Indigenous Voices on Turtle Island
In a jam-packed program full of abundant insight, Ralph first welcomes back Dahr Jamail to discuss his work “We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth” about what we can learn from indigenous people who have survived incredible disruptions to the climate to their families and to their way of life. Then Karen Friedman from the Pension Rights Center gives us an update on how they are fighting to save our hard-earned money. And finally, Cal Berkeley grad students, Sandra Oseguera and Jesus Gutierrez explain the university’s “inverted priorities” as it spends millions of dollars on football coaches’ salaries and real estate while shutting down campus libraries.
Dahr Jamail is the author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, as well as The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption. He is co-editor (with Stan Rushworth) of We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth.
One of the themes of the book is the difference between the Western settler-colonialist mindset of: What are my rights? I have my rights. Versus a more Indigenous perspective that we came across time and again in the book of: We have two primary obligations that we are born into. One is the obligation to serve and be a good steward of the planet. The other obligation is to serve future generations of all species. So, if I focus on my obligations, it’s very very clear that I have plenty of work to do in service to those. If I focus only on my rights, I’m going to be chronically frustrated.
Dahr Jamail, editor of We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth
Karen Friedman is the Executive Director of the Pension Rights Center. She develops solutions and implements strategies to protect and promote the rights of consumers, and for more than 20 years has represented their interests in the media and before congressional committees.
Social Security is the strongest system we have. While opponents of Social Security have tried to undermine confidence in its future, the truth is that Social Security is one of the most universal, efficient, secure, and fair sources of retirement income…It’s not going broke, folks. It's a great system. That’s all propaganda, meant to scare the bejesus out of you.
Karen Friedman
Sandra Oseguera and Jesús Gutierrez are graduate students in the Anthropology department at The University of California, Berkeley. Last month, campus administration announced their plan to close the Anthropology Library, one of only three dedicated Anthropology libraries in the US. In response, stakeholders including students and faculty have organized to demand that the Anthropology Library be protected and fully supported by the University.
[Fighting to save the library] has been a wonderful experience of community and collaboration among many stakeholders. However, we the grad students see ourselves as the keepers and also the main users of [the Anthropology Library’s] collection because all of our research really relies on the resources that are there.
Sandra Oseguera
The library is a really valuable space. It’s not only a space for simply going in and accessing a book. It’s also a space of encounter. The kind of thing that the University is trying to destroy is essentially this possibility for having a happenstance run-in with a book that you may not necessarily have intended to type into the catalog system or with a person who you may not otherwise run into.
Jesús Gutierrez
The situation at Berkeley has become grotesquely inverted, in terms of the University. They have millions for football and other sports and paying coaches huge salaries. They have millions for administrative officials. But they want to shut down one of the great Anthropology libraries in the Western World.
Ralph Nader
In Case You Haven’t Heard
1. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that six former Phillies players have died of the same brain cancer. All six played between 1971 and 2003. The paper obtained samples of the astroturf used between 1977 and 1981, and found 16 different types of PFAS, otherwise known as “forever chemicals.” Researchers only discovered that PFAs were present in artificial turf in 2019, so it is unknown whether these chemicals are linked to this cancer cluster.
2. Reps. Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan, both outspoken progressives, have introduced the “People Over Pentagon Act” which would cut $100 billion dollars from the defense budget. The Biden administration requested $813.3 billion in Pentagon funding in 2022. This bill would redirect these funds to healthcare, education, combating the climate crisis, and more. Public Citizen is fighting hard to advance this legislation.
3. The Hill reports a bipartisan group of Senators have introduced a bill to lift the embargo on Cuba. This “gang” is primarily made up of Senators representing states with large agricultural sectors, including Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Jerry Moran of Kansas, among others. Senator Moran is quoted saying “the unilateral trade embargo on Cuba blocks our own farmers, ranchers and manufacturers from selling into a market only 90 miles from our shoreline, while foreign competitors benefit at our expense.”
4. Breaking news from the Intercept: Today, Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz is bringing to the floor a War Powers resolution requiring US troops to withdraw from Syria within 180 days. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is urging a “yes” vote on the resolution. This comes on the heels of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announcing that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has reached an agreement to move forward with the repeal of the Iraq War Authorization of the Use of Military Force, or AUMF. It remains to be seen whether the Republican-controlled House will reach a similar agreement.
5. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, has opened an investigation into Tesla’s Model Y SUV after receiving complaints of steering wheels flying off while the vehicles were being driven. This probe will cover an estimated 120,000 vehicles from the 2023 model year, via AP.
6. From the Intercept: A new, proposed FDA rule would mandate that foods labeled “healthy” contain a major food group – dairy, fruits, or whole grains – and must be under certain limits on saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars. In response, General Mills, Kellogg’s, and Post Consumer Brands – which
collectively produce almost all cereal on the market – are bitterly lobbying against this rule.
7. In Israel, a video shows former Knesset speaker Avrum Burg – who has endorsed full equality for Palestinians – being roughed up by IDF soldiers for protesting against what he calls the “pogrom” in Huwarra. Huwarra has become a flash-point in Israeli politics. The New Arab reports Israeli Finance
Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the village to be “wiped out” before retracting that statement under immense pressure.
8. From the Washington Post: Child labor violations are up 69% since 2018. This surge is driven in part by an increase in children working hazardous jobs like meatpacking.
Indigenous Voices on Turtle Island
The situation at UC-Berkeley is an interesting one. Mr. Nader is absolutely correct when he essentially says that college athletics does not generate profit for universities and their academic programs. The media likes to talk about the large revenue generated from television contracts and such with the implication that this is highly profitable for universities, but revenue is simply revenue. The money brought in by athletics goes right back into trying to maintain/expand the success of the sporting teams. Those who donate to the athletics program demand results and the arms race nature of big-time college athletics means that schools need to combine athletics donations with general funds/student funds to try to find success in athletics. Creative bookkeeping might lead to PR stunts such as the athletics department donating a million dollars to the library, but that is after the athletics department took many millions from general funds which could have gone to the library directly.
Now, I can’t say the situation discussed on the show is caused by a greedy athletics department. That will need further analysis, but I will say that a seminal book about higher education was written by a Berkeley graduate and former instructor at Berkeley and Indiana University, Murray Sperber. Sperber wrote the popular book published in 2000, ‘Beer & Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education’. This book gained a lot of attention when it came out and C-SPAN has an archived ‘Booknotes’ episode online from 2000 where Sperber goes into detail about the book: https://www.c-span.org/video/?160240-1/beer-circus-big-time-college-sports
While the book might seem like a book about sports culture, it’s really a book about the changing nature of higher education at big public institutions such as Indiana University and UC-Berkeley. Sperber describes a mentality where faculty desire to focus on their research while students desire to maximize fun. Thus, faculty and students form an informal pact where schools allow, and encourage, a party-like atmosphere as long as the students do not expect too much from the faculty. The faculty, in turn, does not expect too much from the students.
Sperber’s book focuses on undergraduate students, but I think some of this mentality applies to graduate students as well even if graduate students are not focused on partying. Universities are producing far more Ph.D. graduates than there are academic positions and one can argue that universities are using the large supply of graduate students as highly skilled research and teaching assistants rather than treating graduate students as the future of the institution. With that in mind, it isn’t a surprise that a school like Berkeley would cut the academic support used by graduate students. Graduate students are there to do as they are told and not question the system. Profitable professional school programs which are cheap to operate, such as business schools, are favored over costly arts & sciences programs...especially ones which don’t bring in as much research prestige and funding. Anthropology might fit that description.
Field-specific librarians are a valuable resource as discussed by the two graduate students. Furthermore, having physical books frees the libraries from unscrupulous book publishers and eBook database providers who seemingly keep increasing prices for electronic resources while continuing to further limit digital rights on those resources. Like with streaming services, content comes and goes from databases. This isn’t a problem if a library has the physical books in their collection. So, yes, I think the students are right to fight to save their library and I commend them for risking the reputation of being rebels given the aforementioned issue of there being more Ph.D. graduates than academic positions.
Presumably, Hannah graduated from UC-Berkeley somewhat recently. Perhaps she should read Sperber’s ‘Beer & Circus’ book and see if it describes students from her generation at Berkeley and at other schools. Sperber was at Indiana University at the time he wrote that book so that is probably his greatest frame of reference for the book, but I suspect Hannah will find a lot in common with what was written in 2000. Who knows, maybe Sperber would be a good guest on the RNRH.
Regarding the discussion of Social Security, and government spending more broadly, has Mr. Nader and the RNRH hosts read economist Randy Wray’s testimony in front of the House Budget Committee on November 20, 2019? Link: https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/tst_11-20-19.pdf
Perhaps Mr. Nader has read Wray’s 2018 book from the Princeton University Press, ‘Why Minsky Matters’, about the economist Hyman Minsky?
Anyway, I know there is an aversion towards economics around this part, but the House Budget Committee is an important read as, if nothing else, it is geared towards members of Congress and so it isn’t a dense theoretical read. This is testimony about the practical impact of informed economic research. Any discussion of Social Security, healthcare reform, demilitarization, a move away from fossil fuels, greater funding of education, full employment, and so forth should start with this economic knowledge.
I don’t know if the RNRH staff has my e-mail address, but I am offering to volunteer to help the RNRH staff develop meaningful questions to ask potential economics guests which will be of practical interest to the listeners. I can’t say I’m expecting to hear anything about this, but I feel the least I can do is to offer my behind the scenes assistance. I recognize that knowing enough to even have a meaningful conversation with an esteemed guest can be a big challenge, but I believe I can help the staff overcome these issues.
The maximum taxable earnings for contributions to Social Security (12.4% of earned income) grew by $41,700 from 2015 to 2023, which is now $160,200. If it's based on earned income, the employee contribution is half, or 6.2%. (Profit is unearned income.) The increases since 2015 are inadequate, yet doubling the increase will not touch the 1%. Taxing wealth must be a part of the solution.
Social Security and Medicare are targeted because they work better than the free market.
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