Hello everyone, I'm here with Shahid Butar who is running against Nancy Pelosi in California's 12th congressional district. He's taking on a political behemoth and he is here to talk about his campaign. Shahid, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, figurino. Yeah, I'm really excited. The minute that I found out there was going to be a challenger to Nancy Pelosi, I got on board immediately.  So I looked over your platform before I went on the air, Medicare for all, you know, ending US militarism. This is a very robust platform. And there's a lot of people running who are progressive around the country. But your campaign is very unique because you're taking on someone that is going to be very, very difficult to unseat. So can you explain why you chose to challenge Nancy Pelosi and why you think you're qualified to defeat her? Why you could be the one who could actually take her out, even if many have ran against her before? Yeah, I appreciate the question. So the simple reason why I'm running against Speaker Pelosi is because she's my representative in Washington. I live in San Francisco. If I'm going to run for Congress, she's the person I would particularly need to take on hand, because frankly, I have spent 20 years as an advocate watching our concerns in the intersectional movement for justice. That is to say the immigrant rights movement, the movement for black lives, the peace and justice movement, the Occupy movement, the movement to relieve student debt, the movement for climate justice. I've watched all of our movements, various concerns fall on, unfortunately, deaf ears in Nancy Pelosi's and being the speaker of the House wielding as much influence as she has and watching her defer to our kleptocrat in chief on issue after issue from impeachment, to fiscal austerity rules, to funding as concentration camps, to supporting as foreign policy. It is frankly intolerable to me. And in 2018, when I ran against Pelosi from the left and got more votes than anyone challenging her from the left in a primary in 10 years, despite entering very late in the cycle against a very crowded field of people who describe themselves as progressive, having achieved that result in three months without media attention in 2018, I'm very confident of at least taking second place in the top two primary in March 2020, which will position me to then challenge Speaker Pelosi in November. And the reason I'm quite confident that we'll win in November 2020 and Speaker Pelosi's career and end the bipartisan consensus on corporate rule. These are stakes much bigger than a single congressional seat. The reason I'm sure we're going to win is because, well, for several reasons. The first, the field is tilting at our favor and the wind is at our back, if only due to generational transition. We've already seen the early tremors of a political earthquake that is only starting to unfold and we haven't yet seen the half of it. Bernie's race in 2016 and the remarkable demonstration that he showed that across the electorate is a deep and broad support, not just for progressive policies, but for socialist policies. I don't describe myself as a progressive, I describe myself as a democratic socialist. And it's because I recognize that not only are education and emergency medical care human rights, but so are housing and food and a meaningful opportunity to compete with everyone else, right? Clean air and water are human rights that we denigrate constantly. So there's a little bit there. My 20-year history of fighting at the vanguard to establish and defend and advance the left is one reason I think I'm going to take this seat in 2020. And finally, as much faith as I have in our campaign, I have a great deal of faith in my neighbors and the people of San Francisco. And I think the people of San Francisco are more committed to our communities than they are to corporations. And because we're running to put people before profit, I think they'll be with us. And this is why I absolutely have faith in you because what you described that you were able to accomplish in 2018 with no media coverage is remarkable. And you also didn't have any indie media coverage. Like a lot of candidates, they'll go on these shows like the Humanist Report and they'll promote their campaigns. But your campaign, I didn't even know that you were running. So the fact that you still did that good with zero media coverage whatsoever, it really shows that you are a force in politics. And if anyone's going to take out Nancy Pelosi, I think we're looking at them right now. So let me ask you this, because this is what I really like about you. We see Nancy Pelosi and she says we're a capitalist party. That's just the way it is. But then you're running unapologetically as a democratic socialist. And I find that so refreshing. So let's say you take out Nancy Pelosi. This is your first year in Congress. There's so many issues. You've listed a number of issues that you know, we need to address immediately. But if you had to prioritize a couple of issues, let's say like two or three, what do you think you'd focus on within that first year? Because if I were a lawmaker, I wouldn't even know where to begin, because there's so much. So just from a personal level, what do you think you would try to focus on? There is indeed so much in your right to raise it. My early priorities would be to dial up oversight. And for instance, if I'm able to get on a committee that would have some jurisdiction over ICE and CBP, the DHS committee, there's a huge need, frankly, to scrutinize the executive branch and its serial ongoing seemingly mounting human rights abuses. With respect to the legislative agenda, I think one area that's very ripe, a bill that we could frankly move very early in the next Congress would be a bipartisan measure to remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act. That's going to have support from Republicans. It's going to have support from Democrats by moving that we're going to both establish a civil rights imperative, which is to say one crucial step forward in dismantling the prison industrial slavery complex. We're going to protect generations of young people and low income people and people of color across the country from being railroaded into pretextual crimes. Here in California, we're lucky enough to have legal access to cannabis. That's not the case in most of the country and it's still a pretext in many parts of the country for people to find themselves sucked into the gaping maw of our criminal and justice system. Another area that I think is important, at least to start the work on, I don't think I'm going to get the bill passed in a first term, but I certainly want to get a bill introduced to introduce 18-year staggered terms for Supreme Court justices. There's a lot of people who are talking increasingly about packing the court and as a constitutional lawyer who's been concerned about the court's politicization since I was in law school in the early 2000s under the Bush administration, I wrote 10 years ago under Obama a proposal for 18-year staggered terms on the Supreme Court to address the court's established political bias. It's pro-corporate bias, for instance. Here's the important part without reintroducing another bias. That's the danger of a court packing plan. A court packing plan might smell nice to progressives for the moment because we've lost the court to fascists, but replacing one bias for another only undermines the independence of the judiciary and the independence of the judiciary is a crux on which liberty rests. I want to make sure that the older, longest-serving justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, aside, but to cycle people off the bench, that would change the incentives in the nominations process. It would diminish the incentives for stealth nominees, for younger nominees. It would allow people to still establish expertise on the bench and allow for new blood to come so that every generation is not beholden to the stale consensus of two generations past. Yeah, and I absolutely love that plan. I've previously advocated for a court packing plan, but as I hear arguments like this, it does sound more appealing because something has to be done. I think a lot of people would agree that we can't just allow the next generation to be dominated by a fascistic pro-corporate court. That's unacceptable. So I do like this plan. I think it's well-reasoned. I think it could be something that would potentially pass. Now, one thing that I really wanted to get your take on was this narrative that you are battling because anytime I post a video about Nancy Pelosi, I just did this week and I talked about the way that she capitulated to Mitch McConnell when it comes to immigration. The pushback that I get is people don't even want to hear the argument. I saw someone on Twitter say, I'm not even willing to hear anyone criticizing Nancy Pelosi.  So how can you say she's not a progressive? So let me ask you this. How do you go against that narrative that is so ingrained in people because people think Nancy Pelosi, she's from San Francisco, she is just by definition a progressive. What do you do to differentiate yourself in this situation? Because I see it, I see how different you are. But how do you get other people to see it? Because this is something that I'm finding really difficult to accomplish. I appreciate the question and you're right. This is one of our central challenges, particularly for low information voters who don't pay that much attention and they only get their news from broadcast network news. And so they see Pelosi cited as the seeming antithesis to Trump. And so they presume that she's acting in opposition. And I share with those people basically information. There's a both a critique of the incumbent and a sort of positive rationale, right, for why my voice is a better one for our district to be represented in Washington. Just to focus on the first, I have to remind people often who don't pay a lot of attention that for better or worse, and I wish that this were not the case, the Speaker of the House has been complicit with our criminal administration in Washington on, for instance, imposing conservative fiscal austerity rules, constraining the progressive majority in the House from pursuing social spending into the deficit to meet the needs of the American people. The Speaker of the House is unfortunately complicit with our criminal administration in Washington by refusing to initiate articles of impeachment. She swore an oath. Every member of Congress swears an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  And for the Speaker of the House, to for two years bang the drum of supposed resistance among her supporters and then fail to show up now that she has the opportunity as the Speaker to pursue executive accountability in my mind is unconscionable. It is disqualifying. It is the abdication of a constitutional responsibility. Moreover, Speaker Pelosi, for better or worse, supports our criminal administration's foreign policy from Venezuela, where he wants to execute a right-wing resource extraction coup, to Palestine, where he supports human rights abuses, right? And the use of our military industrial complex to foment and expand those human rights abuses. This nonsense at the border, the idea that Speaker Pelosi would sign the bill, would stump for the bill to give President Trump billions of dollars to build concentration camps.  That is thin gruel to accept for billions of taxpayer dollars. It's unacceptable. Those are some of the critiques of the incumbent. I could get into her funding Bush's wars and sweeping CIA torture under the rug and being complicit in an era of mass incarceration that's laid waste to communities across the country. But I don't want to beat the donkey that I hope is dead when next year we replace the bipartisan consensus on corporate rule with, instead, a new vision for the Democratic Party that places human rights before profit, that places human rights before the interests of fossil fuel extraction companies, that places human rights before the interests of the military industrial complex, that places human rights before the interests of the pharmaceutical industrial complex and health insurance companies. And ultimately, the reason I present a sharp distinction with the speaker is that some of my earliest political acts were organizing demonstrations to try to stop wars that she was voting to fund. I've done a ton of work creatively as an organizer in the courts trying to seek executive accountability for CIA torture that she facilitated by failing to raise the alarm when she was read into it as the speaker of the house last time a decade ago. A particularly crucial distinction for our districts here in San Francisco were one of the mechas of the LGBTQ communities around the world, frankly. And when I was fresh out of law school as a cis-hetero Muslim lawyer, I was fighting for marriage equality for LGBT couples in the state of New York in 2004. This was almost a decade before Pelosi showed up to even acknowledge the rights of her constituents, my neighbors. And I think the fact that I was fighting in the courts for rights a decade before she even deigned to acknowledge them on the eve, mind you, of a right-wing Supreme Court enshrining those rights for all of us, I think that's a very revealing distinction. And my client at the time, Jason West, who is the mayor of New Paltz, New York, describes those moments as there weren't a lot of people willing to stand with him. And certainly the Democratic Party leadership was not willing to stand with him. Speaker Pelosi did not stand with him. I stood with him and his constituents long before she chose to. And I think that that distinction is revealing to people of the district. And I think that as we make the case over the next year, both for why Speaker Pelosi has been quite disappointing in her supposed resistance and unfortunately effective in her advancement of the Trump administration's policies and also the history I've had of resistance for real, building the last object of the party establishing rights that at some point people long thought were impossible. I've helped make the impossible real before and I'm looking forward to doing it again. Yeah. And everything that you say is completely irrefutable. You don't just make a good case as to why Nancy Pelosi isn't a true progressive or even really that left wing, but you also simultaneously are building this really strong case for yourself as to why you absolutely are the correct representative for that position. Now, one thing I want to ask you is because you lay out this case very articulately and perfectly, I think, do you see people being actually receptive when you talk to them? Like, do you notice cognitive dissonance or are they actually responding well to that? Yeah. The other reason I'm sure I'm going to win the seat in November 2020 is we win any crowd I have a chance to get in front of. And in public outreach, people on the street understand what is happening here. First, a lot of San Franciscans pay a lot of attention and many of them have been long over Speaker Pelosi. I think the complaints about her relative conservatism date back to the Bush administration when she was funding Bush's wars.  She was a gold star mother who had lost a son in Iraq and she ran against Pelosi, raising this issue of Speaker Pelosi's fidelity to the military industrial complex instead of the peace and justice movement for which this city has historically been more known. And while on the one hand, Cindy didn't break through, a lot of people in this district have long been very concerned about Speaker Pelosi's co-optation of our city's voice in Washington. What's kept her in office for 30 years is vast troves of corporate capital and she will still have access to that. But one thing that's very different in 2019 and 2020 that in years before, frankly, is that the electorate is woke. People have grown increasingly alarmed. And while the Trump administration's litany of crimes and serial human rights abuses might be the thing that forced them to wake up, I think in the context of people coming to greater awareness about their own lives and the broader context of our society, the historical arc of justice and whether it's bending in our favor or against us, I think increasingly as people do investigate policy issues, they discover just how unfortunately conservative Speaker Pelosi has been. And as someone who's long but long before running this race, you know, I was dedicated to building the left edge of the movement in some respects, the fact that that I am even running for Congress often surprises me the idea that I am now representing the voice of an entire generation. And I do think millennials being the most progressive generation our republic has ever known. They are solidly behind me. In addition to many boomers and certainly people in my generation who have a critique of the failures of the corporate paradigm that's preceded us, the idea that I am now firmly wearing an entire generation is frankly surprising. When I see Bernie in 2016 touch this nerve across the country, and I'm watching this being like, oh, okay, we're not alone apparently. And then witnessing Representative Ocasio-Cortez in 2018 score a tremendous upset against a very firmly entrenched incumbent. Those things were very hard to overlook and recognizing that the field here in San Francisco that preceded me in 2018 didn't have my depth of history and the movement and expertise across issues from marriage equality to campaign finance reform to privacy in the context of government surveillance to due process in the face of detention, torture, drone strikes, my history of work organizing particularly resistance to profiling by law enforcement authorities at the local and the state level and the federal level. These were a few things that inclined me to jump in. And I think that as I make the case to people here in San Francisco, everyone frankly is very receptive. And I'll be clear about this. If Bernie or Liz Warren are at the top of the ticket in 2020, I win the seat period. I'll have a harder road to climb to the extent one of the centrists are in that slot. But if it is a progressive, if it is a left-wing populist on the ticket in 2020, I'm absolutely confident that with the combined force of that campaign's GOTV operations plus the campaign that we're building now, our ground games are stronger already than it ever got last year. And we still have another, you know, over a year before the general election in November 2020. I have a great deal of confidence that we're going to surprise a lot of people and help continue the generational earthquake that's going to transform our political system over the next five years. That's encouraging. And as you speak, I am a believer. Now, let's fast forward into the future. Let's assume you dethrone Nancy Pelosi. And I mean, that's going to send shockwaves through the entire country. But we can anticipate exactly what's going to happen. I already know that there's going to be a Fox News segment where they say Nancy Pelosi, you know, apparently she's too conservative for the Democrats. And now there's this new guy that's even more liberal. So we already know what the right-wingers and Fox News and right-wing propagandists are going to do. But I think that people within the Democratic Party, they're going to use that example of Fox News against you in order to try to marginalize you within Congress and say, look, this guy is in a representative. So my question is, how do you fight back against the forces within your own party that desperately don't want you to get the message across? They don't want to change the status quo. They want to maintain this capitalistic system where people are exploited and voices aren't represented. How do you push back? Because this is my thing. I don't know how I would respond if one, I need power in Congress because I'm aware of the fact that leadership can strip me of committee appointments. But at the same time, I also need to push back because if I don't, then I'll also be taken advantage of. So how do you respond to the establishment? What do you think is the correct approach? Super thoughtful question. I have a lot of different interests, you know, in addition to politics and music, I DJ, I'm a martial artist as well. That's awesome. In a couple of different martial artists, there are principles, martial arts, I should say, there are principles around deflection and evasion simultaneous with attack. This is one like thing that characterizes Kung Fu or Kapa Ueda. I practice Kapa Ueda and a lot of strikes in Kapa Ueda are also evasions. And all that is to say, just like Judo or Aikido, there are opportunities to use the other sides force and momentum against them. So I want to focus on the first part of your question, which is to say, what happens when Fox News brings me back on again. I've been on Fox News nationally before. In 2005, I was the principal or one of the spokespeople for the counter-inaugural demonstrations that were responding to President Bush's second term. And so I was on Hannity Incombs in January 2005, and I made a fool of Sean Hannity on his own show, particularly because, frankly, if you speak to conservatives, even in the middle of the country and the South, in terms that they can understand, they agree with us, right? The key is not to call it socialism. The key is to call it your right to get your aging parents to a doctor without having to go homeless, getting them there. And there's another piece here. I'm not just a socialist. I'm a democratic socialist. I have a lot of things to say about how the democracy is threatened short of socialism. We have restraints on voting rights and attacks on the franchise. We have a crumbling independence of the judiciary and the capacity to defend individual rights threatened by political majorities. We have rising executive secrecy, impeding the right of the press and the public to understand how our government is using our tax dollars and conducting its business. And we have mounting surveillance that inhibits dissent. So at least among four different dimensions, our democracy is being attacked by a bipartisan consensus. And emphasizing those issues, that is very appealing, particularly to the libertarian wing of the right wing. So Trumpies come in a lot of different flavors, and a lot of them are simply iconic lasts who understand that they're being fleeced and bought a bunch of snake oil. So if you go in there speaking the truth, you can speak to their very legitimate concerns about how the bipartisan consensus to put Wall Street before Main Street for the last generation has led to all of us not only being fleeced, but raced off of either or both of two cliffs, either climate catastrophe on the one hand or rising fascism attempting to consolidate itself on the other. I think many people on the right end of the spectrum share those concerns. So I just want to push back and say, I think I can co-opt some of those fora that we would expect otherwise to demagogue people like me. And we've seen that happen before. Bernie, Ocasio-Cortez, they've been very effective co-opting those right wing fora. I mean, frankly, I think the reason that AOC is known today by an acronym is because for six months before they figured out that she's an unassailable target, the right wing made her a viral sensation. They went after her on every news cycle. And it just turns out that their base was with her. And all Americans are with her, frankly. I mean, she is the future. We, democratic socialists, are the future. And we're just waiting for the rest of the political system to figure it out. And I think as we make the case and we present to voters the choice between, do you want your aging parents or your kids to be able to get to a doctor without you having to risk bankruptcy? Do you think that human beings should have a right to housing and food? Or would you rather squander those resources on missiles and nuclear weapons programs and fighter planes that don't even meet the security needs of our country's future? Right? Wasteful, fraudulent corporate boondoggles that leave your own children impoverished. Do you want a viable future for our species on this planet or not? I think these are questions that when presented in sharp terms that recognize the complicity of corporate Democrats that we can speak to the populace on both sides of the spectrum. One key here, and I do want to make this explicit, is I am both more partisan, pardon me, more progressive and less partisan than Pelosi. In other words, the attempt to defend Democrats is part of the reason why we've seen the country slide to the right. If we articulate bold principles that our own state most treasured values, the inclusion of the tired poor huddled masses yearning to be free, the peace, equality, liberty, values that we're all taught to believe in if we boldly defend those values, especially in a time of crisis like the one we live in now, I think we will pull Americans with us. And I take very seriously both the responsibility and the opportunity as an immigrant to remind other Americans what makes our country great and has made our country great. And it's not the promises of a tyrant in the White House. It is the inclusion of people from all over the world. It is these principles. That's what makes America great. And I'm very excited to breathe new life into them and to defend them, you know, not just as an advocate in our communities, but in Congress as well. I don't think you're going to have anyone who watches this who's a regular viewer, not going to be convinced. So tell us what we can do if we want to support you because I'm assuming a lot of people are very excited. And they want to help you get Nancy Pelosi out not just because we want to defeat Nancy Pelosi, but we want to elect you because you've got a plan for everything in the true sense, you know, not in the not in the false sense. So what can we do to support you? Where can we go? And how can we support your campaign if we don't live in that district in California? Appreciate the question. So you can visit us online at www.shawhid4change.us. That's S-H-A-H-I-D-F-O-R-C-H-A-N-G-E. U.S. You can make a donation there. Campaign contributions help level the playing field. I am confronting the most prolific fundraiser in Congress. And so I certainly have a hard target and any support would be really helpful. We have 1,400 supporters from around the country. It's a very humbling experience to see so many people pitching in to enable this campaign. And so you'll be in very good company. Folks can also sign up to volunteer. That can include if you're in the Bay Area any number of opportunities to join us in street outreach, dropping lit, canvassing. And even if you're not in the Bay Area, there are also any number of volunteer opportunities from data entry. There's a whole set of research opportunities. We have social media teams that are supporting us. So if you're inspired by what you're hearing and you want to help end the bipartisan consensus on corporate rule, we'd welcome you to reach us at www.shawhid4change.us or on any of the major social media platforms, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at www.shawhid4change. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the program, Shahid. I will be watching very closely because I've got a really good feeling about you. And I think a lot of other people do as well. I think now is going to be the time that, you know, we get someone in that position in that district who is actually going to truly represent the people, not just there, but across the country because, you know, this point that I like to make is even if you don't live in that particular district, if Shahid won't be your representative per se, what he does will affect you because Ilhan Omar, she just co-sponsored or she sponsored actually a bill that would cancel all student loan debt, Pramila Jayapal in Washington. She sponsored Medicare for All. These are things that affect all of us. So it's not just about that one district. This is a national movement and if you could participate in any way, chip in a buck or two, you are helping the cause. So Shahid, thank you so much. We will be following very closely. You're very kind. Thanks so much for having me on. I'll leave no stone unturned and I hope to talk to you again soon. Absolutely. Absolutely.


Guys, look at this insane toy. It is so heavy. Look at it. Oh my god. George! Hello, my fellow Snifers. Can I do my own intro? Thank you so much. Hello, my fellow Snifers, flighters and hatchlings. My name is Marlene McCohen. I have my own audience here. It's very exciting. This is George, Jersey, and Mandy for those of you who are new to the channel. Today we're going to do something fun. As you see in the title, we're going to give Rocky his new toy, which I needed George to do. But first, I've done a few small renovations on the room and I found something. I found something really exciting. I already looked at it, by the way, and it's from Australia. I didn't go inside. Wait, you looked at what? I looked at who it came from. OK, but you didn't look at what? I didn't go inside. I was keeping that. OK. But the thing is, it actually came all the way from Australia. That's really awesome. That's actually good to have you reminding me that. OK, so here's the thing, guys. Before we give Rocky his toy, and Rocky, for those of you who are new to the channel or don't know even why you're here, or this was suggested to you by YouTube, we are a channel about parrots and we promote Engage Not Cage, which means engaging with playing with and living with your birds as family. But I got something sent to me from Australia that's been behind my couch for way too long. This could have been behind here over a year. No, guys, I'm serious. I felt like it only deserved to be open on camera, and I just never had the right time because I wanted to summarize the audience. Oh, she never really brought it up to me. Oh, sometimes I need to. So wait, was it the mirror that got that to go up? Because she's been to the mirror for, I don't know, a year and a half? No, OK, a year and a half. No, George, there's a mirror here. George is not hung it up. He's supposed to hang stuff up for me. Same with my YouTube plaque. Plaque, he didn't hang up. Yeah, it's fine there. But anyway, I've been waiting three years for my mirror to be hung up. So then I said, while you're hanging things, let's open this up and see. But I really want your reaction on camera. And Mandy's here specifically too, you'll find out why. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm ready. Well, be very careful. It's fragile. You can't cut the thing. Why is it so light though? It's light, I don't know. Jersey's interested in what's going to be in here. Can I peek? No, don't peek. Just open it like one big opening. You can't do just one big opening. It's just cut all the sides, George. Don't look at it. Oh, star boats. Is this it? I guess so. I don't want to see it until it's. Yeah, yeah, at least someone won't see it because he's going to get peeked and all that. By the way, guys, this is from Kirstie Jones. George is doing the long, slow, the real. It's building hype though. Like, I'm getting excited because it's bright. I'm going to go a little slower then. No, please don't. Let's not go any slower, George. Is there more blue? Oh my God. George. I think I'm going to take a break to get some new drink. My God, George. Like, I could have done this faster with a cup. I think I need a coffee or something. No, I have coffee. I'm opening this. Jersey's waiting to see what it is. I'm almost there. All right. OK. What does the letter say? So this is a pet portrait and wildlife. No, don't read it. Don't read it. Just open the thing first. This is it. This is it. Starbucks is into the bubble wrap now. Oh my God. Show us. Wait, show me. Oh my God. Oh, wow. Can I see it now? Oh, wow. Oh my God, she did an amazing job. I can see it. Wow. Makes me want it now to do the same thing. Now this lady's a pro. She made it for me, and I saw the it on Instagram. I said I am in love with that, and she said he want me to send him a cake to have her send me this. I had to have it. Oh my God. Wow, Jersey. Can you see that? He captured your essence, baby. That's you. That's you. Look how beautiful you are. Isn't it stunning? Perfect. Unbelievable sight. This is great. Jersey, that's you. It's a great job. It's beautiful. I want it. Mandy's in here because she's like literally in love. In love with Jersey. If I die, she gets Jersey. She's in the will. If we both die. Yeah. Whoa. No, that wasn't the perfect. Sorry, girl. She's still mine, you know? Jersey's my baby. They're all here. You can come live with me. They're going to be alive. We'll talk about it. Guys, I'm afraid you're both going to shoot me. Oh my God. Stunning. It is. It's unbelievable, no? Kirstie, you made it a masterpiece here. You did an amazing job. OK, Rocky, do you want a new exciting toy? Let's get Rocky his toy and see what happens. Guys, look at this insane toy. It is so heavy. Look at it. Oh my God. George. How heavy do you think it is? I think it's 10 pounds. I think it's 10 pounds, too. Right? Lollie, you ready? Oh my God. I'm used to workout. Yeah, you got to even it out on both arms. Let's see what Rocky's going to do. He likes it better if George is involved. George, are you ready? Catch. It's humongous. It's huge, right? How heavy do you think that is? We think we should roll it. We're guessing it's 10 pounds. 10 pounds? Is this actually good pounds? 4 pounds. No, that's embarrassing. I think it was in KG. No, I just changed it from KG to pounds. OK, put it back down. 4 pounds and 1 ounce.  It's just 5 pounds. It's not 5 pounds, but it's 4 pounds. It's pretty heavy.  It's the shape of it. If you think about it, if you think about it, it's like, you lift 5 pounds on each hand, it's 10 pounds, and you probably fail at that. Where's he going? He's already coming over to you. Yeah, I like this, buddy. Here he comes. I like the blue piece. How long do you think it's going to last? Hour. You think that's going to last an hour? Maybe. No, it's like a 4 pound wood toy right here.  He's already ready for that. Maybe over the nighttime, we'll have this in his cage, and he'll be like, he likes these pieces, though. For those of you who are new here, Rocky was locked up in a cage for about 10 years. We just love giving him cool, fun presents to play with. He does love wood. This is like a 4 by 4, by the way. Not anymore. Do you like that, baby? Do you know your baby? Proud bird. Is it happy? Are you happy?  Enjoy this video of the Pick Me Marlene bird. I love showcasing your birds, because I feel like they all deserve to be noticed so people could see how amazing birds are. And if you did use that hashtag, that is essentially a submission to me so that I can put it here on this channel. Remember that, guys. I love you guys so much. Bye. By the way, don't forget if you guys are looking for an amazing bird food brand for your bird that is healthy, organic, and not full of food colorings and sugar and peanut smash, check out Marlene's signature blend. I did this along with Top's Parrot Food. I encourage you guys to check out my Feathered Fun Box. It's a passion project. It's a subscription box that comes with parrot toys for your bird and also special merch. Kind of like my dream box. Honestly, I put so much into it. I love that there's something like this for birds out in the world. That's why I created it, www.featheredfunbox.com. I love you guys so, so much. Thank you for listening.


I hesitate to go too much into data about how much carbon can be stored through regenerative practices, holistic grazing. These numbers can be helpful to give permission to the inner beam counter that wants to do these things anyway. To fit it, yeah, thank you, to fit it into the language of policy which prides itself so much on being scientific. What do we really mean by scientific? We mean quantitative reasoning, doing things by the numbers. And that has its place. But to paraphrase Einstein in his over quoted saying, we cannot solve the problems that face us today from the same level of thinking that created them. So to extend quantitative reasoning, to extend financial incentives to a new level isn't going to bring us to the place of love that we need to occupy to really do what we need to do. Not necessarily to save the planet, not because bad things are gonna happen to us, but because we love this place. What if we could, what if we could, through geoengineering, through carbon sucking machines, through algae pools to make oxygen, bleaching the sky with sulfur aerosols, what if we could endlessly engineer our way out of each crisis and end up on a concrete world where all human beings still survive and in fact have rising incomes and every measure and are better off by every measure? What if we could achieve that at the expense of all the rest of life on earth? Would we want to do that? This is the transition that's upon us into a different set of values, a different set of motivations. One thing I've learned in my research for this book is that the things that we've ignored are a lot more important than we've given them credit for. That we tend to emphasize the things that fit easily into our existing ways of thinking. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So what we're good at is reducing numbers. That's the, or working with numbers, increasing numbers, reducing numbers, thinking in terms of return on investment, payback periods, things like that. That's familiar territory, that's financial thinking. So it's not too hard to transplant financial thinking onto environmental thinking and say that this global problem, it's a matter of getting certain numbers down, not into coming into intimate relationship, reestablishing intimate relationship to place, to life, to rivers, to mountains, to forests, to farms. Reestablishing intimate relationship is kind of the opposite direction of improving and extending our metrics. So for example, so in the car ride over, Matthew was talking about the weird weather that New Zealand has been having. The really long summer this year, the almost non-existent summer last year, and how this, like nowadays we have, when it comes to any kind of climate weirdness, weather weirdness, we have the go-to explanation. Well, it's because of global warming. It's because of global climate change. Whether or not that's true, it obscures local reasons that are much more tangible that we might actually have a lot more power to do something about. Because if it's a global thing, then the only thing, like nothing you do is gonna matter very much. And at best we can vote for the right people, empower the right bureaucrats, and give, and especially if it's urgent, give more power to the centralized institutions that have the wherewithal to deploy resources quickly. But when we understand, and this is one thing that I was coming to in my research, when we understand the importance of the hydrological cycle, the water cycle in maintaining the stability of weather, of climate on a local, regional, and even global level, then we are no longer so disempowered. But you're familiar with the idea that we're entering a time of more drought and more flooding at the same time, and how this is caused by climate change. Well, there's another understanding of the causes of this that has to do with the water cycle that basically says, look, when you cut down the trees, when you de-forced the land, when you plow up the soil, then instead of the water soaking in to the ground, replenishing the water table, and then through evapotranspiration generating moisture, generating clouds that maintains regular rainfall, instead the water runs off into the ocean, you get flooding, you get topsoil erosion, you get much less penetration into the groundwater, you don't have the trees transpiring water all the time, maintaining humidity, so you get longer droughts. And I'm not gonna get, I don't think I wanna go too much into the science of this, but long story short, some of the things that we would like to blame global climate change for are actually local and their origin and can be mitigated or reversed when we devote care and attention and energy and healing toward these local beings, toward the rivers. Like how do you maintain a healthy river? You have to have healthy land, you have to have healthy forests. Rivers are not supposed to be fed by runoff, they're supposed to be fed by water sinking into the ground and then coming up sometimes decades later as springs. That's the full water cycle. So, and that's why when in places where they are practicing regenerative practices, springs that have been dry for 10 or 20 or 50 years come back to life. Streams that were seasonal for generations become year round streams again. The question then, and this is the basic question of regenerative agriculture, but it's also what we come to through the lens of seeing nature as actual beings worthy of love, worthy of respect. What we come to is how can I serve you? How can I serve the soil? How can I serve the water? How can I be part of the collective thriving of beings that include not just human beings but also the beings of nature? And this is not to sacrifice human welfare and to become a eco-nazi and say, well, humans aren't important. In fact, maybe they're a pest and the earth will be better off without us. This is to say that human beings like all beings have a gift to give to the well-being of the totality. That it's an understanding of, it's the ecological understanding that no species is superfluous. That a new species comes into being when there is an evolutionary need for that species. It's as if it were called into existence by the needs of the environment. And this sounds kind of anti-Drawinian, but really what it is, it's a Lamarckian understanding that, I'm not gonna go there even. I'm just gonna say that human beings are no exception to this. So it's not that we're a scourge on the planet, even though it is looked that way. The question is, what is the next evolutionary step of which we are apart? How can we serve that? How do we even know that? Like, that's not even a question that we've been asking. We, the dominant culture, we've not been asking that. One thing I appreciate about what Matthew said yesterday morning, and I might be paraphrasing a bit here, but he said, let's be a little careful about jumping too quickly to the answer, too quickly to the solution because so often the answers that we come up with reflexively encode the same biases and assumptions that the problems come from. Maybe we gotta pause for a second here, pause and listen. And I would go even further to say not only do we not know the right answers, but we don't necessarily even know the right questions. This is the humility that our converging crises have brought us to. I'm not sure if we're there yet, but I'm seeing signs of it, especially in my country where that kind of gung-ho, we can do it, we can solve everything. Technology's gonna solve all of our problems. The world's gonna get better and better. We're gonna engineer a perfect society through material technology, through social engineering, political science, et cetera, et cetera. Like, we're gonna solve this thing. Like, that confidence is unraveling. That's one reason why we are so interested in the ways and perceptions of the indigenous. They're not like, yeah, some of it is like an identity piece and they become a fetish object and et cetera, et cetera, a cultural appropriation, but there's also a humility there that's like, wow, we don't know after all. Maybe you know. Or maybe you know something. Maybe you've remembered something. Maybe you can feed a thread of knowledge into the tapestry of how are we meant to live on this planet. Yeah. So the first step then is to listen. To answer that question, how can I serve the land and what is the next evolutionary step? The first step to do that, to find that, even to ask those questions, starts with listening. And listening doesn't mean like some new age spiritual state where I'm going to channel the beings of the land. I mean, it might include that actually, but it also includes what we call science. It includes careful observation. It includes the knowledge that farmers and ranchers gain if they're paying attention through long connection to a piece of land. It includes the knowledge held by communities, excuse me, held by lineages, that's been passed down by the ancestors through stories. Grandpa remembers when things were like this. Like to recover connection to land, it requires rebuilding a culture. The right relationship to place only happens collectively. One person living on the land can gain part of that knowledge, but not the same way that a culture can, not the same way that a lineage can, not the same way that a community can. That means that, so okay, so let me draw the logic here. The logic that I haven't pretended to rigorously establish it, but the logic is that planetary health, global health, depends on the health of the local. That cutting emissions is not enough.  It is a living being. And when we destroy these ecosystems, we are destroying the organs and tissues of Gaia because it is a living being.  But no, we're destroying, so okay. So the health of the global depends on the health of the local. The health of the local depends on our ability to serve its health, to live in a way that is aligned with its health, with its thriving, with its regeneration, with its renewal because it's so damaged today. And that requires social health and cultural health. And there then is a link between what we might call climate activism and social activism, political activism, social entrepreneurship. All of these realms of healing contain each other. And that's why when you hear about like yesterday, one of the fellows was presenting about her social enterprise that brings intellectually disabled people into meaningful employment and into society and into community. The climate puritan would say, well, that's all very nice. But you're wasting your time because when the sea levels rise 50 feet, there aren't gonna be any jobs. Let's do that social stuff later and take care of the urgent problem first. Now that thinking is called fundamentalism. And I would call it climate fundamentalism. That thinking is war thinking that says everything must be sacrificed to the one important thing. That's fundamentalism. And it ignores the interconnected nature of all things. It ignores that we ourselves are among the organs of a living planet. And that's why you recognize that woman as an ally. Even if your cause is, I don't know, saving the whales or your cause is protecting the rivers, restoring New Zealand's rivers to purity or your cause is regenerating the soil or changing the criminal punishment system. We recognize you as an ally because all of this work is necessary.  And I guess if I was gonna make that bridge, I'd say give a bit more attention to the health of the land. And I know this is part of it already, but even more, like how do you transition to a holistic regenerative agricultural system from where we are right now? How do we bring politically conservative farmers and ranchers on board?  They should be allies too. How can you, how can you narrate this endeavor that we really are all in together in a way that doesn't alienate them right away? That respects where they are, that respects that they're up to their ears in debt, that they're trapped in a commodity agricultural system. How do you make that transition? Knowing that maybe the word subsidy is politically poisonous. So maybe you're starting to talk about transition grants that say, yeah, we're gonna help you repair your relationship to the land because we know you love the land and we know that you're probably, right now, the person best equipped to serve that land, you know what this land needs, we're gonna help you do it. Because it's in the interest of the nation and it's in the interest of the planet for us to have healthy watersheds, healthy farms, healthy forests. So maybe that kind of narrative would be a step to the enactment of what we are becoming conscious of, which is that we are not alone on this planet. We are not the only sentient conscious beings here, but we are among our brothers. And that our role here is to give to the evolution and wellbeing of the whole from the gifts that have been given to us. And I'll, and I have like a minute here left. So I'll say, maybe I'll just end with the question that is, that often comes up, well, what should I do? When we understand that social healing, relational healing, personal healing, ecological healing, climate healing are all part of the same healing, then the scope of our allowable activism broadens. And we allow ourselves to lose our lives and to listen to the communication of the world to ourselves about what is needed. What am I called to do? What is mine right now to do? The mind may not be able to say how this will bring down CO2 numbers, to house homeless people. How is that gonna bring down CO2 numbers? But we don't need to listen to that. We can trust that what is called by our care as our informational horizons expand, it's not about ignoring what the science is telling us. But we can trust that as our informational horizons expand and as we listen, that our care will call us to the right action. Even if it doesn't obviously bring down the numbers, even if it doesn't obviously scale up or go viral. But we can trust that just like humanity and just like every other species, we ourselves are brought into being with a gift. Yeah, I would say that that is where the initiatory ordeal of climate change is taking us. Yeah, thank you for your attention.