about regime change as one sort of starting point. I think going back to hit said earlier, with the revolutions in my lifetime, its that theres an ongoing revolution i think its deeply antiauthoritarian, the authority of bosses over employees and police over citizens and parents over children, men over women. Colonist over the colonist, all delegitimize, even humans over animals for a lot of us, and so what were really talking about is not starting a revolution, i think, but feeding the long revolution were in the midst of and removing obstacles and encouraging people to join the revolution and not the counterrevolution, which is powerful right now, but whether it can win and how long that is is a real question. I think that we are seeing a bunch of scary conservative regimes in russian and Eastern Europe and the u. S. And the philippines and et cetera. I dont know if this is like world war iv come can go some sort of longterm momentum or just sort of of blips, but it will change again, and how do we feed that future to give it something to change into, is part of the question. I think one thing you have also said is that we cant be sure what the impacts are going to be of events that may happen or of things that may be generated. Yeah. Thats something that is really, really central to the hopefulness in the work. I have a piece that game out in the guardian on monday that is my basically nevertheless she persisted, and it opens with damage ellsberg who lives near here and one of hi great heroes. In conversation with Edward Snowden and snowden says, had ellsberg not existed as an example, he, snowden, would not have been able to do that. He watched the documentary, the most dangerous man in america, before he did what he did, and that means that only did Daniel Ellsberg expose the corruption of six president s and the false premises of the war, and help contribute to the end of that war, and the discreditingcredite nixon regime, bus laid groundwork for an important act in 2013 performed by someone who wasnt born yet and that is so amazing. Theres no way you can say in 1971 im going to do this so a kid who will be born in 1983 will in 2013 do this thing. You cant and so you look at these longterm changes, and i tell a story there that i love of the first real official act of civil disobedience is gandhi and south Asia Community in Southern Africa resisting the kind of racial the caste sim there and gandhi goes to london to fight in this british controlled territory and three days after he lands british sufferats infade the parliament and play civil disoowe obedience and gandhi is so impressedfully sufferats and write as prophetic essay about people laugh at these women but a they will win. Ty laugh at us bus we will liberate the subcontinent. Its amazing and then gandhi leads to sets up models and tactics and visions that kind of lovedriven politics for the Civil Rights Movement, and so i was able to kind of go from these british women in 1906 to john lewis opposing the trump muslim ban in the airport, john lewis think great civil rights hero in january of 2017. Its like youre always planting seeds, and who will harvest that fruit . You dont know. Just have to plant the seeds, knowing that you dont know. That is a really important part of what i Guess Company call my credo. You saw our fiveminute sign . I didnt but i felt it. That was about two and a half minutes ago. Oh, okay. So, do we have time for questions . So, guess we have folks that have been letting down their questions on cards. As we wait for the questions, i had a quick lightning round. Just say a couple of names or things and just quickly react. Youre good at this, jeff. You should have a radio show. Id like to. Somebody hire me. [inaudible] if you have your questions on your cards please raise your cards and well collect them. Lightning round. Virginia wolfe. Yes. Tell me more, though. She has played such an Important Role in your writing. I like hen re david sure sure rowed she modeled a wholeness. And the poetry has no politics but that writing is the two separate nonintersecting apartheid camps camps and both s body of work that refuses to make that division. And sure to to the rowe gets outfield of jail and leads a Huckleberry Party and you think huckle and antislavery and antiwar goes to jail together and virginia wolfe writes guess war and really important formative feminist stuff and so she really holds big space, i think, for all of news which you dont have to feel like, im going to accept this pigeon hole and tame the solos and thes a gearous writer about things i write about. And the uncertainty of the value of being in doubt and this experimental message and the time of hope in the dark comes from something she wrote in their journal, the future is dark, the best thing the future can be and i always want to resuscitate the word dark as something other than pejorative. I love shade and night and darkness as a desert rat. And so many origins, the beginning of creation. I think creation takes place in darkness, whether its erotic or artistic. The light. We have two really great questions. The first is, thank you for your post election leadership and activity. Many activists are calling on the left to say outraged and angry. As a motivation or drive to action. How too relate to this call for outrage and anger and how does your activism relate to this and to empathy . I think that anger will eat your insides out, and one thing i know about angry people, certainly experienced a lot during the other ex, its kind of like a machine gun that can shift just a little and start turning into friendly fire and ive been taken out by people who got all ramped up and just stayed that way. Its a really Destructive Force but i think outrage is indignation, a sense that this should in the be so. But what i feel pretty sure for most of the longterm activists i know, they love environment more than they hate oil companies. They love justice more than they hate people who carry out injustice. Hate is kind of hate is a kind of sugar you get a rush off but im afraid im going to go into a protein bar metaphor so ill stop right here. Its really sad and pathetic and granolay but its a sustaining force and theyre easy to confuse and the Antiabortion Movement is scare because they claim to love the unborn baby and they dont seem to give a damn about born babies and seem clearly driven by hatred of free sexual independent autonomous women, women with voices, and the agency, and host could it be fear . Yeah, free women are threat to patriot kick which is patriarchy, so i think that its not about being different to indifferent to suffering and outrage but just i think also staying in touch with what you love sustains you personally and politically. If youre an environmental list, go camping. If you care about human rights, hang out with people who are doing the work. And on whose behalf you think youre walking, partly because they should be in charge of their own liberation, but im outrage is a funny word and exists without rage per se, just a state of kind of indignation, a deep sense this should not be so, and i hopefully then that i will do what i took change it. This question is related i really i got it this past weekend the tucson book festival. It relates to the recent protests, student protests, at at mid middle Berry College where students disrupted the appearance of the neoconservative intellectual charles murray. The professor stinger is a owes and wrote an oped but the question is and what are your thoughts bet protests relative to the thoughts on silence. Theres a huge debate on the left about violence and i feel im not a big fan of the idea that everybody wherever should be nonviolent. I certainly believe in everybodys right to selfdefense. There was a really interesting story a few days ago bat woman jogger got assaulted in a bathroom in seattle, fought back, subdued the guy and now like it was kind of awesome. And they may need to jet edit this for book tv but she kept shouting not today, mother fucker. Not ever. The kind of movement im been partve in the united states. Never heard anybody make a agrees argument how violence will get us where we want to go. And at least since the seattle in 1999 it is that far bill clinton a huge debate about diversity of tactics tasteful euphemism can violence be partve nonviolent tactics. Im friends with mark rud, part of the weather underground, and they whenty decided to do violence they did violence big. They flew stuff up and it still he is now kind of a ferocious and even aggressive proponent of nonviolence but a real stickler about it. He has seen people be blown up and killed. Nobody is just really made a convincing case for me that squabbling with the police and lighting garbage cans on fire and smashing windows is this is netting us any really great benefit and there are times light at occupy oakland where i saw i wasnt there when nat was happening but i kept hearing stories, including from a wheelchair bound friend of mine about the police getting whipped up into a frenzy by ablebodied people who then scampered off and left the moms with kids, slower older people, disabled people tober bear the brunt of the police. So i think theoretically possible hasnt yet seen the circumstances in which it belongs in the stuff ive been part of. But i also think what property destruction is violence, its a complicated question, and i wrote after during during occupy the firefighter breaks down the door to save life. The husband breaks the dishes to demonstrate to the wife you can also break her. What we do to inanimate objects can have difference meanings. Another fast round while we are at it. Beyonce. Shes great. Shes like the virginia wolfe of hiphop, dont you think . Absolutely. Thats the perfect analogy. This complex kind of feminism and these long narratives she is constructing and her tremendous inininsistence. One of her influences is rebecca solnit. Quote beyonce. From formation. Just become my new kind of silence. But no, theres very funny thing that happened in 2012 which divided my world into those who knew beyonce and cared and those who didnt. It was fun. Somebody in any family dont know how to pronounce her name. People dont care about beyonce. There are those people. Were protecting you. But beyonce tweeted about the after the bearing of the daughter and people dont conclusion because win youre that famous everybody is overinterpretting and projecting on you like crazy this was actually the explanation why her daughter was named blue and is beyonce named people didnt know there was a thing called nonfiction so was turn interest a novel or poem or things like that. And the sad thing about it is there are times where somebody mentions your book and you get a little bounce out of it. Beyonce fans turn out to not be really big bookbuyers. But i am its also this fun thing such a factchecker where like, at first i was like, thats really cool. Nope, was trained as a factchecker. Did she say thats why he named her daughter that . What is the origin of story. It was inoctober accuse fake news and i wouldnt take create for it but the person who edited my wikipedia entry that no longer says it was i regret it because whats the thing in the man who shot liberty valance . When the truth becomes legend, print the legend. Thats i went to j scholar at burkly. Thats not what we were taught. What is your take 0 trumps proposed budget cut opens the national endo youment for endowment for the arts we. Have a small budget for arts which is smaller than canada which is about to double their arts funding under the cute guy, trudeau. He is handsome but he keeps building pipelines. I received nea work my new Orleans Atlas received the neh. But one of the sad things about this kind of budget cutting is that it doesnt really understand how economies work, that one thing that trump is doing is scaring off the tourist economy which is crashing dramatically, and for a lot of cities including San Francisco and new york and new orleans, i probably should have been closer to this the whole time but nobody told me wow, and this wicker chair has me leaning way back. Its very tilty. And i should have test evidence it. But the arts are a huge have a huge economic benefit and so cutting them, which they pre its tiny. Theyre pending more money protecting melanie in trump tower than the nea. Its a hate crime basically. And you look at the all the way theyre allocating spending and Science Research benefits the country. Cutting automatic emissions, people actually save money on gas. And so theyre doing all this stuff and in a funny way they are idealist, theyre responding according to how the world should be rather than the way the world is so doing symbolic things that reinforce the white pate old ways. Coal with never be a useful fuel again. And theres not that many coalminers and where its its basically i joke that make America Great again really means make america 1958 again so thats an idea its still 19 exactly coal is our energy and Climate Change doesnt exist and lots of men work in coal mining and we pretend that black lung and other things that happened to them dont happen. So its weird seeing them build an economy or destroy an economy based on ideological fantasy rather than what works. The military is were the biggest military in the world. What are well go to dive 10 more and then goes back to fear anded idea if you throw more money the military well be safe ever safer. Its what are we not safe from . Its white men with guns guns gd maple violence generally male violence generally and the opium epidemic and Health Crises and one thing is find interesting is this bait and switch fear game. But the nea, i it would be a great symbolic victory and is about the cart of pencil necks being crushed, thats me. Possibly you, although youre not really a pencil neck. Thats an adlai stevensen term and now the republicans trying to live out their fantasy and theyre mostly destruct. Feels like the nea, one of the first places to really promote multiculturalism in the arts has become this symbolic thing in the way that obamas image became a symbolic thing of what needs to be done away with in order to make america 1958 again. Does represent a diverse progressive integrated vision of cultural and so this is kind of like i dont i dont know what their idea is culture is. Ted nugent . Last question here. We have gone through this entire night and not talk about the womens march which feels like a huge omission. I guess the first question is, does it make sense that to me it makes perfect sense but want to understand how to how you think about it. The womens march in terms of the way the you now your principle came out ands a vance a whole bunch of things. Climate change is not a feminist issue or shouldnt be a feminist issue. Racial justice shouldnt be a feminist issue. But it seem wow, way to marginalize and get to thize feminism. These are the debated that occurred around the unity principles principles and then four Million People show up for these ewany unity principles. The question i had is, well, the rest of the resistance continued to be led by women and why not . I hope. So i hope. So and woman is slightly more than half of the human beings on seater that doesnt feel like a very restrictive category. And also feels symbolic and antithesis to the almost all white male cabinet. We didnt talk about the world intersectional, the place where two things cross or this kind of joking with you, kind of like well meet the intersection and we have talking about gender and race and everything else. Feel like something that we know instinctively is how these are connected but dont have and would really benefit from a really powerful manifesto explaining how human rights and all the categories we recognize them, disability, orientation, et cetera, and environmental justice, et cetera, are connected, and it is wonderful seeing people refused to be separate. They can pick you off when youre separate and seeing the sierra club and 350. Org stand up for black lives matter a year or two doing and say Racial Justice is not separate from what were working for and then black lives matter developed a climate platform and to really refuse every time theyve try to separate us and say, like, my your suffering doesnt have anything to do with their suffering so well put them in camps and exclude them from full citizenship or youll watch them lose their meals wheels and you wont care because we con veined you youre separate. Its what do we del in indivisible. It really was about solidarity which is empathy which we can use the scary word, love. And fear fear divides and hate divides. A wonderful live in Gloria Steinam saying that hate generalize, love particularizes. And hate divides and love connects and so i think that indevicibility the practical and economic and kind of spiritual and moral ways that you cant deal with these things in isolation. They were pretty much all handmade and they were not sweatshop made. People could harvest their own salt and there was a kind of doityourself to it, but its like purple and yellow and [inaudible] my friend that wears a kind of clerical somebody made her a hat anhalf and it was all some f like catwoman. [applause] [inaudible] thank you so much for coming out. [applause]