But is there more to the story on Republicans and science? Mooney thought so, and began examining the relevant research in psychology and neuroscience, particularly the role of cognition, emotion, and the brain in shaping our understanding of the world. His research has led to widely read articles like “The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science” and his recent book The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality (Wiley 2012).

Mooney talked with Left Eye on Books about the science behind ideology and beliefs, the reaction to his book, and the Republican brain.

Christine Shearer: Your book The Republican War on Science was one of the first popular books to really lay out how the Republican party as a whole was veering farther and farther away from accepted scientific research, from the Newt Gingrich Congress through the George W. Bush Administration. And it looked at some issues that appeared to be more financial, like climate change, and others that were more religious, like stem cell research. Is it fair to say that you thought the crux of the issue at the time was corporate funding of misinformation and religious belief triumphing over science?

Chris Mooney: Yes. In fact, that was explicitly the argument of the book. It was that corporate influences and religious influences were creating an anti-science double whammy within the GOP. And by the way, although in the new book I go on to discuss the underlying psychology behind the denial of science, that is not to say that this analysis was wrong. The GOP clearly is the party of religion and the party of business — although recently, it has become so ideological that I would say it is becoming rather anti-business in many ways. And this has led it to dramatically undermine science.

Christine Shearer: Your next book Storm World (Harvest Books, 2008) looked at a group of scientists trying to determine whether global warming could be impacting the intensity and number of hurricanes. And there were a few scientists who were just adamant against making such a correlation, even as the supporting evidence mounted. Was it people like that who, in part, got you thinking that there might be more at work than money and religion in causing some to reject scientific evidence?

Chris Mooney: Huh. Actually I’d read that issue a little differently. This was a classic emerging science conflict under high uncertainty. It seems to me that skepticism about a climate-hurricane connection wasn’t necessarily beyond the pale at that time.

Certainly, though, the main character in the book, William Gray, does push the Republican War on Science analysis. Because the guy is a global warming denier, but no conservative. He wasn’t being driven by religion and he wasn’t being driven by corporate greed. Something else was going on there, having to do with a kind of turf battle between old-school meteorologists and computer-modeling climate scientists.

Christine Shearer: So let’s lay out the thesis of The Republican Brain – you draw upon a variety of studies suggesting that people identifying as Republicans and Democrats within the U.S. do not just think differently – their brains appear to be wired differently. For example, Democrats as a whole appear to be more open to new experiences and changing their minds, while Republicans more consistently value group solidarity and tradition, and these are differences that have correlations to parts of the brain?

Chris Mooney: Apparently they do. The brain stuff is very new, and controversial. But the personality and cognitive style differences from left to right are very real and well established, and it isn’t exactly radical to propose that those are going to have physical correlates in the brain. Right now, the search for them is on, and some tantalizing findings have already been published. But the only reason anybody went looking in the brain for differences is because they’d already manifested themselves in personality differences.

Christine Shearer: And of course the book is not arguing that biology determines political ideology, but perhaps there is a feedback effect: for example, the social movements of the 1960s created a backlash amongst U.S. conservatives that strengthened some of their core traits and values, not just in their ideas, but their physical brains?

Chris Mooney: Sure. I mean, living your life in a particular way—for instance, devoted to a set of ideas—changes your brain. We know that. So it is kind of common sense that getting conservative ideas reinforced a lot probably makes a brain more “conservative.” It appears there is both something “natural” about ideology, which is why genetics seems to be involved, but also a reinforcement effect emerging from life experiences.

Christine Shearer: How about conservative think tanks like the Heartland Institute – do you think they believe in what they are doing, or are consciously trying to shape public opinion, even if that means promoting false or misleading studies?

Chris Mooney: Well, I think these are libertarian ideologues, often white and male. Their beliefs are very strong and they are very sure they are competent and in the right, and that global warming is hokum. I don’t think they’re conscious liars at all. They actually believe that they are rational — critical thinkers, even. Of course, this is a pretty inflated self-image.

Christine Shearer: How does religion fit into this? Or gender – for example, how conservatives like Rick Santorum and Rush Limbaugh appear to be quite misinformed when it comes to issues like birth control?

Chris Mooney: My view on religion is that there is conservative and liberal religiosity, just as there is conservative and liberal politics. In both cases, the conservatives crave certainty and flee from uncertainty and ambiguity. In religion this leads to fundamentalism; in politics, well, it leads to Tea Party-ism and authoritarianism. And the two overlap heavily of course.

There is clearly a gender gap in both religiosity and in politics. In politics, women are more liberal, and I think this has a lot to do with empathy. And of course many women are thankfully rejecting the authoritarian, man-controls-the-family view of the right.

Christine Shearer: Is it fair to say that this research and thesis fits best with the experiences and history of western nations, particularly the U.S.? How might these findings vary by country, particularly a country very different from the U.S.?

Chris Mooney: Much of the research has been done in the U.S., and most of it has been done in the West. For obvious reasons. I suspect that we are tapping into something very deep here about human beings, though—for instance, the Big Five personality traits have been studied around the world, and seem pretty close to a human universal. And if some of those traits have political implications in a western context, wouldn’t they also have political implications in other contexts? I’d be surprised if they didn’t.

But culture is going to be a huge factor here, and under culture I include political systems. For instance, if the regime is totalitarian and you don’t really have a choice of what political view to adopt, does your personality really matter as much in determining your “politics”? Probably not. In such countries people would not likely be very well “sorted,” ideologically, by personality.

So you will see wide diversity in human ideologies and political systems, but you will also see some core elements that look a lot like “left” and “right” in the West and that likely reflect elements of personality that are part of human nature.

Christine Shearer: For many on the left, the immediate reaction when faced with someone who believes in something that is demonstrably false is to challenge them with loads of supporting evidence, but the research is showing that this is exactly the wrong approach with many Republicans. What is the better approach?

Chris Mooney: The better approach is emotional. You have to take away the defensive reaction; more facts only strengthen the defensive reaction. The facts, then, have be made to seem non-threatening. This requires knowing the source of the defensive reaction—why the facts seem such a menace to a person’s worldview—and an understanding of framing, or, how to present the same facts, or similar facts, in a context that conveys a very different and less threatening meaning.

Christine Shearer: Many conservative media outlets have attacked your book, which you find highly unfortunate, because you think there is a lot that the left and right in the U.S. can learn from one another. How much do you think conservative media sees the book as a threat to their worldview, and how much do they see it as a threat to their material interests? Is it fair to say the Republican platform is in many ways firmly rooted in free market and Christian ideals that make some people very wealthy and powerful?

Chris Mooney: Oh I think it is largely a threat to their self image as people who are rational and reasonable and, in fact, more reasonable and rational than their political opponents. I’m completely taking that away from them. I’m showing that their reasoning is emotionally driven, and moreover, that their way of responding to the world isn’t so conducive to the kinds of reasoning that we see in the scientific community. That’s threatening on a personal level. I don’t know that it has much to do with money or power.

Christine Shearer: You have said Republicans can offer those on the left valuable lessons in the area of group cohesion and loyalty. Yet Occupy Wall Street, for example, might say that their cohesion and loyalty lies in their shared commitment to participatory democracy, rather than following a certain party or leader. Do you think there is a middle ground between increasing group solidarity and cohesion, while also expanding the number and kinds of people within that group?

Chris Mooney: Sure. But I mean solidarity and unity in achieving actual political objectives. AKA, effectiveness. This requires actually choosing a leader—one Occupy Wall Street chapter was so anti-authoritarian that they chose a dog as their “leader”—and follow that leader…faithfully.

The left hates this, but it also needs this. I don’t think the left will choose leaders who are non-inclusive, but the point is that there is a need to actually be organized and achieve concrete strategic objectives. Just throwing a protest doesn’t cut it.

Chris Mooney is a science and political journalist, blogger, podcaster, and experienced trainer of scientists in the art of communication. He is the author of four books, including the New York Times bestselling The Republican War on Science and most recently The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality (April 2012). He blogs for Science Progress, a website of the Center for American Progress and Center for American Progress Action Fund, and is a host of the Point of Inquiry podcast.

Christine Shearer is a postdoctoral scholar in science, technology, and society studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a researcher for CoalSwarm, part of SourceWatch. She is Managing Editor of Conducive, and author of Kivalina: A Climate Change Story (Haymarket Books, 2011).

By Christine Shearer

What are we to make of Obama’s first term? In Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press, 2012), editors Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank offer their assessment: “The Barack Obama revolution was over before it started, guttered by the politician’s overweening desire to prove himself to the grandees of the establishment. From there on, other promises proved ever easier to break.”

Under this bold thesis, Hopeless brings together different voices from the Left to assess the Obama Administration’s actions on a variety of issues. Writers include journalist Jeremy Scahill on foreign policy, activist Ralph Nader on the nonprofit sector, and economist Michael Hudson on tax cuts and war spending, to name just a few.

Editor and co-writer Joshua Frank talked with Left Eye on Books about the book, Obama’s policies, and why he sees more promise for true hope and change with Occupy Wall Street than Obama or mainstream politics.

Christine Shearer: How did the idea for this book come about?

Joshua Frank: My co-editor Jeffrey St. Clair and myself decided to pursue this book project because we both felt their has been far too little left critique of the Obama years thus far. He was cheered into office by an overwhelming wave of popularity, but it didn’t take him long to leave the rhetoric of “hope” and “change” in the dust of the campaign trail. So we decided to document these failures and betrayals. Hopeless contains a host of voices and is set up in chronological order so that the reader can gaze at Obama’s arch as president. It’s a sobering read to be sure, but hopefully one that gets people thinking outside the voting booth.

CS: I don’t know if the timing of the book’s release – right before the 2012 election – was deliberate, but it’s provocative, because many Democrats and some progressives would say that right now we need to rally behind President Obama to avoid a Mitt Romney presidency. What do you say to that kind of argument?

JF: I would tell these well-meaning progressives that instead of rallying behind a particular presidential candidate, that instead they ought to continue rallying behind the causes they hold dear. Often what happens during an election hoopla is we see movements – say the anti-war movement – put their protest signs in the closet and stick their pro-Democrat sign in the front yard. This is especially dangerous when said Democrat doesn’t support the anti-war positions we support. If we don’t put any demands on these candidates to adopt progressive positions, then there is really no reason for them to ever heed our concerns. Instead, we ought to put a significant amount of pressure on Obama and hold his feet to the fire on the issues that matter the most to us – be it climate change or foreign interventions. That’s what our objective is with this book, to inform and engage. I am hopeful that the evolving Occupy movement will keep on it, mounting pressure on both parties as the election party hits full cylinder. If Occupy decides to end their campaigns to support Obama, that’d be death of one of the important social developments we’ve seen in this country in the last decade.

CS: A lot of Democrat candidates will use populist rhetoric in their campaigns, only to later govern more from the center or even center-right. Do you think there is a degree to which Obama is more guilty of this than say, for example, former President Bill Clinton?

JF: I totally agree that they use particular language in order to sway voters. I think Obama is guilty of this, but I would say he’s not quite as gifted at the art of public relations as Clinton was. He’s just not as smooth or as coy. He also probably doesn’t have as many lies to cover up as Clinton did. No really though, cutting through the jargon is half the battle. I much prefer to look at the actual record and dissect the policy than to analyze a particular speech or interview. Actions speak louder than words as the old cliche goes. And sadly, Obama’s policies, like those of Clinton, just don’t pass the progressive sniff test.

CS: Yes, tell us about some of Obama’s policies and the problems with them discussed in the book.

JF: We cover the whole array of issues, from the environment to the economy to foreign policy. Some of the brightest and most eloquent writers on the left reveal Obama’s ugly warts, such as Tariq Ali, Jeremy Scahill, Kathy Kelly, and Ray McGovern. The host of writers critique Obama’s management of the so-called War on Terror, his energy policy, attack on civil liberties, torture, and his bail out of Wall Street. One of the more interesting essays, in my view, is one by Andrew Levine who argues Obama is actually an economic libertarian. It’s a very damning, if not enlightening, must-read piece.

CS: One of the most interesting things about Obama, to me, is that there are often multiple and conflicting analyses offered for his motivations and actions. For example, in taking on economic liberalists like Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geitner as financial advisers: did he choose them because he admires them, because he thought it was the only way to prevent a depression, to reach out to conservatives and financial institutions, or because he actually agrees with them? In the Introduction you and Jeffrey St. Clair write that at heart Obama is a “calculating pragmatist” that “doesn’t want to be stained with defeat.” Do you think that explains a lot of his actions in the first term?

JF: Absolutely. Obama is really a middle-of-the-road Democrat on most issues. In the end, he actually agrees with the likes of Summers and Geitner. He said as much while campaigning in 2008 and defends his Wall Street bailout to this day. He’s almost too pragmatic at times, which is exactly the opposite of what most progressives had hoped for when they ushered him into office. They thought he’d be bold and unflinching, the antithesis of George W. Bush. But what they got was a guy who is hardly a liberal and actually agreed with Bush on most big issues.

Take the hot news item of today: Obama’s new found support for same-sex marriage. While I certainly applaud him for finally taking a stand, it’s not at all a radical position. He’s made clear that he takes a states rights approach to the issue. Which means, if a state like North Carolina wants to outlaw same-sex marriage, he’ll accept that. Could you imagine if he had the same feeling about, say, segregation? Without the Civil Rights Act we’d still have lawful discrimination in most southern states. It took a federal law to move us forward. Without a similar piece of national legislation regarding same sex marriage, gays in this country will still be discriminated against in most states. Obama’s is not a progressive civil rights position on gay marriage – it’s pragmatic and calculated. Keep in mind, it’s also virtually the exact same position both Dick Cheney and Ron Paul have espoused. What Obama has endorsed is simply marriage equality federalism, to be wonky. He did not, sadly, embrace the notion that marriage for all ought to be a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution.

CS: Another area where Obama has had a lot of overlap with former President George W. Bush is national security and foreign policy, including continuing some of the more Constitutionally questionable – some would say illegal – policies of the “War Against Terror,” such as extraordinary rendition, military tribunals, and domestic wiretapping. And he’s even taken it a step further by authorizing drone attacks in a host of countries. Can you tell us a bit about how the book addresses Obama’s national security policy, and do you think the writers were surprised by Obama’s policies in this area?

JF: I do think many of the writers were shocked at how far this administration has gone to extend Bush’s “War on Terror” into Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. The callous nature of drone bombings is perhaps the most frightening aspect of Obama’s evolving wars.  Drones are indiscriminate, and many would argue, absolutely illegal under international law. If Bush were carrying out similar attacks, with nearly weekly reports of civilian deaths, the US antiwar movement would be up in arms, out in the streets and camping out in front of the White House. But since it is Obama carrying out these murders, mums the word. Democrats have essentially co-opted the antiwar movement and it’s been very detrimental.

CS: You, Jeffrey St. Clair, and Darwin Bond-Graham also write about Obama’s nuclear power and nuclear weapons policies. Could you tell us a bit about those policies?

JF: Obama’s support for nuclear power is a pretty frightening thing. One reason he’s been so enthralled with nuke power, even after Fukushima, may have something to do with all the money he’s received from the industry over the years. For the first time in three decades Obama guaranteed loans for new nuke plants in the south. It’s a huge step backwards for our energy policy, and Obama has yet to feel the sting from the environmental movement for his nuke embrace. His policy on nuclear weapons is also more of the same, if not even worse. As Bond-Graham writes, Obama’s first term will go down in history as putting forth the single largest spending increases on nuclear weapons ever. So, even while he calls for a reduction in nuclear weapons globally – if not an all out elimination – he’s simultaneously boosting the industry at home.

CS: I think some people may disagree with many of Obama’s policies but still sympathize with him because – while members of the Right certainly attacked Clinton – it has just taken on a new flavor and intensity with Obama: they can’t decide if he’s an Islamic terrorist sympathizer from Kenya or a godless communist socialist, but it all implies that he’s fundamentally unAmerican. And many Republicans say very openly that they refuse to compromise with Obama or the Democratic party. Do you think what Obama has been up against should factor into critiques of his actions in the first term, or do you think that’s a separate issue? In the book you and Clair seem to suggest that, if anything, the attacks should have made Obama less receptive to Conservatives?

JF: Great question. I do think it should factor in, but not for the reason you imply. The Right is going to call Obama a socialist/Islamic fascist, regardless of the types of policies his administration actually carries out. So, in this cynical climate, why not fight back hard? Why not actually push a real progressive agenda? The Right is already blaming Obama for being a commie, so why doesn’t he stand up to their rhetoric? Instead of trying to convince the Tea Party types that he isn’t as bad as they say – that Obamacare isn’t really that radical, for example – why not stand up on principle and defend social and economic justice? He’s pandered and caved to the Right where Clinton employed the “art” of triangulation. We’re all waiting for the “real” Obama to step forward, but I think we are actually seeing the real Obama in action right now, and he’s timid and politically thin skinned.

CS: What do you make of the argument that Obama would be more receptive to progressive activists in his second term since he won’t have to worry about reelection?

JF: I think that’s a nice thought, but one based on perception rather than reality. What I can say is this: without consistent, uncompromising pressure from progressives, Obama will continue to ignore us. If he is victorious next November, I hope we turn up the heat on his administration and hold Obama’s feet to the fire. He may be receptive, but he’ll never hear us if we aren’t yelling.

CS: A recent Truthout article noted that Obama’s 2008 election campaign helped organize and galvanize a savvy group of activists who, after being neglected by the Obama Administration, used their skills to help create the 99% movement, with its emphasis on truly democratic over republic-an values. And a lot of those activists reported being uncertain about whether they would now help Obama turn out voters in swing states. So, in the spirit of your book, what should self-identified progressives do as we head toward the 2012 election?

JF: I think these activists, people committed to their issues, ought to continue working hard to make change. One of my biggest fears is that Obama will co-opt Occupy to the determine of that movement. We’ve seen it happen time and again. Most recently as I mentioned, in 2008, the Obama campaign successfully absorbed the antiwar movement into his campaign and as a result mass protests ceased to exist, despite Obama’s escalation of drone attacks and a massive troop increase in Afghanistan even after they killed Osama. Could you imagine the same thing happening under a McCain presidency? Occupy, I feel, is not going to just go away though. It sprouted during Obama’s first term and in order to stay relevant, will have to keep the passion and vigor alive and growing. Progressives this time around shouldn’t put too much energy into presidential elections. Instead they ought to continue to organize around their causes and build a movement that can be effective over the long haul, no matter which Twiddle Dee or Tweetle Dum ends up taking the electoral prize.

Joshua Frank is an environmental journalist whose investigative reports and columns appear in CounterPunch, Common Dreams, and AlterNet. Along with Hopeless, he is author of Left Out!: How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, and co-editor of Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland.

Christine Shearer is a postdoctoral scholar in science, technology, and society studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a researcher for CoalSwarm, part of SourceWatch. She is managing editor of Conducive and author of Kivalina: A Climate Change Story (Haymarket Books, 2011).

Steve Keen (photo courtesy of author)

While many economists have argued that no one could have foreseen the 2008 financial crash, some economists were sounding the alarm well before the bubble burst. One of them was Steve Keen, a Professor of Economics & Finance at the University of Western Sydney, and author of the book “Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences” (Zed Books UK, 2011). Keen is credited with predicting the 2008 financial crisis in December 2005. He has argued that his foresight on the crisis is due to a little-known secret: that many widely believed economic models have been shown to be wrong, which many economists — particularly those in government policy positions — will not admit.

Keen argues that economic theory is particularly wrong when it comes to the “Efficient Markets Hypothesis,” which still dominates academic thinking about finance, even after the Global Financial Crisis. Since 1995, Steve’s main research focus has been the development of an alternative, empirically grounded theory based on Hyman Minsky’s “Financial Instability Hypothesis,” which argues that finance markets are not self-equilibrating but inherently unstable. Keen’s forthcoming book on the topic, “Finance and Economic Breakdown,” will be published in 2012. He also writes the blog Debtwatch.

Keen talked to Left Eye on Book‘s Christine Shearer about “Debunking Economics,” the problems with many economic ideas and neoclassical thinking, and his own work toward a new model — and theory — of economic systems.

Christine Shearer: You begin “Debunking Economics” with a critique of the fundamental principles of [classical] microeconomics: supply and demand. You argue that the equations around demand are flawed because they assume one consumer that is then aggregated to the level of the market, which you say does not hold up empirically or mathematically. Conversely, for supply, economists argue that firms exercising their profit-maximizing behavior will supply goods at a level in which it is not profitable to produce beyond that level – where marginal cost equals price – but its defining equations only hold up under demonstrably false assumptions?

Steve Keen: It’s more than just demonstrably false. The equation, first of all, with demand what they do is have a distilled explanation of an individual’s behavior. And that is deriving individual demand from a set of preferences, and then they say after you determine these preferences you can say what an individual’s demand will be, and they then jump straight from that point to talking about the market. And if any textbooks actually talk about that transition process then they simply say there can be conflict. What they’re leaving out at the very start of the exercise is assuming that you can change the prices without changing the distribution of income or level of income. Well, if you change the price of bananas, it won’t affect individual income all that much. But when you have an entire society involved, any change in prices necessarily changes not just income but the entire distribution of income as well. Some neoclassical economists have done this work, to get the foundations, and they’ve concluded that if you get consumers with different tastes and different prices, and different goods – some luxuries, some necessities – you can derive any demand curve; just a squiggly line across a sheet of paper without taking your hand off the page. Now of course they don’t teach that in the introductory courses because, as soon as you do that, good bye demand and supply. Because if you just draw like a sine wave, there’d be  absolutely no reason why that could not be a legitimate demand curve in a market.

That’s the first stage. The second, on supply, they argue that firms face rising costs of production and they therefore will, as volume rises, the increase in volume will push up the level of price for them, at a stage where the firm will say, ‘Well, I’m not going to produce any more – any more than this and I’ll produce at a loss.’ Well, if you actually empirically ask what sort of cost structures that they face – well, Alan Blinder, who was once vice-president of the Federal Reserve and a very influential neoclassical economist, went out and did precisely that in a book called “Asking About Prices.” And here’s a very rough conclusion of what he said: he said that 89% of firms for which he was reporting had constant or falling marginal costs, which is the opposite of the situation that is taught in the textbooks. So they are wrong about firms facing a rising point in terms of cut-off costs. But he said OK, let’s pretend that they are right even though we know that they are wrong, but let’s just look at the mathematical argument: the position that they find is profit-maximizing does not maximize the profits of the individual firm, the levels of output does.

So neoclassical economists are wrong about the shape of the demand curve, they’re wrong about there only being one possible shape being logical given what the shape can be, and they’re wrong about the point of profit-maximization. So the whole thing is a shambles, but it’s taught without those nuances in textbooks. So students have this would-be perfect vision if everything else is correct in the belief — and it’s not the students’ fault that they go this way — in the belief that everything else is in fact correct. But good neoclassical economics have proven that the demand curve does not look like what the textbook says it does, and I myself and other colleagues have argued that the supply function is completely different as well. So it’s a total shambles, but with that perfect picture the students go off believing the rest of that ideology: you know, that markets are perfect, markets choose the best possible point — when the theory, properly worked out, shows that markets cannot identify what the best point is anyway.

Christine Shearer: So supply and demand is the basis of free market economics because it assumes equilibrium – i.e. the government could only disrupt this natural balance? It is the equations behind the philosophy of economic liberalism?

Steve Keen: Yeah, and that’s the whole idea, that there is an actual balance out there. And that’s a very seductive thing for a student. I know I was seduced by it when I first learned it in high school and becoming a University student, and it’s a very seductive vision because what it actually communicates is that you can have an economic system that distributes to society resources without having any power – and you don’t have any power because the model argues in favor of competition rather than collusion. You have firms not colluding with each other, workers not forming unions, and you have the government keeping out of the way, and that would lead to the perfect situation rather than leading to political anarchy, etc., etc. So it’s a very seductive vision of an anarchist society that works well. And, strangely enough, I think most neoclassical economists without knowing it are effectively anarchists because they are arguing in favor of no government, and that is an argument that a lot of humans have had over time and the trouble is both left and right anarchy failed, in that anarchy when it did manifest on the left became centralized power in the socialist system – it had a lot to do with the economic failure of that society. And when you try to create society built on this model, that doesn’t work either because the actual ideas behind them are totally unsound as well, and you get the sort of canards we see now in financial markets, but it’s an essential part of why economists are so anti-government: they have a vision of society that doesn’t need government.

Christine Shearer: Yet the Great Depression of the 1930s arguably created an opening for new theories of the economy to be considered, such as John Maynard Keynes’s argument that government spending could bolster employment and thus demand, helping jolt economies out of a slump. Such economic theories were applied to the macro level to create models for numerical simulations of the economy, and were often linear and assumed equilibrium. The Investment-Saving/Liquidity preference model (IS-LM), for example, was informed by the work of Keynes, but took out his consideration of uncertainty and complexity (yet is still called neo-Keynesianism). But it did consider that government may have a role to play in stabilizing economies?

Steve Keen: Yeah, the whole way that Keynes was undermined by neoclassical themselves is remarkable, it’s one of the reasons that I am so aggressive about the case I make today because I am not going to let that happen to my arguments and the arguments that New Keynesianism and Complexity Theory also make. What was called Keynes’s theory, which was the IS-LM model, which was developed by John Hicks, and Hicks later in life, in fact 1979, 1980, or 1981, I think, wrote a paper for the “Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics,” said when looking back at the history of how he derived the model, he first developed that model in 1934 and, this is pretty much a quote: “Before I had written even the first of my papers on Keynes, and it was a general equilibrium model, it was a neoclassical model of economics.” But because he wrote it up in what was called a review of Keynes, economists accepted it as Keynesian, and there were ways in which you could see several of Keynes’s ideas in the general theory, I don’t think Hicks was entirely wrong to argue that, but it left out fundamental issues like uncertainty, money, expectations, ideas about the future affecting what you do today – all that from Keynes disappeared, it was a totally simplified vision.

Now if you take all that into account, which is what I have been doing and people in the post-Keynesian tradition have been trying to do, you get models that are inherently unstable and in some cases government spending can counteract that in the same way that a room that is subject to extremes of heat and cold from the climate, an air conditioning system can change the temperature inside by moving in an opposite direction from what is happening with the weather, like a stabilizer. So it is possible for the government to have that role.

Christine Shearer: But eventually the “monetarist” dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model took out the role of government policy altogether, beyond managing the money supply, on the premise that anything the government does will be counteracted and neutralized by the behavior of the economy — essentially creating a model of macroeconomics informed primarily by the microeconomic “laws” that you critique?

Steve Keen: Yes, and this is one thing I’ve done in the second version of “Debunking Economics” going through the history of using economic theory of what was the driving force of macroeconomics over time. It had nothing to do with making the models more accurate and everything to do with trying to create a model derived from microeconomic foundations. So they derived a model of one consumer using one product, who knows the future, and is rational about allocation of time and effort between labor and collusion and so on, has technology that functions perfectly, etc. etc., and as Robert Stoller, a staunch neoclassical economist said, how can anyone expect a sensible, short- to medium- term macroeconomic model to come out of that set-up? That’s what they’ve done. And of course it completely ignores the existence of money and the existence of banks. I mean, the financial crisis was considered an exogenous shock. But it’s only an exogenous shock because their idiotic models completely ignore the financial sector. That’s a sign of the total disarray neoclassical economics was in when the 2008 crisis hit because their models argued that there could be no crisis and then they had the gaul to say that, ‘Well, our models worked during the good times.’ It’s just bizarre.

Christine Shearer: So this is the model behind neo-liberalism, grounded in faith of neo-classical economics?

Steve Keen: Yeah. Neoliberalism is a political ideology that has been adopted in the last forty years because it seemed to be working with the growth of the financial sector and the power of recovery from the 1970s, 1980s, the 1990s crisis and so on, and it became dominant on both sides of the fence. I really try to distinguish my arguments from the political realm because I really don’t care if you are on the left or the right – if your economics are bad, you are still going to be wrong. And this is what has actually happened: we have adopted an economics that appeared to be correct because it was practiced at a time when there was an enormous debt bubble driving economic performance. And the debt bubble gave a huge growth to the financial sector and for a short term stabilized unemployment and inflation, with a little bit of help from China on the inflation front obviously, while at the same time driving debt to unsustainable levels. So we have both left and right throughout the world espousing neoliberalism and the elephant in the room behind it that drove the whole thing – the level of debt – has finally exploded the room, and we have really a barren political philosophy on both the left and right which is why, you know, there is such disarray in Europe right now. So, if you’re going to have left or right politics, you need to have a realistic model of economics, and because both often sustain unrealistic models, that is why we’re in a financial crisis right now and why politicians are paralyzed right now and why rather than neoliberalism – and I’m emphasizing the liberal part – we’re more likely to see a rise in neo-fascism, and neither left nor right nor the middle can afford to have that happen, but have set up the conditions by swallowing this theory.

Christine Shearer: Neoclassical economics assumes that, first, bank deposits are made, and then individual banks and financial institutions issue loans based on those deposits – the “Money Multiplier” model. But you and other economists argue that, in reality, loans are often issued first. Is that one of the main factors leading to debt bubbles?

Steve Keen: Yeah. And if people want to draw a mental picture in their head, I just worked this out for a conference presentation I’ll be giving in April, discussing why, for example, [Paul] Krugman‘s model of bank lending is so transparently wrong, because of how he thinks banks operate. So neoclassical economics, it’s not just that they leave money out, it’s that they leave banks out completely. So if you don’t have banks and you want to borrow, you’d have to knock on your neighbor’s door and say, ‘Can I have some money please? And I’ll include the rate of interest as well.’ Well, if your neighbor did that his stock of money would fall and your stock of money would rise and there would be no macroeconomic impact. The reality is you walk straight past your neighbor’s house and go to the bank and say, ‘I have this great idea, can you lend me a million dollars?’ And the bank says, ‘Yeah, it’s a good idea, here’s a million dollars and, by the way, you owe us a million dollars’ and, by attaching that condition, that bank increases spending power without changing the spending power of existing actors in the economy. So you have a boost in demand coming out of the loan, and this is the essential reason that the crisis occurred and that neoclassical didn’t see it coming, because they are still arguing that the level of debt doesn’t matter macroeconomically. Krugman has been arguing this in recent economic posts quite vociferously, saying debt is just money we owe to ourselves and therefore it has no overall impact. That’s the “borrow from your neighbor” model, not “borrow from your bank.”

So they are ignorant about the nature of banking, and when you take it into account, you find that loans are created and the creation of loans simultaneously creates deposits, and reserves generated or supplied by the Federal Reserve are necessary for banks, otherwise they would face credit crunches on a daily basis. And the money multiplier model is a mirror of what actually happens: rather than a reserve being created for a purpose by companies taking money from the economy and giving banks excess reserves and banks lend that way, or depositors going to a bank and giving banks excess reserves and loans are created out of excess reserves, loans and deposits are being created at pretty much the same instant, and reserves are generated by the repayment of loans. So it’s a bit like the solar system – we talk about sunrise and sunset, but we know what is really going on is the earth is spinning on its axis. So it’s not that the earth is sitting still, it’s the other way around. And we talk about that vision but know better. But economists talk about the money multiplier vision and they don’t know better.

Christine Shearer: If neoclassical economics assumes that, as you put it, “debt merely involves the transfer of spending power from the saver to the borrower,” then does that make its models unable to account for financialization?

Steve Keen: Yeah, exactly, because as far as they are concerned there is nothing really significant about a growth in the financial sector. It’s just that there is specialization going on – they don’t distinguish between industrial capitalism and financial capitalism, whereas I think it is extremely important to do that, because it’s industrial capitalism that ultimately gives you productivity, growth, technological progress, and so on. Financial capitalism is like the grist in some ways – it provides the cash flow necessary so that new ideas can be put into place, the Schumpeterian approach to what money should do, in which it does play a useful role, but anything above a certain scale is funding a Ponzi scam, which is what financialization was, and neoclassical economics – some neoclassical books still specifically argue assuming no Ponzi behavior, and we have just lived through the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, so assuming that is assuming that we live on a different planet.

Christine Shearer: You say that economist Paul Krugman argues that many macroeconomic models did not forecast the 2008 crash because they did not factor in the role of private debt. Yet you argue that the problems with the models are more fundamental and grounded in their assumptions — primarily that markets left to their own devices inherently strive for equilibrium. You therefore created a model (based partly on Hyman Minsky‘s financial instability hypothesis and others) with a particular focus on the ratio of private debt-to-GDP — and did forecast a crash? In other words, your model assumes the economy has a type of life cycle, not just stasis?

Steve Keen: Yeah, this is the bizarre thing about economists, they think they are doing really cool, hot-shot stuff, with models of what Krugman still calls “comparative statics0″ that start at a point of equilibrium and make a change and see how the “equilibrating variables” change in a given situation over a time path between the two. That is so primitive, it is so nineteenth century, because in the twentieth century in particular the real sciences continue using dynamic tools to model what they are talking about. Dynamic models are the rule in every other discipline, and there are computer software that let you do this quickly in prototype in dynamic modeling software, you don’t even have to build the thing. So economics is doing nineteenth century math and thinking it is hot shot. So all I’ve done is say, ‘Let’s look at how this is done in the genuine sciences like engineering, physics, biology, and so on’ and then adapted those dynamic modeling techniques for economics. And when I do it’s a life cycle – things change over time. And this is the importance of Minsky – his verbal vision of how that happens was pretty accurate. And that is that you have a debt-driven economy where entrepreneurs have to borrow money to do their investing or their Ponzi behavior, and banks supply the money most of the time, and you have a boom-bust cycle coming out of it, and once you put yourself in, for example, a “hysterical” time, banks make loans and most of those loans succeed, and they say ‘Hey, we should lend out more money, we have been too conservative,’ and you get a cycle out of it, a series of ratcheting up over time, and then a breakdown when the bubble bursts, and it is possible to model that relatively easily using dynamic tools. You can’t even see it if you are using comparative statics.

Christine Shearer: How does economic globalization factor into your work – i.e. the increasing ability of investors to move funds across borders at ever-increasing speeds?

Steve Keen: I’m still modeling because it takes a while to build complicated, dynamic models, I’m still building an aggregated banking sector and an aggregated economy and I’m not looking at the national, but the intention is to take that model and then split it to look at national economies and banks and so on. And I’m sure that once I do that I’ll show that globalization makes things worse because you have extra volatility, like when you have one country offering a high interest rate, people in other countries will sell their currency and buy yours and take advantage of higher returns, and when they do that not only do they get a higher return they also drive up the value of your dollar because they’re bidding it up in global markets. That then causes your own manufacturing to become uncompetitive over time, your economy will go into a crash and then you’ll start to lower interest rates, those same dollars flee out of your currency to avoid capital loss that comes with the currency falling and goes back to their own society, it’s then a destructive process. Add that to what’s happening at the global level when you ignore those international fluctuations, it simply makes things worse. So we’ve gone down a completely disastrous path of letting finance become an international plaything. One of the things that Keynes argued many decades ago that was forgotten was that, after the experience of the 1920s and 1930s, he said, “And above all else, let finance be national.”

Christine Shearer: Do you think economic globalization played a role in the “debt crisis” affecting Europe today and what happened to Latin America in the 1980s?

Steve Keen: Yeah, for sure. Latin America is a classic case of the banks finding that they could not lend to European or American borrowers anymore at the scale that wanted to, so they lent to the Third World, and you have the Third World debt crisis coming out of that and it was papered over until the next debt crisis and there was a whole series of debt crises until finally you can’t just keep on juggling it and it comes down and crushes the economies.

In terms of the European situation, for example, that’s another classic one where – not just globalization – but the attempt to expand the national economy to continental-scale itself set off crisis because, before the Euro, you had separate countries which could all use separate monetary policy, fiscal policy, and exchange-rate policy if they needed to, and those three variables could adjust if there were imbalances between one nation and another. Then when they formed the Euro, first they ruled out exchange-rate policy because it is one currency across the whole continent, and then they ruled out fiscal policy because they were told they could not have a deficit over three percent of GDP, and finally it ruled out monetary policy because rules were set by the European central bank. So, essentially, it said to countries like Greece, ‘We’re going to tie your legs to the Germans and you’ve got to keep up with them and you cannot use any other means to modify your performance. See how you go.’ And of course they failed. And of course we have the crashes coming out of that. So Europe going down this road of globalization being a good thing without thinking through the consequences has actually made the situation far worse than it would have been without the forming of the European Union.

Christine Shearer: Why are banks foreclosing on homes in the US rather than helping homeowners renegotiate terms to meet payments – is there a financial gain for them to foreclose?

Steve Keen: That’s a really good question. I think the best answer is that banks have systems set up that treat a fall as an episodic thing, not a systemic thing. So on an episode-by-episode basis, it is not in the interest of banks to reduce returns because if they do it for the few borrowers that got into trouble, the many borrowers that didn’t would say, ‘What about us?’  and there would be a clamor and they wouldn’t be able to do it. So the easiest thing for them to do is, when somebody can’t pay their debts, foreclose and swallow the losses, and keep the vast majority of your loans that are still solvent. What happens when it suddenly becomes a systemic crisis and 25 to 40 percent of your borrowers are effectively insolvent? Well, you’re still continuing  a practice that worked when it was an episodic crisis that is now a systemic one, and they would actually be better off if they would change their behavior to what you are talking about and renegotiate terms because at least they’d still be getting a cash flow. So in fact banks, by using a non-crisis model of what you do when somebody becomes insolvent, are actually making the crises worse, not just for the overall society, but even for themselves.

Christine Shearer: The 99% movement has highlighted the role of the increasing gap between the very wealthy and everyone else. While the movement has largely portrayed this as an issue of equality and fairness, I am wondering if you see the disparity more in terms of your models: as symptomatic of continuing economic decline, particular the level of private debt?

Steve Keen: Yeah, it’s something that’s driven by the rise in the level of financial wealth and therefore debt reduction backs it up. Because capitalism is always going to have inequality, and there is no social system that has not had inequality, and even one that claimed to bring equality like the Fidel Castro distribution of income where you might not have much money but you live in a palace, and everybody else does not have much money and they do not live in a palace – it is still inequality and is an essential aspect of the society and you cannot quite get away from it.

But you get an exaggerated level of inequality in a capitalist system when you allow financial bubbles to occur because the Ponzi speculators make a fortune out of it when it is going up and when it starts going down they run away with the money they made already and it’s really the growth of financial debt that matters.

One thing I found when I did my PhD in the early 1990s was I built a model based on Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis that just had three elements to it: workers’ share of income, employment rate, and the ratio of debt-to-GDP. Now, when I worked out the equilibrium of the model, and I worked out how the equilibrium would change with various shifts — and it was not an equilibrium model but a dynamic one, of course — but in equilibrium there were three economic variables: employment rate, the debt-to-GDP ratio, and not the workers’ share, it was the capitalists’s share of income that affected equilibrium. Workers’ share of income depended on the level of debt, so that if the level of debt rose, the workers’ share of income fell, and this is ironic because in the model itself I simply had capitalists doing the borrowing, workers didn’t do any borrowing at all, but it turned out that the essential group that paid for the borrowing by a change in income distribution was the working class, not the capitalists, not until the crisis hits and then they both lost money and the banking sector will go as the whole economy collapses.

So one thing when I look at the data is how this simple model captured what has happened in the past twenty years. As the level of debt has risen, workers’ income have fallen, capitalists’ haven’t, until the final crisis hit. So in that sense what we see is the playing through of a complex, financial system, where even though generally speaking it was the capitalists who took out the debt under the subprime bubble, the burden of that debt repayment ended up falling on what workers got in wages compared to output of the overall economy. So the fundamental problem comes down again to letting the financial sector get out of control. You can’t get rid of inequality in capitalism, you can certainly reduce it, and the best way to do that is stop the financial sector from taking over the economy in a Ponzi scheme.

Christine Shearer: You pose a seemingly radical solution in your book: jubilee, or the cancellation of private debts. But you make this argument as an economist: that it is the only way to free economies for productive growth, because the private debt-to-GDP ratio has just grown too large to be serviceable – is that correct?

Steve Keen: Yeah. [Economist] Michael Hudson put it beautifully in the simple phrase that “Debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be repaid.” If you try to repay them all you do is increase, of course, the amount of debt you have to pay further down the track. We’re talking about private debt here because with private debt you have to borrow money from somebody else, the government in the US can in effect borrow money from itself, so it does not face quite the same limitations but the public sector does, and you keep rescheduling private debt and try to find ways to preserve levels of debt that should have never been offered in the first place, you accumulate more of the problem down the track.

So the best thing you can do is reduce the level of debt. but the trouble is not only did banks produce too much debt and give too many loans to borrowers, they also then sold that debt through securitization to the public, so in the past when you said, ‘Let’s eliminate the debts,’ only the banking sector would suffer. If you did that now, not just the banking sector but a large sector of the public would suffer as well. So what I’ve proposed is what I call a modern debt jubilee, where you have quantitative easing and rather than give money to the banks, you give money to the public, but it goes into their bank accounts, and the very first use of that money has to be paying the debt down. Now that would mean, for a start, is that anyone who was in debt would have their debt level reduced, and banks would be unaffected in terms of their solvency because their money-making assets like loans would fall, but their cash assets would rise, and anybody in the public who had no debt would suddenly have an injection of cash. Now their income strength would fall, because it would be reduced in the value of the loans, but they’d have less income coming out of the debt in the future, and they’d have a cash reserve they could send out in the meantime.

So the idea is to have a jubilee that focuses on a reduction in income simply on the group who should have a reduction in income, and that is the finance sector, while trying to minimize the damage being down to the rest of the economy, and try to minimize the damage done by massive deleveraging so that, if we don’t do anything systemic about it, it might give us twenty years of a downturn before we finally start to stabilize.

Christine Shearer is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a researcher for CoalSwarm, part of SourceWatch. She is Managing Editor of Conducive, and author of Kivalina: A Climate Change Story (Haymarket Books, 2011).

Yusef Bunchy Shakur (photo Karen Gagne)

I am here with Yusef Bunchy Shakur, author of “Window 2 My Soul: My Transformation from a Zone 8 Thug to a Father and Freedom Fighter”, to talk about  the book “Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther,” by Marshall “Eddie” Conway, former minister of defense of the Black Panther Party, who remains a political prisoner after 41 years, and Dominique Stevenson, director of the Maryland Peace With Justice Program of the Middle Atlantic Region of the American Friends Service Committee. We both read the book this summer and I knew he would have a lot to say about it.

By Karen M. Gagne

KMG: Yusef, thank you for agreeing to talk to me about Marshall Conway’s book. I was excited that you were reading it at the same time that Left Eye on Books asked if I would review it. I had only recently read your own book “Window 2 My Soul.”   I thought it only proper to ask you to comment on what you thought of the book. As a book seller, collector and voracious reader, what caught your eye first about “Marshall Law”?

YBS: What caught my attention on reading “Marshall Law“ was the opportunity to read the accounts of a political prisoner and I had strong interest in hearing how he was able to maintain his political activism within the belly of the beast. I know the story of guys becoming political that entered as criminals, but never read from the perspective of one entering prison and remaining political while dealing with the prison politics of the guards and prisoners who are not politically consciousness.

KMG: How representative would you say are Conway’s descriptions of the framing of political activists from the Black Panther Party (BPP) by the FBI’s COINTELPRO?

YBS: His description is the most accurate I have read, directly from a political prisoner telling his/her own story and also in describing the motives of why he was target for not only his political consciousness but for exposing a police agent who became a high ranking member of the BPP.

KMG: I was struck by the chapter titles. Particularly telling are “Door of No Return” and “Slave Ship” to “The Bowels of Hell.” Others, such as Elaine Brown,  have made this link from the ships to the modern prison, including you in your book, “Window 2 My Soul.” In the prologue of Conway’s book, he makes that link explicit, “Imprisonment is slavery and the enslavers have long been opting to pack the ships as tightly as possible. Block after block of this nation’s prisons are flowing with black and brown bodies. And after thirty years of capturing the strongest of the stock, the system now satisfies itself with our children.” Not only are the stories very similar in the process of enslavement, but they are also similar in the path to freedom once “in the belly of the ship.” On the next page he reminds us of the Underground Railroad and that prisons have required the building of a similar system “comprised of relationships and routes that help the prisoner escape the inhumanity of incarceration.” How do you understand this journey?

YBS: I think it was important to make those connections with the titles to able to penetrate the minds of the readers—to able to absorb his message of educating people to the daunting truth that slavery still exists, but educating people in a real way to overstand how it is true and the titles spoke to that.

KMG: I especially love the title “After George” in the middle of his story. How important was George Jackson, as well as his death on August 21, 1971, on Conway himself and his comrades?

YBS: George Jackson is phenomenal and set the bar of what it meant to be a revolutionary in every sense of the word. I can only imagine what the impact his death had on Eddie and other people of the era because George was huge in a very human way. He challenged you to be a better revolutionary and a more committed revolutionary.

KMG: It is in this same chapter we begin to get a real look at the inside of the prison, after his death, it “signaled the beginning of the end for the movement.” He noted that drugs would soon “sate the appetite of the rebellious prisoner” helping them to escape the reality of extremely hard times. Still, he adds that for a few extra coins they “like modern day Judases” were helping the government in its genocidal plan. This was of course, parallel to what was happening in the communities. How was the introduction of heroin in Baltimore (like that of cocaine and crack in Detroit and other cities) testament to that continued bondage? Conway suggests that Baltimore in 2011 is “more south” than Mississippi in 1962 and that the connection between drugs and the violence between blacks and whites are not a coincidence. How would you respond?

YBS: Heroin impacted Detroit in the 60s and 70s like every other major urban city crippling it to its knees, and opened the doors of crack cocaine to come in and rip the heart of Detroit and put her on her death bed, which we are still attempting to recover here in 2011. The majority of urban cities are a reflection of what the south was and still is: segregated cities bathing in self-hatred that is perpetuating the violence that we are witnessing across the nation while these cities are being manipulated and control by white people with the end goal being genocide of Black people.

KMG: I heard that in fact heroin, too, seems to be making a “comeback” (if it ever left). This has been in recent news regarding Madison, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois, for example.

YBS: The drug trade has become a part of the urban fabric in amerikkka. It is business in the Black ghettos of amerikkka that offers jobs for people who don’t need to know skills besides selling. As long as the imagination of people in this country is as a slave to the materialistic culture in this society you will have people who will explore drugs as a means to make fast money. The reality is the drug culture is a bastard version of capitalism in its rawest form.

KMG: Very well put! Thank you. I wanted to touch on a topic I thought Conway wrote eloquently about, which is family life and what he is able to see in retrospect about his relationship to his family as he entered the political movement and then again after he is incarcerated. He talks about his new role in the political movement, which he always saw as working toward making life better for him and his family simultaneously resulted in their separation and a distance between them. This happens when Conway first leaves for Europe. He notes that he “lacked the necessary balance to create a strong family unit” and that he lacked understanding of what it meant to be a father and husband. Later in the book, he notes a similar distance as a result of the pain of his family having to see him through glass and concrete. Do you think that Conway’s ability to reflect on the importance of balancing one’s involvement in the movement with family life comes from simply “growing up” or are there things that happen while serving a long prison sentence that make one have to see things in a new way? I also wonder what wisdom he wants to share with the new generation of Black Panthers, to suggest that this balance is necessary for long term struggle. How do you see this in your own experience not only in surviving a lengthy prison sentence but also in becoming more and more active in the movement?

YBS: The social break down of Black families has played a crucial role in the destruction of Black neighborhoods, and the fabric breakdown of Black neighborhoods has contributed to the destruction of Black families. We have to find the balance as activists to not only fight for a better world but fight for better families through productive fathers and mothers as well as being on the frontlines of the struggle. Finding that balance is essential for leading us to victory and for maintaining a strong morale.

KMG: There is a passage in the chapter entitled “Home is Where the Hatred Is” when Conway talks about coming home from the Army and trying to find a job. He went to the employment office and was immediately sent over to the pipefitters and general labor area. He challenged them and said that he wanted a firefighter position. The scene is straight out of the pages of the novel “The Spook Who Sat By The Door” by Sam Greenlee. Despite attempts to integrate the fire and police departments, he was given the run around and told that he needed to be “qualified.” Even after he passed all the tests they still resisted him at every step. When he finally was let in, he was among six African Americans out of 101 firefighters and would get “most of the isolated duty at the outpost or fire patrols of the shipyard.” This is when he becomes angry and politicized–he was working here when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

YBS: Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s required a young teens to be politicized even when they didn’t think so. The movement and struggle were completely part of everything happening, and this challenged you as a human being either to get involved or sit on the sideline. With history being his guide, this led him into the movement. We have to recreate and redevelop a culture of revolutionary struggle today that will help shape the next generation of activists to lead the revolution.

KMG: Even though there are a couple of decades difference between you and Conway, how do you connect with his experience—both before you entered the prison system and during your incarceration…And now that you have been back in the community for eleven years?

YBS: I connect with bro Conway on many different levels. Historical, personal and political. History-wise he and other political prisoners/prisoners of war (PP/POW) are living testimony of the struggle of justice, equality and freedom in this country. Reading his story for me was like reading my father’s story. My father, Ahjamu Baruti, is a political prisoner here in the State of Michigan. He taught me about what endurance it takes to be a PP/POW under constant repression everyday while being surround by ignorance. Also, reading Conway’s book added fuel to my fire to continue to fight the here in the 21st century and reinforced that I made the right decision by joining the fight even though we are in a low tide. But Conway’s story inspired me that we have to continue to fight no matter what. That is our obligation to humanity.

KMG: I thought about your father when I was reading the book, and how he also is one the elders and “griots” now on the inside. Can you talk more about this connection you see between Conway and your father? How do you see them in this light? How are they influencing the youth, both inside and outside?

YBS: It is because of men like Eddie Conway and Ahjamu Baruti in prison that a Yusef Bunchy Shakur could exist [see Baruti’s book “Scribes of Redemption: Letters from and Incarcerated Father to His Incarcerated Son”]—because without them I still would be an undeveloped human being labeled a criminal. These kinds of men provided me with the models, and the care and love to rehabilitate, redeem and transform myself in prison. These type of men are holding down the mandate of reeducating and rebuilding as many of the broken and lost young men entering prison as they can.

KMG: You recently attended the 45th anniversary of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. What did the contemporaries of Conway—the original members who are still alive—share with you about their activity in the movement and about what wisdom they’ve gained now 45 years later? How are they still connected to those like Conway, who remain incarcerated?

YBS: For me it was more about what I saw as well as what was conveyed to me. To see the comradeship amongst them that was built out of blood and strength is something to respect and admire. Many of them know the struggle continues and that the job is not finished with so many of their comrades trapped behind the enemy’s line and communities across this country still oppressed. They all were still committed, dedicated and educating.

KMG: Conway writes much about the issue of FBI informants within Panther meetings and activities. They would also be sent inside the prison, and even to bunk with him in his same cell. This part of the “Door of No Return” chapter is very interesting. Further, we know that the trials were rigged when it came time for the members to go to court. Can you talk about this history in the context of the 1970s, but also as it continues through the decades? How does this work once someone is already convicted to ensure his long stay behind bars?

YBS: The oppressive climate in which he was tried and convicted is the same in all the cases of PP/POW here in amerikkka, and prisons are nothing but an extension of that oppression. The terrain may change but the oppressive system remains the same and prison offers an opportunity to bury revolutionaries alive by cutting them off from the people.

KMG: But, this is where the paradox is in the system. In its attempt to bury revolutionaries they also cultivate the environment for them to collect their thoughts, build coalitions within and between POWs inside and out, as wells as individuals who would normally never associate with each other on the inside. Maybe this is what is making for a new day?

YBS: Those of us who are politically aware overstand rather that we are in prison on the streets—the oppression continues by our oppressors, so the struggle to continue to fight lives within every revolutionary. They can never be buried under those circumstances. The spirit of the people is too strong. The ideas they are committed are too strong. You can kill a man but you can’t kill the ideas that created him. That is what is fueling a new day—a day that is connected to the past.

KMG: Speaking of a new day, Yusef—I know that you have been working hard on a new book as well. Was reading “Marshal Law” in any way inspirational or motivating in moving on that? Can you say a little about it? Will Left Eye on Books be looking forward to reviewing this book as well?

YBS: Yes reading “Marshal Law” was a huge inspiration because I was anxious to read his story and see how he maintained his political activity while in prison. I wanted to convey the challenge of becoming political aware in prison and making the transition to the outside–of how I was able to emerge despite the many social challenges I faced coming home and engaging in revolutionary activity. There have been thousands of men who have come home from prison prior to me with the same mission and 95% of them have failed for whatever reason. My new book “My Soul Looks Back: Life After Incarceration” (forthcoming in February 2012) is a compelling journey of my 11 years of facing social rejection as I emerged as a father, college graduate, author, business owner, national speaker, author and respected community activist. It would be an honor.

KMG: Thank you, Yusef, for talking with me about “Marshall Law”. I hope people will pick up a copy. And yes, we will look forward to reading your new book and talking with you again very soon!

 …..

Karen M. Gagne is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. She teaches about the Prison Industrial Complex in her Contemporary Social Problems course. Her publications: “’I Arrived Late to This Book’: Teaching Sociology with Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust”, the ‘Novel.’” Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge,” Spring 2008; “On the Obsolescence of the Disciplines: Frantz Fanon and Sylvia Wynter Propose a New Mode of Being Human.” “Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge,” vol. V, Summer/Fall 2007; “Fighting Amnesia as a Guerilla Activity: Poetics for a New Mode of Being Human.” Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, vol. IV, Summer/Fall 2006; “Falling in Love With Indians: The Metaphysics of Becoming America.” CR: The New Centennial Review, 3:3 Fall 2003; and “On Coloniality & “Condemnation”: A Roundtable,” Discussant. “Proud Flesh: New Afrikan Journal of Politics, Culture and Consciousness,” vol. 1, no. 2. 2003.

In prison before he was 20, Yusef Bunchy Shakur would meet the father he never knew behind bars. The father that had been foreign to Yusef was now determined to reshape his lost son – not into a hardened criminal – but into a responsible man and leader.

Since being release from prison 10 years ago, he has overcome many challenges to emerge as a college graduate, author, business owner, inspirational speaker, community organizer/activist and father are some of the significant roles taken on by the dynamic and inspiring Shakur. He has been instrumental in making a significant change in the community since his release through embarking on his mission of restoring the neighbor back to the hood by helping to transform the lives of misguided young people in inner city Detroit by using his life as a testimony of transformation.

Shakur’s notable accomplishments and recognitions include: being elected as chair of H.O.P.E. (Helping Our Prisoners Elevate), receiving the 2008 Rev. Dr. Wendell Anthony Social Activist Award, Silent Hero Award 2009, Leaders, Legends & Luminaries Award 2010 and receiving the Local Hero Award from Bank of America 2010.

Shakur tells his story of redemption in the critically acclaim self-published “The Window 2 My Soul: My Transformation from a Zone 8 Thug to a Father & Freedom Fighter”, released in 2008 that has been used at the University of Michigan, Michigan State, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Wayne State, Wayne Community College and Merritt College in Oakland, California. Also, in 2010 he released “The Window 2 My Soul Curriculum Guide Designed for Middle School, High School & Mentorship Programs.”

Author and activist scott crow

“Solidarity not Charity” is a way of feeding people while addressing the underlying problems that cause hunger. The way this manifested itself in Common Ground was to immediately deliver and render aid where the state had failed, and then to leave structures in place so communities can continue to rebuild themselves as they see fit.”

Interview by Stevie Peace & Kevin Van Meter

 In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina both federal and local authorities failed the population of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region. As a result, relief efforts from various sectors of American society flowed south. One of the first and most spectacular and aggressive efforts was Common Ground Relief — formed by strands of the anti-globalization and anarchist movements. scott crow documents these struggles in “Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective”, recently released by PM Press. In this interview, Crow describes the process of becoming an author after being an organizer, reviews the history and myths of Common Ground and explores possible lessons for future progressive and radical organizing. Visit crow’s website at http://scottcrow.org/.

Can you speak to the writing process behind “Black Flags and Windmills” and your shift from an organizer to an author?

One word: difficult. I don’t consider myself a writer; and while I have written a few pieces over the years, it has mostly been out of necessity. From my arrival in New Orleans I took copious notes. Every time I would get moments to get away, I would take notes about organizing and creating an organization to deal with the disaster following Hurricane Katrina. Additionally, I wrote communiqués from just days after the storm and continued for three years. I went back to all of those writings and began turning them into chapters. On a personal level it was healing to write: I came back with post-traumatic stress, couldn’t function in society and felt like the ghost in the machine a lot. The writing actually helped me to relive those traumas in a different way, to really dissect them. It was almost a five-year process; I feel so much better now than I did when I started the book. This is not to say that “Black Flags and Windmills” is a sorrow-filled book. There are lots of beautiful stories along the way and lots of really engaging organizing that was going on. The book describes the anarchist heyday of Common Ground, when the most self-identified anarchists came; this was early September 2005 until 2008. Afterward, the organization became much more structured in a traditional nonprofit way. This is not to denigrate it — just to say that the book focuses on this initial period of “black flags” at Common Ground.

Since memory is a tricky thing, I did outside research and revisited with people. I went back to news articles from grassroots media, reports and blogs to look at specific events and the way things unfolded. Then, I would ask key organizers and New Orleans residents, “Do you remember when this thing happened?” Sometimes it was completely different from how I remembered it. I don’t claim to speak for Common Ground, as I think that would do a disservice to the thousands of people who participated and the hundreds of key organizers that were there.

When I tell a story I want people to understand it and create common bonds. I wrote this book for people who might not have any understanding about radical or anarchist concepts. I always ask myself, “What would my mom think about this?” While I wrote it for people like her, my target audience was those who were coming into movements and might be inspired by what Common Ground was building. I used the stories in the book to give a primer on the theoretical background of anarchism in practice. Another part of the book is telling my own personal narrative. It’s not because I think my story is important, but I wanted to show that I am a regular person that was just caught up in extraordinary circumstances.

Can you describe the work of the Common Ground Collective — as well as its guidelines of “solidarity not charity” — as it sought to stabilize and improve the lives of traumatized New Orleans residents?

Common Ground grew out of short-term relief efforts with a long-term vision. What we wanted to do was rebuild infrastructure that had collapsed before the storm — even decades before the storm — and also to build infrastructure that had never existed in certain communities. The idea was that we would then turn it all over to community members and they would develop it further than we ever could. We never went in with the idea that we were going to save all of these people; we wanted to build capacity for the community, to empower them to do things for themselves and to expand the things that they are already trying to do. There are tons of organizations that feed people, but it doesn’t solve the problems of why people are hungry. “Solidarity not Charity” is a way of feeding people while addressing the underlying problems that cause hunger. The way this manifested itself in Common Ground was to immediately deliver and render aid where the state had failed, and then to leave structures in place so communities can continue to rebuild themselves as they see fit. This involved medical clinics, women’s shelters, free schools, access to school supplies, basic things. It was basic service work; it’s only revolutionary in the way that we thought about it.

Can you trace out the early history of the organization, the initiatives it launched beyond the Algiers neighborhood into the devastated 8^th and 9^th wards, and other projects that developed?

When the levees failed and the flooding began, most of my friends hadn’t gotten out of New Orleans. One of them was Robert King – a former political prisoner who had been released in 2001, after being exonerated and held in solitary confinement for 29 years. He had lived through hurricanes all of his life so he decided to stay. Brandon Darby, a friend of mine at the time – he came out much later as a FBI informant, which is a whole other story – said, “Hey, maybe we should go find King; we can gather supplies and go do it.” It was a crazy idea. Once we were on the ground we could see the failure of the state and watched bureaucracies and government agencies fight over who was going to have access to search-and-rescue boats and how things were going to be administrated. As they were fighting, people were dying. I couldn’t stand it. They were more interested in restoring law and order then trying to help people, and it was heartbreaking. Then Malik Rahim, another friend of mine who’s a New Orleans resident and who used to be part of the Black Panther Party, called me and said, “Hey, we have these white vigilantes driving around and are threatening to kill me and my neighbors, and I need some support.” So we loaded up guns and ammo and some basic supplies and headed to Algiers, his neighborhood on the west bank of the river. While we were there, Brandon went across the river to look for King, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency ended up finding King and brought him to Brandon. We were totally elated; I cried I was so happy. I thought King was dead as it had been almost nine days since we had heard from him. In the midst of all this, I floated the idea of forming a relief organization that would be based on the principles of the Black Panther Party, the Zapatistas and anarchism. So I went back to Austin to gather supplies and the first of the volunteers. Upon our return, two weeks after the storm had struck, we unfurled tarps and started Common Ground Relief.

In the early stages, there were very few of us and little money. We started with a few programs and kept adding more; every time we saw something that needed to be done we would just organize a program. Mayday DC, a housing rights organization, opened a first aid station at the mosque Malik attended, and then other organizations came and turned it into a full-scale medical clinic. We set up portable medical patrols in Algiers and other locations; there were Vietnamese, Cajun and First Nation communities that hadn’t seen any medical attention. There were programs to remove tree debris, clean gutters and tarp houses. We provided access to food and water and started armed patrols to fend off the militias. In a way, Common Ground functioned as an incubator and as a network that gave support to programs as they grew: the Rhubarb Bike Collective, Women’s Health Center, Legal Aid, eviction defense, replanting grass along the coastline, community gardens. Not all of these projects were successful, but many were and many succeeded for a long time. What mattered was that we went into areas where the state said we could not be. If they said we couldn’t be there but we found residents that needed support, we would defy them, and then do it over and over again.

How did the collective use existing organizations and networks to funnel volunteers and resources into its work?

These networks were instrumental in obtaining support and volunteers for Common Ground. Early on we knew that we were not going to work with the Red Cross or government agencies, especially with the state failing and police brutalizing residents. It was the networks that formed in the alter-globalization movement that brought in medical, logistics and communications people. The idea was to draw on these networks to create long-term support and infrastructure. Additionally, we were willing to work with any organization that wasn’t looking to take over or tell us what to do, because we were clear with our objectives and what we wanted to achieve. Without groups such as Veterans Against the War, Food Not Bombs and the Bay Area Radical Health Collective we would have been dead in the first week, as they provided support by letting people know what was happening and often were able to give material aid and money. Another key piece was that they were able to spread information about what was taking place in New Orleans. But it wasn’t just our voice; we were able to amplify many different voices from different communities in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region.

What limitations did the Common Ground Collective encounter, and in what ways did it seek to challenge and possibly overcome these limitations?

This organization grew in the middle of a disaster from basically nothing, using existing relationships and political organizing experience. So we didn’t have a long history as an organization and I think that plays into why getting access to funding was critically difficult at the very beginning. Additionally, volunteers would come in waves that we weren’t anticipating. During a Road Trip for Relief campaign that took place in November 2005, we went from under a hundred people to thousands. There wasn’t infrastructure to address basic needs: Where are people going to sleep? Where are they going to eat? How are we going to maintain people? These tensions were always chronic to the organization and so we devised methods along the way to reach out to the immediate neighborhoods we were working in. We would approach churches and community centers and offered to gut and clean their spaces if they let us use them to house volunteers, or as a distribution center.

Even with a horizontal structure, we had no clear delineation as to how to deal with this stuff and often projects operated completely autonomously from us. Some projects worked very hierarchically, with one person in charge; we didn’t have mechanisms for accountability or even simple reports on the successes and failures of those projects. From the beginning I wanted to create a culture focused on challenging oppression. Starting an amorphous organization from scratch and then having thousands of people arrive made this really difficult. In early December 2005 we started to have trainings with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond and over the next year we trained over 5000 people, mostly middle-class white students, giving them their first introduction to anti-racist ideas. This was incorporated into orientations where we talked about the historically marginalized communities of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. These ideas were also present in the language that we used: we didn’t say “poor black communities” or “poor Vietnamese communities,” we used terms like marginalized communities or historically neglected communities. We didn’t want to essentialize these communities so we were very conscious of the narratives we told. Eventually an antiracist working group was formed to continue efforts to address oppression. Unfortunately, Common Ground created an informal hierarchy of oppression within the organization. Race was valued first, class as a distant second, at distant, distant third was gender, and off the map were sexual orientation, disability and other forms of oppression. This was reinforced because we didn’t have effective ways to combat it.

I want people to understand that crisis was everywhere; there was a “top 10” list but everything was number one. In this situation you can’t operate sustainably, so individuals in the organization faced huge burnout, as well as mental and physical stress. The idea of self-care and collective care was a failure at Common Ground. I think it got better as things calmed down, but in the first few years people operated with “emergency hearts,” so much that it was hard to make organizers and volunteers stop working. For a number of the long-term people, either it was the best experience of their lives or it was the worst experience of their lives. I think a lot of this depends on how they came in, how they were treated, what kind of power they had, and how they were taken care of while they were in New Orleans.

Concepts such as non-violence, solidarity, accountability, self-determination, privilege, leadership and anti-authoritarianism are often debated in a vacuum; in the work of Common Ground, these concepts collided with the realities of organizing. Can you describe some of the ways these ideas raised challenges when translated into the work of the collective? 

In the book I touch on the question of language. I think it is important to have language that doesn’t box us in. I’m not just radical or an anarchist; I’m a father, a son, a neighbor, a worker, a Texan, and all of these identities are valid. Additionally, it’s important to talk about power. I use power with a capital “P” to describe illegitimate power or power over someone; and, taking again from the Zapatistas, there is power from below.

Let’s look at this another way. Imagine that in the first few years, 10,000 self-identified anarchists and anti-authoritarians came through Common Ground. Every person brought with them assumptions, not just about privilege and power, but also about what anarchism, solidarity, accountability, self-determination and leadership means. What I found is that there wasn’t a lot of understanding about these concepts in practice. What does it mean to be a horizontal organization? What does it mean to be a collective? These questions always created conflict between the organization and people that came. Some anarchists would show up and would expect to have full input and decision-making power over the organization. I found it really interesting that people didn’t ask, “What do these things mean to you as an organization?”

Post-Katrina New Orleans has been described as a “disaster within a disaster.” How do we address current and less spectacular disasters with an eye to preparing for future large-scale relief efforts and organizing?  

I think that preparing for the future is the answer; we don’t need to look for the next disaster or the next crisis to organize. We cannot afford to be short-sighted when it comes to practical applications of long-term vision. We need to develop dual power: you have to resist on one hand, and you have to build and create on the other hand. What I would like to do is get people to really think about 20-year, 30-year and 50-year futures. If we protest day in and day out, we squander our energy and limited resources to build long-term capacity and power. I am proposing that we build our own power all the time, and that we save resistance for when it’s really, really important and has dramatic, incredible and far-reaching effects. We should look at movements as having multiple points of intersection; it takes all kinds of things to make changes happen, and people come into movements for all different reasons. We need to make our mirror reflection bigger than ourselves, and we have to meet people where they are. This is a longer conversation that we are not going to wrap up in this one question, but I think these are key pieces. As I often put it, “Dream a future. Know our history. Organize ourselves. Fight to win.”

Stevie Peace and Kevin Van Meter co-edited, with Team Colors Collective, “Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States” (AK Press, 2010) and co-authored the short book “Wind(s) From Below: Radical Community Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible” (Team Colors & Eberhardt Press, 2010). Both have been involved in various organizing efforts together for over a decade. Peace worked in various organizing and administrative roles at the Common Ground Health Clinic in New Orleans following the hurricane for 15 months; Van Meter spent a few weeks volunteering at the clinic in the winter of 2005.

scott crow is a community organizer, writer, strategist and speaker who advocates the philosophy and practices of anarchism for social, environmental and economic aims. For almost two decades he has continued to use his experience and ideas in co-founding and co-organizing numerous radical grassroots projects in Texas, including Treasure City Thrift, Radical Encuentro Camp, UPROAR (United People Resisting Oppression and Racism), Dirty South Earth First! and the Common Ground Collective, the largest anarchist influenced organization in modern U.S. history. He has appeared in various media outlets including “The New York Times,” CNN, “Democracy Now!,” “Texas Observer,” “Infoshop,” “Anarchist News,” “Z Magazine,” “Austin Chronicle,” “Austin American-Statesman,” Pacifica Radio and AlterNet as well as the documentaries “Welcome To New Orleans, Better this World” and “Informant.”  Public Radio’s “This American Life” called him “a living legend among anarchists” and “The New York Times” characterized him as “anarchist and veteran organizer … that comes across as more amiable than combative …” His writings have appeared in the anthology “What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation” (South End Press 2006) as well as various radical print magazines and online sites over the last decade.

Crystal Meth (photo: Radspunk, Creative Commons)

“I felt we needed a language that explained the effects of the War on Drugs and placed them within the broader political culture of the United States, while also enabling comparison between countries, regions or even local contexts.”

By Nicki Lisa Cole

 William Garriott is an assistant professor in Justice Studies and Anthropology at James Madison University and holds a PhD in anthropology from Princeton. A cultural anthropologist, his research has been published in “The Canadian Journal of Law and Society” and in “Anthropological Theory.” His latest book, “Policing Methamphetamine: Narcopolitics in Rural America” (NYU Press 2011), is an in-depth look at the everyday, on-the-ground effects of America’s “war on drugs” for those living in rural West Virginia — a nexus of methamphetamine trade, production, and use. I recently interviewed Garriott to learn more about the approach he took to doing the research presented in the book, the significance of his findings and the practical policy suggestions he has to offer.

NLC: Why did you choose to write a book on methamphetamine, and why now?

WG: I was interested in experiences of addiction in the rural United States — the Appalachian region in particular. At the time, and particularly in the community where I conducted my research, methamphetamine was the most pressing concern. There was also a significant amount of legislative activity taking place, such as the anti-methamphetamine legislation added to the PATRIOT Act in 2006. Thus, I was interested in seeing the interaction between the lived realities of methamphetamine and new anti-meth legislation in a community where meth was a problem, while likewise placing national concerns about methamphetamine in context.

NLC: What are the benefits of an ethnographic approach to understanding this phenomenon?

WG: Ethnography is typically associated with the study of “the local” and “the everyday,” owing, in part, to its origins in the study of small-scale societies. But it is just as effective at working across scales and showing the impact of history on contemporary events. And it is this capacity of ethnography, to link experiences taking place within “the local” to “larger processes of change,” to study “up, down and sideways simultaneously,” to borrow a few phrases from Laura Nader, that I utilized when conducting the research for Policing Methamphetamine in the community I call Baker County.

Working ethnographically across scales was an absolute necessity for my research on methamphetamine. For instance, the key chemical ingredient used in making methamphetamine, which is also the key ingredient in several common over-the-counter cold medicines, is only produced in nine factories in the world — none of which are located in the United States. Similarly, local methamphetamine markets were supplied both by clandestine cooks operating in out-of-the-way locations, and by national and transnational supply chains that brought meth produced in Mexico, California and elsewhere into the area. Thus “the local” context of my ethnography was situated within national and transnational networks of production, distribution and use.

Taking an ethnographic approach allowed me to show the interconnectedness of these processes and experiences — from the methamphetamine “superlabs” in Mexico to the policymaker in Washington, D.C. to the individual addict in West Virginia. Proceeding in this way, I was likewise able to develop a conceptual language — most notably the term, “narcopolitics” — through which to understand what was happening and relate it to other contexts. The conceptual language was developed through reflection on the ethnographic material, not the reverse.

NLC: Explain what you mean by “narcopolitics,” and describe how this concept infuses society and the everyday lives of individuals.

WG: I use the term narcopolitics to refer to a mode of political practice that works to rationalize governance in terms of the problems associated with illicit drugs, a.k.a. “narcotics.” It is an adaptation of Michel Foucault’s concept of “biopolitics” — an attempt to theorize the same dynamics of governance he examines from the perspective of “life,” but from the perspective of narcotics.

I introduced this term because I felt I did not have the conceptual language I needed to describe what I was witnessing in Baker County. This was rooted in a more fundamental problem: we (both scholars and citizens) lack a robust conceptual language to think and speak critically about the political and cultural effects of America’s ongoing encounter with illicit drugs. The term “War on Drugs” is often used, but the meaning of this term is already over-determined by its origins in and association with official political discourse. I felt we needed a language that explained the effects of the War on Drugs and placed them within the broader political culture of the United States, while also enabling comparison between countries, regions or even local contexts. Introducing the term narcopolitics was an attempt to do that.

Narcopolitics is everywhere, though it manifests itself differently in different locations. It shapes the administration of public schools, family dynamics and the work of the state (both distributive and retributive), just to name a few. In poorer neighborhoods narcopolitics may take the form of over-policing and hyper-surveillance; in wealthier neighborhoods it may manifest itself as the drug test that is used in the negotiation of tensions between parents and children; in public schools it means that drug searches by police are now taken-for-granted components of the educational experience, just as anti-drug programs such as D.A.R.E. have been fully incorporated into the curriculum; prenatal care today routinely involves drug testing; and the receipt of work-related benefits, such as workers compensation after injury, are usually contingent on the ability of the worker to demonstrate that he or she is drug free, and that their injury was not the result of drug use. Failure to prove this typically results in loss of those benefits and termination from the job. The criminal justice system is probably where the impact of narcopolitics has been the most pronounced. Indeed, it is hard to even imagine criminal justice in the United States today apart from the focus on illegal drugs. So across these institutions, which are some of the primary sites where the work of governance takes place, drugs have come to play an important, though often under appreciated, role.

NLC: Meth figures prominently in recent popular culture. Last year’s film Winter’s Bone was a favorite of critics; a plot-line involving a meth lab was featured on the new Law & Order: Los Angeles; and the term “meth face” has arisen based on images of people arrested for using meth. Did the image of methamphetamine use, and of the meth addict in popular culture, influence your interest in this topic? If so, how? Do you think the popular portrayal is accurate? And, how might this relate to narcopolitics?

WG: Methamphetamine was just starting to work its way into popular culture while I was conducting my research (2006-07). The most prominent force at the time were the anti-meth campaigns undertaken by groups like the Montana Meth Project. I was struck by these campaigns because they focused so much on the physical effects of meth — the toll it takes on the body. The Multnomah County (Oregon) Sheriff’s Office “Faces of Meth” program, the Montana Meth Project’s P.S.A.s and others have taken great strides to disseminate gruesome images of meth-ravaged bodies as their way to deter potential users. And with the Internet, digital copies of these images can be picked up and reproduced very easily. I saw “before and after” mug shots taken in Oregon, reproduced on posters by a company in Colorado, and used by the Sheriff’s office in my field site in West Virginia as part of their own anti-meth campaign. So obviously this depiction of meth use has resonated deeply with the public, particularly amongst those looking to curb meth use.

The question of whether or not these representations are “accurate” is tough to answer in the abstract. Most of the meth users I knew displayed or reported symptoms associated with meth use such as weight loss, tooth loss and so on. Staying up for days at a time was also common, as were hallucinations, and obsessive, repetitive activity (like counting change), and irritability. At the same time, not everyone displayed these symptoms, even those who had been using regularly for years.

One of the more interesting aspects of meth use I discovered was its relationship with labor in the area. Baker County is in the midst of the regional poultry industry. Virtually everyone is connected in one way or another to this industry, be it as a “grower” of poultry, a truck driver or a worker in one of the processing plants. And in almost every aspect of this industry, one could find meth being used. Many truckers used it to stay awake during long drives or to pick up extra shifts, while those working on the “live hang” line — where live chickens were placed on a conveyer belt-like apparatus to move through the machine that slaughtered them — used it to be more productive and make their work more enjoyable. Indeed, the tendency of meth to make people more energetic, capable of working faster for longer hours, and with a chemically driven compulsion to do repetitive tasks, made it ideally suited for use in the agribusiness economy that dominates Baker County and much of rural America.

Many of those I worked with started using meth as part of their work in the poultry industry. On the surface, the managers at the poultry processing plants were working hard to eliminate its use. Drug testing was part of the application process, for instance (another example of narcopolitics at work), as were regular, random drug screens which often resulted in firings when workers tested positive, which they seemed to do with some regularity. However, meth users I knew who worked in the local poultry plants scoffed at these efforts, and said that managers were more likely to turn a blind eye to meth use because it helped productivity. One former user and dealer I spoke with said that a supervisor at the plant caught him using meth at work, but instead of disciplining him, the supervisor simply demanded to be given some meth for himself.

NLC: How is this case similar to or different from approaches to policing other drugs? For instance, I often thought about the policing of crack cocaine in inner cities and the attention paid to Oxycontin in the last decade while reading this book, and wondered about the overlap and divergences.

WG: Perhaps the most unique feature of methamphetamine is that it may be produced locally. The chemical ingredients are all legal and widely available. “Recipes” for “cooking” meth are easily obtained via the Internet. This has shaped the production, circulation, regulation and policing of methamphetamine in very specific ways. Targeting local production, for instance, has involved mobilization of broad swaths of the population — essentially anyone involved in the production or sale of any ingredient which can be used to make methamphetamine. Pharmacists, for instance, must now maintain a state registry which records and monitors the sale of products containing ephedrine or pseudoephedrine (most often cold medications such as Sudafed). I spoke with cashiers at a variety of businesses who likewise were required to monitor the sale of certain items used to make meth. Some were even instructed to write down the license plate numbers of any customer they encountered that they suspected of making meth. So in this regard, the policing of methamphetamine has involved some unique innovations.

At the same time, there is much that is very familiar in the response to methamphetamine. As with previous illicit drug “epidemics,” the response has been largely punitive. The criminal justice system has, by and large, been given the primary responsibility of addressing the problem. Those that are arrested tend to be low-level users and dealers, mostly poor and marginal. Treatment options for users are limited, particularly if one does not have the means to pay for private, outpatient treatment (the majority of those arrested). Treatment options are even more difficult to access in rural communities. And despite all of the concern for locally manufactured meth, the bulk of methamphetamine available in the United States comes from elsewhere, particularly Mexico. So, there are the same dynamics of transnational circulation and enforcement that one sees with more familiar drugs such as cocaine and heroin — and in many cases it is the same cartels using the same transportation networks employed to bring these and other illicit commodities into the country.

NLC: You found that people in Baker County felt that meth addicts were often “the people you would never expect.” Can you unpack this a bit for us? In particular, what anxieties undergird this sentiment? And, what does this perception reveal about contemporary American culture?

WG: This phrase, “the people you’d never expect,” was one I encountered frequently among adults when I asked about the local methamphetamine problem. The idea was that, what made meth different (and scary), was that it wasn’t those individuals who seemed naturally inclined to deviance that were the most likely users of meth, but, rather, the “people you’d never expect” — the “popular kids,” the athletes, the “good kids” from the “good families.” A psychologist who worked for both the local hospital and high school told me that if I wanted to see who the meth users were, I should go to a meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at the high school — a group composed entirely of the “good kids” from the “good families.”

The irony, of course, is that it was typically not these individuals who were the primary targets of police intervention beyond the random drug searches that took place at the school. Indeed, I asked the guidance counselor at the high school about the prospects of instituting a random drug testing program at the school and he stated it was an impossibility due to the high potential that the “wrong people” would be tested. The leader of a local citizens group said explicitly that, even though the typical user was imagined to be “the people you’d never suspect,” it was still only “the rednecks who go to jail,” by which she meant the poorer members of the community. This is part of a broader pattern with a deep history in the United States where anxieties over the vulnerability of middle class youth fuel the desire for a punitive response which focuses disproportionately on the poor and marginal.

NLC: Policing, surveilling and punishment are increasingly privatized in our society. Did you find this to affect attention to meth and the treatment of meth addicts?

WG: There was very little in the way of privatized policing at work in the response to methamphetamine in Baker County. However, the forces that have driven the move to privatization elsewhere were certainly present. These were forces such as overcrowding in jails and prisons; local and state governments incapable of financing policies which privilege policing and incarceration; and the unwillingness of local, state or federal government to invest substantially in mental health and social services — particularly in rural areas — so as to take some of the pressure off of the criminal justice system.

This left very few options for methamphetamine users seeking treatment. Those with the means traveled to private clinics, some of which were 100 miles away. Others made use of the local state-run mental health facility — though it functioned in many ways as a component of, rather than an alternative to, the criminal justice system. Those whose drug use led to incarceration had very few treatment options at the regional jail. There was a treatment program in the jail, but it only served eight inmates at a time (out of a population of over 200), and only men, leaving women with no formal treatment options. Entrance into the program was competitive; and, given that the vast majority of those incarcerated had some significant history of drug use and abuse, according to administrators, competition was high.

Once admitted, the person was still subject to the terms of the their sentence or the progress of their case: if it was decided halfway through the program that the person was to be transferred to a state penitentiary, that was the end of their treatment, even if the program was proving successful. And, of course, there was the constant possibility that the state would choose to eliminate the treatment program and other mental health services as a cost-saving measure. Given all of this, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) were very important components of the local treatment landscape. The service was free, easily accessible (though only recently so) and run by addicts rather than medical professionals, state officials, or other authority figures. But even these meetings were not totally separate from the criminal justice system, as judges often required those convicted of drug crimes to attend a certain number of AA or NA meetings as a component of their probation.

NLC: Simultaneously, you point out that narcopolitics involves the folding of citizens into police work. Tell us about the community implications of this phenomenon.

WG: In the case of methamphetamine, this goes back to the fact that it can be produced locally, using relatively common household chemicals. Part of the response to methamphetamine at the state and national level has been to impose new regulations on these chemicals, primarily at point of sale. There have also been significant efforts made to raise awareness in communities about the chemicals used in methamphetamine manufacture as well as possible meth lab indicators. This has required everyone from pharmacists to cashiers to citizens involved in highway clean up programs to participate in the policing of methamphetamine, either through newly imposed work requirements or simply through encouragement to be more vigilant in scanning the social and physical landscape for signs of meth production or use.

A corollary aspect is the representation of methamphetamine as a uniquely “white” and “rural” drug. This is an inversion of the standard representation of drug problems in the United States as problems particular to urban, nonwhite populations. The residents of Baker County, which is overwhelmingly white, struggled with this because it meant they had to look internally to uncover the methamphetamine users and producers in their midst. Here again we see the importance of the physical signs of methamphetamine use, such as tooth loss, weight loss, scabbed skin and so on. When drug use and criminality can no longer be associated exclusively with nonwhite, urban populations, a new means of identifying the addicted criminal starts to emerge.

NLC: Have you heard from anyone in the community who has read the book? What reactions are you getting to it?

WG: I am in regular contact with “Christie” whose story is the focus of the final chapter of the book. She said reading her story was “like a slap in the face, but in a good way,” meaning that it reminded her of everything she had gone through and brought all of those memories — most of which are not particularly pleasant — rushing back. Christie occupies a difficult existential position. She feels that while her arrest, prosecution and incarceration were completely unjust, they were responsible for literally saving her life. Christie is thus both thankful and resentful at the same time, and reading the book forced her to encounter and work through that tension again.

Christie has gone back to school and recently earned a degree — ironically in her eyes — in criminal justice. She has enjoyed telling her colleagues that she was both the subject of and a consultant on a recently published book. Seeing the book in print inspired her to contact the judge that sentenced her. The two of them had a long conversation in his chambers, which was an incredible experience for her — one with deep symbolic weight. It sounds as though it was a good experience for the judge, too, as Christie is one of the few “success stories” to which he can point. But at the deepest level, Christie felt that I got her story and that of the community “right,” which I was very pleased to hear. Indeed, it was through working with Christie that I realized I needed to tell the story, not just of addicts, but of institutions and the community more generally to understand methamphetamine because all were being affected, albeit in different ways.

NLC: If the “War on Drugs” is a failure in its goals and for those it targets, what practical policy recommendations would you make based on your research?

WG: As an anthropologist, I see the use of mind-altering substances as endemic to the human experience. The historical and ethnographic record suggests that use of such substances, which range from tobacco and sugar to opium and heroin, has been taking place for a long time. From this perspective, there is no reason to believe that there will ever be a completely “drug free” society. This does not mean that drug control is an inherently fruitless endeavor; it does mean that aspiring to complete elimination of drugs and drug use is probably unrealistic. Policy should be shaped accordingly.

One of the things I was at pains to demonstrate in the book was how engrained the War on Drugs — or, as I prefer, narcopolitics — has become in the political culture of the United States. This is one of the reasons why reform of any kind is so difficult. As I mentioned above, criminal justice in the U.S. is virtually unimaginable apart from the focus on illicit drugs. Thus to imagine a less punitive approach to governing drugs would require a fundamental shift in those institutions that have been tasked with putting this approach into play.

Let me give you an example. The Global Commission on Drug Policy recently released a report, which formally declares that the War on Drugs has failed. They recommend a shift away from punitive, zero-tolerance policies focused on reducing supply towards approaches focused on reducing harm and demand. One of the commission’s recommendations that I see as particularly significant is that governments shift their focus away from those on the low end of illegal drug markets: farmers, petty sellers, couriers and so on. The report rightly recognizes that these individuals are often themselves victims of violence, and are involved in the drug trade because they have few alternatives to earn a living, support their families and so on.

These individuals have often been the target of drug enforcement operations, in part because they are the most vulnerable to arrest, but also because their arrest is part of a widely employed enforcement strategy in which police threaten these individuals with long prison sentences in order to get them to assist with police investigations as confidential informants. If they succeed in “flipping” this person, police then use them to pursue the next person in the distribution network. If they can arrest this next person, then they try to get them to flip, and they begin the process all over again. To turn attention away from these individuals, as the report recommends, would thus mean abandoning a common practice used by police in drug enforcement. It would require police to re-imagine the structure of the drug trade and the most appropriate means of policing it. This could be a good thing in the long run, though in the short run I imagine it would be quite difficult and be met with significant resistance.

That said, now might actually be a good time to pursue such systemic change. One of the things I was struck by during my research was the rather profound lack of enthusiasm for the contemporary approach to drug enforcement among members of the criminal justice system. There was just an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness that seemed to hang in the air whenever I spent time at the courthouse. Criminal justice workers seemed to take little satisfaction in their work and saw their efforts as, at best, a containment measure, but nothing that would ever promote any real change in the problem. This suggests, to me, that there may be some openness to alternatives at this point that may not have been there during previous decades. The sheer cost of policies that emphasize incarceration is also starting to take its toll on local governments, so I think there is openness to change on that front as well.

But all of this may be fruitless if the illicit drug trade can’t be curbed. I mentioned above that humans have a long history of using mind-altering substances. What is unique today is that these substances have become commodities. Assuming the commodity form allows them to be produced, circulated and used within a market context, on a remarkable scale. Many of the contemporary problems associated with illegal drugs stem from their circulation as much as their actual use. This is, in part, why I am not an unqualified supporter of legalization. Though the harms of the prohibition approach are well-documented, so, too, are the harms of legal markets in substances such as tobacco, alcohol, caffeine and over-the-counter and prescription medications. Indeed, there is a strong argument to be made that legal substances such as these are much more harmful to personal well being and public health than their illegal counterparts. That said, the pursuit of prohibition does carry the constant potential of exacerbating the very social harms it is intended to address.

One of the most devastating consequences of U.S. drug policy is that it sustains illegal markets, and thus the organizations — industries, really — that supply and control these markets. What is taking place currently in Mexico is one of the more acute and tragic manifestations of this predicament. There you have terrible levels of violence, towns overrun and then run by drug cartels, and a Mexican state which does not have the resources to compete. Thus one of the challenges I see is to devise forms of drug control which regulate use while reducing the impact of illicit markets. The punitive approach has not succeeded in eliminating illicit drug markets. A new approach needs to be developed that addresses the profit motive. If the profit motive could be mitigated somewhat, I think the drug trade would quickly become less attractive as an occupation, and the harms associated with it would begin to evaporate.

Nicki Lisa Cole is a writer and public intellectual who holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned a Master of Arts from UCSB in 2006, and a Bachelor of Arts from Pomona College in 2002. Nicki keeps an eye on issues of both global and local production and consumption, and their connections to social problems. She writes about what we can do to promote justice and equality, and believes fiercely in the motto of New Hampshire, her home state: Live free or die. To learn more about her interests and writing, visit www.nickilisacole.com. Contact Nicki at nickilcole@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nickilisacole.

Jeremy Leggett has undergone quite a few large career changes, from oil industry consultant to Greenpeace scientist to solar entrepreneur. A geologist by training, he worked with the oil industry until his studies brought him face-to-face with the growing evidence of global warming. Within an industry refusing to change, Leggett moved to Greenpeace and was part of the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) talks up to the Kyoto Protocol. Seeing the strong resistance to renewable energy, Leggett decided to move in that direction himself, setting up SolarCentury, the UK’s largest solar energy company, which helps support the sustainable development organization SolarAid. Leggett shared his experiences with Conducive Mag’s Christine Shearer, including his thoughts on the upcoming IPCC meeting in Copenhagen, what he sees as promising developments for renewable energy, and why he regards culture as the key to tackling climate change.

Christine Shearer: You began your career as an oil industry consultant and professor at the Royal School of Mines, helping train petroleum engineers and geologists. Could you say a bit what that was like and why you left?

Exxon is beyond the pale, still is beyond the pale as an organization with a terrible culture and a terrible attitude to the future and the mortgaging of the future.

Jeremy Leggett: Well, it was a lot of fun. I was really into it. I loved geology, I loved the process of studying history, I loved the research part. I researched the history of the oceans so I came at the climate system through the research on oceans, the bottom up, as it were. My consulting, a lot of it was with the oil industry, I worked with the oil industry in Japan, in Pakistan, in other places, with BP and Shell, so I was very much, y’know, a part of the machinery and if anyone had ever said to me I’d be doing what I’m doing today I would really have doubted that. And the reason I ultimately grew disenfranchised was the emergence of the worrying climate science in the mid-1980s coming from the atmospheric guys studying the climate from the top-down. When I put those two things together, what they were saying about the heat-trapping ability of the atmosphere with what I knew about the behavior of the oceans, that’s when I got really worried about global warming and of course still am.

Christine Shearer: As you became alarmed about global warming, did you talk to your colleagues in the petroleum industry about it and, if so, how did they react?

Solar works particularly well with wind. Wind is most effective in the winter, solar in the summer, simple pairings like that are going to amplify [renewable] technologies as the growth rates continue.

Jeremy Leggett: Sure. All of the time. And in the mid-1980s there was growing concern. I thought it would all switch sooner than it did. As you probably know it took BP and Shell until 1997 to actually admit there was a problem as organizations and then of course they started doing good stuff. But that’s ten lost years in which they were battling very hard to hold everything back. Even though there were very senior people in those companies saying to me, ‘This doesn’t look good, does it, we should be doing something about it.’

Christine Shearer: But as a corporation they just couldn’t?

Jeremy Leggett: Well, of course Exxon is beyond the pale, still is beyond the pale as an organization with a terrible culture and a terrible attitude to the future and the mortgaging of the future.

Christine Shearer: You then went to work for Greenpeace, and were at the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meetings up to the Kyoto Protocol, which you describe in your book The Carbon War. What was that like?

[T]here are going to be some hard questions asked about the way we make group decisions and the way we create cultures, cultures that become impervious to logic, and I think that’s what the Carbon Club, as we call them, have succeeded in doing.

Jeremy Leggett: Yeah, really rather weird at the time. I came out of what was then one of the most conservative universities in the world, science and technology only, into what was then one of the most radical environmental groups. It was a strange culture shift, to say the least. But there were a few scientists in other environment groups with the kind of pedigree that I had built up, Dan Lashof in NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council], Michael Oppenheimer in EDF [Environmental Defense Fund], and we sat down at the table with all the hundreds of climate scientists and of course also the lobbyists from the fossil fuel companies, who also had very good scientists on their books, and we did “gentlemanly” battle, a battle of ideas, and it started then and it’s still going on today.

Christine Shearer: The book lays out the complete indifference of some nations and fossil fuel companies to the plight of small island nations, who were literally negotiating for their future livelihood, given rapid sea level rise. Having been part of the fossil fuel industry, did you see such strong and resilient opposition coming, or were even you surprised?

Jeremy Leggett: With the benefit of hindsight I was pretty naïve. I did think the battle of rational argument would hold more sway than it did in those days and still does today. I think collectively we humans, with the privilege of looking back and analyzing the mistakes that we made, in these crucial times, there are going to be some hard questions asked about the way we make group decisions and the way we create cultures, cultures that become impervious to logic, and I think that’s what the Carbon Club, as we call them, have succeeded in doing.

Christine Shearer: Do you have much hope for the upcoming IPCC Copenhagen talks?

Young professionals are moving out of the digital revolution into the solar and clean technology revolution generally for their vocation.

Jeremy Leggett: I’m neutral. I believe in hope but is it going to work? I don’t know. We went to Kyoto and no one thought it would work but it did produce a treaty of sorts [the U.S. never ratified it]. So I think we have to keep the faith. But a lot depends on what happens bilaterally between the United States and China. And if Washington and Beijing can in any way get their ducks lined up than the rest of us will have to fall into line. And I think what’s encouraging is that the Chinese are being told by all their top scientists, ‘Houston, or Beijing, we have a problem.’ They’re not going to sit there and just say, ‘No, climate change is not an issue, we’re not going to do anything about it.’

Christine Shearer: You have also tried to draw attention to peak oil, discussed in your book Half Gone. When did you became aware of it, and have you noticed oil companies moving to deal with it?

In all the years I’ve been at this business that’s what’s struck me is we create cultures that are really resistant to change and whether they’re just naked defense of vested interest or lack of imagination or a combination of the two,… they’re cultural problems more than technology problems.

Jeremy Leggett: I was late to that, I’m ashamed to say. Being one of them, when the first whistles were blown in the late 1990s I kinda took a look at it, I saw the first real public whistleblowing paper in Scientific American by Campbell and Laherrère in 1998 and I read it and thought, ‘No, that can’t be right.’ And later I thought, ‘Well, great piece of analysis there, Dr. Leggett.’ It was the Shell reserve fiasco in 2004 that really woke me up to the issue, and after that I started researching it and coming to what I hope is a considered opinion. And of course it’s different from climate change in that there are plenty of people coming out in and around the oil industry about peak oil. It’s still probably a minority view, but there are plenty of people blowing whistles. And this is one that is going to conflate with climate in a very interesting way and my hope is it will push us to accelerate what we know we have to do anyway, which is go fast and hard on low-carbon technologies, and where climate has failed the prospect of a steep descent in global oil production might do the job, hopefully.

Christine Shearer: After Greenpeace you started SolarCentury, the UK’s leading solar energy company, which helps finance the sustainable development organization that you also started, SolarAid. That is not an easy task – how did you make it happen?

Jeremy Leggett: I got lucky, really. Most people can have entrepreneurial ideals, but I wanted to set up some kind of candle for hope, which we see Solar Century as being, and I was able to finance it in the dark days of the dot.com era just before the crash. We’ve struggled on to the present position, where over the last five years we’ve been the fastest growing private energy company of any kind in the UK, and we’re based in several European countries, so it’s a candle for hope that continues to burn quite bright.

Christine Shearer: You advocate microgeneration technology. What would that look like?

A lot of people don’t realize that for the first time last year in the [United] States or Europe there was more renewable capacity brought onstream than nuclear and fossil combined.

Jeremy Leggett: Yes, I’m in the solar business but I don’t think it’s a magic bullet, I don’t think there are any magic bullets, and we need to mine all the numerous members of the renewable and efficient energy family so microgeneration is going to look great with strategies like strategic harness. Solar works particularly well with wind. Wind is most effective in the winter, solar in the summer, simple pairings like that are going to amplify these technologies as the growth rates continue.

Christine Shearer: You were part of the UK Renewables Advisory Board, yes?

Jeremy Leggett: I was until 2006, so for four years I was advising the government, but I think they got sick of the sound of my voice and I sure got sick of the sound of theirs.

Christine Shearer: So is the UK somewhat moving in the direction of renewables, or?…

Jeremy Leggett: They bumble along. But we’re third from bottom in the lead table of European countries in the percentage of renewables in the energy mix, which is a shocking, shameful statistic. The government came into power with that statistic and it’s not changed in all their period of power, which I think they should be thoroughly ashamed of.

Christine Shearer: What do you think could really help the use of renewables grow?

I think it’s encouraging the Chinese are looking so hard at what global warming will do to their economy. There’s no point in growing an economy if it’s going to get washed away, literally and metaphorically, by the marching armies of climate impacts.

Jeremy Leggett: I think it would help a lot if the vested interests and the cultures that have been created started listening to rational argument and didn’t go into default mode of defending their environmentally ruinous status quo. That’s a constant theme. In all the years I’ve been at this business that’s what’s struck me is we create cultures that are really resistant to change and whether they’re just naked defense of vested interest or lack of imagination or a combination of the two, to believe or see that things can be done differently, they’re cultural problems more than technology problems.

Christine Shearer: Yes, what do you say to people who say renewables are great but not technologically or economically feasible?

Jeremy Leggett: I say talk to the people in Silicon Valley. See where they’re going with their feet and their wallets. This is what excites them. Young professionals are moving out of the digital revolution into the solar and clean technology revolution generally for their vocation. So what do they know that officials in the White House or here in England or the old foggies in the oil industry don’t know? They have a different view of the world, the Silicon Valley folks, and they have the right one and the dinosaurs have got the wrong one.

Christine Shearer: Do you see any promising fronts on the struggle to mitigate climate change?

[Peak oil] is going to conflate with climate in a very interesting way and my hope is it will push us to accelerate what we know we have to do anyway, which is go fast and hard on low-carbon technologies, and where climate has failed the prospect of a steep descent in global oil production might do the job, hopefully.

Jeremy Leggett: I do. Many. That’s what gets people like me out of bed in the morning. The growth rates of clean technology is amazing despite all the problems. A lot of people don’t realize that for the first time last year in the [United] States or Europe there was more renewable capacity brought onstream than nuclear and fossil combined. You tell people that and they say no, it must be wrong. No, it’s not wrong, it’s in the statistics. So we’re working with the grain, those of us in and around the survival technologies. So all that’s encouraging. It’s encouraging the political regime has changed in the U.S., away from one that was blind to all the difficulties. It’s encouraging all the demonstrations for cleaner energy. I think it’s encouraging the Chinese are looking so hard at what global warming will do to their economy. There’s no point in growing an economy if it’s going to get washed away, literally and metaphorically, by the marching armies of climate impacts. All that is encouraging.

CONDUCIVEMAG.COM

Reprinted with permission from Conducivemag.com

While many may think about oil when it comes to climate change, the real struggle could be coal. Coal is used for half the nation’s electricity, which is the U.S.’s largest source of carbon dioxide emissions. Scientists warn that the continued use of so much coal could put us on the path to runaway warming, yet federal policy continues to subsidize and support its use. Discussing his books Gangs of America and Climate Hope, Coalswarm founder Ted Nace talks to Conducive about the rise of corporations and Big Coal, the growing network of grassroots movements against coal, and why, despite the non-binding resolution coming out of Copenhagen, we should have hope.

The Coal War: Interview with Climate Hope Author Ted Nace

Christine Shearer: You helped start the successful Peachpit Press, a tech publishing company, and then went on to write a book about the growth of corporate power, Gangs of America. Did something make you want to write that book?

Ted Nace: For a long time I had been thinking that there needed to be a different way of looking at corporations than I’d seen in academic disciplines like economics, sociology, etc. I wanted to look at them the way a science fiction writer or an exo-biologist would view an unusual dynamic phenomenon — say a strange cloud moving around on a recently discovered planet. Even if the phenomenon did not seem to fit the narrow definition of a “life form” in the way we are accustomed to thinking, the exo-biologist would be trained to realize that life forms might not necessarily fit our preconceived notions. Basically, it seems to me that the corporations we have today — defined by a structure that gelled about a century ago — are exactly this sort of thing: a sort of life form. They meet all the standard criteria that biologists use to define life: persistence, metabolism, reproduction, adaptation, etc. By life form, I don’t mean to use a metaphor: I really think these things are literally coexisting with us physically, socially, and politically, and we may be on a direct collision course with them for the use of this planet. There’s a legal philosopher named Meir Dan-Cohen who has written about how a corporation could actually exist that had no human participation whatsoever — a chilling thought until you realize that big corporations already function to a certain degree on automatic pilot, since the decisions that guide their behavior are actually determined not really by individual managers but by the programmed parameter known as profit. That’s what makes corporations distinct from other human organizations like governments or social clubs. I wanted to highlight this Frankenstein notion, and a natural way to do that seemed to me to juxtapose it up against the well-known judicial doctrine that a corporation is a “person” and up against the 1886 Supreme Court case that gave corporations their first actual Constitutional rights. The fact that these immense, profit-maximizing entities are afforded the rights of human beings is a blatant irony that practically begs to be explored.

Christine Shearer: Especially since in that 1886 case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, “corporate personhood” came not from the actual judicial decision but from the court reporter’s notes on the case.

Ted Nace: Yes, and that’s just the most well known of a long string of court decisions endowing corporations with greater and greater rights, none of which are grounded in the actual language of the U.S. Constitution.

Christine Shearer: Were you surprised by these findings, how corporate power expanded and came to take its modern form?

Ted Nace: The big surprise for me was to see that even from the very beginning – the eighteenth century discussions on how to arrange the American system of government – people were already expressing a great deal of nervousness about the dangers of the corporate form. The framers of the American system of government went to great lengths to limit corporate power, for example by requiring corporations to renew their charters every 20 years and requiring each corporation to adhere to a particular beneficial function. Those measures worked for nearly a century or so — until just after the Civil War. Then, due to Supreme Court decisions such as Santa Clara and an assortment of changes in state incorporation statutes, the corporate legal form began to morph and the “modern” corporation came into being, which was much more legally privileged and also much larger than what had come before. It was like a second American Revolution, and I think our society hasn’t even begun to cope with it.

Christine Shearer: Your most recent book, Climate Hope, describes a grassroots network of communities fighting – very successfully – the construction of new coal plants in this country. How prevalent is coal and the use of coal plants in the U.S.?

Ted Nace: There are about 600 coal-fired power plants around the country, supplying half our electricity. Recently there were plans afoot to add another 150 coal plants. From a climate perspective, coal is far and away our worst problem because the remaining reserves are so much larger than those of other fossil sources like conventional oil and gas. NASA climate chief James Hansen says that phasing out coal emissions is “80% of the solution to the global warming crisis.” In other words, phasing out coal is really the “silver bullet” for stopping global warming. Conversely, Hansen warns that if we don’t somehow constrain the burning of coal we risk triggering the “Venus Effect” of runaway feedbacks that would render Earth completely uninhabitable. (For the details on this scenario, see Hansen’s Storms of My Grandchildren.)

Christine Shearer: Do you see connections between the national use of coal and your research on corporations?

Ted Nace: We have a clear planetary crisis and a clearly defined solution, yet our ability to implement that solution is being blocked by the well-financed lobbying and PR sponsored by the coal and utility companies.

Christine Shearer: Could you tell us a bit about the communities discussed in your book, and why they focus on coal?

Ted Nace: Two communities affected by coal represent the diversity of those impacted by coal: one is Little Village, a Latino barrio in Chicago, the other is the Navajo reservation in New Mexico—both suffer very high rates of asthma and coronary heart disease caused by nearby coal-fired power plants. Wherever there are coal mines, plants, or waste dumps, there are health effects: 24,000 deaths per year nationally from fine airborne particles, hundreds of thousands of infants exposed in utero to excess mercury, toxic drinking water in areas near mines and power plant ash dumps. Mining destroys large amounts of forest land and agricultural land, and mountaintop removal—the most destructive type of mining—results in downstream flooding. In return for all this damage, the coal industry provides relatively few jobs. Only about 1 in every 1,000 workers are employed in coal mines or power plants in the United States. Study after study has found that phasing out coal in favor of renewables would create a large net gain in the number of jobs in the electricity sector. In fact, wind industry jobs actually surpassed coal mining jobs in 2008, so the comparison isn’t theoretical.

Christine Shearer: How many plants have been cancelled, and what have been some of the successful tactics to keep new plants from being constructed?

Ted Nace: At least 110 proposed coal plants have been stopped so far by local citizen opposition. Stopping a coal plant always involves a combination of tactics: regulatory interventions, direct actions like sit-ins and blockades, bank boycotts, lawsuits. In general, the idea is to scare away the financial backing for the plant, push regulators and judges to use whatever legal handles are available, and convince utilities that coal is simply too much trouble compared with attractive alternatives like efficiency measures, wind, and solar.

Christine Shearer: Many within these movements have been skeptical of “clean coal.” Could you explain why?

Ted Nace: “Clean coal” is like whack-a-mole. You can take the ash out of the smokestack, but then where do you dump the ash? Each time you clean up one pollution stream, you create a new one. Then there’s the problem of cost. Yes, it’s theoretically possible to separate out the carbon dioxide that causes global warming, compress it into a liquid, and pump it deep underground. But the development of this technology at a commercial scale is a couple decades away, and even then it’s estimated to be more expensive than wind, solar, geothermal, etc. So why not just adopt the clean alternatives?

Christine Shearer: Why aren’t we adopting the clean alternatives?

Ted Nace: Clean alternatives are definitely being adopted across the country, but federal policy still overwhelmingly tilts toward subsidizing “clean coal.” For example, the Waxman-Markey bill provides $60 billion in subsidies for clean coal, which is an astonishing amount considering that the aggregate value of the entire coal industry, as measured by the value of its stock on Wall Street, is about $50 billion. This sort of huge subsidy is a simple reflection of the political clout of Big Coal.

Christine Shearer: In addition to writing Climate Hope, you also started the wiki CoalSwarm – could you tell us a bit about it?

Ted Nace: The idea behind CoalSwarm is that information is power, and that making information about coal more accessible to the public could be a way to aid the movement to stop coal. CoalSwarm is an informational website about coal that uses the same wiki technology as Wikipedia. That means anyone can contribute information, and there are now over 2500 articles on the website. For example, you can find out the location of power plants in your state and college coal plants, see photographs and data on those plants, read about lawsuits and demonstrations, and see who’s organizing. People find the information via Google searches, and so far we’ve clocked over 3 million page views.

Christine Shearer: Climate change activists advocate regulating greenhouse gas emissions, so many were frustrated that a non-binding resolution came out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change talks in Copenhagen. What did you think of Copenhagen: a potentially promising first step, or a demonstration that reform will have to come from below?

Ted Nace: Copenhagen proves that reform has to come from below. That’s good news, because the grassroots climate movement is growing fast. For example, the number of protest actions quadrupled between 2007 and 2009. The chaotic fumbling that was on display at Copenhagen was depressing, but the amazing progress of groups fighting coal over the past several years – 110 coal plants stopped to date – shows the breadth and strength of the movement, and it also suggests that focusing on particular plants, mines, and waste sites is a productive way to work.

Christine Shearer: Within the U.S., the EPA has finally determined that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that threatens human health, giving them authority to regulate emissions, which they have yet to do. Yet the Waxman-Markey bill working through Congress would pre-empt the EPA’s authority with a cap & trade market for carbon emissions. Do you support Waxman-Markey, or would you rather see the EPA regulate carbon dioxide emissions?

Ted Nace: The Waxman-Markey “cap & trade” bill that passed the House and the parallel bill being considered in the Senate have some good features, such as tougher efficiency standards. But if this legislation passes it will actually hinder the work of phasing out of coal plants by eliminating the power of the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, and that means it would take away the one step that climate scientists have described as the “silver bullet” in addressing climate change. Having the EPA directly regulate power plant emissions may not be sufficient to solve the problem, but it’s definitely an important piece of the solution.

Christine Shearer: Some argue that any U.S. actions on global warming are negated because China is starting to put up so many coal plants, but in your book you dispute this. Could you explain why?

Ted Nace: China’s own reserves of coal are limited—comparable to those in the state of Montana. Analysts project that China’s use of coal, though alarming at this point, is going to top out soon and then decline. Fortunately, China is moving quickly towards renewables, and it’s already moving into the position of global leader in producing wind turbines and solar panels.

Christine Shearer: What are the next steps for the no-coal movement?

Ted Nace: Having stopped 110 coal plants, the next steps for the no-coal movement are to keep fighting the remaining proposals for new plants and to begin to work toward phasing out the existing fleet of 600 old coal plants. This means organizing in all parts of the country and also focusing on coal mining and coal waste sites. This is the year that mountaintop removal mining should finally be banned. It’s also the year to begin focusing on the federal coal leasing program.

Christine Shearer: What can people do to help move the U.S. away from coal? Are there alternative energy sources you see as particularly promising?

Ted Nace: The biggest potential lies in efficiency measures like stricter building standards, enhanced appliance efficiency, and weatherization programs. If the entire country were to become as energy efficient as California, we could retire 80% of the coal fleet. As for climate-friendly generation technologies, utility-scale wind turbines are now cheaper than new coal plants, and they’re especially attractive in offshore sites like Lake Michigan or the Atlantic coast. Rooftop photovoltaic arrays on warehouses, malls, and homes could become a significant provider of power if utilities adopted the sort of “feed-in tariffs” that have enabled photovoltaics to explode in Germany. Solar thermal plants – large arrays in sunny areas that can include onsite power storage – uses a decades-old technology and is currently being expanded very rapidly in California, Spain, and elsewhere. As for technologies still under development, one of the most promising is known as “enhanced” or “hot rock” geothermal. An MIT study of enhanced geothermal power, which involves drilling deep wells and injecting water that is then heated by hot rocks and then brought back to the surface to run generators, reported that this technology could economically power the entire country more or less indefinitely. For details on how all these technologies could replace coal and other fossil fuels, I recommend Google’s “Clean Energy 2030” website.

CONDUCIVEMAG.COM

Christine Shearer, PhD is Conducive’s Managing Editor. She is a researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara researching climate changes and law.

Reprinted with permission from Conducivemag.com

Dunnewold: What progress have you seen in cultural acceptance of your theory? What issues have changed in the twenty years that the book has been in print? What stayed the same?

Adams: I am shocked that people so fear the word feminism. A young woman said “I wasn’t going to read your book, because it had the word feminism in it. And then I saw your slideshow, and realize that I want to read your book.” This resistance is to a word that encapsulates so much of how we’ve gotten where we are! Progress on women’s health care, rape crisis centers, battered women’s centers, sexual harassment laws, reproductive choice, all is because of feminism. Yet, all the progress the feminist movement achieved has been massaged in such a way that the feminist roots are lost.

Meanwhile, veganism is now “hot.” This is a shock and a thrill. It makes travel easier and more enjoyable. There are vegan restaurants everywhere I go, all around the globe. That is the wonderful part. But so much of veganism hasn’t recognized the way our culture has structured the sexual politics of meat. Many vegans seem to believe we can leave ideas of masculinity undisturbed and still end meat-eating. But it won’t work. There are vegans who are complacent about the sexualization of women. Some say, “so what if a guy is really macho, as long as he’s vegan.” That complacency is dangerous. The sexual politics of meat is what stays most unchanged. It finds new iterations; ads that may be tongue-in-cheek about men needing to eat meat, for instance, but they still convey the same message: men believe it is more masculine to eat meat, still, and that this is their right. Some men who are vegans have called themselves ‘hegans’, as if the word vegan itself is tainted by being associated with women. Given the association of women and vegetables, some vegan men appear to feel a need to recoup threatened maleness.

You asked what has stayed the same. I didn’t think that the sexual politics of meat would be both so intransigent and so mobile. It’s versatile. When it comes under attack, it’s like water finding its own level; it is just expressed in a different way. All around the world, advertisements and newspapers articles presume the normativeness of the sexual politics of meat, and here it is, 2010!

And you asked what is most changed? The sexualization of animals in images has actually increased, as the sexualization of our culture overall has increased. What Hustler magazine perpetrated against women in the 1980s, meat ads do to animals in the 21^st century. In The Sexual Politics of Meat I argue that all animals in our culture are rendered symbolically female. But I never realized how strongly that trend would be expressed through images. I also didn’t expect the animal rights movement to be so sexist in their attitudes and their activism.

Dunnewold: Can you elaborate on that?

Adams: PETA’s (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) sexist campaigns are the most visible ones; and have probably alienated more feminists from animal activist messages than any one organization. A January 2007 example was PETA’s “State of the Union Undress” (available at YouTube for anyone who verifies they are 18 or older), a video in which a young white woman is depicted (through the magic of video intercutting) addressing the US Congress on the subject of animal exploitation–as she slowly strips off all her clothing. And then when Obama was elected, PETA decided they should do the same thing but this time, in 2010, they used an African-American woman. Equal opportunity sexism. One of the implicit, if not explicit, messages of such advertisements is, “Yes, we’re asking you to give up animals as objects, but you can still have women as objects! You can become aware of animals’ lives, but you don’t have to give up your pornography.” Thus, rather than challenge the inherent inequality of a culture structured around dominance and subordination, the ad instead tries to leverage sexual inequality on behalf of the other animals. In fact, every time PETA uses a naked or nearly-naked woman to raise concern for animals, they not only benefit from sexual inequality, they also unwittingly demonstrate the intransigence of species inequality.

But the problem of sexism in the movement is much deeper than PETA’s ongoing commitment to sell animal rights by using women’s bodies. In the animal movement, men still predominate as leaders and speakers, women as the grassroots workers doing the day-to-day work. Just as the Gross National Product does not measure housework, it does not measure volunteer hours. Unpaid labor is more likely to be provided by women than men, whether in the animal movement or at home. Yet, while animal activism needs women’s labor, it also disowns the very labor it needs! For the past twenty years, a variety of male leaders of the animal rights movement have been quoted as saying, “We aren’t a bunch of little old ladies in tennis shoes.”

Such statements are truly acts of confining the feminist-vegan message and messengers by focusing or actually not wanting to focus on the aging female body. I take this ongoing denial of women’s contributions personally. I am hoping to live long enough to qualify to be a little old lady!

I don’t think the animal rights movement is able to acknowledge its indebtedness to the feminist movement and feminist theory.

Dunnewold: What events have made you happiest and/or proudest, in relation to getting your ideas out there?

Adams: At different times over the past twenty years, I would have answered this in different ways. Having an industrial rock group, Consolidated, create a track on their Friendly Fa$cism CD devoted to The Sexual Politics of Meat was pretty great. And as I have said, it gives me great joy when I hear from people who tell me the book changed their lives. The most recent event generates complex emotions, I was both shocked and in awe: It was seeing myself portrayed on Law and Order, SVU, in April 2010. The episode is entitled “Beef.” One of the characters in this episode is clearly based on me: She is juxtaposing slides that depict animals used as meat, and women, and saying, “Our society views women and animals pretty much the same… as cuts of meat.” She then says, “Meat eating and the patriarchal world go hand in hand.” She concludes by saying, “We can’t end the objectification of women until we stop eating our four legged and winged brothers and sisters.” She finishes her slide show and moves to a table to do a book signing, and the cover of the book is that rear-entry, come hither image I described to you. I sat there, fascinated and horrified. Fascinated to hear my words on Law and Order, and to see an image that I have identified and discussed being explained by a fictional me. Simultaneously, I felt both visible and invisible. If Law and Order depicted a fiction writer known for creating a world of young wizards, we’d all know who it is. But, my work doesn’t have that kind of visibility. If it did, I would’ve just been thrilled, because Law and Order conveyed the message nonjudgmentally. These ideas leaped several levels in popular culture into the stratosphere of the Law and Order world. To have that level of visibility was galvanizing. But it was depressing, at the same time. I wish the show could’ve acknowledged that someone actually does show a slide show discussing these ideas or could have identified these ideas as having come from The Sexual Politics of Meat. If only on the Law and Order website they linked to The Sexual Politics of Meat, or credited my ideas. There was a huge debate on my Facebook page. “This is great, it’s homage, you should be thrilled.” And others were saying, “why could they not have acknowledged Carol?” To me, that was a ‘meta’ event, seeing my own fictional counterpart showing my slideshow.

There have been so many wonderful experiences in so many different venues around the world. When I spoke in Buffalo, NY, near my home town, a vegan feminist created a cheesecake for me–and later presented me with a beautifully-decorated, framed, rendition of the recipe. After a reception at Peter Max’s studio, the vegan caterer copied out one of her recipes for me and signed it “I love Carol Adams.”

Dunnewold: What has made you most proud?

Adams: Many different things, like people giving copies of my book to their parents or children. But personally, something happened recently that thrilled me. This summer, my college student son was taking part in a Jazz Camp for high school and college students. One young girl was a vegan, and there were no vegan offerings at a meal. Ben realized this, and brought her a vegan meal from his apartment. When the student discovered who his mother was, she was in awe and raved with admiration. It was fun to hear my son experience, through the eyes of someone else, what it means to have me as his mother. When he was a child, I was busy writing, raising my kids, cooking vegan food for him to share with his friends—that’s what he knew of me, that “Mom.” What this writer mother meant to others, that wasn’t something he knew growing up. What he knew was that sometimes my writing meant I was unavailable to do things with him. For many years, The Sexual Politics of Meat was not well known in my own community, so my sons were not presented with signs of my public role. I think it was meaningful to him, as he realized what I meant to someone I had never met, to be able to integrate these different aspects of his mother–the public self, the writer self, the mother self.

Dunnewold: Are there other points, about this experience over twenty years that you would like to convey?

Adams: Last November, the New York Times Book Review stated that twenty years ago, the book was ahead of its time, but that now it’s essentially of this time. It was lonely to be ahead of your time. I do hope that my ideas are now timely because there are some things that I would really like to see changed.

Meat eaters, whether feminist, progressive, evangelical, whatever their stripes, think that change is hard. What I’ve learned is that not changing is harder. People just haven’t learned that yet. They are working so hard not to change, that they’re unable to discover how easy it is to change. Meat-eaters think vegans are burdened by carrying some sort of rulebook around, or that we’re living lives of deprivation. Those lives of deprivation might occur when we’re eating with meat-eaters, who have picked the restaurant. In my own home, and among other vegans, I don’t live a life of deprivation. I don’t live a rule-based life, filled with obsessing about what I’m going to eat.

There is a statement by the Buddha, “One need not carry the raft on one’s head after crossing the stream.” There is a stage where you learn, and there is a stage where you practice. You’re not always forced to learn, you’re not always carrying a raft. I’ve read that the average person prepares only ten different meals. I believe those ten different meals can be easily veganized: Start with spaghetti: Spaghetti and veggie balls, spaghetti and portobello mushrooms, spaghetti and spring vegetables, spaghetti and summer vegetables. One reason that Patti Breitman and I wrote How to Eat Like a Vegetarian Even If You Never Want to Be One: More Than 250 Shortcuts, Strategies, and Simple Solutions, was to show that it is really very easy to be a vegan.

I believe vegans actually have a wider choice of food than meat-eaters, because we actively try to learn to cook such a wide variety of vegetables. Before I became a vegetarian, I was a lousy cook–I didn’t even know how to seed a pepper –and now I’ve become a really good cook. One reason I end up talking about food with vegans when I travel, is I want to know what they’ve learned. Their rafts were different, and I want to know what they learned. The recipes and insights they have shared with me are wonderful — uses for nutritional yeast, seitan or vegan lasagna recipes, quick ways to prepare leafy greens.

Back when the book first came out, I was told that some feminists announced they weren’t going to buy the book because they were afraid they’d have to give up meat! I don’t think that’s the worst thing that can happen to someone! When you think about it, there are worse aspects of meat-eating, than having to give it up. Most importantly, I think ethically, meat eating violates every aspect of progressive or feminist thought, because it makes someone a means to our end. And that someone isn’t given a choice, to say, “no, I really don’t want to be your dinner.” The ability to widen how we live in this world, and whose lives we pay attention to, is an important aspect of engagement and awareness. Why that should end at the species line, I do not understand. In the 1970s, I wrote, “if we want to live in a world without oppression, where does meat eating fit into that vision?” For those of us living in the Western world, I don’t believe meat eating can fit itself into our vision. The great French writer, Simone Weil, said that attention is the ability to ask “what are you going through?” and being able to hear the answer to the question. My work as a feminist has been to say, “we need to ask that question and listen for the answers from nonhuman animals as well as from humans.”

Click on the following links to purchase Carol J. Adams’s books:

Sexual Politics of Meat

The Pornography of Meat

The feminist-vegetarian critical theory (referred to in the subtitle) of The Sexual Politics of Meat is comprised of three main points:

1) A link exists between meat eating and notions of masculinity and virility in the Western world. Meat eating societies enhance male identification food choice; creating and recreating an experience of male bonding in various male-identified locations, such as steak houses, fraternities, strip clubs, or (domesticated) at a barbecue. Within this sexual politics, vegetables represent passivity, and so vegetarianism is construed as acceptable for women and anyone associated with women.

2) Animals are the absent referents in the consumption of meat. The concept of “absent referent” originates with linguistics, indicating language that refers to something not present. Behind every meal of “meat” is an absence: the death of the animal whose place the “meat” takes. Without animals there would be no meat eating, yet they are absent from the act of eating meat because they have been transformed, and relabeled, as food. Animals in name, and body, are made absent as animals for meat to exist. Cultural linguistic custom entails calling meat from cows “beef,” not “cow,” hence removing the animal of the cow from our minds. The function of the absent referent is to allow for the moral abandonment of a being –while also emptying violence from the language.

3) Violence against animals cannot be understood without a feminist analysis, because this violence is embedded within patriarchal culture. The process of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption connects women and animals in a patriarchal culture, as each becomes overlapping absent referents. This cycle of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption links butchering with both the representation and reality of sexual violence in Western cultures. To highlight the experience of subjugation of female animals, The Sexual Politics of Meat coined the term “feminized protein,” (plant protein produced through the abuse of the reproductive cycle of female animals, i.e., dairy and eggs).

Dunnewold: What has surprised you the most about the process of writing The Sexual Politics of Meat?

Adams: I had the original idea for The Sexual Politics of Meat in October 1974, but the book was not published until 1990. When I initially talked about the underlying link between a patriarchal society and meat-eating, there were a few people who got it. But the majority of people laughed. It wasn’t just that as a writer I led a solitary life; I led a lonely life. I almost exiled myself, to western New York, and became an activist. Those years as an activist in the women’s movement, in particular working with victims of domestic violence and resettled migrant workers, taught me how to have a voice—and why.

During that time, the idea of a connection between meat eating and a patriarchal world would simply not let go of me. My task was to figure out what to say and how to say it. I had to learn how to be a writer. After years of incubating the idea, figuring out how to say it, and battling self-doubt, it was a major surprise that when the book was published, suddenly, I was not just a writer. I was an author. And I’d had no idea what it was like to be an author.

Dunnewold: How do you see the difference?

Adams: An author is a public person. An author has readers. I had a relationship with people I’d never met. People I’d imagined reading The Sexual Politics of Meat suddenly truly existed in the flesh. There were other people who got it!

During those years of “exile”, I was figuring out how to argue with the predominant culture in a way that could be heard. Not until ’87 did I realize how angry I was. I had to get rid of this anger, or no one would want to read it. Who wants to read a complaint? I needed a beguiling way to invite the reader in. In a book about consumption, I can’t force feed the reader. I had to trust the reader; I had to make my words work. As an author I discovered that I really did have readers, and it was right to trust them.

Early on, I was uncomfortable when people said, “I love your book.” I wanted to give them something in return, so I would say “tell me about you.” It probably took me fifteen years of being an author to learn simply to say “thank you.” “Thank you for having the openness to trust my words.”

Right away after the book was published, I began to get letters, now emails and Facebook posts, saying, “your book changed my life.” The experience of meeting my readers has overwhelmed me, though I am surprised by the degree to which people react to the book, such as the young man at Harvard who whispered “I can’t believe I’m sitting so close to her” or religious studies graduate students moved to tears to meet me. I perceive myself as just another human being. I’m honored that others trust my words. I try to eliminate the space that this idolization creates between my readers and me. That’s not the kind of author I want to be.

What an incredible gift readers give me, in letting my ideas influence how they live. When given this gift of trust in me as an author, I don’t want to betray that trust by accepting any hierarchy or authority. I try to knock it down, to equalize, to accept this gift of a relationship with them. I only knew the book from the inside out, but my readers gave me a perspective on my work from the outside in.

Just two weeks after the book appeared, a reader sent me an image illustrating the theory. Since then, I’ve received hundreds of images. In the first edition, there were only two images demonstrating the interconnection of oppression of women and the other animals. Now, I’ve received T-shirts, advertisements, menus, matchbooks—with sexist and speciest phrases, examples of the premise of the book. This ephemera surrounds us all the time, and deadens us to how we look at women or domesticated animals. With the publication of the book, the ephemera stopped being ephemera and became examples. People around the world responded, sending images from Romania, from Canada, from Australia. I simply had never anticipated this response.

I thought, after publication of the book, that I would be done engaging with this idea. I thought I had said everything I had to say. But my readers showed me that I wasn’t done. The images they sent raised questions: “Why are all the pigs in ads white? What’s going on racially? What about class distinctions?” The person who lived in my house before me had subscribed to pornography, and a pornographic flyer arrived in the mail one day. There was a picture of a woman on all fours, presenting her buttocks, and she is looking over her shoulder. The very next day, I received a picture in the mail of a billboard in Atlanta, “Hamtastic” showing an advertisement for pigmeat. The pig was positioned just like the woman in that pornography. That image is still widely used in the South. I realized that positioning animals in this way was an encoded way of talking to pornography users. I call that the “come hither/rear entry” pose; the animal is saying “I want to be consumed,” as if to be eaten is meeting the pig’s needs. It was from readers’ responses to the book, and the images they sent me, images like “Hamtastic,” that The Sexual Politics of Meat Slideshow was born. Prior to 1996, I simply talked about the interconnections when addressing audiences. Then a reader suggested that I put the images I had used in my books (Neither Man nor Beast had appeared in 1994) into a slide show, illustrating and expanding upon the theory in the books.

Then, with the creation of the slide show, my theory evolved, and I wrote The Pornography of Meat. The slide show is continually evolving, as I collect images, and track new trends (with the same old themes, sadly), and I’ve now shown it on more than 120 campuses and around the world.

I think of a quote from Jane Goodall about her dedication to her work. She said she was paying back, in part, the debt owed to the chimpanzee. After all these years, I realize that I will never be done engaging with issues around animals. My debt to animals–how they’ve gone before me, how they’ve saved me, how they live (and so many suffer) now–that debt is always ongoing. But the difference is I’m not alone any more.

Dunnewold: What is the point from the book that has been most misunderstood?

Adams: There are two key points. When the book first was released, I was often asked, especially by TV hosts in Texas, “Are you saying that if I eat a hamburger I’ll beat my wife?” As if A leads directly to B, cause and effect. What I am saying is that in a patriarchal world women are animalized and animals are sexualized. It is interconnected; it permeates our viewpoint; it’s a systemic problem. We can’t have one–or stop one, without stopping the other. I know from working with battered women that animals often are injured as part of the control a batterer exercises. It’s about control, which might get expressed by demanding meat to eat, within that couple and within our culture. But I never claimed, and don’t believe, that eating a hamburger causes one to beat his wife. I do believe that someone who believes he needs to eat hamburger, who has to restore a sense of his manhood by eating male-identified foods, tells us a great deal about our culture’s teachings about men and virility. And I also believe that if a batterer kills an animal, the woman is in danger and should seek help.

The second misconception is that it’s okay for women to just eat vegetables and still cook meat for their partners. I’d be rich if I had a dollar for every woman who has said “I’d be a vegetarian if I didn’t have to cook meat for my husband.” In terms of food preparation, women are taught to deny their own desires; they are taught that they must meet their husbands’ desires. Women need to know they can be equipped to honor their own desires and educate the men in their lives to change. I loved the story one reader related, a young woman in Michigan. She fell in love with a young man from the Southwest. He wanted to marry her. She asked him to read The Sexual Politics of Meat before she would accept his proposal. She wanted him to understand her worldview. He read the book and became a vegan. He moved to Michigan and they had a vegan wedding. I loved that the book was a tool for that kind of creative negotiation.

This is part one in a two part interview with Carol J. Adams.

Click on the following links to purchase Carol J. Adams’s books:

Sexual Politics of Meat

The Pornography of Meat

Reprinted with permission from Conducive Chronicle