Moving Policy Through Storytelling
Yessenia Funes:
Hello, we've arrived at the final episode for the season. I know, so sad. Lucky for you all, our final guest was worth the wait. His name is Vic Barrett and he has been a climate activist since he was 14. He does many things, but what he's perhaps best known for is his lawsuit against the US government. He and 20 other young people are suing the American government because, well, their futures are on the line, and the government has failed to take adequate action to ensure that these young people have a safe future at all. While policy can sound real boring, it's one of the only mechanisms that can actually create space for the types of infrastructural change necessary to meet climate change and defeat it.
Vic wouldn't describe himself this way, but a lot of his work ultimately comes down to pushing policymakers to act. His weapon of choice? Stories. His story, in particular. This kind of emotional work isn't easy. Vic and I get into all this: the highs, the lows, the past, the future. He's got a whole lifetime ahead of him and he's still figuring it all out. Probably a lot like you. So remember, you're not alone in trying to find your place—that happens to all of us. Yes, even the pros.
This is the Architectures of Planetary Well-being podcast. I'm your host, Yessenia Funes.
In 2015, 21 young people in America decided to sue the US government for causing climate change. Their argument: the government is violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property. Vic Barrett, a climate activist who's been in the fight since he was 14, is now 23 and one of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit.
Vic, welcome.
Vic Barrett:
Yeah, thanks for having me; so excited to be here.
YF:
So excited to have you with us. I was hoping that you might be able to just introduce yourself and your work, and share with folks a little bit about how you became a climate activist and ended up in this historic lawsuit that the US government now faces.
VB:
Yeah. Like I said, I'm Vic, I'm 23. I've been doing this work since I was 14—so nine years now. A lot of the way that I got into climate justice work or talking about the climate in general… I grew up in a really conservative, very white part of Upstate New York until I was about 13 years old. And because of that experience growing up in a place that was so drastically different than the identities I hold—I'm Afro Indigenous, I'm Afro-Latino, I'm queer, I'm a dark-skinned black person—and 98% white, rural, apple-farming New York was not necessarily reflective of those identities… So, I learned a lot about how people are treated when they're different and I learned a lot about fairness, and it just became a value I really cared about: fairness and justice and just the way that we treat each other in general. So, when I finally left school in Upstate and I started going to school in the city I was kind of just… In the West Village of the city, which is the stark, stark contrast from conservative Upstate New York. It was basically the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of—
YF:
Very gay, very gay West Village.
VB:
Yeah. Exactly. And the people around and what they looked like and what they cared about and everything… So I kind of just wanted to get closer to that lived experience in my being. In high school—with these afterschool programs that came to us that were about social justice and about human rights—and I was just looking for something to do after school. I was always one of those kids that was like—I lived the furthest and I was the last person to ever go home just because I was always doing afterschool activities, trying to be around people and stuff. I was lucky enough to join this organization, Global Kids, that talked a lot about climate change—but in the context of climate justice—and gave me this… Climate change in my head was this really sciencey, STEM thing, something I never really did well at. But we learned about it in this context of, oh, Black and Brown people, a lot of the identities that I am, are disproportionately impacted by this issue that they do less to contribute to.
And my family in Honduras is affected by this issue that they've done less to contribute to. And I guess in the vein of me caring a bunch about justice—it ended up with me caring a lot about climate justice and learning a lot about climate justice because I saw it kind of as this umbrella issue of all the things that I was already caring about, and it touched on a lot of the things that I was already concerned about. And I also noticed there wasn't a lot of people who looked like me who were talking about it, and I figured if there were, maybe folks would understand it a little bit more.
YF:
Yeah. Well, what you're saying really resonates with me because I also had sort of similar… That’s sort of the similar reasons why I got attracted to climate justice work and covering issues around climate justice because, yeah, I mean, there's this sort of narrative of it being about science and the greenhouse effect. There's all these really jargony terms that are used to talk about climate change, and for a long time the narrative missed the human element, the inequity element. So, that really, really resonated with me.
You're focused a lot, though, on efforts to transform policy—change policy. That's sort of at the heart, right, of this lawsuit, is to try to get the US government to take actual efforts at the policy level to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to do something about climate change, rather than making the problem worse. Why did you gravitate toward this sort of climate work? And I know that in our previous conversations you haven't really thought of it…You haven't really thought of your own work as policy- related, but I'm curious to hear a little bit about this focus on pushing leaders to act.
VB:
Yeah. Absolutely. I think that a lot of where that inspiration came from is, you know… So much of politics, the politics that leads to policy, is in rhetoric and jargon and also—kind of hidden way behind all the abstract stuff—is about human beings and about stories and about what folks care about. And I figured if we could frame climate change as outside of these emissions, to what infrastructure we're building to just… If we could frame it outside of all these things that are numbers and inhuman and frame it in a way that is absolutely human—which is what usually gets voters to act, what gets constituents to act, what gets government to move—that there was a better chance that climate change could become a focus of politicians and something that they wanted to talk about. Because politicians a lot of times, and policy a lot of times, relies on us not paying attention or understanding who it's going to impact or what it does at the end of the day.
But if I'm out there constantly giving a narrative that explains how it impacts so many people on the day-to-day, and how it actually has to do with lived experience and quality of life, then there's a better chance that politicians and policymakers have to feel accountable to those narratives. It's easier to pretend that you can't do anything when you're giving folks abstract facts and numbers that they don't actually understand. It's harder to act like you don't have to do anything if you're letting… if the public is informed of the fact that this is a day-to-day issue in so many people's lives and it implicates itself in so much more than what folks figure it does. So, I guess to me, building that understanding amongst the public is been a way that I've—and amongst politicians and amongst policymakers—is a way to force them to have to answer the fact that they're dealing with a human issue, and not just an issue that people can let fall to the wayside.
YF:
Yeah. It feels like empathy is a big cornerstone of your work in bringing forth these stories and in shaping public understanding and shaping the understanding of decision makers. How do we shape policy with empathy and concepts of care, rest, love? How do you incorporate this into your storytelling work?
VB:
Yeah. I think that the way that I try to do that is definitely by, one, making it clear that I do have some standard of believing that changing policy or changing the stance of the government actually does have implications on people's lives—even though a lot of times it feels very, very distant, or it can feel very, very easy to give up on those systems as being any sort of answer to a lot of the things that are going on. But I think that as we see climate disaster become more real and real every day, it's more stories that point to the fact that the US federal government has to be taking this seriously—and not that… local governments, state governments have to be taking this issue seriously. Hurricane Sandy, for example, what I first got engaged with—the New York State government, the New York City government, could not ignore the fact that people were being completely displaced from their homes, and a lot of those people absolutely looked the same and had a similar relationship to the government and were mostly Black and Brown people, were mostly low-income folks.
Those are the bottom-line facts that you can't ignore, and you also can't ignore that even if those are constituencies that often aren't listened to, they still make up a massive amount of the people who have decision-making power in terms of who they go vote for or if they want to be informed on who they can go vote for. It's significant, so implementing that into how we address a policy… I think it's also kind of new for some politicians. I always talk about when I was younger, going to city council members' offices—I don't think they expected a bunch of young Black and Brown kids from around New York City, going to all different types of schools, to be coming in with folders with facts and data and information on how our communities could legitimately be better if they actually listened to us. So, it kind of changes the playing field a little bit when these decision-makers realize you're just as informed—if not more informed—than they are, because they've got to have this luxury of being uninformed and just looking for votes every upcoming election season.
YF:
Yeah. I mean, that is a big part of what pushes them, and we see folks taking all the action when midterms or November rolls around. It's unfortunate, but that's where strategy comes in, right?
VB:
Yeah.
YF:
This work is hard, though—sharing these stories, whether they're yours or stories of others, confronting the data and the scientific reality of what we face. This is hard work and it's emotionally taxing. I think that folks who don't work on climate change really struggle to understand how intense it can be for those of us who are in this all the time. How do you take care of yourself, Vic, and find rest in this practice?
VB:
I think that a lot of the ways that I take care of myself, honestly… I think a lot of it, first of all, has to do with… In this movement that I've been fortunate enough to be a part of for as long as I have been, I feel like when you start to really get to know people, there's these built-in mechanisms for taking care of yourself— where it's like my life at home, when I'm just at home playing PlayStation and cuddling with my cat and taking my roommate's dog on walks. Sometimes that life can feel very separate than being in Glasgow or deciding if I'm going to go all the way to Egypt or being in DC for a week, doing whatever I am. It could be easy for those things to feel really separate, but also when the young people that I get to meet on these… The young people that I get to relate to, of having this kind of bizarre, lived experience of being an advocate in so many ways, just hit me up on a regular Tuesday and ask how I'm doing…
I think that movement care that's really strongly built into the climate movement and also just—especially amongst the younger people in the climate movement—that's such an important part of it all. If I had to travel to these abstract places where I knew things might not actually make a difference, it would be way more difficult if I didn't know I was going to see some people that I consider my best friends there, even if we only see each other once or twice a year. And also, I think that I find a lot of the ways that I take care of myself or find rest is just in realizing that it's always going to be there. That took me a long time—that took me a really long time to realize I did not need to be doing everything and be everywhere in order to… And that the whole weight of changing the world wasn't on the shoulders if I was just too exhausted to be some place or not.
I think that also comes into that movement care: just knowing that we're all holding it down and that if I need to spend two months just being Vic living in Madison, Wisconsin and doing what I do there, the whole world isn't going to end, or nothing's going to fall apart, because there's other people on our team and other people on our side. So, I feel like I find—weirdly enough—I find a lot of the feelings that I can give myself care and feelings that I can take rest inside the movement and inside how strong it is.
YF:
Yeah, it sounds like community is an important element of finding that rest for you.
VB:
Yeah, absolutely. It's funny because I never know… That whole introvert, extrovert thing, I never have a total grasp on, but I know that community is really important to me. If anything, I feel best when I'm around other people. No matter what, I feel great when I'm around other people and get to have that human experience of, this is a lived experience that we all share and that we're all trying to do our certain parts to preserve. And there's all things that we particularly care about that we're trying to protect at the end of the day. And also sometimes, we could just be really casual and be young people and hang out. Community has always been really important to me, just being around other folks and trying to understand them. And also just giving myself a break on understanding myself, but surrounding myself by the people that I can.
YF:
For sure. I mean, I love just the element of hanging out. I don't know—for me it feels like people have these really radical and gorgeous and dreamy ways of talking about rest like, “oh, I'll go and I'll take a soak in the bath, and I'll get a massage,” and I'm like, “yo, I just want to sit on the couch. I just want to put some on Skims, I just want to enjoy my vices.”
VB:
Absolutely.
YF:
And just relax and tune out. So, a day of hanging out really, that's it for me. That's my rest.
VB:
Yeah. That's what's so funny, too. I always get asked the question, at least like, “what do you do in your free time?” And it's funny because I feel like I hear a lot of people answer, “I like to go on hikes” or “rock climbing” or “camping” or something. I was like, that all still kind of sounds like… What? I don't know, literally my free time, what I do in my free time is, I have TV shows I really like, I play GTA, I play—
YF:
I love some GTA.
VB:
—I play my PlayStation, I cuddle with my cat. I have a big thing of… I could watch YouTube forever. I don't know, I just do regular people things. Nothing that crazy.
YF:
But it's also worth mentioning and reminding folks you're 23, right?
VB:
Yeah.
YF:
We’re both pretty young in this call, but there's things that you still deserve to enjoy and to find that joy. And for a lot of us joy is as simple as video games or our cats.
VB:
Yeah. And I never even know if people understand me when I'm saying it, but sometimes I really am just like, “I'm a very regular 23-year-old boy.” Whatever perfect Pinterest apartment you might be imagining or whatever just doesn't exist. I really am just a kid. And also, doing this for so long, yeah, I do try to give myself the grace of… Sometimes I do really boring things because since I was like 15, 16, 17, I didn't really get the chance to do that. I had to miss AP tests to be at the World Economic Forum, or I missed one of my senior field trips to speak at the UN. That right now is me reclaiming some of my—
YF:
That's right.
VB:
—just being young and not having something and not having anything to do sometimes.
YF:
You deserve that. You deserve that. I want to talk a bit more about this lawsuit, though; it's monumental what y'all are doing with this lawsuit, Juliana versus United States. It's demanding that the US government take action. How is that going, and what role do you think the courts play in holding policymakers accountable and channeling the public's human rights?
VB:
For sure. The lawsuit is one of those things that… It’s not like you could ever, at one point in your life, forget that you sued the US federal government, I suppose.
YF:
It's pretty wild.
VB:
It's so pivotal to everything that I've been able to do and just my existence in the climate movement in this moment. The lawsuit's been so pivotal to my experience throughout the movement. I joined the lawsuit in August of 2015, just a couple months before I also got the opportunity to go to COP21, so it was all in that year a lot kicked off, for sure.
YF:
And just to clarify, COP21—that's when the Paris Agreement was signed? That was at the [inaudible 00:19:57] one of the most key COPS ever.
VB:
Yeah. It was in Paris. My mom was kind of weary of what… I always have to give my mom props, because she let me go to Paris just a couple weeks after the really unfortunate attacks that happened there. But I was like, "Mom, I need to go to this climate conference."
YF:
Got to save the world. No big deal.
VB:
Yeah. So, the lawsuit—right now in the lawsuit, we are in a place where we're trying to file a motion to amend. So, we want to amend our argument so that the relief… So, every court case needs to have a relief that you're asking for. We're trying to have our relief be declaratory relief—so very, very similar to Brown versus Board of Education, where we're not asking the court system to implement any certain policy, or even tell the judicial or executive branch to implement any policy, but instead to make the declaration and the assertion that a livable climate system is necessary for the constitutionally protected rights of life, liberty, and property.
YF:
And just to clarify, for those who might not be familiar—we might have some listeners outside of the US—Brown versus Ed is the lawsuit, is the decision that desegregated US schools.
VB:
Yeah. Brown versus Board of Education was the decision that came down from the Federal Court saying that it was unlawful to have segregated schools. And once the court system made that declaration, it was up to the executive branch and legislative branch in states to own up to that declaration, whatever way that they were capable of doing. It led to a lot of pivotal moments in US history, in terms of Black students being able to go to white schools and fully integrating in schools. And that was just based on a declaration by the court, so that's what we're looking for in our case, too. And we're lucky enough that we've had some really precedent-setting decisions from federal judges in our case already asserting that the right to a stable climate is integral to having life, liberty, and health. And we've had a lot of precedent-setting decisions, but this is what we're asking for, for our actual relief and what we're looking for them at the end of the day.
It's really interesting and it's been a wild journey to go through because when we first started suing the federal government, we started this lawsuit under the Obama administration. It's gone to the Trump administration, it's back with the Biden administration. So, it does speak to the fact that it's not a completely partisan issue; it's an issue of the US federal government taking direct action to still perpetuate and subsidize and support a fossil fuel energy system, despite everything they've known that says it could be catastrophic for the livelihoods of future generations. And with a federal decision affirming that there's also this opportunity for some… I feel like for some reason, infrastructure has become somewhat partisan when really, it's just like—we just want navigable cities and an environment that people can actually navigate through in an easy way. Lately it's a lot of, “oh, big cities are the ones who are caring all about this infrastructure,” but if we were actually to change infrastructure on a national level, it would change the entire culture of the United States. And not necessarily better for one person than another, but as a whole. So, I think that's what’s really, really exciting about the idea of prioritizing, even if people don't want to talk about is… green infrastructure or prioritizing climate resiliency, it still is just making cities better, making towns better, and making the way that we can coexist better. So, that's an exciting portion of it, for sure.
YF:
Yeah. I mean, we're talking about fewer cars, talking about mass transit, more trains, cleaner air. There's all these benefits that just cannot be underestimated in terms of what they mean for folks at an individual level, at a community level. The economic benefits that come with cleaner air, healthier people—there’s just so much wrapped up in all this that makes this case just so exciting. I know, though, that these institutional spaces, they have their limitations. The courts are not perfect, the legislative branch is not perfect, and this is where storytelling, I think, is a key tool for you. Can you share a little bit more about the role that storytelling plays here, especially to sort of counteract the limitations that exist within these institutional spaces?
VB:
Yeah. For sure. I definitely always try to at least have the chance to speak to... The reason, as a young Black man it would be—at least in my opinion—it'd be a little naive for me to stand up anywhere and be like, “the courts are the entire answer to everything that I'm looking for, and I completely and fully trust them to make the best decisions.” But yeah, I think that that's where the storytelling comes in for sure, and that's why I feel appreciative of our court case at least, because there's 21 plaintiffs and each one has an incredibly unique story to tell. And that's what makes up our court case. Whether that's Levi, who is 13 years old now, was eight when we started the case, and lives in…
YF:
A baby!
VB:
Yeah. He's been suing the government for a whole quarter, a third, of his life at this point now. But he was on the satellite island off the coast of Florida that was really rampaged by a lot of the hurricanes that they were having. Or Jayden, who lived in Rayne, Louisiana when they were having 100-year floods what seemed like every other day. A lot of our plaintiffs have such distinct, unique lived experiences with climate change. And being able to tell those stories is how we prove the fact that people's lives are changing, and I think that's how it kind of got me into storytelling as a tool—just realizing what might be my lived experience isn't necessarily an obvious… It doesn’t necessarily make the… The connections that are obvious to me, between my lived experience and climate change and fairness and justice, isn't necessarily that explicit to everyone else.
And I guess getting that… The way I learned how it works as a tool was, after telling my story or after explaining why it mattered, having people approach me and say “that's something that I never considered,” I think, was a big, big motivator to be like, “oh, well, that means I need to be telling as many people this as possible,” because if they never even just considered this—what seems like the obvious to me, that certain people end up getting more… are more likely to be disenfranchised, or certain people are basically used as shields against the inconveniences of society like flooding and natural disaster—if that's not a clear narrative to as many people as I thought it would be, I need as many people as I know for that to be a clear narrative, so that they care more. I think that there's always been this conversation around climate change, where a lot of people look at it and they're like, “oh, that's a distant issue, that's not impacting me right now. That's something we have time to work on.”
Whereas, if you belong to certain identities or have certain lived experiences or are of a certain age and where your whole community has changed in front of your eyes, you know that this is something we need to be talking about right now. There are some people who still hear nine years, eight years, or whatever from the IPCC and think that means a world of time—when at the same time there's already whole communities, cultures that have relocated, have had to change their entire way of living in order to adapt to a changing world. So, I think the more that we tell that story, the more that politicians and the more that even in places like COP—where… They've been having COP for 27 years now, right? What have we actually seen change? But I think in the last few years, or at least since I've started to be pulled into the ecosystem that is COP is—as long as we keep talking about people's lived experiences, as long as we keep talking about what it's going to take for certain folks to stay alive, they have no choice but to acknowledge it. Even if they acknowledge it in a way we like or don't, at least it's something they can't ignore anymore.
YF:
Yeah. And this feels so urgent, I think, this tool of storytelling and the perspective you share around bringing in people who maybe don't understand that lived experience, who haven't been exposed to enough people with that lived experience. I'm talking specifically, to keep it real, white people who are voting for Trump and voting for conservative Republicans without understanding the ramifications of their decisions, really. I think we're living in this period of polarization that's really scary. Folks are really gravitating toward these different politics and the impacts are climate inaction. Climate inaction is a result of that, right? And I think that this point you make around bringing in people who didn't know or understand your lived experience, and using your lived experience to bring them in and understand the urgency of climate change, is just so needed right now to try to bridge this gap that I think is building right now in our society, this sort of fissure that we're witnessing that, at least in the US, is quite terrifying.
VB:
Yeah, yeah. Beyond, yeah.
YF:
I don't know; I'd like to hope that some of these people's minds can be changed. And maybe hearing about experiences like yours, lifetimes like yours and mine, being Black and Brown queer people in America—there's always the hope that our stories can change people's minds and hearts so that they can care about us or vote with our well-being in mind. How does—
VB:
Yeah. Which is also rough in its own way, too.
YF:
Yeah. To get into that, and I kind of want to hear a little bit about that, Vic—sharing your own story. What's that like for you? Having to get personal and talk about your identity, because you have all these layers of identity, too, that I know was a bit of a struggle for you to grapple with at some point.
VB:
Having layered identities, especially coming up younger, was always super hard, being first generation, being Afro-Indigenous, being Afro-Latino, being queer. At some point it just felt like too much, because the world, in so many ways, and to this point—I feel like just being who I am is so political or politicized. There's so many assumptions that can be made about me or how I feel about things or the way I approach things just because of the identities I hold, because identity has become so politicized. So, I think I definitely try to make a point of… I just approach everything from a really genuine place. I'm never really going out of my way to try to convince someone by talking about who I am or what I experience or the things that I care about. I'm just being as genuine as I can possibly be, because I think that's something that everyone can relate to.
I don't always have the perfect words, and I don't always have… I mean, I rarely even have some master agenda. I just want people to relate to the fact that I'm trying to exist the same way that they are, and that that's kind of how I try to approach speaking or approach environments I might be in that are uncomfortable—or approach anything, really. Sometimes I wonder if it's the defense mechanism I've developed of just trying to be really personable, but it's just what has worked for me. And even just my dad, for example, is a really conservative Republican. I didn't realize what it totally was at the time, but I grew up hearing things like Rush Limbaugh playing in the car.
YF:
No!
VB:
Yeah, I didn't even know who that was until I was older and I was like, oh, I heard his voice and I was like, “this is the guy that was playing in the car when I was younger.”
But I think that that lived experience is—especially having somebody close in my life who maybe doesn't relate to me value-wise on so many things— I know we relate to each other by caring about each other. And so I think that's kind of just what I try to tap into with everyone that I can. I have noticed in… Like I said, when I first got involved in the climate movement, it's not like there was a bunch of young, dark-skinned, queer, Black people who were taking up much space. And if anything, when I was trying to talk to my friends that did fit those demographics about climate, it was very fairly, “why is that the space you would put yourself in?” But over time, I've been able to see it pay off, and just in terms of helping people build understanding of the fact that this is an issue that impacts absolutely every single one of us. If your version of the climate movement is one where you're just seeing white, Ivy League college students who worked on one divestment campaign, then you're not seeing the full scope of what the issue even is in the first place and who it impacts.
And so, I think a lot of my work has been a willingness, on my part—also just because I'm curious in that way—to let myself try to be an example of the fact that the climate crisis is multifaceted, and therefore the climate movement has to be, too. There's a lot I can say about what that's done for me or how that's felt, but everything about it, at the end of the day, has felt like what could be my best contribution to trying to get people to understand this crisis in a more wholehearted, full-picture way. The reason that Black, Latino, first-generation… The reason that all of us need to be in the climate space is because folks need to realize that divesting from fossil fuels or fossil fuel infrastructure collapsing, at least to me, is just the start of a better world that I want to see.
YF:
Yes, yes. Tell me about this world you want to see. What do you imagine when you envision it?
VB:
I imagine a world that prioritizes way less short-term gratification and prioritizes way more the people that we've been super willing to let fall to the wayside in order to achieve some goal that doesn't feel like it benefits me or the people I care about in terms of…if it's growing the US economy or just growing one billionaire's pockets. I want to see a world that's the opposite of that, and I want to see a world where the police aren't funded in the way they are—a world where I don't go home and see certain things on the news, or haven't been seeing certain things on the news since I was 14 years old, 15 years old. I think it's understanding that, to me, a world that doesn't have fossil fuels also has to be a world where there's no Honduran kids who are trying to cross the border living in cages. There's not people who look like me being gunned down in the street. There’s not trans people being attacked on the daily. Those worlds all overlap for me. It's not just this one image of, we get rid of fossil fuels and so then I can have a good time hiking with my white family and wherever the… I don't know.
It has to be: addressing climate change is just addressing a symptom of all these way larger and insidious issues that we're already facing that tend to disproportionately impact certain people. To me, if we can address climate change, and we can address all the reasons that it comes to be, we can address a lot of the reasons why white supremacy and the patriarchy and this rampant version of capitalism that we have going on exist. So, it's kind of just this… The issue is this crux of all these bigger issues that, I don't know, people wake up and have to be hit in the face by every day, but still try their best at overcoming.
YF:
I think you really hit the nail on the head there, Vic, in reminding folks what climate change is a symptom of. It's a symptom of capitalism, of colonialism. It's a symptom of these systems that have existed long before the water started rising and before wildfires began eating up entire communities.
VB:
Absolutely.
YF:
We can build a world that's powered by solar energy and clean power, but if it's still at the behest of vulnerable peoples, our peoples, then it's not really a world worth building at all.
VB:
Yes, exactly.
YF:
You're our last guest on the show, Vic. I've been asking everyone to share an inspirational quote. I mean, everything you just said sounded quite inspirational, but I did want to ask if you have a quote that you want to share that shines a light on the world you want to help build, that sort of helps, I think, encapsulate what you just shared.
VB:
Yeah, I can think of two right now. Is that okay?
YF:
Yeah, yeah, sure.
VB:
One is one that I say in the talks all the time. It's by Fannie Lou Hamer, who is an awesome civil rights activist, Black woman who did a lot for her time in the civil rights movement. She is the one who originated the quote, "Nobody's free until everybody's free." I feel like a lot of what I've talked about, or a lot of what I try to build understanding on, is people realizing that, no matter what comfort they walk through in the day-to-day, they're not living in a free society either as long as other people are grasping at anything in order to get what's theirs and what's fair.
YF:
Thank you for sharing that with us, Vic. Well, that's all I've got today. But Vic, thank you again for being with us, for your vulnerability, your honesty, and for just giving our listeners a little hint of the powerful work you're doing.
VB:
Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for having me. I loved all the questions and it's always nice to get to ruminate on all the big things that remind us why we do everything in the first place.
YF:
Yeah. It's a good reminder. We need it.
Audio:
Architectures of Planetary Well-Being is a podcast of revisions, a media initiative supported by re:arc institute, a philanthropic organization committed to supporting architectures of planetary well-being. For more information on re:arc, please visit www.rearc.institute. This season is hosted by Yessenia Funes. For more information on her work, you can follow her online at @yessfun, Y-E-S-S-F-U-N, and in her work, The Frontline at Atmos magazine. This podcast is produced by Minah Kwon and Andi Kristins. Music by In Atlas.