The first episode of The Overstory's second season was originally intended as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. As the pandemic unfolded, we pivoted to consider what social activism will look like in this season of social distancing. Hear from Denis Hayes, founder of the Earth Day Network; Zero Hour founder Jamie Margolin; author and artist Jenny Odell; and the Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. Plus also: Ms. Green explains her investigation into PFAS in menstrual underwear.

Transcript

Jason Mark: I'm Jason Mark, the editor of Sierra magazine, and I'm happy to let you know that The Overstory is back, for another season, six episodes over the next six months.

(0:12) Introduction

Jason Mark: When we started planning this first episode of our second season, we imagined it as a kind of celebration. A celebration of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. We wanted to host some conversations with artists and activists that would offer some imaginings of what Earth Day could and should be, as well as some remembrances about how Earth Day fundamentally changed environmental politics in America. 

Well, since we began production, the entire world has been changed by of course, the coronavirus pandemic. Two weeks ago, when we did our first recording for this episode… well, that feels like an entirely different epic. This episode is still going to be about Earth Day, but of course Earth Day, like almost everything else lately has been changed by the coronavirus. So we reached out to Kathleen Rogers. She's the president of the Earth Day Network, and we got a chance to talk to her for just a few minutes about what Earth Day is going to look like this year. 

(intro music) 

(1:18) Earth Day 2020

(computer ping) 

Jason Mark: Hey, is that Kathleen? 

Kathleen Rogers: Yes. 

Jason Mark: Hi Kathleen. It's Jason Mark here from Sierra magazine and The Overstory. 

Kathleen Rogers: How are you? 

Jason Mark: I'm well, how are you? 

Kathleen Rogers: Well, I'm lousy like the rest of us, but I'm not sick, which is good. 

Jason Mark: Yeah… So we're recording. 

Kathleen Rogers: Oh. 

Jason Mark: So Kathleen, maybe you can just tell me how is Earth Day going to change given that people just are not able to congregate in the streets for celebrations and for rallies? 

Kathleen Rogers: It was always going to be about going to our website anyway. And so whether it's our live stream broadcast with lots of groups, hundreds of groups participating, to our online digital activism. And we have a map there of course for EARTHRISE, our strikes and other types of activities that were out in the general public. 

Kathleen Rogers: And that website is still up and running for those countries and communities that can go outside. But once you get there it'll be replaced if you're in a place... Like I am in Maryland where we just got a stay-in-place order from our governor. We'll be able to see a broad range of digital activities that we can take. And they include Earth Challenge 2020 app, which allow you to take photos of both air and plastics pollution. 

Kathleen Rogers: We upload them on the site and then you get a pop-up that allows you to take an action around those two subjects in your own countries, downloading and signing onto petitions on a wide variety of topics. A favorite of mine, which is very popular on our website, which is a commit-to-vote under our Vote Earth campaign as well as these live streams that will be running for 72 hours with our partners. 

Jason Mark: You know, I've always thought, I think it's true that one of the most potent and important things about political rallies, and marches, and protests is the ability for people who are within a movement to see each other, right? There's a mirror effect that you can sort of... The movement reflects back on itself. In some ways to have a digital Earth Day, that kind of function of a political rally could be stronger than ever. Right? I mean as people sort of see what's happening in other countries. Have you thought about that? That in some ways, even though this is a huge unforeseen, unprecedented challenge, in some ways it may actually increase the potency of Earth Day 2020? 

Kathleen Rogers: What we have found since we made that announcement is this giant turnout already by people who said and have told us that they refuse to be turned away from any kind of Earth Day activity and instead are going to embrace a digital version. We have a program that we're launching and what it is, is a real time realistic, from Google Earth, map of iconic locations that you can choose your avatar and you can go and protest for Earth Day. So you'll see a Google Earth, meaning a real time map of the National Mall, and you'll be able to put your avatar on the map and we hope well, to fill up the Mall by Earth Day with people who are concerned about climate change. 

Jason Mark: Kathleen, thank you so much for all of your leadership and for your resilience and perseverance in this really crazy time. I really appreciate it. 

Kathleen Rogers: Thank you again. 

Jason Mark: Stay safe out there, take care. 

That was Kathleen Rogers. She's the president of the Earth Day Network. As she said, if you want to get involved virtually, digitally with Earth Day 2020, go online, earthday.org. 

Jason Mark: You know, for me, I have to say this whole situation is really bittersweet. I had my own personal environmental awakening when I was 15 years old. It was 1990 and my parents took me to the rally at the Arizona State Capitol, marking Earth Day's 20th anniversary. Looking at Earth Day 2020, I had really taken heart that this year's rallies and protests would bring more young activists into the environmental movement, and I guess I'd like to think that that will still happen. 

It seems like we're all online a lot now anyway, and so a digital Earth Day, well, that makes perfect sense. So this episode, the first of our second season is Earth Day in the Time of a Pandemic. 

(5:50) Episode Overview

 (transition music)

 Jason Mark: You'll hear from Denis Hayes. He's the guy who coordinated the first Earth Day in 1970, talking in a with Jamie Margolin who started Zero Hour, a youth-led environmental movement that's taking concrete action around climate change. 

Jamie Margolin: I used to hate Earth Day. All Earth Day was, was, "Here's how you can make a fun little basket out of a recycled gardening hose." And now my opinion about Earth Day is different because I learned about its revolutionary past. I learned about what it's actually for and what it's originated in. 

Jason Mark: We'll also have Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. of the Hip Hop Caucus, who will let us know what he thinks the future holds. 

Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr.: We're moving into a time where people will listen to us differently. We're not just talking to the same group of people, but we're trying to make sure that everybody... 

Jason Mark: Plus a conversation with Jenny Odell, an artist and author of the book, How to Do Nothing, which probably resonates with a lot of us right now. 

Jenny Odell: Shrinking your scale of attention to something very minute and focused, like other forms of life or like other ways of being in the world. Like what is a raccoon's way of being in the world? I'll never know. (laugh) 

Jason Mark: And finally we'll take a field trip for all of you homebound folks out there. 

(water splash sound) 

Jason Mark: I'm Jason Mark, and this is The Overstory. 

(music fades out) 

(7:14) The History & Future of Earth Day

Jason Mark: We're starting this episode with a conversation across generations between two activists who are on kind of opposite ends of the modern environmental movement's 50-year lifespan. Denis Hayes was the national coordinator of the first ever Earth Day in 1970, and he went on to found the Earth Day Network. About 45 years later, Jamie Margolin cofounded Zero Hour, which aims to bring the voices of diverse youth into the conversation around climate and environmental justice. 

They joined me to talk about where they agreed, where they disagreed, where Earth Day is headed and what the climate crisis and the coronavirus have in common. 

Denis, Jamie, thanks so much for joining us on The Overstory. 

Jamie Margolin: Yeah, thank you so much for having us. 

Denis Hayes: It's a pleasure. 

Jason Mark: So Denis, as someone who was there and really at the front of the effort, how does it feel? How does it feel to now be at the 50th anniversary of this event? 

Denis Hayes: Well, if you'd asked me then if this would happen, I'd have thought you were smoking something. The original event was very much in the tradition of events that were held throughout the 1960s, the March on the Pentagon, the March to Selma, the Poor People's March. We thought we were going to do it one time. We'd weave together all of these different strands that became the Environmental Movement, the anti-pesticides movement, the anti-freeway movement, the solar energy movement, the recycling movement, and on and on and on, into one big fabric. 

Denis Hayes: And if we could do that for a day and really get the nation's attention focused on it, our job would be done and we never dreamed that it would happen again in 1971 and '72 and '80 and '90 and finally to 2020. So it may now be a permanent part of the landscape. 

Jason Mark: So Jamie Margolin, what were some of your first memories or takes or opinions about Earth Day? 

Jamie Margolin: I used to hate Earth Day because... So when Denis was talking about this, my parents were toddlers during the first Earth Day. So it was something very, very distant that I was not taught about. I didn't know that the very first Earth Day was like a revolutionary mobilization. That wasn't taught. 

Jamie Margolin: All Earth Day was, was you turn on the local news and there'll be like, "Here's how you can make a fun little basket out of a recycled gardening hose," and "Oh that's cute. Let's do some fun little crafts. I like the earth, how cute. Don't use as many paper towels when you wash your hands." Like things that really don't really mean anything. 

Jamie Margolin: To me, it was infantilizing and trivializing the climate crisis and the environmental crisis. And I was born December of 2001--  so I, I put it this way, and I don't know if people will quite get it, but for me, growing up, there's never been a time in my life when Beyoncé wasn't like famous and wasn't everything, you know. And so I always say I heard about climate change the same way a lot of people my age heard about Beyoncé. You can't remember when you first heard her, you can't remember when you first knew that she was famous and not to be messed with. You just kind of always knew it, and there's no pinpointing moment. It's kind of like that for climate change. 

Jamie Margolin: And so to know the drastic impacts and changes that needed to be made in order for us to solve this, and then see Earth Day… nothing radical, no actual radical critiques of the systems that caused the climate crisis, that caused environmental destruction. It's all just on the surface, "Be as least controversial as possible." 

Jamie Margolin: Now my opinion about Earth Day is different because I learned about its revolutionary past I learned about what it's actually for and what it's originated in. So my critique on Earth Day is not Earth Day itself or the organizers, like Denis Hayes is really amazing. It's not a critique about that. It's a critique about the way the world and the media has managed to take something that's really supposed to be about really grassroots necessary radical change and turned it into something trivial and oversimplified. 

Jamie Margolin: People are often asking, "How do we cover the climate crisis like the emergency that it is? Because people aren't really covering the climate crisis like the emergency that it is." And the answer is the way the coronavirus has been covered. Consistent updates of death tolls. Consistent updates of what people can do. Consistent like, "Oh my God this is an emergency. This is how it just got worse, this is how it just got worse." 

The way the media is properly covering the coronavirus is the way the media should be covering the climate crisis. Everyday trending on Twitter and everyone feels like we're all in this crisis together and that's really what... And everyone is kind of pitching in and things are shutting down immediately. Everything's coming to a halt so we can like reorganize and redo things for this virus. And so now it's like, that's exactly what needs to happen for the climate. 

Denis Hayes: I think I would agree with that almost entirely with one little fill-up, which is to say when the news media are covering what you should do about the coronavirus, they have understandably focused upon things that individuals can do to protect themselves and to protect their communities. A huge emphasis, I mean I've heard at least a hundred times, "Wash your hands for 20 seconds or rub your fingers in between one another and make sure you're getting your thumbs in your fingernails." 

Similarly with the climate crisis, there's a fair amount of literature that's out there that says, "Buy a super efficient automobile or an electric automobile and a smaller house and change your diet," all of which can be doing really important things and in the aggregate times, billions of people are very important. But in both of them, there's this policy dimension that is not getting as much attention as I wish that it would. 

I mean if you look at what Singapore did with regarded the coronavirus, it's basically a nonissue. At the time that we're recording this interview, South Korea is testing for COVID-19, as many people every week as the United States has tested total in the last two months. What are the policy differences that made tests available in one country? Why did they do some things that we didn't do? Why it didn't get out there much more rapidly with getting an anticipated vaccine program underway. 

And not to take away in either of these cases the importance of individual action, but it's necessary and not sufficient. And we really need much more attention to the decisions that leaders are making, whether they're for the good or the bad. 

Jason Mark: I think there's a lot of wisdom there. So Jamie Margolin, Denis could essentially be your grandfather, or people who are your parents' or your grandparents' age. What does an intergenerational climate justice movement look like? 

Jamie Margolin: You know, Denis, I've been talking to him since the summer of 2019 and I had a meeting with him and this other young activists that I work with over lunch and we just talked. I told them all about our movement. He told me all about his and we spoke and he helped us secure the largest grant that Zero Hour has ever received so far. So thank you Denis. 

Denis Hayes: Thank you Jamie. There is, I think something here that is not often thought about. Almost all movements ever are fueled by youth. Young people who have idealism, who see injustice and feel it passionately, who have a bit more time on their hands than they will when they're 40 years old and they're trying to support their families and raise their kids. But that's a time of life when propellers of change really jump in like Jamie did, and stick their neck out and say, "I'm going to try to do this, who's with me?" 

There's another stage in life where that could happen, which is once you hit retirement. And it's my hope that a lot of the idealists that came out of the 1960s, who are now members of the AARP and have some time on their hands because they retired, have some assets available to them because they've been saving for retirement their entire lives, have grandchildren that they care about passionately and that are a little embarrassed about the state of the world that they're passing on, will join in what I think of as sort of a gray-green alliance, between those of us that are kind of wandering off toward the ends of our lives, and those that are just leaping into a state of their lives and they can really have some impact. And I think that we all have a lot in common in those two things and we will potentially become a very important force in the future. 

Jason Mark: I love that idea, the gray-green alliance. So you two have obviously already met, but I'm wondering, do you have any questions for each other? 

Jamie Margolin: Well, I guess my question for Denis is like how would you like the youth to keep the legacy of Earth Day alive? I can imagine building something and wanting to make sure that, that it continues in a way that honors what your original intent was for it. How can we keep the movement alive? 

Denis Hayes: And I think you have the answer to that. Being born in the era of 9/11, being raised as a digital native, you have a better grasp of the instruments that are... I mean, I have never watched Tik Tok. I don't even exactly know what Tik Tok is. I think the generational torch, honest to God gets passed, and the people who pick up the torch need to decide where they're going with it. And worst thing that the gray generation can do is try to say, "We did it this way. This is how you ought to do it too." 

I remember a number of the old-line conservationists who were trying to give me advice in 1970 and my attitudes toward them. And some of these conversations are almost embarrassing to remember. I had a very prominent leader of a national organization say to me, "What the hell does clean air have to do with birds?" And I said, "Well, it actually has a lot to do with birds." But I think we need to get out of the way. (horn music fades in) 

Jason Mark: Jamie Margolin, thank you so much for your vision and your resourcefulness in finding a way to continue this really important mobilization even in the era of this global pandemic. And Denis Hayes, thank you so much for your leadership and your wisdom over the years. I really appreciate it, and I want to thank you guys both for taking the time to talk with us today. Just stay safe out there and keep yourselves and your friends and your family healthy. 

Jamie Margolin: Thank you. 

Denis Hayes: We'll do our best. (horn music fades out, hip-hop fades in) 

(17:45) Ms. Green on Period Underwear

Jason Mark: Now it's time for Ms. Green, aka Jessian Choy. This time we're not going to answer any listener questions. That's because earlier this year Jessian broke a huge story and we wanted to hear more about it. Our own Katie O'Reilly is going to take it from here.

 Katie O'Reilly: I was curious for listeners who aren't familiar, if you could tell us a little bit about what period underwear is and how it works. 

Jessian Choy: Well basically it's leak-proof. Leak-proof underwear that doesn't feel like a diaper, so you don't feel like you have like a mattress between your legs. You know what I mean? 

Katie O'Reilly: Oh absolutely. I think that was one of the things that scared me about it, because I remember seeing those ads a few years ago too and thinking, "Oh, is this just going back to like the maxi pad nightmares from junior high?" 

Jessian Choy: No, you just feels like underwear and it's thin. I mean I doubt you wear really thick, padded, regular underwear, so it just feels like your regular underwear. (laughs) It comes in all shapes and sizes. You could wear a thong if you wanted and it's still leak-proof. But I know that with any kind of leak-proof product, whether it's food wear or textiles, anything that's stain, water, nonstick or grease resistant, they have found toxic Teflon-like chemicals called PFAS, P-F-A-S. 

Katie O'Reilly: And they're the forever chemicals, right? The ones that just stay in our bloodstream always and stay in the environment always? 

Jessian Choy: For me, what's most worrying also is that it's getting into our water and it cannot be filtered out. So some of them have been found to be linked to cancer and some of these other serious health issues. I couldn't really answer the reader's question to Sierra Magazine on what's the most eco products, menstrual product, without finding out if what I was wearing had these chemicals in it. And so I had a pair of Thinx tested and found that there were thousands of parts per million in my organic Thinx underwear and more PFAS chemicals in an organic one made for teens. And all these chemicals were found on the inside of the crotch. 

Katie O'Reilly: It really resonated with readers. 

Jessian Choy: It did, um, yes. Even people started offering to mail me their used menstrual underwear. (laugter) If you're listening, you know who you are. Yes, the plots thicken. Like my uterus lining that sheds each month (Katie laughing) because then... Thinx is the company. Thinx, their competitors started creating a petition to regulate their industry to create safer products. 

A lot of brands, they are hiring companies and factories and raw material suppliers far away in other parts of the world and so they might not even know certain chemicals are being added to their products. So even asking a manufacturer to disclose all ingredients is not good enough. The most important thing I would say is to ask the government and eco labels, so eco labels like ones that certify fabrics to be less toxic, to actually test the products. 

Katie O'Reilly: Well thank you so much Jessian, aka Ms. Green. 

Jessian Choy: Thank you. (hip-hop music fades in) 

Jason Mark: That was Jessian Choy, aka Ms. Green. We reached out to Thinx for this story and ask them to come on the show. They said they weren't able to. In response to Jessian's reporting, they did though, offer us this official statement. "The implication that Thinx products have negative health effects connected to PFAS is unsubstantiated and the continued reporting of this narrative does a disservice to people seeking out safer alternatives to traditional period products." 

Jason Mark: If you've got any questions for Ms. Green, tag her on Twitter @realMsGreen, that's @ real, R-E-A-L, Ms, M-S, Green, G-R-E-E-N, or head over to sierramagazine.org. (music fades out) 

(21:53) Jenny Odell, Author of “How to Do Nothing” Talks About Taking Time in Your Day

Jason Mark: The artist and author Jenny Odell thinks a lot about how to pay close attention. Her book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, got a lot of critical acclaim. It was even on President Obama's top 10 books for 2019. In the book, Odell makes an argument about how to take time in your day. Time away from the internet, time to do something that isn't necessarily productive. Sierra's science editor, Heather Smith, recently caught up with Jenny. Heather wanted to know, during this moment when so many routines and lives have been totally up-ended, how is Jenny thinking about time? We'll start with Heather's question. 

Heather Smith: Right now we're in the second week of quarantine. How is that affecting your sense of time or your idea of what time is? 

Jenny Odell: It definitely is an interruption I think in how I and probably many other people experience time, which any interruption like that makes you, I think, aware of the assumptions that you were making about time or how time passes or how you see time. I mean unfortunately it's an interruption for a horrible reason, but I think it does provide an opportunity to kind of, like, look back at the schedule that you had and… that you were taking for granted and see how it's all kind of just like built out of very abstract ideas that felt very concrete when you were living in the middle of it, but now that you're not, you can sort of see that. 

For me personally, it's been... I've been going on two or three-hour walks, but I'm not even paying attention. I get home and I see, "Oh, three hours has passed. Okay." It's like I wasn't even... I'm aware of things like quality of light at different times of the day or, like, when the birds are singing more and when they're not singing as much. But like in terms of, "Oh I have two hours to finish this task," that is kind of gone. 

You know, I live near Lake Merritt in Oakland, and we have migratory ducks that arrive every year in the winter. And, you know, that's something I've only become aware of and maybe like the last three or four years. Um… And so now for me it's like this event when they start showing up, is like an event that I recognize and look forward to. And when the quarantine started, I actually, I have not been going over there because I'm trying to avoid crowds. And I started to get worried that they were going to leave before I got to see them again, because there is this temporal aspect to like when those species are here. 

Um… And I have binoculars because I'm, you know, looking for birds. But because there's so little smog right now you can see really far. And so I've been using the binoculars, just look at other places that I can't go. Like (laugh) I've been looking at San Francisco and I could see every building in San Francisco and I could see the Lake. And then so, I was looking at the Lake, Lake Merritt yesterday, thinking about how I hadn't been there in a while and I looked like so closely and I could see like little dots in the Lake and I was like, "Those are the ducks," like, those (laughs) ducks I would normally look at. 

And I was like, "I think this is the furthest away I've ever looked at a bird." (laughs) I was like many miles away just looking down at these dots, which you could only see because it was so clear. But yeah, that's about as close to looking at ducks in the Lake as I've gotten. 

Heather Smith: Yeah, the air is so clear right now. It's like… it makes me... Rebecca Solnit wrote an essay once about descriptions that people gave of the way the air looked before California was really industrialized and it's just like this kind of insane clarity. It almost looks like a diorama now to me. 

Jenny Odell: Yeah. It's really surreal. But I think yeah, just in general, and also just like psychologically, shrinking your scale of attention to something very minute and focused, that's been personally for me really therapeutic. 

Heather Smith: Yeah. That's also something that I think people really loved about your book, was that it was not like a heroic going out into nature narrative necessarily, like. I feel like a lot of people use nature as a backdrop for their own, like, personal crises or whatever, and this was much more like, "Let's pay attention to nature." 

Jenny Odell: Yeah. Well and also it's just I'm such a firm believer in this idea that everything in... I mean, I know that he gets into this whole thing of how do you even define nature? Right? But everything in nature is, is so deeply weird and I mean weird as like the highest compliment, right? But you know, the fact that crows, you know, have been documented recognizing human faces and some species like using tools, that crows are backyard birds, right? Or even, I have recently learned that that pigeons are also really smart, which I didn't know. 

And just like plants, right? Like weeds, I don't know, there's all of these things that are just right there and because they're right there, I think they're at risk of being overlooked. Like you need to drive to Yosemite and see like some kind of grandiose, rare, whatever, which is also amazing. But I personally feel very fulfilled looking at things that are close to home. Of course, again, I live somewhere that's relatively pleasant and nice to go outside. 

But just the other night we were downstairs. There's a garage on the first floor of this apartment building and we noticed that there were these little paw prints in the dust on this old Thunderbird that someone never drives. (laughs) And we were looking up different paw prints and we decided that it was a raccoon. 

And raccoons are pretty common, right? But I just think raccoons are so crazy. I mean just everything about them, like the way they look, the way they move, the fact that they're out at night, they're just incredibly smart and just watching them manipulate things and just like... I don't know, I was so comforted by the idea that while I was sleeping there was this small beast (laughs) just on the first floor of my apartment that decided to walk the entire perimeter of this very large car and then like hop off of it. 

I don't know… that already in itself is just enough for me to kind of like contemplate the strangeness of other forms of life or other ways of being in the world. Like what is a raccoon's way of being in the world? I'll never know. 

Heather Smith: I'm sure you read those articles that came out a few years ago about how the city raccoons are like incredibly good at solving puzzles and- 

Jenny Odell: Yeah. 

Heather Smith: ... opening trashcans and things like that. They're this whole other level of puzzle solving than their country cousins who are probably great at other measures of raccoon intelligence. 

Jenny Odell: Right, totally. 

Heather Smith: They're highly specialized. 

Jenny Odell: Oh, one thing I will mention just in case it's helpful for anyone in this moment is that I highly recommend the nature webcams on explore.org which maybe you already know about, but I didn't. And it's related actually for me to this idea of time, because you're watching something that's live. So explore.org has all of these live real time cams of like a nesting Eagle or the cranes in Nebraska, and especially right now when a lot of folks are stuck inside or are living in an area where it's like too crowded to go outside, and also where all time kind of feels the same, I think it's a great resource to just have. Honestly, I always have one of these open in a tab in my browser that I just go back and check on. 

Jenny Odell: I've been watching this eagle in Iowa for the longest time. And also the Osprey. There's an Osprey couple in Richmond, that's nice because that's close to here. But you can even see like... you can see the weather there. You can see clouds passing and you can see it's morning, it's night. And just that's a weird way of experiencing time, but you know that it's happening in real time so I feel like it's very different. It's different from a video. It feels like you're really like watching something. And so I've always loved those cams anyway, but I think right now they might be something nice to watch because it's something that's non narrative and it is tied to a material experience of time and it's just... I think we have this obsession with like checking on things right now, so it's like something you can check on that's not horrifying. 

Heather Smith: I think at this point like there's nothing more epidemic-related I can check on, period. I feel like once we went into quarantine, it was kind of like there's not a whole lot you can do besides stay still and try not to infect anyone. 

Heather Smith: Right, but you can watch eagles. You can watch eagles. 

Jenny Odell: But you can watch eagles, yeah. (Laugh) 

Heather Smith: Well it's been so great talking with you. Thank you so much and I hope that your COVID level of confinement goes well and that you see many attractive birds. 

Jenny Odell: Thanks and likewise. Stay safe out there. 

(transition music fades in) 

Jason Mark: That was Jenny Odell talking with Sierra Magazine's Heather Smith. The website that Jenny mentioned is explore.org. Jenny's also got a great essay in the current issue of Sierra Magazine. She wrote about EARTHRISE, that iconic photo of the earth rising over the moon's horizon. You can find it in print or online on our website, sierramagazine.org. 

(32:52) The Reverend Lennox Yearwood and Coming to Environmentalism VIA Poverty and Pollution

Jason Mark: The Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. Is a minister, a U.S. Air Force veteran and the president and founder of the Hip Hop Caucus, a political and environmental activist organization. Here, Reverend Yearwood talks about where he's from and how that led him to care about the planet. 

(transition music fades out) 

Reverend Yearwood: So where I come from is from the great State of Louisiana. My parents are both from the Caribbean. And so you combine that, the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean and you have a super environmentalist, and that's me. (laughs) I think when Hurricane Katrina hit, this was my home state and these were my family and friends, particularly in New Orleans and to see what that devastation and destruction could do. 

If there hadn't been a Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana was still called cancer alley because of all the toxins that were there and all the oil refineries and pollution. And so I began to connect those dots to look at how we can fight both poverty and pollution at the same time. Now, it's funny because I'm around a lot of my, my friends who are from Vermont or from Bend, Oregon or whatever or Sonoma County and they have a very different origin story. 

They have the, "Man, I was out in the woods with my dad and I would see the mountain sky," and this and that, which all sounds beautiful. And, man, I was like, "Man, my stories are about pollution and cancer alley and Hurricane Katrina," but, you know, we all come in this together, which is I think also the reason why I've been a proponent for why it's important, not just how we got here, but realizing that people come into this movement differently. 

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Earth Day. And like any 50 year old, you have aches and pains, don't quite move like you used to. And so I think that we should just be mindful of that. We get can get stuck in your ways. The difference clearly in the 20th century where people were fighting primarily for equality, but in the 21st century we are fighting for existence. 

What the coronavirus has shown is what it looks like when you have people who don't believe in science in charge. What it looks like if we don't put things in place now and begin to change our behavior. So if we come out of this and obviously hopefully we will, I actually believe that we're moving into a time where people will listen to us differently. That's why it will be very important for us to make sure that we're not just talking to the same group of people, but we're trying to make sure we talk to everybody. 

I know it's a tough time, but this will be much tougher 20 or 30 years from now if we don't change our behaviors. And so we can't give up hope. We can't fall to despair. We can't lose our vision. We must fight on. I'm hopeful. I'm super hopeful actually. I believe in the power of people and I know that we can do it, but I also know we have no other choice but to do it, and we must succeed. 

(36:32) Take a Moment - Atlantic Ocean

Jason Mark: To close out this episode, we wanted to offer a little something different. (wave sounds fade in) What you're hearing is the Atlantic Ocean on the coast of Maine. This was recorded recently by our producers. Actually right before the State of Maine shut down a bunch of beaches there for fear of overcrowding. For all of you homebound, shelter-in-place folks like me, we wanted to offer you this, as a kind of moment of Zen. So for the next minute just take a breath and listen to the waves at Kettle Cove in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. 

(37:07) - Sounds of gentle waves crashing

 (theme music fades in)

 (38:04) Notes and Thanks

 Jason Mark: The Overstory is produced by Josephine Holtzman and Isaac Kestenbaum at Future Projects Media with help from Danielle Roth. Our theme music is by Jeff Brodsky. This episode was mixed by Merritt Jacob. I want to give a big thank you and shout out to Topher and the whole crew here at the audio studios at the Berkeley J-School and to all of you who are listening out there, just want to tell you to stay safe, stay healthy, keep a distance and take care of each other. I'm Jason Mark, and you're listening to The Overstory.