CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

 [Cheerful theme music begins] 

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

In this episode, co-founder of Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project, Gopal Dayaneni is joined by community organizer and environmental justice advocate Carla Maria Pérez for a powerful conversation exploring the connections between environmental racism and climate change and what we can do as individuals and communities to address and heal from the harms of both. 

This episode was recorded during a live online event on April 28th, 2021. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 

[Theme music concludes] 

Carla: Good evening, good evening everyone. Wow, G a conversation on racism, climate change, and pathways to justice feels like stuff we've been talking about for a long time. [Gopal: Yeah.] I'm gonna go ahead and introduce you to our friends in my own way. Is that okay?  

Gopal: Yeah, that sounds great.  

Carla: Alright, I want to introduce Gopal Dayaneni as my longtime friend, comrade, and co-conspirator I would even think of him as a soulmate of sorts. Definitely feel destined to have been coming to each other's paths for this life work, that we’re both dedicated to.  

Gopal is a villager. One of the first ways that I think of him in my mind family from Andhra Pradesh, India. He's a loyal son, brother, partner, father, nephew, friend, comrade. Gopal was born with a fire, fire in his gut and that fire comes out of his gut through his mouth and he blesses [laughs briefly] -blesses us in the movement through his words. He's an organizer, a campaigner, a facilitator, a strategist, an ecologist and a preschool teacher, one of my favorite sides of him. You should see games that he plays in his workshops. He's also a carpenter and a gardener and like I said a poet and just recently coming to embrace the fact that his words are medicine for us, strategy and poetry together, make a big impact on those of us that are contemplating the world and what we can do about it.  

When I met him, he was working at Project Underground and we collaborated together left and right and it was in 2001. We worked together for the first time in 2003 and then I'll never forget the day that you said, we have to work together again because I pretty much only get to socialize with people that I work with and lo and behold we ended up being founding members of the Movement Generation Justice in Ecology Project together, which now Gopal is a board member and I've remained collective member. So anyway, it's my pleasure to introduce you that way. 

Gopal: Oh Carla. Thank you so much. It's just, it's such a gift to have that. That kind of an introduction and yeah, we do talks all the time and it's like, you know, people read your bio which is which cool I get it but it's this is so much more important. So, I am deeply privileged to be in this conversation with you and to introduce you to all the folks who are watching and thank you to CIIS for giving us this opportunity.  

Carla, oh well I just want to start by saying for me Carla you so seamlessly commit your politics, your vision, your organizing in every aspect of your life. Like the healing, the commitment to healing as a foundation for social, cultural, personal, collective transformation is just it just guides you in everything you do. And for me the deep inspiration, and I think some of the most important strategy that we've learned together through the work has come from me -for me, has come from watching you as a parent always asking yourself “what is the right relationship to have with this human being in this moment?” And not “who is the person I want my child to become? Or “who's the adult I imagine my child will be?? But what is the right relationship to be with this person right now, and that centering of relationship and that valuing of family of community and to embrace that journey is just one of the most inspiring things about you for me in my life and us being able to do the work of Movement Generation together is one of the most important sort of pieces of my life and pieces of my work.  

So, it's just such a great privilege to be in this conversation with you and we have been fellow travelers on this. Like I remember I'll just start with I remember when we first the first Movement Generation Justice in Ecology Project collective meetings when we were talking about the climate crisis and you and I were just like, it's not a climate crisis. [Carla: Yeah.] Let's not talk about it as a climate crisis. It is something much bigger and much deeper than a climate crisis and so I actually, since I get the opportunity to introduce you, I want to actually ask you to explain that to our folks, to talk about that a little bit more in the context of your own journey, like the journey that brought you to this work and -and just seeing the world in that way.  

Carla: Wow. Okay. Let me -let me find the pathway, speaking of pathways. So, I I'm descendant from one parent from El Salvador, one parent from Mexico. They both immigrated here at different times for different reasons. All part of sort of colonial thinking or the colonial project, right? My mom was sent here as a teenager to learn English so that she could get ahead, then she went back to El Salvador, came back later. My father was a student at the UNAM, the Autonomous University in Mexico City. He was part of student government when the 1968 massacre took place there and his, all of his friends were either killed or disappeared and so he came here, he escaped.  

And so my upbringing went, you know, included going back to both of those countries and just witnessing, you know, the militarism, the ties with the US the, you know what I understand now is like the impact of trade agreements, of stolen land, of global land grabbing and moving of international corporations. And, you know, back here at home, I didn't put that together with just what I was seeing here. You know, I started noticing how our environment was degrading, you know, and like where we lived, we had a really clear view of the bay and when I first realized like that it was overcome with smog, I was like, what is this?  

So, I started discovering the Earth in that way like ecologically. And then I was putting that together with what I had seen in my family, like the militarized state of El Salvador, an uncle who had got deported from our house, you know, just putting like what do these things have to do with each other? And as I continued to develop and had to choose a focus in college, I was like, I don't know, I need to learn and study and understand Earth and ecology more. But like, the people in like a rasa, mi rasa I need to do… and then I met environmental justice, environmental racism, you know as like a field where actually you're taking on both and in terms of it not just being a climate crisis. I guess.  

You know, in that time frame I also discovered my spirituality. I was born and raised in a devout Catholic family, but that was not my spiritual path that created the foundation for me and I was always meant to reconnect with my Indigenous spirituality and, and so through that at the same time I was learning -learning observing integrating and understanding about the Earth and energy and you know, just how human activity that impacts the Earth kind of vibrates out and, and has a much longer lasting effect than we understand and just how complex everything is.  

So, when I was like, well, we're talking about that moment. It's like, oh man, it's not just climate like climate is one symptomatic expression. Like the problem is so much deeper and then we would go, you know, we would get into this, it's really ecology. We have to call it an ecological crisis, not just the climate crisis, because how can you talk about it without acknowledging the role of water and the water crisis, or the way where you know, disturbing habitat and like the, you know, that crisis right? But then even deeper than that, should I go there yet? [Laughs] [Gopal: Yeah! Yeah, go there.] Is like that it's even like, how did we get to that place of siphoning out climate. So, and these are like global worldwide, brilliant minds, right? And I know there's maybe there is some strategic thinking involved and like, everyone is just putting forward this big climate, climate, climate and I remember you and I being like, wow, it's not just that, it's not only climate, it's the whole ecology, but then it's like, how did we get there? It's this crisis of disconnection, right? And like your work and specifically. You know, in looking at the, the unfolding of humanity and like, what, and along, every point in the development of humanity, and what we think of, as civilization, you know, from before the dawn of domestic agriculture, what happened? Where did those things take place that went [makes clicking sounds] and just turned us that much more like off. Disconnected us a little bit, a little bit, and a little bit more until we get to this global imperialist. You know, extractive beast that we, you know, contend with today which just makes it all the more clear but it's not just climate. 

Gopal: Wow. Thank you. That was that was a great way to get this started to first thing. Yeah. Like just right off the bat being able to say if you pay if you thought we were going to come and talk to y'all about climate change. It's actually going to be a little bit, a little bit of a different gauge so.  

Carla: Broader than. Yeah. Well, what about you Gopal, can I ask you the same question?  

Gopal: Yeah. Yeah. Just once again being reminded that we have such similar journeys in certain ways and very different in other ways. But, you know, also an immigrant family, also displaced in ways that we don't even think of as displacement, sort of the way in which the cash crops and chemicals of the Green Revolution shifted my family from being and you know peasant farmers to engaging in the process of mining for calories. I don't even I don't even call industrial agriculture growing food, right? It's and our friend Dave Henson always reminds us, it’s mining for calories, it's the extraction of wealth from soil and but that wealth was used to get my dad an education and so we became sort of, we immigrated eventually to the US.  

But my journey into this work. So, when I graduated from high school is a similar, the story of going back and forth. You know, when I graduated from high school I went to India, right after I graduated from high school for a year and I yeah, I wasn't, I had issues as a kid, but when I got to India and I walked off the plane in what's in Madras, which is now called Chennai. I had two nearly simultaneous realizations that put me on my path. The first was oh my goodness. Every single person looks like me, like everyone looks like me. I hadn't actually I had been to India before as a kid, but I had never really noticed, I'd never- that had not been a realization that dawned on me. Like everybody here looks exactly like me. I could disappear in a moment which I had never experienced growing up, in California and Silicon Valley. Now, of course, if I go, you know, back to where, where I grew up, there's just, you know, people are just as likely to be speaking Telugu in the grocery store as they are to be speaking English, but when I grew up, it wasn't like that. 

So, I had this experience of like, oh my goodness, everybody looks like me, and then I had this nearly simultaneous experience of, oh, my goodness, every privilege that I enjoy, I enjoy at the expense of someone who looks exactly like me. That there is a…there's this transfer. I'm a vehicle for a transfer of wealth. I am like the- I am a living vehicle of this transfer of wealth from the global poor to the global rich. And, you know, I didn't understand it, but I had this visceral sense of it. And I think that started me on this journey of like, what unifies that story like what makes that make sense? Like how do I explain that?  

And so, you know, and I started that's what set me on the journey of really racial justice, and social justice, and global justice. But what was interesting, the other part of the story I want to share is like, you know, fast forward a few years, and I'm in college and I'm a student organizer at UC Davis, and I'm doing racial justice organizing, and anti-war organizing. And, you know, in the, during the first Gulf War, and I remember getting ready to speak at a rally and there was this like person before me like an older white environmentalist. They were probably like 30, but at the time, I thought they were older. Now I realize [laughs] now that I'm in my 50s I'm like, wait a minute…but at the time I heard them, getting everyone chanting, you know, “no blood for oil, no blood for oil” and I knew I liked, I viscerally understood that. I was right. Like, I knew that was right. And I felt that there was something missing and I remember thinking to myself, you know, we actually should be chanting. We shouldn't be chanting no blood for oil, we should be chanting no blood or oil because anywhere there's oil there's going to be bloodshed. There's no other way to get it and it's sort of like for me was the psychic break from the Western notion that we are separate from nature or that we can talk about. We can talk about ourselves as somehow see ourselves as outside of the living world. No, I…and this comes up all the time when at MG retreats when we say that all wealth is generated through the work of the living world. Some radical lefty racial justice organizer will raise their hand and say “what about labor?” And it's like wait you did not hear yourself? In the work of the living world? Like that is a profound reflection of the deep alienation [Carla: Yeah, the disconnect.] that capitalism and extractivism that has created for us and it's the unlearning of that and the recognition that we are as the as the saying goes in many cultures and many languages in many ways, we are nature defending itself.  

And for me the environmental justice movement, climate justice movement have been about that idea and in that sense, ecology, you know, knowledge or study of home must include our relationships with each other and so that, that I think, for me is the is like, that's what got me to this place. I think are moments like that, these moments of psychic, these brief moments of psychic break with the control mythologies of the dominant culture, and, of course, relationships relationships, relationships, relationships, nothing and nobody, there isn’t an original thought for thousands of years and nobody does anything by themselves. [Carla: Right.] I like pointing, I like pointing out to folks, like, you know, “I think, therefore, I am” is bullshit. Like that's, I like to call that putting Descartes before the horse. Because actually, you only have a name because you are not alone. You are named because you were not alone and to center relationship in the way we think of everything is I think that, the remedy to that disconnect. 

Carla: That's right and what an important remedy, because when we're talking about, you know, when we're talking about bringing forward solutions for environmental racism or climate injustice, right? You know, I was you and I were well, you're a little bit ahead of me but we were raised in a similar era of organizing, right? [Gopal: Yeah, yeah.] Campaign based organizing also, you know, very influenced by, you know, communists organizing thinking very like target the state and get your metrics in line and taught, you know, who's your target and make sure your demands are winnable. If they're not winnable, you shouldn't even choose them as, you know, demands in your campaign, right? And, and we very much like learned an organizing process, that reinforced the power dynamic right between the people and the elected, or selected decision-makers that usually, you know, it's not like, we didn't win things, you know, we did.  

But it was like, I always saw it as a step forward and step back at the same time or at least another trip on the treadmill. You know, because while we may have gained something, we just massively reinforced that the ones that are in the position and have the solutions are the government, you know, that are usually collaborating with the corporations and the ones that are harming our communities, right? [Gopal: Yeah, yeah.] And again, it's and individualizing it's like this council person. The mayor like this selected person, this whatever, or even this all-star organizer, right? Like we do that in our own movement history, right? Like and the school system has helped us, do that very much. Let me not put it on the people, right? Like Rosa Parks, and yeah. Anyway, what were you going to say.  

Gopal: No, I think I think, I think that's, I think that's right. And I think, for me, that's like one of the most important things to think about, in terms of like if we first of all, recognizing as you said, like the climate crisis -like, if you want to understand the crisis, you just cannot look up at the atmosphere and count carbon that is actually a distraction. Both in terms of thinking that then that's the scale at which we should make interventions. But also, it averts our gaze from what's really happening, which is like that, that crisis is just the emergent consequence of the exploitation and extraction of wealth from communities and living systems all over the planet at once. And, and so that- 

Carla: Including living governance systems, right? 

Gopal: Living governance systems, and that process, then the strategic point of intervention becomes like, how those communities can be in right relationship with each other in the living systems upon which they depend. And, you know, the organizing we grew up with was like, Saul Alinsky, and stop saying organizing, and I'm not against all of it, like there's a lot of value in it. This is not but, you know, [Carla: It's not enough.] and I'm heading to I'm taking this to a question directly for you. [Carla: Okay!] It's Saul Alinsky and the stop sign organizing. It's like what you mentioned like the smart goals which comes out of the corporate world, you know, it strategic, it's measurable, it's realistic, it's time-bound, it's and…you know, and then we talk about what's politically possible in terms of the Overton window, which came from an advertising guy, you know, it's like all of it. It is like the tools that we were being told to use were actually ones that presume the legitimacy of the existing structures of governance and power and are simply trying to you know change the outcome as opposed to actually transforming fundamentally relationships of power which is what I think is most inspiring about the environmental justice movement.  

It's that in environmental movement where cam -where organizing is just tool for winning campaigns in the environmental justice movement campaigns are an expression of the power of the people, in their organizing. And it's about changing relationships of power. But the thing that I want to really invite you to share with folks on this pathway to solutions and that, like, I just love your articulation of, and I'm hoping that you can really talk about the healing clinic collective in this is, is the way in which this idea of, you know, like, just not always spending all our time and energy fighting against what we don't want, but the strategic, political, cultural, emotional, spiritual necessity to live into the world we know we need and I feel like there are very few expressions of that. I mean, there's many expressions of it, but there are few that touched my heart, the way, the healing clinic work that you've sort of brought into the you know, brought into our communities. Its -I'd love for you to talk about that and just speak a little bit to that that shift in thinking about how we, how we move towards solutions and vision.  

Carla: In that way, great, thank you. I mean, well my orientation to, that kind of organizing came out of that experience. Like I said, it was just often so as an organizer, so I was like, you know, knock on your door, recruit you to be a member organizer for many years. And spent so much time, like work, you know weeknights and weekends and with people and their kids at the park you know preparing them to speak and just how utterly disempowering it was right when you someone gets up…I'll never forget this one mother who got up and talked about how every night she can't sleep because she's not sure her child will stop breathing or not in the middle of the night, you know, from the refinery pollution and just like people, you know, the council just sitting there like, going like this and sipping their coffee and they're like, not even listening. And then they, like, never mind, you know, give the company, the permission, whatever, right.  

So, it's like this can't be this, can't be it. This can't be how we're going to make- so everything you described as like reformism, right. So, we're trying to make little reforms within the system and, you know, I've come across folks when I've talked about resilience based organizing and just transition who are like, well, we're not the ones who caused all these problems. So why does it sound like all of a sudden, it's our responsibility to fix everything when the government and the companies…like, well, it's, you can look at it that way or you can say, who would you rather have fixing the problems? Because, what's the track record that thec orporations have when they get together to fix our problems, it's in their interest to deepen their pockets, to secure their long-term political aspirations and to keep inflating the wealthy right? To keep pumping the status quo.  

So, we have to build, right, community built and led institutions to meet our own needs. This is how Movement Generation talks about resilience based organizing right? Applying our own energy towards- to build out the solutions that we that we know that we need in the way that is appropriate for us and that we control, right? And so in for the Healing Clinic Collective, you know, having lived here in Oakland at time since, let’s see that was in 2013 when I started and I moved to Oakland around ’99, so you know seeing Oakland and the hardships that people in my circles, people on the street, you know were going through I saw like a little -I witnessed the little fethiye de salude, a little health fair they called it, in New Mexico, working with my teacher there when I was pregnant.  

And it was like in one room, it was a community space, there was no private doors or anything like that and I saw someone receive a healing and the practitioner like embraced her and she was crying and they were rocking and I was like [gasps] you know I just never seen that like a doctor or a nurse you know what I mean someone who's like providing a wellness treatment like treat somebody that way you know and I said oh and just like you talked about getting off the plane you know and it was like in that moment. It was like boom. Oh my God. This is so right in so many ways for so many reasons and we need this, and I knew how it had been organized, you know. So, the Healing Clinic Collective was the answer to a lot of people's prayers, and we consider it very much picking up the baton from you know generations not far past who have been doing this work already, right? And we are designed to meet the health and wellness needs of our community with a network or a base, you could say a socially conscious, politically conscious, spiritually grounded, mostly POC, at least 50% queer identified somewhere in the spectrum, network of practitioners that through us agree to show up as community healers and not as sort of business people, right? And we pledge our allegiance, to the guidance of our ancestors and cultural knowledge and cultural protocols and ceremonial protocols and that is what guides our work. We pretty much like disregard the legal framework, as any kind of framework to give us any kind of direction on what we should or shouldn't do. And as we you know, say if it's the right thing to do, then we have the right to do it and we will.  

And so, we've been operating now for shoot, we're going on our eighth year, oh my god. Is that right? Yes. And we have a network of over a hundred and fifty natural or traditional wellness practitioners, and about 200 folks that are volunteers and we've held, you know, over like 13, 14 clinics served, more than 5,000 people and provide all kinds of other things besides the clinics, you know? [Gopal: Yeah.] But it's a real a, I mean, that's the thing G. It's like so amazing when people hit us up and they're like, I didn't know where to go, I didn't know what to do because this is not something I could take the Kaiser, you know, or to my doctor. Thank you.  

Gopal: Or I don't have health care. 

Carla: Yeah, like, thank you so much for being here. So, it's been really incredible to witness and there's not always in this life, in this movement life, you don't always get to see the theory manifest and it's like, oh, that theory it works, and we can see it. So, it's a real blessing.  

Gopal: And of course, there's a history of that across you know, we took inspiration from the Black Panther Party, and you know, the dominant story that gets told about the Black Panther Party, you know, is the militance, which is absolutely important. But what isn't told is the community programs, and the recognition that it is ours, if we yeah, if we are not prepared to meet our needs, then what business do we have saying, that we're going to govern it right? If we're not prepared to govern by directly meeting our needs and you know, something that you brought up about the -I just wanted to connect this to something that I think is a really important part of this conversation about pathways to solutions climate and environmental racism is this this thing you talked about like the sort of the reformist or regulatory frameworks? This is one of the things I think that's really like. Whether it's the Healing Clinic Collective, whether it's transformative justice and folks, who are looking, you know, if we are prison abolitionists, which I am, then I need to I need to be figuring out. I need to be part of a community of practice that's asking the question. How are we going to navigate harm and hurting in a way that is that is that doesn't depend on policing and prisons, right? We need, we need to actually create those solutions in our communities.  

And I think about this idea of sort of rights versus regulation, right? The regulatory -this for existing structures of governance whether it's about the environment or even whether it's about the particular aspects of the environment that are like policing in the murder of Black Indigenous and people of color, particularly Black folks in America, the mechanisms for dealing that dealing with all of that are these regulatory frameworks. And regulatory frameworks are not the same thing as rights. [Carla: Right.] And this idea, you know, I think this is really, this is really an important distinction. Particularly for those of us who are interested in this larger question of ecological justice. It is this, you know, with the health, the Healing Clinic is a really good example, for me of this, you know, if I ask people, do this all the time and workshops like, how many people believe in universal healthcare? And everybody raises their hand. Or how many people believe health care is a human right? Everybody raises their hand. And if you believe that healthcare is a human right then all economic activity must be subordinate to that right. And so, any economic activity that infringes upon that right is a form of violence because rights are not given and rights are not taken away, they are violated and that is the origin of violence. And if we were to say, health care, if we truly were to organize around the notion of health care is a human right it would look more like the Healing Clinic than the structures of industrial medicine that are essentially a net transfer of life expectancy from poor people in the global South to rich people in the global North. And you can say that about anything. You can say that about housing, you can say that about, you know, and that idea of rights-based frameworks around our organizing and that the only way to ensure rights is to actually exercise them. [Carla: Yeah.] To practice them -not, you can say you have the right all you want but until you actually practice it, you don't contest the legitimacy of existing authority which either says you can or you can't do it and so to me, that's like a really the Healing Clinic, transformative justice work, even all of the other work around communing, like The People's Solar Energy Fund and the creation of community based community owned cooperative solar that is contesting the legitimacy of the enclosure of a basic resource we all need, whether it's whether its energy or food sovereignty, these are all essentially anti enclosure movements, and so I think that's really important.  

And I want to invite you to say a little bit about like for you the with the importance of being grounded in ancestry and traditional knowledge in this work because like, you know, one of the only place that I know of in which the, this foundational principle of free prior and informed consent where consent is the basis of collective rights. Which essentially means that we must you know we must share governance as commons in a in a caring way is in the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And I feel this like deep connection between consent in terms of and, you know, an Indigenous pathways to commoning and to build- creating commons, shared resources in general but also and of course the infringement upon consent that is embodied in the patriarchal culture of our society and how those things, you know, how enclosure and you know, and entitlement, go hand-in-hand and how in some- your Indigenous grounding has been really kind of a guide around a lot of that wisdom. So, I would love for you to share a little bit about that. 

Carla: Small question, small question.  

Gopal: Sorry. [laughs] 

Carla: Okay. No, no, it's good. I'm gonna go back just a little bit to answer that around the like- it's just something you said made me think about, oh, when you were talking about prisons o- and people being able to imagine something else. Right. And so even those of us who our communities, are very much targeted by the police our young people or, you know, dark people in our ethnic groups, right? Are super targeted have a really hard time. I mean, like the depth of how ingrained it is that that that there are no, it's still the best thing to do. There's not another option that's often true and for many people so just you know also like there's a big mental leap to take around the health, right?  

Because people really, really, really, really, really trust doctors. Like anyone who's a scientist of any kind, right? It's like we've seen it so many times. We've heard it so many times. You know, they are the authority, scientists say, the united medical industry, says, you know, and that's like the ultimate authority that like so making that leap in our minds is a really big deal. And until we are presented with information about ancestral cultures, until you actually have the opportunity to learn and I'll admit for me, for me it was a real. As it was like, oh wow, my ancestors were astrophysicists, you know, and they functioned in the material plane and the spiritual plane and that's where all their knowledge came from, right? So, like the Mashika people, they drew drawings of what fired the flames- tongues of flame from- that come off the sun. Tongues of flame, is that what they're called?  

Gopal: Yeah, solar flares, I think. 

Carla: Thanks yeah, something like that. There's-they have drawings of them there in the codices, they're carved into the pyramids, well guess what? They look just like the NASA photos that were taken with super telescopes, right? So, until- I mean, that was one thing that I learned, but it's like, we actually the way that Indigenous people are portrayed by the media and the government, you know, is just so like antiquated. They're like these people from the past. They were back at all of that internalized. I think stops us from allowing ourselves to believe that peoples that didn't have this kind of technology that we're used to, the kind of instruments we’re to seeing doctors and people use. How else did they know what kind of sickness you have? How did they really know right? Like we can't imagine it.  

And so, for me it I just can't underscore the importance of like learning. Learning about ancestral ways of life. Pick one. Pick your own lineage you know pick a popular one pick, whatever is closest on the shelf or that you have a friend that could tell you about their lineage. But until you really kind of get into the fact that we didn't need all of this. Like, we didn't need petroleum and fossil fuels. We don't, we didn't need these electronics. You know, we didn't, I mean something some of my ancestors from the Yucatan area. They performed surgery without medical- metal instruments. They predict- they predicted like massive, you know whether events, I mean they did that with no quote-unquote electronic technologies, right?  

And so, I feel like there's, you know, the leap in the mind to undo, all the discriminatory thoughts, all the sort of racist thoughts, you know, that we've been fed about what Indigenous people are and what they're capable of without all the modern tools that we have is, is really important. And then when you think about some of the contemporary social justice principles that we rest on you, find all of them in old, old, old, old texts. You know. So, part of this is like, you know, the principle of Sankofa. If we just look back, if we look back, say, oh, or in our, in our, in our cultural thinking, we think of the past as behind us, right? That's actually not true for cultures every Indigenous cultures everywhere. So, if we think about our ancestors and the way that they lived and what they were able to do. Yeah, we can sort of start to regain respect and acceptance that we can trust different ways that are not biomedical ways, that are not industrial ways.  

Gopal: Yeah. Yeah. If I could just build on that a little bit [Carla: Yeah, please.] I think I'm like for me for me like the way I think about it as I want to draw a really sharp distinction between- and we talked about this at the ETC Group the Etc. Group that's working on technology, the ETC stands for erosion technology and corporate concentration, but one of the, one of the things that we try to distinguish between science and scientism, and I hate- I hate STEM. For example, I hate science, technology, engineering, and math because the conflation of science as a method of inquiry, with the production of technology, or with the engineering of solute- or an engineering is an attempt to act. It's part of the sort of corporatization of the co-optation of science as a method of inquiry, as based in questioning and seeking to know in there are many forms of Science and- that seek can, you know, internally consistent ways of making meaning of the world.  

And then scientism just becomes like any other religion if we're not allowed to question it, then, you know, it's got the same- it's got vestments of power. Just like any other religion and the lab coat and stethoscope, you know? [Carla: Mhm.] And, and it's so it- for me, you know, I'm- in London and Yeshiva talks about this, this idea of where new ecological knowledge and traditional, ecological knowledge come together, where the idea of observed open inquiry into what the nature of the world and using the diverse, you know? And, and looking for the commonalities and diverse knowledge systems is a useful, you know, way to reflect the make meaning. So, I just wanted to lift that up because I think oftentimes scientists- scientism, is when we- we aren't actually, ironically allowed to do the thing that science wants us to do, which is to doubt and question. 

Carla: Right. Make our own observations. How dare we!  

Gopal: And make our own observations and, and of course, all of that has more to do with capitalism and extractivism. There's even [Carla: Of course, control.] exactly it's like- and we see that in the institutions that are supposed to be our scientific institutions are actually profit-driven, which means that they are interested in, th- in the enclosure of the wealth of the living world. And, you know, I think that's- that- that to me is like, at the heart of the problem, which- where universities that should be places of public learning end up becoming places of patent production. [Carla: Yeah.] And that's, you know, and- and that's just an intellectual enclosure. And- and all enclosures are predicated on violence, whether it's the border around the nation state, or the fence around your house that's patrolled by the police. Or the patent law that, you know, says that ideas can be owned.  

Carla: Right. Stolen. 

Gopal: Yeah, stolen. I just wanted to build on that to offer that a little bit. One thing, Carla that, I think it would be really good for us to talk about is sort of we talked about this a lot. I'm going to ask you to reflect on an expression that we tend to use that, this idea that social inequity is a form of ecological imbalance and will inherently result in greater ecological erosion. That idea that we tend to again getting back to this. I think fundamental danger of an environmental movement. That sees people as separate from nature and that therefore is allowed to say we work on forest protection without recognizing that we cannot protect the forests while people are getting murdered in the streets. We cannot, you know, that you cannot, you cannot have an environmental movement that doesn't recognize that the entire economy is built on disposable people and disposable communities, and I would love to hear your just take, reflection, articulation of the sort of that core idea and how that connects to the, you know, how you learned that connection, how you came to that connection?  

Carla: Well, yeah, I mean it was really the, my strongest point of decolonization around that was sitting in ceremony, you know, there's also something that, you know, traditional medicine and sort of that the energy of a ceremonial space in a whole different way sort of allows you to integrate not here. That's kind of the difference, you know is like it's not a cerebral process of like intellectual grasping, it's like you know through living also, right? Like in you and I share in common, with lots of our comrades and certainly lots of people watching, this is like we relate intimately with the Earth that we stand on, right?  

And so it's like this process of relationship of building relationships. Then really understanding like, oh we're, you know, the sort of famous Native American sentiment of all my relations, right? Which is something that we credit mostly the Sioux Nation, you know, for bringing that as a as a phrase forward for us All My Relations, you know, I remember thinking like, wow, you know, actually there's things that are found in space, you know, all the things found in space, they're all made of the same elements that we considered, like the Earth elements, like the, you know, the table of elements, the periodic table and we're all this, we're all just made of different ratios and amounts of the same elements that produce, you know, all ignited, with that con esa chispa, [snaps] you know with that spark of life, that's the mystery. And then we come to life in all these diverse, all these diverse forms, right? And understanding, truly that what affects one, affects all.  

So, I mean, for part of it is just like, you have to accept that as a principle. You know, you have to accept that as a principle that it, that we are connected actually. Like, we're all, like you said, all the you said something around like a -well I forget what you're referring to but all the air that we have is all the air we have. It's all there we ever had. It's just like, cycling around, all the water we have is all the water we ever had is just like looking around, right? So, you know, if we understand ourselves, then as like just in relationship to things. Even if you don't consider yourself, like I'm an earth lover, you eat plants for food all the time. Do you eat animals? Like they're coming from the environment. What does this have to do with, you know with social justice?  

Well in a more modern context you know we can't we can't escape the disconnect that came from the colonization process, right? Where peoples were actually removed, like physically removed from their place and how, you know, whether it was indigenous people here or it was the trans-Atlantic slave trade, or it was like folks in India, right? From you're from where you're from and what that did to the place for lacking their stewards and to the people right for not having- where's our meaning now, right? And so, like our meaning, now the only place we find meaning in that context then is to find a job. To serve the new like ecology that we think we're part you know it's like the economy becomes our ecology like everything is about buying and selling of something and I have witnessed like in really straightforward ways, you know, with my relationship for example, to the Navajo community, you know how that manifests, you know, a beautiful, huge -god, a tribe with still so much intact, like tradition language story, super deep, and elaborate, and extensive cosmology, and ceremonial world, and folks, you know, taken away from their land. Denied the right to access the resources to make a dignified life for themselves. But guess what, they can get a job at the refinery, or at the coal extraction site that happens to be now on their rez and is one of the only forms of employment that they have, you know?  

So, it's like, I've, I have personally many relationships, which folks who on the one hand or in the ceremony or in a cultural space, you know, honoring the water and the land and then the next day, go to work at a refinery and pull oil from the ground or refine it and put waste into the water. And that's just a very direct, you know, example, that's not all that direct but I think to make a point is like, when you when you take away people's right to govern their lives and govern their relationship to place in particular, when that relationship has ancestral roots, or at least historic roots, where there's actually a relationship. We don't just know the land, the land knows us too you know, and so when you take us away the land suffers from that lack of relationship as well. And then we do what we have to do. We are a survivalist like all other species, right? So, we’re the I have to do something to care for my family and myself. Even if it means, I have to hurt the Earth. I'm going to do that.  

Carla: Ended here  

Gopal: Yeah, yeah because people are just navigating trying to navigate the you know, contradictions of the world we live in like yeah, you know, people don't blow up their own mountains for coal. People are forced to do it. It's and it's that it's that you know your- you what you were saying reminds me of our friend Roberto from Black Mesa Water Coalition who always talks about recognizing that they, as Navajo are the keystone species of logical restoration in their community, that without their dry-land farming erosion happens. And so, they see that, you know, he's so for him that the recovery of those practices, the preservation of those practices, the teaching of them to young people is actually about the deep interdependence of people in place and it, you know, and we see that everywhere it's like our friend Colette from Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy who when, when in post, you know, post Katrina and then post BP disaster, if you ask them, you know, what are your demands? Their demands were not jobs and compensation. The demand that she would always say is we want our wetlands back because if the wetlands were there than then the you know, the oil drilling wouldn't be. It's basically the recognition of and that in people wouldn't have been getting shot during Katrina because if we had had our wetlands, it would have been and again, this to me gets back to these fundamental questions of rights territorial Integrity. These- these- these things. And of course, like I just want to name that we are trying to navigate those contradictions. Right?  

Like so from my perspective, it's like, yeah, there we are. You know, we are facing serious ecological crisis. One aspect of it is climate but people have tended to think of climate justice as this idea of like you can win on climate change and you can win on social justice issues, it can be jobs that are good for the environment. And it's like, or this idea that it's a win-win that we can- we can get some justice wins and we can also address the climate crisis. And I think for me it's like it's not a win-win, it's the only way to win the only path forward for us is a path that recognizes that being in right relationship to each other, which means confronting the war on diversity that is represented by industrial agriculture and biocide and insecticide and herbicide and deforestation…that that war on diversity has that has that facet and it is also the war on diversity, that is white supremacy and racism. Because that's what it's designed to do. It's designed to eradicate diversity, to take all of the languages and all of the cultures of all of the people of, all of Turtle Island and call them Native American to take all of the languages of all of the cultures of all of the people of all of the diversity of Africa, and the diaspora, and call it Black and to- and- And it's true for white. Take all the people of all the cultures of all the languages of all of the knowledge systems of all of Europe and a few other places to, you know, who get access to the- the- the category of lightness and to call it white. And for- for us a part- a part of, for me, one of the learnings from your work is like if you want to disrupt that category those categories, you don't deny that it's real. You don't say, racism doesn't exist, and you don't get you don't pretend, you're colorblind. What you do is cultivate the diversity it seeks to repress, find your story, find your ancestry, learn your, your culture. What is the knowledge that is being repressed? That is being waged war against in the service of extractivism. [Carla: Yes] because that's the knowledge we need to move forward together in a good way to honor all that, to honor that diversity, that is, you know, being assaulted. 

Carla: Yes, say it. And like that really makes me think of, you know, one of the most powerful quotes that I've come across in our work, which you were probably there the first time I saw it. Was on one of Brock Dolman slides of a mural, I believe from Venezuela or something like that of like of a mural that said you can only, I forget if it was in the positive or negative, but you can only protect what you understand. Or you can't protect what you don't understand. And again, for me this comes back to that crisis of disconnection, right? And the homogenization, the mono crop of the mind. You know, system moving out because through- through all- when I was talking about that walk through human history, you know? And all of those places in in human history, where what is now government and imperialist force and, you know, all the tenants of this global way were developing all along, you know, removing the natives from, you know, from here to call it preservation. You know, stealing people from Africa to create a slave economy here, you know, all that disconnection and the, the forced homogenization.  

It's like, we don't know that anymore. You know, there's so much that we don't know what it's like to, you know, find a water source for our family anymore. We don't, you know, a lot of people don't know what it's like to cultivate their own food. People don't understand how to manage a water budget. You know, it's like all popular to catch water and rain barrels now, you know. But people don't know what that means. People don't see the diversity anymore. Like we're literally we’re living on top of concrete in the cities, right? Which is like what 80 percent of the US is urbanite. You know or people anyway live in an urban context right now. So literally we have been separated by the institutional structure, you know, from the elements that we need and that we always were in direct relationship with to provide our basic needs and so we don't we don't know them anymore. We don't know that diversity anymore. We don't know what it means anymore to be just as impacted by a fire, as like a neighbor animal. You know, like that used to be a reality for us. So why would we protect fire ecology? You know, when we don't know that you- like here in California, you're so easily like, fuck the fire. You know, duh-duh-duh- like- it's like we're like, no, we need the fire. We just, you know, we just need to take guidance from the Indigenous people that are very much still here and still have a relationship to control, you know, traditional controlled burning and learn how to respect that. If we realize in this age, who is not aware of this quote, climate crisis who is not aware of the ecological breakdown. And do we- if you think, just like your question about healthcare, do you think it's important to salvage ecological systems so that humans can survive and our children? Great, then all economic activity should be subordinate to that. We can't suppress the fire. We got to move the hell out of where the fire needs to be. So, the fire can do its thing and that forest can be here in a hundred years for my great-grandchildren.  

Gopal: You know I do think like I want to be clear that we do need to fight the fossil fuel industry, we do need to you know shut down polluting industry and we do need to control- control the cops and get rid of the cops. And just as you said it's like you cannot protect that which you don't understand. I think we will only protect and defend that which we love. And if we put all our energy and into fighting against everything, we will learn to love the fight and we will just be assimilated into the process of helping capitalism navigate its contradictions. Then if we actually say, what are the needs that it- that we have in our communities that aren't getting met? And let's meet them and by doing so we change the conditions of what's possible.  

And so, for me that's- that to me is like at the center of my pathways to solutions thinking is like, okay part of like- I believe in the rights of Mother Earth and I believe that then we should be organizing ourselves and building economic infrastructure that's subordinate to the rights of Mother Earth. I believe that people as communities have the right to the resources required to create productive, dignified and ecologically, sustainable livelihoods. And if we believe that, then we must reorganize ourselves to meet that need, which means what are those resources? Land air and water, I would argue even capital, financial capital. What does it mean to create commons of those resources and that's sort of for me, the work of just transition and the work of the pathways to solutions. It does involve intervening and policy and fighting against- fighting against things we don't want, but then the piece we've neglected for so long as a social movement is living in to the- the- the economy we know we need. And because that's also the economy that both will help us navigate the inevitable consequences of the crisis that's been set in motion for hundreds of years and also, you know, is in and of itself, a disturb- a disturbance in the and the existing- existing economy and hopefully a deep disruption in the existing economy, allowing for a new kind of healthy succession, which is what which is what we need and want. And so, with that…  

 
Carla: Thanks Gopal so much. [Gopal: Thank you!]  I just want to say thank you brother, it's good, it's good to just have the opportunity to rap you know about all these things. And yeah, I appreciate you and thank you. 

Gopal: Thank you CIIS, and I hope it was too stream of consciousness for folks at home, but that’s just how we roll.  

 
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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
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