we’ve heard so much today merciless
attitudes towards refugees lack of
compassion towards the undocumented by
the way I have a problem with that
phrase just as no child as illegitimate
no one is undocumented in God’s eyes we
heard about we heard about the sale of
atrazine where the profit-making
capacity of a chemical company not just
in the case of atrazine but in so many
chemicals is placed above the health and
well-being of our citizens and of our
planet there are so many things that we
know about like this now and it is very
tempting to become reactive and it’s
very important that we not just be
reactive that we be responsive Martin
Luther King said we need a change in our
circumstances that is quantitative but
we need a qualitative change in our
souls so what I want to talk to you
about today is the change in our souls
is the fundamental shift in the sense of
our own personhood that will allow us to
deal with these issues if we deal with
all of them separately we’re just
dealing with symptoms whether it’s
atrazine or mass incarceration criminal
injustice our attitudes towards refugees
our attitudes towards the undocumented
or any other symptoms such as that if we
want to deal this country heal this
country we must heal it with an
integrative approach and get down to the
cause and when we get down to the cause
we get down to the deeper story of
America America is like a novel you
can’t just open it in the middle and
know what this chapter means who these
characters are where it fits into the
larger narrative unless you had read the
earlier chapters so let’s talk about the
beginnings of America the beginning of
this country was an extraordinary burst
of light it was an extraordinary burst
of light not only in terms of the
political movement forward that it
represented but in terms of the moral
movement forward the spiritual movement
forward because until the founding of
this country Western civilization was
dominated by a monarchical and
aristocratic paradigm
and within that paradigm the established
social order deems a few people entitled
when we were kids we were taught about
the Sun King that God had given power to
the Sun King of France and then that
power was to be shared the king and the
queen and their cronies you know the
aristocracy and those few people were
entitled to land those few people were
entitled to education those few people
were entitled to wealth those few people
were entitled to wealth creation those
few people were entitled to
self-actualization those few people were
entitled to dream those few people were
entitled to make their dreams come true
and to have a sense that their children
would be able to do that too and
everyone else the majority of the people
of those societies were basically little
more than serfs with the founding of
this country that entire paradigm was
repudiated in this country the idea was
not that God gave power to the king and
the Queen to be shared only with their
friends the aristocracy but that all men
were created equal all men all men were
endowed by God with inalienable rights
of life and liberty and the pursuit of
happiness and it wouldn’t just be a
small group that would run things but
rather there would be e pluribus unum
that there would be many and out of that
many there would be one and that the
government would be on behalf of those
people and then later when Abraham
Lincoln said that the government itself
would broke her individual liberty
rights with a concern for the common
good for everyone and that the
government would be of the people and by
the people and for the people but before
that with the founders having
established those incredibly enlightened
principles for the first time in the
founding of a nation in the founding
documents of a nation and risking their
lives signing that Declaration of
Independence was at risk of your life if
the war for independence had been won by
the British those people who signed that
document would have been executed as
traitors but the irony the historical
irony we all know well we know that the
same people that risk their
lives to imbue those documents in the
founding of this country with really not
only were radically enlightened views
200 years ago but which are still today
radically enlightened views
we’re aware how many of them were
themselves slave owners so it is built
into our DNA it was there from the
beginning but we represent both the
highest enlightened ideals and sometimes
the basic basest human instincts
so that dichotomy has always been with
us every single generation has had to
deal with him
we have been both slave owner and we
have been abolitionists we had women not
only not allowed to to to vote not
allowed to own anything any kind of
property or any kind of money yes we had
that but then we also had the women’s
suffrage movement and waves of feminism
we had institutionalized white supremacy
and segregation but then we also had the
civil rights movement we had gay people
not having any particular rights and
certainly not the right to marry and
then we had the gay rights and marriage
equality movement in other words ladies
and gentlemen we have been both as
generation after generation the entire
story of America the entire political
journey of America has been one in which
there have been people whose hearts were
on fire with the possibility with the
gorgeousness of this dream of
self-actualization being a possibility
for everyone and there have been people
who have struggled there have been
people who’ve sacrificed and there have
been people who have died so that this
could be true and yet there have been in
every generation just like in ours those
who have said let’s not and it’s
important that we identify that we had
slavery it’s important that we identify
that we gave women no rights it’s
important that we identify that we had
segregation and white supremacy of
course it’s important that we identify
the shadows of this country of course
it’s important that we identify the dark
side of course it’s important that we
identify the problems but let us
identify with the problem solvers
that is what is important right now we
are not the first generation of
Americans who have had to deal with the
fact that America has gone off the rails
because what has happened is we have
subconsciously once again recreated the
condition of aristocracy you can call it
a corporate aqua sea you can call it a
plutocracy you can call it an oligarchy
I don’t care what you call it we have
once again manifests the social system
in which for all intents and purposes
apparently just a few people are deemed
entitled somehow to health care entitled
somehow to safety entitled somehow to
justice entitled somehow to the goods of
this country ladies and gentlemen we’re
not the first generation to have to deal
with this stuff but let us not be the
first generation to wimp out on doing
the job it takes to get this country
back on track
what are those personal qualities one is
conviction you know there aren’t more
people in this country in this world who
hate them who love hardly vastly more
people loved and hate the problem those
in our country today and in the world is
that those who hate hate with conviction
people who hate are serious about
effectuating the changes that they want
to see and too often those of us who
love are kind of casual about it really
into it when it’s convenient or will
show up every two years or every four
years the problem is not that we have
more people who hate than love we the
problem is not that we have more as FDR
called them economic Royalists and then
Bernie picked up that line as well the
problem is not that they’re more of them
then of those who love and those who are
in love with the idea of mercy and the
idea of justice and the idea of love and
the idea of the possibility of infinite
possibility there aren’t more of them
than us the issue is simply that those
who hate hate with congrat our
conviction too often conviction itself
is a force multiplier we have to love
with seriousness we have to love with a
seriousness that knows that love of my
own children is not enough to create a
sustainable and survivable future in
order to create a sustainable survivable
future we have to realize that every
child on this planet is one of our
children and the earth itself is our
home we must love not only our own
children but every single child we must
make a we must make a change
that has to do with an emotional and a
psychological and a spiritual shift that
to me is very much in evidence in the
shift from the anti-slavery person to
the abolitionist what’s anti-slavery
mean anti-slavery means oh I would never
live in a slave owning state I think
those states are crazy I would never be
a slave owner if someone was
anti-slavery and they had that attitude
that’s very nice but that did not move
the needle for one slave the
abolitionists however if somebody who is
not just against slavery the
abolitionist is someone who lives with
conviction and speaks with conviction
and acts
with conviction not on my watch that is
what we need in this country today
ladies and gentlemen we need more of us
who with conviction are willing to
realize that sometimes love says no many
people Jews african-americans there are
a lot of people in this country a lot of
people in the world who know that this
aristocratic archetype that is back it
is back it is back this stuff is not new
and it was naive of us to ever think
that somehow it was gone you know it is
like it’s like somebody who has a herpes
in their system it’s never going to be
necessarily out of your bloodstream but
you try to keep it asymptomatic it’s not
like racism we ever thought racism was
gone it’s not like we ever thought and
homophobia was gone it’s not like we
ever thought xenophobia was gone
it’s not like we ever thought
anti-semitism was gone these things will
not be gone until we have evolved as a
human race to an enlightened state but
we thought in this country that we had
reached the center where they were
asymptomatic enough we thought that we
had reached a consensus on both the left
and the right that those things would
not be given emotional and psychological
and technological and financial and
political power that too often they are
given now and anybody who has any sense
of history knows that at some point just
as so often just as with the Holocaust
we look at people and we go why didn’t
you leave why didn’t you leave why
didn’t you do something well they didn’t
do something because they didn’t think
it could actually happen there
you know I visited Yad Vashem which is
the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and
they have a lot of extraordinary
videos of films that were actually made
in which it’s very clear Hitler said
what he was going to do everything that
he did he said that he was going to do
and later Hitler said the only way they
could have stopped us if they would be
who would have been if they had come
data Swift and early and fiercely ladies
and gentlemen I got to tell you
something about the new a rising up of a
right wing and I mean far right I mean
all right I mean authoritarian I mean
dictatorial I mean fascist wave that is
among us we are
really skipped we already missed the
boat on getting at it fast and fierce
and and early we missed the fast and the
early and the Swift and the fierce part
we have to do it now you know a lot of
times people say III think we should
actually have a lot of democracy at the
core a love of democracy at the core of
how we function I don’t think that the
prophets of chemical companies should be
placed before the well-being of our
children you know one of the one of the
issues that really got me was when Scott
Pruett became the head of the EPA and
then the new budget you know the budget
of the Environmental Protection Agency
that is now proposed would slash that
budget by one quarter and one of the
first moves that he made one of the
first moves that mr. Pruett made was
that there is a particular pesticide
which every single environmental
scientists that had been appointed
during the Obama administration every
single scientist had said that this
pesticide to be permanently banned
because of the damage that we know it
does to children’s brains and developing
nervous systems one of the first things
that mr. Pruitt did was he overturned
that ban saying that much as we heard
for mr. haze tonight that the profit
making capacity of Dow Chemical is
somehow more important than the
developing brains of our children the
idea that profit is placed before the
health and well-being of our children
whether it has to do with fossil fuel
companies or whether it has to do with
health insurance companies whether it
has to do with the private prison
industry no matter what it has to do
with what it what are we as a nation if
we are not willing to stand up and say
no you know there is a common
anthropological characteristic of every
advanced mammalian species that survives
and thrives and that is the fierce
behavior of the adult female of that
species when she senses there is a
threat to her cubs whether you see it in
the bear or you see it in the tiger or
you’re seeing it a lioness they’ll leave
you alone unless they think you’re
coming after their Cubs they’ll come
after you and when we see a National
Geographic special with the momma bear
acting that way or Tiger acting that way
or lioness acting that way and she’s
coming after your fierce we don’t say
about the tiger or the bear of the lion
oh I think she’s strident I think she
has anger issues no no no no and when
you have a country when you have a
country with American Cubs American
children as threatened as they are a
world in which 12,000 children are
starving every single day and there is
no dearth of food and the fact that the
adult female of our species is not
standing up as much as we might in order
to stop this this is showing for all
intents and purposes a species with no
intent to survive but something is
happening now there are people all over
this world who look at Americans and
think God we’re sleep for a long time
when are Americans ever going to wake up
yeah that’s pretty much true of
Americans we are slow to wake up but
I’ll tell you something those same
people know this about us too when we do
wake up we slim it like nobody’s
business and that is what is starting to
happen now
and for every American woman who leaves
this place and says do you know about
this chemical name atrazine and they’re
continuing to produce it and to
manufacture it even though we know it
does terrible hormone hormone disruption
and you leave and you say do you know I
went to this TEDx Berkeley and I learned
about what these undocumented kids are
going through I went to TEDx Berkeley
and I learned about what some of these
refugees are going through and it seems
so merciless and our own parents and
grandparents were refugees and American
foreign policy created some of these
situations to begin with and you are met
by people who go oh my god I’ve heard
this before
are we gonna hear it from you again –
we’re just trying to have dinner listen
this is what you do at that time let me
tell you again do you know about this
chemical called a cuisine this chemical
called after seeing that we absolutely
know is disrupting or almost and let me
tell you about those documented workers
and then and then if nothing else will
work they’ll do what they’re doing now
they’ll call you a snowflake I’ll tell
you what you say when they say either
you’ve spent too much time in California
or okay snowflake you just look at them
and you say damn right and there’s going
to be an avalanche in November thank you
[Applause]
attitudes towards refugees lack of
compassion towards the undocumented by
the way I have a problem with that
phrase just as no child as illegitimate
no one is undocumented in God’s eyes we
heard about we heard about the sale of
atrazine where the profit-making
capacity of a chemical company not just
in the case of atrazine but in so many
chemicals is placed above the health and
well-being of our citizens and of our
planet there are so many things that we
know about like this now and it is very
tempting to become reactive and it’s
very important that we not just be
reactive that we be responsive Martin
Luther King said we need a change in our
circumstances that is quantitative but
we need a qualitative change in our
souls so what I want to talk to you
about today is the change in our souls
is the fundamental shift in the sense of
our own personhood that will allow us to
deal with these issues if we deal with
all of them separately we’re just
dealing with symptoms whether it’s
atrazine or mass incarceration criminal
injustice our attitudes towards refugees
our attitudes towards the undocumented
or any other symptoms such as that if we
want to deal this country heal this
country we must heal it with an
integrative approach and get down to the
cause and when we get down to the cause
we get down to the deeper story of
America America is like a novel you
can’t just open it in the middle and
know what this chapter means who these
characters are where it fits into the
larger narrative unless you had read the
earlier chapters so let’s talk about the
beginnings of America the beginning of
this country was an extraordinary burst
of light it was an extraordinary burst
of light not only in terms of the
political movement forward that it
represented but in terms of the moral
movement forward the spiritual movement
forward because until the founding of
this country Western civilization was
dominated by a monarchical and
aristocratic paradigm
and within that paradigm the established
social order deems a few people entitled
when we were kids we were taught about
the Sun King that God had given power to
the Sun King of France and then that
power was to be shared the king and the
queen and their cronies you know the
aristocracy and those few people were
entitled to land those few people were
entitled to education those few people
were entitled to wealth those few people
were entitled to wealth creation those
few people were entitled to
self-actualization those few people were
entitled to dream those few people were
entitled to make their dreams come true
and to have a sense that their children
would be able to do that too and
everyone else the majority of the people
of those societies were basically little
more than serfs with the founding of
this country that entire paradigm was
repudiated in this country the idea was
not that God gave power to the king and
the Queen to be shared only with their
friends the aristocracy but that all men
were created equal all men all men were
endowed by God with inalienable rights
of life and liberty and the pursuit of
happiness and it wouldn’t just be a
small group that would run things but
rather there would be e pluribus unum
that there would be many and out of that
many there would be one and that the
government would be on behalf of those
people and then later when Abraham
Lincoln said that the government itself
would broke her individual liberty
rights with a concern for the common
good for everyone and that the
government would be of the people and by
the people and for the people but before
that with the founders having
established those incredibly enlightened
principles for the first time in the
founding of a nation in the founding
documents of a nation and risking their
lives signing that Declaration of
Independence was at risk of your life if
the war for independence had been won by
the British those people who signed that
document would have been executed as
traitors but the irony the historical
irony we all know well we know that the
same people that risk their
lives to imbue those documents in the
founding of this country with really not
only were radically enlightened views
200 years ago but which are still today
radically enlightened views
we’re aware how many of them were
themselves slave owners so it is built
into our DNA it was there from the
beginning but we represent both the
highest enlightened ideals and sometimes
the basic basest human instincts
so that dichotomy has always been with
us every single generation has had to
deal with him
we have been both slave owner and we
have been abolitionists we had women not
only not allowed to to to vote not
allowed to own anything any kind of
property or any kind of money yes we had
that but then we also had the women’s
suffrage movement and waves of feminism
we had institutionalized white supremacy
and segregation but then we also had the
civil rights movement we had gay people
not having any particular rights and
certainly not the right to marry and
then we had the gay rights and marriage
equality movement in other words ladies
and gentlemen we have been both as
generation after generation the entire
story of America the entire political
journey of America has been one in which
there have been people whose hearts were
on fire with the possibility with the
gorgeousness of this dream of
self-actualization being a possibility
for everyone and there have been people
who have struggled there have been
people who’ve sacrificed and there have
been people who have died so that this
could be true and yet there have been in
every generation just like in ours those
who have said let’s not and it’s
important that we identify that we had
slavery it’s important that we identify
that we gave women no rights it’s
important that we identify that we had
segregation and white supremacy of
course it’s important that we identify
the shadows of this country of course
it’s important that we identify the dark
side of course it’s important that we
identify the problems but let us
identify with the problem solvers
that is what is important right now we
are not the first generation of
Americans who have had to deal with the
fact that America has gone off the rails
because what has happened is we have
subconsciously once again recreated the
condition of aristocracy you can call it
a corporate aqua sea you can call it a
plutocracy you can call it an oligarchy
I don’t care what you call it we have
once again manifests the social system
in which for all intents and purposes
apparently just a few people are deemed
entitled somehow to health care entitled
somehow to safety entitled somehow to
justice entitled somehow to the goods of
this country ladies and gentlemen we’re
not the first generation to have to deal
with this stuff but let us not be the
first generation to wimp out on doing
the job it takes to get this country
back on track
what are those personal qualities one is
conviction you know there aren’t more
people in this country in this world who
hate them who love hardly vastly more
people loved and hate the problem those
in our country today and in the world is
that those who hate hate with conviction
people who hate are serious about
effectuating the changes that they want
to see and too often those of us who
love are kind of casual about it really
into it when it’s convenient or will
show up every two years or every four
years the problem is not that we have
more people who hate than love we the
problem is not that we have more as FDR
called them economic Royalists and then
Bernie picked up that line as well the
problem is not that they’re more of them
then of those who love and those who are
in love with the idea of mercy and the
idea of justice and the idea of love and
the idea of the possibility of infinite
possibility there aren’t more of them
than us the issue is simply that those
who hate hate with congrat our
conviction too often conviction itself
is a force multiplier we have to love
with seriousness we have to love with a
seriousness that knows that love of my
own children is not enough to create a
sustainable and survivable future in
order to create a sustainable survivable
future we have to realize that every
child on this planet is one of our
children and the earth itself is our
home we must love not only our own
children but every single child we must
make a we must make a change
that has to do with an emotional and a
psychological and a spiritual shift that
to me is very much in evidence in the
shift from the anti-slavery person to
the abolitionist what’s anti-slavery
mean anti-slavery means oh I would never
live in a slave owning state I think
those states are crazy I would never be
a slave owner if someone was
anti-slavery and they had that attitude
that’s very nice but that did not move
the needle for one slave the
abolitionists however if somebody who is
not just against slavery the
abolitionist is someone who lives with
conviction and speaks with conviction
and acts
with conviction not on my watch that is
what we need in this country today
ladies and gentlemen we need more of us
who with conviction are willing to
realize that sometimes love says no many
people Jews african-americans there are
a lot of people in this country a lot of
people in the world who know that this
aristocratic archetype that is back it
is back it is back this stuff is not new
and it was naive of us to ever think
that somehow it was gone you know it is
like it’s like somebody who has a herpes
in their system it’s never going to be
necessarily out of your bloodstream but
you try to keep it asymptomatic it’s not
like racism we ever thought racism was
gone it’s not like we ever thought and
homophobia was gone it’s not like we
ever thought xenophobia was gone
it’s not like we ever thought
anti-semitism was gone these things will
not be gone until we have evolved as a
human race to an enlightened state but
we thought in this country that we had
reached the center where they were
asymptomatic enough we thought that we
had reached a consensus on both the left
and the right that those things would
not be given emotional and psychological
and technological and financial and
political power that too often they are
given now and anybody who has any sense
of history knows that at some point just
as so often just as with the Holocaust
we look at people and we go why didn’t
you leave why didn’t you leave why
didn’t you do something well they didn’t
do something because they didn’t think
it could actually happen there
you know I visited Yad Vashem which is
the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and
they have a lot of extraordinary
videos of films that were actually made
in which it’s very clear Hitler said
what he was going to do everything that
he did he said that he was going to do
and later Hitler said the only way they
could have stopped us if they would be
who would have been if they had come
data Swift and early and fiercely ladies
and gentlemen I got to tell you
something about the new a rising up of a
right wing and I mean far right I mean
all right I mean authoritarian I mean
dictatorial I mean fascist wave that is
among us we are
really skipped we already missed the
boat on getting at it fast and fierce
and and early we missed the fast and the
early and the Swift and the fierce part
we have to do it now you know a lot of
times people say III think we should
actually have a lot of democracy at the
core a love of democracy at the core of
how we function I don’t think that the
prophets of chemical companies should be
placed before the well-being of our
children you know one of the one of the
issues that really got me was when Scott
Pruett became the head of the EPA and
then the new budget you know the budget
of the Environmental Protection Agency
that is now proposed would slash that
budget by one quarter and one of the
first moves that he made one of the
first moves that mr. Pruett made was
that there is a particular pesticide
which every single environmental
scientists that had been appointed
during the Obama administration every
single scientist had said that this
pesticide to be permanently banned
because of the damage that we know it
does to children’s brains and developing
nervous systems one of the first things
that mr. Pruitt did was he overturned
that ban saying that much as we heard
for mr. haze tonight that the profit
making capacity of Dow Chemical is
somehow more important than the
developing brains of our children the
idea that profit is placed before the
health and well-being of our children
whether it has to do with fossil fuel
companies or whether it has to do with
health insurance companies whether it
has to do with the private prison
industry no matter what it has to do
with what it what are we as a nation if
we are not willing to stand up and say
no you know there is a common
anthropological characteristic of every
advanced mammalian species that survives
and thrives and that is the fierce
behavior of the adult female of that
species when she senses there is a
threat to her cubs whether you see it in
the bear or you see it in the tiger or
you’re seeing it a lioness they’ll leave
you alone unless they think you’re
coming after their Cubs they’ll come
after you and when we see a National
Geographic special with the momma bear
acting that way or Tiger acting that way
or lioness acting that way and she’s
coming after your fierce we don’t say
about the tiger or the bear of the lion
oh I think she’s strident I think she
has anger issues no no no no and when
you have a country when you have a
country with American Cubs American
children as threatened as they are a
world in which 12,000 children are
starving every single day and there is
no dearth of food and the fact that the
adult female of our species is not
standing up as much as we might in order
to stop this this is showing for all
intents and purposes a species with no
intent to survive but something is
happening now there are people all over
this world who look at Americans and
think God we’re sleep for a long time
when are Americans ever going to wake up
yeah that’s pretty much true of
Americans we are slow to wake up but
I’ll tell you something those same
people know this about us too when we do
wake up we slim it like nobody’s
business and that is what is starting to
happen now
and for every American woman who leaves
this place and says do you know about
this chemical name atrazine and they’re
continuing to produce it and to
manufacture it even though we know it
does terrible hormone hormone disruption
and you leave and you say do you know I
went to this TEDx Berkeley and I learned
about what these undocumented kids are
going through I went to TEDx Berkeley
and I learned about what some of these
refugees are going through and it seems
so merciless and our own parents and
grandparents were refugees and American
foreign policy created some of these
situations to begin with and you are met
by people who go oh my god I’ve heard
this before
are we gonna hear it from you again –
we’re just trying to have dinner listen
this is what you do at that time let me
tell you again do you know about this
chemical called a cuisine this chemical
called after seeing that we absolutely
know is disrupting or almost and let me
tell you about those documented workers
and then and then if nothing else will
work they’ll do what they’re doing now
they’ll call you a snowflake I’ll tell
you what you say when they say either
you’ve spent too much time in California
or okay snowflake you just look at them
and you say damn right and there’s going
to be an avalanche in November thank you
[Applause]
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