Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

By around 2044, the U.S. will become a majority-minority nation. This seismic demographic shift has triggered a cultural earthquake, provoking a radical spike in hate crimes. In times of massive disruption and economic stress, what Carl Jung called the “shadow side of the psyche” comes into play: the pronounced psychological tendency in the collective psyche is to project these shadow qualities with unusual potency onto whomever people see as “the other.” But is there also a deeper story? Perhaps the question to ask is: Who benefits? In this half hour, we hear from Heather McGhee of Demos. She sees a direct connection between today’s extreme inequality and this peak moment of racial panic and white anxiety.

FEATURING

Heather McGhee, distinguished senior fellow and former president of Demos, is an award-winning thought leader on the national stage whose writing and research appear in numerous outlets, including The New York Times and The Nation. Her latest book is The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.

RESOURCES

Heather McGhee's Keynote at Bioneers 2017 | A New “We The People” For a Sustainable Future

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Today, three to five giant corporations control up to 80% of almost every industry and marketplace. These monopolies depress wages, exploit workers, and decimate small businesses. Stacy Mitchell from the Institute for Local Self Reliance has been a leader in a growing anti-monopoly movement with a broad political base. Can this emerging movement – along with bold federal antitrust action –  create a force that can challenge corporate power for the first time in decades? 

Stacy Mitchell, a Maine-based writer, strategist, and policy advocate whose work focuses on dismantling concentrated corporate power and building thriving communities and a healthy democracy, has played a leading role in today’s growing anti-monopoly movement. She is Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) and the author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses, and co-author of the influential report: Amazon’s Stranglehold.

Stacy Mitchell – Democracy vs. Big Tech: How We Can Win the Fight Against Monopoly Power | Bioneers 2024 Keynote

Democracy v. Plutocracy: Behind Every Great Fortune Lies a Great Crime

Our Economic Future: Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Ideas | Bioneers Reade

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

To transform our culture from its focus on dominance and hierarchy to one of connection, empathy and collaboration, it’s vital that we re-envision the essential (or archetypal) masculine, which changes everything. This rarely tackled topic is the subject of a deeply authentic dialogue among Playwright and activist Eve Ensler and three men working to change men and change the story: Tony Porter, co-founder, A Call To Men; Dallas Goldtooth, Indigenous activist, member of the 1491’s Native American comedy troupe; George Lipsitz, board president, African American Policy Forum.

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

As a backlash against LGBTQ rights escalates into an authoritarian crusade, acclaimed author and queer activist Taylor Brorby asks how we can still be fighting this battle? As a writer addressing the fossil fuel industry’s acceleration in the midst of climate chaos, Taylor is forced to choose between the existential crises of the assaults on nature and on LGBTQ people. It’s all connected, he says, as he seeks to reconcile nature, culture, diversity and belonging.

Taylor Brorby, a Fellow in Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah, is an award-winning, widely published writer and poet as well as a contributing editor at North American Review who also serves on the editorial boards of Terrain.org and Hub City Press. Taylor regularly speaks around the country on issues related to extractive economies, queerness, disability, and climate change, and is the author of Boys and Oil: Growing up gay in a fractured land; Crude: Poems; Coming Alive: Action and Civil Disobedience; and co-editor of Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America.

Taylor Brorby's keynote Bioneers 2024 – Raising Hell: Censorship, Carbon Capture, and Being Gay on the Great Plains

Learn more about Taylor Brorby at taylorbrorby.com

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

In a world that’s unraveling from climate disruption and gaping inequality, another climate crisis confronts us: the climate of hate and othering. Award-winning scholar and educator Valarie Kaur says to overcome racism and nationalism, we must not succumb to rage and grief. As someone who has spent much of her life challenging horrific injustices and intolerance, Kaur learned the lesson that historical nonviolent change-makers understood: social movements must be grounded in an ethic of love. She founded the Revolutionary Love Project, and has emerged as one of the most important voices of the American Sikh community, and a highly influential faith leader on the national stage.

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

For transcript and more about this program, visit: https://bioneers.org/laboring-for-justice-see-no-stranger/

Credits

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Written by: Monica Lopez and Kenny Ausubel

Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

Producer: Teo Grossman

Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

How are donors leveraging effective change beyond traditional pathways and norms? From shareholder activism to investment strategies and disinvestment campaigns, explore how foundations can be reshaped to be far more effective. Hosted by Jen Sokolove, Program Director, Compton Foundation. With: Lauren Embrey, President/CEO, Embrey Family Foundation; Tom Van Dyck, Senior Vice President and Financial Consultant, SRI Wealth Management Group at RBC Wealth Management; Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, Senior Director of Membership & Communications, Women Donors Network; Kristin Hull, CEO, Nia Global Solutions.

Recorded Friday, October 17, 2014 at the national Bioneers Summit Conference in San Rafael, California.

At the core of our civilizational breakdown is an extractive economy that wastes both nature and people, at the same time it is Hoovering extreme wealth up to the billionaire class. But with breakdown comes breakthrough. Professor Manuel Pastor believes we’re living through a moment of profound transformation. It will come down to what we do – or don’t do – at this moment of radical change.

In this episode, we hear from Pastor on how shocks to the system are precipitating a great awakening and growing movements to transform the economy to our economy.

Manuel Pastor, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at USC and Director of its Equity Research Institute, has long been one of the most important scholars and activists working on the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities and the social movements seeking to change those realities. He has held many prominent academic posts, won countless prestigious awards and fellowships for his activism and scholarship, and is the author and co-author of many important, highly influential tomes.

Solidarity Economics: Why Mutuality and Movements Matter | 2021 Book by Manuel Pastor and Chris Benner

SolidarityEconomics.org | Joint Project of the Equity Research Center (ERI) at the University of Southern California and the Institute for Social Transformation at UC Santa Cruz

Manuel Pastor – Solidarity Economics: Mutuality, Movements and Momentum | 2021 Bioneers Keynote Address

Solidarity Economics: Our Economy, Our Planet, Our Movements | 2021 Bioneers Panel

Bioneers Reader: Our Economic Future | Free eBook

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Few people know how a hostage-taking incident transformed a shy housewife from the working-class community near Niagara Falls into one of the founding mothers of the environmental justice movement. Spark-plug community organizer Lois Gibbs traces the electrifying arc that led from sick children to an international rallying cry for human rights. Because, says Gibbs, “It is just not right morally or ethically that somebody with a corporate interest, with a dollar interest, is making a decision each and every day in this country about who lives and who dies.”

There is a growing movement to redefine manhood, and to address ways that violence is baked into our cultural expectations of masculinity. Courageous, visionary men are rising to the challenge. One of those men is activist, writer and public speaker Kevin Powell. In this half-hour, Powell boldly and bravely discusses his experiences with toxic masculinity and his journey to redefine what it means to be a man.

Kevin Powell - Re-defining Manhood: A Message to Men, to Boys, to Us All | Bioneers 2018 Keynote

To find out more about Kevin Powell and his work, please visit his website.

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

As we hurtle into the Sixth Age of Extinctions, we face the cataclysmic loss of half the world’s biological diversity. 80% of the remaining biodiversity is on Indigenous lands. Ethnobotanist and Indigenous rights advocate Mark Plotkin of the Amazon Conservation Team tells us how scientists are helping protect the people who will protect the land, and the age-old wisdom that’s imperative for our future.

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.