Excuse me. A week ago, ending a week ago, we had a Rohatsu Sashin, five days of intense sitting, celebrating the Buddha's enlightenment. And I spoke, inspired by a teaching from Dogen, the 13th century founder of Soto Zen, about the dignified presence of active, actual Buddhas, practicing Buddhas. So this dignified presence, this inner dignity, in the context of Sashin, we emphasize in terms of finding our own inner dignity, which is one of the main functions of this sitting practice. Dogen says in that writing, just experience, just fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha.

[01:12]

So this practice, the Zen practice, is a vital process. It doesn't happen according to some clear, linear explanation. It's kind of organic and alchemical. And it includes a transformative function. And for people who do this practice regularly, and I encourage sitting several times a week, at least just stopping Our usual way of trying to manipulate the world, of course that will come up in our sitting too in terms of our patterns of thinking and so forth, but we can pay attention to our own inner grasping and aversion and confusion and find this deeper interconnectedness in which there is this great Dignity's not, doesn't capture it all, but this igi that Toget talks about, this presence that is responsive and aware and attentive.

[02:19]

So, during Musashino, I was talking about this mostly in terms of our own inner work. So, part of our sitting is to turn the light within, to focus on what is going on on our cushion or chair and to connect with this deeper creative presence that is there. But this practice works within us but also is expressed externally in response to the problems of our own life and the problems of our world and our society. So this is what I want to talk about today. What is our responsibility? How is it that we can pay attention to the difficulties of the world? So I'm going to talk about this in a few different areas. So we'll see how far I get. But one context is just to see how Buddhism in America is integrating, or can integrate,

[03:33]

maybe needs to integrate with Western religious perspectives. So I have been teaching for many years at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. I taught there regularly on site when I lived in the Bay Area. I've been teaching there for more than 20 years. And now, living in Chicago, I teach an online course there every year. And I got this interesting email, and this is in response to the situation of the murder of unarmed African-Americans by police that's happening in many places all over the country. So the president of the Graduate Theological Union, which is, it's a consortium of different seminaries. So I have taught through the Institute of Buddhist Studies, which is, well, it's a training for Pure Land the Pure Land Buddhist School, but it's a seminary, but also has other Zen people besides myself, and actually a range of Buddhist teachers.

[04:42]

But there are also many other seminaries there, Christian seminaries, Jewish, Islamic, many different denominations of Christian seminaries. So this is the context of response from religious people beyond just sin. So the president of GTU wrote this, sent this out. In the last week, people have taken to the streets across the nation to protest against repeated incidents of unarmed black and brown citizens being killed by police officers. This injustice within our law enforcement and legal system has triggered personal and public pain. indignation, and a nationwide call for accountability. Members of the Graduate Theological Union community, including faculty, students, staff, and alumni, have been among the thousands here in Berkeley who have lifted their voices and engaged in nonviolent protests to call public attention to the destructive impact of racism within the criminal justice system and in our larger society,

[05:53]

We recognize that our educational institutions are certainly not without fault and face their own necessity to address and dismantle racism. But if educational and religious leaders remain silent in the face of these killings, our silence will only contribute to the perpetuation of belief systems and behaviors that need to be rooted out and eliminated in a society that truly reveres fairness, justice, and equality as sacred values. The GTU believes it is essential that issues of racism, violence, and injustice within the legal system be addressed in classroom discussions, pulpits, scholarship, and social media. But this is a moment when we must also register publicly our disdain for the lethal actions directed against unarmed citizens by legal authorities. While engaged in peaceful protests for the past several nights, two members of the faculty and 15 students of GTU member schools were arrested.

[06:54]

We celebrate the courage and willingness of these members of our community to endure risk for the sake of their witness. The GTU joins its voice with that of the many individuals, both inside and outside our community, who are calling for an end to such injustice and violence. So we're all part of this community, this song of ancient dragons. I'm made as part of many other communities. Each of you has a range of communities. That's part of the, I think, the health and advantage of practicing in this maybe unusual way in terms of Buddhist tradition, practicing in an urban, non-residential life center where we are out in the world, in Chicago. And so the problems of racism, of course, have a long karma of slavery and racism. It's very deep. It's in all of us.

[07:59]

So this is a mostly white, not completely, but mostly white, sort of middle class, if that means anything anymore, sangha, but as white people who are not oppressed by the difficulty of African-Americans just walking out on the street and being subject to, as we've seen in many, many cases, actually being just killed by police officers. This has to do not just with bad policing, but it has to do with all of us and the ways in which we carry these prejudices. So I feel some responsibility to mention this. I've mentioned this before, right after the incident in Ferguson. How do we see that in terms of our own practice and our responsibility?

[09:01]

I was impressed with what I saw of the nonviolent protests, not just in Berkeley, but in Chicago and in many places in the country, about this part of our police system, our legal system. So we have a traditional practice of nonviolent action, which is related to Buddhism in a lot of ways. So I think Buddhism that needs to, you know, coming from Asia where there wasn't even the idea of participatory democracy, representation of the government. All of our ancestors lived in societies, feudal societies, our Buddhist ancestors, where there were feudal rulers and warlords. And yet here we are in a society that at least pretends to have democratic values.

[10:06]

So I think as Buddhists, you know, not each in our own way. I'm not saying that you all have to go out and participate in those demonstrations. Although I've been sick and then I was at Sashin, I haven't had a chance myself, but I am hoping to get to some of those demonstrations. And if any of you are interested in joining me, let me know. But how do we respond to Not just what's happening in these streets and what's happening to African-American people, not just in terms of the police killings, but in terms of the oppression and incarceration that they face. This has to do with our own attitudes, too. So... There are ways to respond and I think as Buddhists we actually have something to offer to these kinds of responses. A sense of this vital process, a sense of this inner dignity that we can impart to response actions that respond to these situations.

[11:20]

And this isn't easy. And again, I don't feel like there's one right way to respond. But to be aware that this is part of our society and ourselves is helpful, is necessary. So in terms of our response, to come from this inner space of calm and settledness, but also responsiveness. When we see our interconnectedness, we know that we are part of, we are, the problems that people face in all parts of the world and even in South Chicago are part of our situation as well. So as I said, I wanted to talk about this in a few different areas of what's happening in our society, and I hope we'll have time for discussion.

[12:33]

This week, also, there was released this Senate report on the practices of American torture. And this is pretty... Grizzly stuff, it's actually, well, some of the details are new, but most of the basics, at least in this summary statement that was released by the Senate, is not something that's new. So one of the things that I'm most proud of in my life, along with bounting and supporting this ancient dragon Zengate Sangha, was the year before I moved here in January 2007.

[13:38]

In 2006, I organized a weekly vigil and teaching at the University of California, Berkeley Law School. There was still a man teaching there named John Yu, who was one of the attorneys who rationalized for the Bush administration and legitimized for the Bush administration this practice of torture. And I thought it was strange that John Yu was teaching there in Berkeley. Even in Berkeley, nobody was doing or saying anything. So for a year, we had this weekly midday vigil and teaching outside of the law school there. And I spoke, and people from the ACLU, and Alan Sanocki has been here, and Joanna Macy has been here. One of the law professors was actually brave enough to come out and speak about his colleague.

[14:40]

Dan Ellsberg also spoke a couple of times, who you may know as one of the great whistleblowers who released the Pentagon Papers. He lives in East Vail. So we did this, I did this for a year, and there continued to be responses to his presence. But the point is that there was this horrible torture thing that was going on, and I'm not sure it's completely over, there's still, Guantanamo is still, there. So I'm just going to read a little bit from a discussion of these. I haven't read the full report from the Senate Intelligence Committee. They just released a summary, 500 pages. It's much, much, much longer. But this is a discussion of it from Democracy Now.

[15:45]

The report concludes that the intelligence agency failed to disrupt a single plot from torturing al-Qaeda and other captives in secret prisons worldwide between 2002 and 2006. It details a list of torture methods used on prisoners This is what was done with our tax money. This included waterboarding, sexual threats with broomsticks, medically unnecessary rectal feeding. The report also confirms the CIA ran black sites in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Thailand, and a secret site on the Guantanamo Naval Base. So far, no one involved in the CIA interrogation program has been charged with a crime except the whistleblower, John Kiriakou, who discussed this and made it public. In 2007, he became the first person with direct knowledge of the program to publicly reveal its existence.

[16:49]

He's now serving a 30-month sentence. So people who did the torture have immunity, like the police who shoot African-Americans who are unarmed. Senator Feinstein, who released the report, said, first, the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques were not an effective way to gather intelligence information. Second, the CIA provided extensive amounts of inaccurate information about the operation of the program and its effectiveness to the White House, the Department of Justice, Congress, the CIA Inspector General, the media, and the American public. Third, CIA's management of the program was inadequate and deeply flawed. And fourth, the CIA program was far more brutal than people were led to believe. So in terms of broomsticks and medically unnecessary rectal feeding, in one case a prisoner had his entire lunch tray of hummus, pasta, and thus pureed and administered by an

[17:51]

Sorry, this is really gross material, but this is what was done with our tax money. There were deaths. In one case, a detainee was subjected to ice water baths and 66 hours of standing sleep deprivation before being released because the CIA discovered he was likely not the person he was believed to be. Many of the people who were tortured were not guilty of anything. They were picked up near battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq, often just reported by neighbors who had some grudge against them. So these were people who were never indicted, never had a court hearing, were never even charged in many, many cases, most cases. This is, again, really horrible stuff, but this is what our government's been doing.

[18:56]

One person who testified from the Spokesman for Human Rights Watch said, the first thing that really jumps out is just the sheer pervasiveness and the brutality. I mean, even those of us who have been looking at this for the last 10 years, as one of my colleagues said, may be not surprised, but shocked. Rectal feeding, rectal hydration, not just one prisoner, numbers of prisoners. This was used, according to the CIA documents, as a means of behavior control. This wasn't about getting useful information or intelligence. And there's details that I'm not even going to read because they're so gross. A detainee who died in the salt pit in Afghanistan was partially nude and chained to a concrete floor, died from suspected hypothermia. At least three detainees were threatened with harm to their families, threats to the children of detainees, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee.

[20:12]

Hope told that he would never be allowed to leave alive. Detainees placed in ice water baths, people shackled in dark cells. called by the CIA's own people as dungeons. It's medieval stuff. And it was a dysfunctional program. The interrogation program was essentially outsourced to two psychologists who received $81 million to design this program and our tax money. So you may have heard the headlines about this, but I wanted to say a little more about what has been going on, what the American government has done, and how nobody's been held accountable for this. These are international war crimes, crimes against humanity, but we don't observe that. Anyway, there's more, but I'll just...

[21:14]

President Obama, in his remarks, said that it was important that this report be made public so that hopefully we don't make these mistakes again. These aren't mistakes, these are crimes. Dianne Feinstein, in her Senate remarks, referred to the UN Convention Against Torture, which says that torture can never be justified under any circumstances. That convention also says something else. It says the torturer must be prosecuted. That when someone is alleged to have committed a torture, the state concerned must refer the case to their competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution. What assurance do we have this is not going to happen again? It's not enough to say, well, we tortured some folks. This was a bad public policy choice. We'll put a stop to the torture. It's not a policy choice. It's a crime. So this is the fellow speaking from Human Rights Watch talking about how there has to be accountability for this. I'm mentioning all this stuff because I think it's part of what the world we're living in.

[22:27]

And during the session, we chanted the names of the Buddhas and ancestors. Going back to Shakyamuni Buddha. and the lineage that we celebrate of the people for 2,500 years who kept alive this practice that we do here of this organic process of practice of this vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha, not just having some glimpse of Buddha or some understanding of Buddha or some experience, but actually how do we practice awakened activity in our world So I think that Buddhism needs to respond to what's going on in our society. And as I said, those ancestors, things have always been bad in some ways. Things have always been wonderful in some ways. We have this possibility of community to support each other and ourselves to take on this practice of being responsive and awake.

[23:41]

to our lives, inner lives, to find our creative energy and respond to each other, to share love with each other. This is possible. So I want to finally also say something about the other thing that's happening now. And you, of course, keep happening each week about what's going on with climate damage. This last week, there was a conference in Peru, the first time these annual conferences have been held in the Amazon, which is being destroyed. Basically, we could say our lungs, our planetary lungs, the oxygen given off by the Amazon. Secretary of State John Kerry went and gave a really fine speech. So I'm going to read a little bit from that. As Secretary Kerry said, it seems that every time I speak at an event about climate change, someone introducing me says, John Kerry has been at every major gathering since Rio back in 1992.

[24:52]

That's true, but I'll tell you something. That's kind of troubling. Because that was when I heard the Secretary General, quote, declare, quote, every bit of evidence I've seen persuades me that we are on a course leading to tragedy. That was 1992. This morning I woke up in Washington to the television news of a super-storm rainfall in California and Washington state, torrential record-breaking rain in record-breaking short time. It's become commonplace now to hear of record-breaking climate events, but this is 2014. 22 years later, we're still on a course leading to tragedy. So this is an issue that's personal for me, just as it is for you, absolutely. At the end of the day, if nations do choose the energy sources of the past over the energy sources of the future, they'll actually be missing out on the opportunity to build the kind of economy that will be the economy of the future, that will thrive and be sustainable. Coal and oil may be cheap ways to power an economy today in the near term, but I urge nations around the world, the vast majority of whom are represented here at this conference, to look further down the road, to consider the real, actual, far-reaching costs that come along with what some think is the cheaper alternative that's not cheaper.

[26:09]

Please think about the economic impacts related to agriculture and food security, how scientists estimate that the changing climate is going to yield, is going to reduce the capacity of crops to produce the yields they do today. In rice or beans, they could fall by 2% every single decade. He goes on to talk about what this means to millions of farmers and to our whole system of feeding human population. For everyone thinking that you can't afford this transition or invest in alternative or renewable energy, do the real math on the costs. Consider the sizable costs associated with rebuilding in the wake of every devastating weather event. In 2012 alone, extreme weather events cost the United States $110 billion. When Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines last year, the cost of responding to the damage exceeded $10 billion. So Secretary Kerry is giving a practical economic context for how we need to change, and change soon.

[27:20]

Those are just the costs of damages. Think of the cost for health care due to pollution. The largest single cause of young children in America being hospitalized during our summers is environmentally air-induced asthma that kids suffer. The agricultural and environmental degradation is palpable. It's time for countries to do some real cost accounting. Just curious, when I moved to Chicago, I suddenly developed asthma. How many people here have asthma of some kind? I'm the only one? OK, well, anyway, it's something that affects a lot of children. And again, this has to do with air pollution. OK, so we know that we need to change what's happening in terms of our energy resources. One of the facts is that we actually have everything we need to take care of our energy needs without coal and other fossil fuels.

[28:29]

How we get to there from here is the big question. And it's being instructed by the way the fossil fuel companies control our government and media. And they're buying elections. But it's possible. It's actually possible. There are the resources. wind and solar and other renewable, sustainable energy sources to take care of our energy needs. There exists on the planet still the possibility of feeding everybody. There doesn't have to be hunger, but because of the inequality in resources, this isn't the case now. I'll just say I grew up in the 60s, and so I have this, from then, still this sense of possibility, maybe idealism or optimism.

[29:39]

I think we can take care of our lives and our planet. This also has to do with Sangha, though. So this institution, if you want to call it that, of Sangha, this sense of practitioner community, that we are expressing in our own way here, goes back to 2,500 years to Shakyamuni Buddha, who set up an order of monks and nuns. And one understanding of that, of Sangha, one of the three jewels of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, Buddha, awakening, Dharma, the teaching of reality in Sangha community, is that Sangha has existed all that time as a kind of counterculture. kind of way of seeing an alternative to the usual way of the world of working for fame and gain and material accumulation. And it's so what we're doing here just by providing an opportunity for people to practice and respond in each in your own way to

[30:45]

the situations of the world just through expressing caring and kindness. And many people here are doing healing work of various kinds, but also many people here, if they're not doing that overtly in terms of their livelihood, are expressing kindness. This is something that happens through this vital process, through this settling into a space of feeling our interconnectedness. And it makes a difference. Everything we do makes a difference in the world. And actually, part of why I don't feel pessimistic, part of why I can talk about this stuff, which seems scary and we can easily feel hopeless about it, I don't think that's realistic. As Joanna Macy says, there's a great turning happening now.

[31:48]

Many, many, many people all over the world are really paying attention and working at each in their own way to create something hopeful, to create something positive. We have already passed some tipping points in terms of climate damage, and things are going to be difficult. But there's still ways in which we can take care of it. It's still possible. to actually manage a world that is not just falling apart. So in this connection, I wanted to announce the talk two weeks from today. Sunday morning, we have a special guest speaker, Jiwa Woodbury. He's going to talk about Buddhist tools for processing climate grief. So part of what we need to do is to actually pay attention to what's going on.

[32:51]

And we've talked about three of the terrible things going on in our society, our government's torture, what's happening to African-American people, and other minorities. And then the fossil fuel companies disruption of our habitat. Jiwa Woodbury, who's going to be here in two weeks, has written a very influential article called Planetary Hospice. He's a longtime economic activist, but also a Dharma practitioner. He does Tibetan Buddhist practice. But he's also trained in the Zen Center Hospice in San Francisco. So he's a hospice worker. So he's written this article, Planetary Hospice. And I talked about this last spring. It's a very interesting article about responding compassionately to the climate crisis.

[33:55]

The phrase planetary hospice, I think, a little bit discouraging because it implies that the planet is dying. Well, the planet is going to continue one way or another, and I believe that human beings will continue also, although that's not certain given what's happening to climate, but certainly our way of living this society that we've developed in the last decades, as it is, is not sustainable. There's going to have to be changes. How do we respond to that from our sense of practice? So there are ways of doing that. There are ways of, first of all, just feeling the sadness and difficulty hearing about these torture programs, knowing about how African-American mothers have to be concerned about their sons going out into the streets.

[35:15]

and knowing what's happening to, actually, we're less affected by climate damage than people in third world countries, than poor people. And yet, it's going to affect us too. It is affecting us as well. So again, how do we find our inner dignity individually and together to respond? So again, there's not one right way to respond, but the first is just being aware of what's going on, being willing to face it. The first noble truth is that, well, it's usually translated as the fact of suffering. It could also just be the dissatisfactoriness of the world.

[36:17]

So this is called a noble truth because to face that in our own lives, in our own hearts and minds, but also in the world around us, is actually a very important first step to making a change, to making changes and to responding. And, you know, part of our perspective as we recite the lineage of Buddha ancestors. And also we recited last week the names of women ancestors, because there were many women all through the history, as well as men who were not recalled, who were keeping alive this practice. So this is a way of facing our lives and facing our reality and finding ways to respond. And it needs to be a creatively reinvented in each situation. So these are some of the situations that we face. Maybe that's enough for me to say. Maybe it's too much for me to say.

[37:19]

But I'll stop and invite comments, questions, responses. Please feel free. Comments on any part of all the stuff I was talking about. Yes, Jane. On a practical note, I did hear that there's something called ethical energy. It's a way of paying your Commonwealth. You still go through Commonwealth Edison, but it's the only part that supports wind and solar. Good. Yeah. There are lots and lots of different practices that can be done around the world that are constructive in all of this. something I think will happen also as we make these transitions in technology is there will be short-term suffering for those who work, and I'm not thinking of the heads of the corporations who make millions, but for people who don't, who will be out of jobs.

[38:28]

So for us to attend as a culture to those to help make that transition, there's going might be behind that, fear of loss of livelihoods and being able to support oneself and one's families. And this very directly affects people in our sangha who are unemployed or underemployed. So this is not something abstract and far away. Thank you. Yes, Jim. Wow, you covered so many things, and so I've had reactions to a lot of it. But in thinking about the tremendous cruelty that we have inflicted on others and continue to do, one of the things I think it's important to keep in perspective is that humans have done this, unfortunately, probably for at least 100,000 years.

[39:36]

And that on the positive side, all this is coming out, and people are objecting. And that, I think, is unusual. So I think we need to realize that the very fact that we're talking about it, that it's out in the open, is an improvement, a step in the right direction. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I think we all should know what's going on. It may feel scary, but being present and knowing about what's going on, we can start to think about, as Jane suggested, there are ways to respond. And part of having this very long view of 2,500 years, really longer, of Sangha and awakened activity is to see that that change that the Buddha wanted to make in the world in humanity with Sangha is something that's going to take a long time.

[40:45]

On the other hand, changes happen very suddenly. Apartheid in South Africa, the Berlin Wall came down and so forth, seemingly suddenly after lots of work. So each of us just working on our own cushion and trying to find goodwill and caring and how to express love and compassion contributes to something that, some change that can happen at some point about all this, and is happening actually. Yes, Libby. Thank you for bringing this difficult issues that, you know, all of us have been sitting with, but to bring it into this context where we have an opportunity, I mean, for me at least, it was something useful about, you know, having just sat and

[41:50]

you know, coming from a certain, you know, being in a certain space and being able to sort of sit with and practice with these really overwhelming and painful issues, you know, in this context. And one of the things that was coming up for me was how, you know, the practice is so, this, our practice is so experiential and so sort of here and now sitting with our reality and it isn't always obvious how to translate that into these issues that aren't necessarily happening right in front of us. If there's someone right in front of us who's being harmed, yes, there's a response, but thinking about as soon as something is basically not directly happening in front of you and it's something you're reading about and hearing about, it's still very real, but you're using yourself in a different So it's not as obvious how to translate this practice, you know, to those kinds of issues.

[43:06]

And yet, of course, it's vital, because it's like, if you think about the torture, for example, and it's like, again, that would happen right in front of you, the response would be obvious, but just because it's happening another time and place doesn't mean it's not vitally important to have some response to it. So one question arises of sort of what does our practice teach us about how we can respond to these things in ways distinct from kind of habitual ways that such things are responded to? And so you brought up about people losing their jobs, made me think about my partners from West Virginia, and we were there for the summer. Yeah, there's an overall feeling there from many, many people of, you know, fear about, you know, the coal industry sort of declining.

[44:07]

And there's people living in rural areas that that is their only, their almost only, you know, needs of supporting their families. Like, you know, so it's no small question basically being that we can stand for listening to all sides, even the torturers, even the psychologists running these million dollar, I mean those people sound like devils at first when you think about it, but then they're not devils, they're human beings, so they're bringing some sense of dignity and curiosity and compassion to everyone on all sides of these issues, the police, people who are overtly racist, trying to understand everyone.

[45:10]

And so it's bringing together a perspective that brings together all points of view. Yes, thank you. That's very, very important. right view, one of the eightfold paths in Buddhism. It's not some particular view. It's actually to listen to many perspectives. One of the things that Buddhism has to offer to practical responses to all of this stuff in the world is to recognize, to not demonize the people who are torturing or the people who are profiting off of climate change. It's not about some evil people who then we have to torture. But how do we see the whole, how do we see different sides At the same time, we can respond to harm.

[46:14]

So basic Buddhist ethics is non-harming, not killing. And that means not just that we don't do that ourselves, but that we try and support that in the world. So this practice, even though it's a wonderful way of turning within and really seeing ourselves in our own patterns and finding our own creative energy and so forth, It's not an escape from the world. Bodhisattva idea is that we respond to the suffering of the world. We try and help ease that. And we don't always know what to do. And then the other thing that Buddhism has to offer to social activists, social action responses to this is the practice of patience. That we don't always have to run out and, you know, I was impressed by Pastors, particularly black churches, the last couple of Sundays, leading their congregations out to go into the streets to not violently, in a dignified way, demonstrate against police brutality.

[47:22]

There's a way in which we can represent a wider view of dignified non-violent response that's not about, that's addressing some problem without trying to, but that also recognizes the coal workers in West Virginia, as you were saying. So this isn't easy, but if we're actually awake to our lives and the world around us, this is what we're called to. Yes, Jim. I think, adding to what Lily said, addressing the seeds of violence in ourselves, too. Yes. I, too, am a psychologist, and so what separates me from those psychologists that engage in torture? Is it a matter of degree? Might I have become them if the circumstances were different? So I think it behooves me to look within myself at what potentials are there in me and how do I notice them and see them and counter them within myself.

[48:35]

Right. Good. Yes. And to recognize that we all are, as I said, we are all affected by racism, for example. That's just really clear. We grew up in this society that was forged in slavery. So, this is really difficult, all of this. And yet, our practice gives us a kind of place from which to respond, from which to listen, from which to see how can we actually take on some action to respond. And sometimes there's nothing to do, but then we're ready to respond when there is something to do. Jan, you had your hand up a while back. I've been to a lot of events lately, and I wanted to respond to what this lady said about labor.

[49:39]

book roll out by Tom Gagin, the name of the book is Only One Thing Can Save Us Now, and Gagin is a labour lawyer and his view of what can save us has to do with labour's response to the emergencies that we're facing. And I thought that was very, very interesting because he sees that as a key thing. Combine that with something that just breezed through the radio the other day. There were, and I'm sure the woman on the radio said more than 10. I think she said 11 or 12 new colonized So during this year there were 12 new coal mines opened in Illinois.

[50:44]

I tried to document that by going online and I could only find the wonderfully named Sunshine Energy Company that has opened up two coal mines in Illinois, one in 2014, but two quite recently and one in Indiana. Did they have any part of their program including solar energy, given that date? I don't think so, because there was a picture of the inside of Coleman, and there was no sunshine there. But I think in Illinois, we're faced with this juggernaut of increased fossil fuel extraction And the reason there were so many opened in Illinois is that Illinois quote-unquote scrubs its coal so that it now sends out clean coal, which is, you know, I can't put my mind around this.

[51:54]

So that combined with the fact that Illinois has more And I'm thinking, here we are, we're in Illinois, and this, what appears to be a juggernaut going forward. And I wanted to just say one little thing about plan A and plan B. When those policemen came upon that 13-year-old boy with the toy gun, there was no plan B. On Democracy Now!, she said, as soon as the policeman got there, he shot the kid. talked to him, didn't wait to find out what was going on. He just shot him. And you look at the guy who strangled the man in Staten Island, you have the feeling this was his plan A, to put the man in a stranglehold.

[52:58]

And there was no plan B with Michael Brown. And what we're looking at We have to have a different way of approaching it. And this is our solution. Other people call it second negativity. You see what you dislike, and that's first negativity. And then you say, well, this is what I want to change it to, and that's second negativity. And I'm just doing this. So during this time, I suddenly realized that what we call Plan B is the same thing as other people are calling second negativity. It's, what are we going to do about it? And how do we respond differently than just walking up to a child and shooting him? So that's all. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, you said a lot of things there.

[54:01]

Just one point is that in terms of the, The people in West Virginia, for example, whose whole life for generations has been in terms of working in coal mines, the reality is that there will be many, many more jobs created if we convert to developing sustainable energy. It's the transition that people are afraid of, and it's that fear that the fossil fuel companies prey on as they continue to control the government and control this fossil fuel energy system that we have. How we make the transition is not clear and not easy, but it's going to have to happen. What we're doing is not sustainable. Aisha, did you have something? The question I have is how do we, and the world needs to ask itself in all these issues is how do we change the powers

[55:24]

things because, yes, although it's nice that we get the protests in the streets and the messages are all right, but it seems even with the Aggie Pride Wall Street protests, those protests are good and they We're all well and good, but the fact is, at the end of the day, the corporate structure's terrible. So how do we affect real change at the top and get government officials to understand and understanding that this matches our U.S.

[56:41]

issue, I mean, I mean, we can't, if I change it at the world wide level, but the reaction is that I think, thank you Ryan, I think you're raising a central point that the government structures controlled by the fossil fuel companies and so forth perpetuate all of this, but the change that we need is not something we're going to get from political leaders. It's just not. We don't have a real, anyway, the current political system is broken, I would say, but what can cause change is Us, many people all over the world are responding about climate change.

[57:41]

For example, are responding about police shooting of African-Americans. Enough people responding just that forces the change to happen. So it happens slowly, but that's actually what we can do. Calling Congress people, going to protest, whatever. letting our concerns be voiced. So that's frustrating because it's slow, but that's actually how change happens, I think. So that's something that's up to us. Anyway, we've gone over time. Thank you all very much for just listening to all of this. And this is not easy. And I appreciate all of the responses. And this is part of our practice, turning within. Finding interconnectedness ourselves is the base, but then how do we respond to the world?

[58:47]

And this is the question that I appreciate everybody's comments.

[58:52]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_86.51