17 May
Researchers also determined that the cuts would provide more than $600 billion a year in health benefits in the United States.
18 species whose populations may be in trouble will get a review for threatened or endangered status from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).
So you want to contribute to a mass tree planting campaign to combat climate change. Where can your money do the most good?
Over the years, we have had countless conversations about our shared research, the field of environmental health, ethical science, the lack of diversity in our field, and how to become successful environmental health and justice researchers.
These last two points have been particularly salient as early-career researchers. Success as a researcher can be elusive — and job security is not a guarantee. We have seen faculty and students leave or be pushed out. We are speculating about the reasons for these departures, but we believe that some may be due to inadequate financial, social, and emotional support by institutions and individuals. Most of these individuals were people of color or from other systematically marginalized groups.
And many don’t even get a chance. Marginalized racial and ethnic groups are underrepresented in academia. While Black and Latino people represent 13% and 18% of the U.S. population, respectively, only 6% of professors in the U.S. are from these groups.
Research also shows biases in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — the main federal funding agency for academic health researchers — specifically for Black people. These differences are in part explained by the topic areas that researchers propose to study. Notably, Black researchers are more likely to propose studies that examine health disparities and studies that develop ways to prevent those disparities by collaborating with community groups, which in turn have historically received the least amount of funding.
Recently, there has been a groundswell of interest in addressing health disparities and working toward health equity, including in environmental health sciences. We hope it translates into improved health for marginalized groups and leads to more faculty representing those groups succeeding as researchers. We wanted to learn from Black and Latina researchers who are part of this positive trend and have achieved national stature for their work in environmental health disparities as well as developing interventions toward health equity.
We posed four questions to Dr. Paloma Beamer (Professor at the University of Arizona), Dr. Christina H. Fuller (Associate Professor at Georgia State University), and Dr. Chandra Jackson (Earl Stadtman Investigator in the Intramural Research Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences).
We hope you will learn as much from them as we did. Responses are lightly edited for brevity.
There was a time in my career that I started to believe it was impossible to get grants funded. I remember a colleague telling me that I should consider changing my focus area so that I could get more funding, especially from industry, like him. I ended up developing a line of research looking at the intersection of environmental and social determinants of health in development of asthma in a 40-year-old birth cohort. I was able to develop a team of mentors that really taught me how to write grants, conduct epidemiological analyses, and critically think in a whole new way. This cross-training is what allowed me to be more successful in writing NIH grants.
When funding is slim or none, I’ve forged ahead and done research without it. Even with funding, there is a significant amount of relationship building and investment in community dialogue that must be established beforehand. This work is almost never funded but is integral to ensuring benefit for the communities involved. Then I have been able to leverage these relationships for future proposals.
I am an investigator within the intramural program at National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and consequently do not need to apply for grants to support my salary and research program. I, however, would seek to add value to and collaborate with more senior, well-funded investigators who conduct research of interest to me. This also presents an opportunity to sharpen grant-writing skills while the structural barriers to accessing funding are being addressed.
I believe wholeheartedly that this is a necessary step toward achieving environmental justice and health equity. How many more mice need to die before we know that arsenic is bad for you? We need more funding for solutions that address the root cause of the health effects of arsenic. I would like to see more opportunities for community engagement to design interventions to address environmental exposures without having to extend the research to health outcomes, especially for contaminants whose toxicity is well characterized.
I definitely agree and advocate for this shift. Research in this arena must be grounded in and with people. A great deal of knowledge is already held by those in the community. The researchers do not necessarily discover new information, but instead can reveal and clarify data and associations for a new audience and with a defined purpose.
I certainly support this shift because new knowledge can be generated in a variety of traditional and non-traditional ways. We need research that can be integrated along the entire translational spectrum — from basic science to global population health. So, everyone has a role, and technological advancements have made the integration of various scientific disciplines possible. Community engagement through citizen science approaches, for instance, are essential.
I did have one person tell me I should work on my accent. |
I was once told that I should not pursue community-engagement in my work, because it would cause my research to be biased. This assumes that other frameworks for research are completely unbiased, which is not necessarily true.
I was advised to not interview for a particular position since I had already received an offer from what was perceived as a more prestigious institution. Prestige, however, does not automatically equate to tangible benefits, and I think a person should select an institution that can provide the most material and social support to meet the person’s needs or goals.
One of the best pieces of advice from one of my first mentors as an assistant professor was to never to agree to anything without saying, “Let me check with my mentor.” While, as I got more experienced, I didn’t always check with my mentor, I learned that it gave me some time to think about the request and if it would benefit my career or the work I’m passionate about. I would tell early career researchers to get a mentor (or a few of them), to focus your time on things that advance your career and the communities you care about.
My advice is to not be deterred by nay-sayers or attacks on the validity of your research simply due to its topic or inclusiveness. Focus on elevating research around your interests by utilizing the scientific and lay tools that you have learned as a researcher and a human being.
I would like to share the following advice: (1) Remain authentic. (2) Define professional and personal success for yourself, and do not rely on society’s definition. (3) Establish a team of mentors who are succeeding in a manner that aligns with your own definition of success along with values. (4) Establish healthy boundaries early and take care of yourself since you cannot “pour from an empty cup.” (5) Be prepared to and get comfortable with speaking up. Marginalized individuals and groups tend to “shrink” or assume their contributions are less significant, but unique backgrounds and experiences fuel innovation and are inherently, as well as demonstrably, valuable.
We feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from these three leaders.
We leave you with three of our takeaways.
Our experiences, and those of many others, in academia have been full of scrutiny and failure. Standards for success are high—getting promoted or tenure requires being the absolute best in your field. It’s no wonder that many junior researchers are plagued by imposter syndrome.
Dr. Jackson tells us to ignore what those around us define as success and think about what it means to be successful for ourselves, advice that can be instrumental in finding happiness and fulfillment for those constantly thinking about how to achieve the next research goal, be it your first publication, a grant, or a job.
As one might expect, the quest to be ‘successful’ in research leads to high rates of burnout. Only take on tasks that serve your best interests and do not come at the expense of personal happiness and well-being.Just as we should define success for ourselves, we should define our own trajectories. The super stars whose work you admire came up in a different era, with different questions, different funding environments, and different strategies. The paths to success today are inevitably going to look different.
To improve chances for success, we should aim to have a team of mentors, at different stages in their careers, each with complementary expertise whose explicit focus is to elevate us through tangible sponsorship, as researchers and individuals.
Drs. Beamer and Jackson also offer excellent advice to collaborate with those with histories of success. Still, Dr. Fuller notes that we can make incremental, but important, progress even when funding is absent, especially in our local communities.
When we talk about environmental justice, we use the word justice because it is imbued with a notion of ethics and morality.
Hardships in research and academia are expected, but for those dedicated to advancing justice and equity, and especially those from historically marginalized groups, these struggles are even more common.
Our three respondents share vivid examples of overt and indirect threats to their research. Their persistence is noteworthy, but also necessary. Frequent rejection—papers that get rejected or are not cited despite rigor and relevance; grants that don’t get funded—is expected. And yet, each time hurts, and a strong moral compass will help us persevere.
Meaningful institutional and structural support would aid in our struggle for equity and justice.
Dr. Daniel Carrión is an Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Public Health and Dr. Carlos Gould is a School of Earth Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. They are both senior fellows of the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice program.
This essay was produced through the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice fellowship. Agents of Change empowers emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.
You are an engaged bunch! We asked for one gift – one "big lesson" – your mother gave you that you cherish today, and you offered up examples of grace, beauty, toughness and humor.
I'm grateful – and speechless – reading your responses. We've printed a selection, and I hope they leave you as touched and hopeful as they did me.
And for you moms out there: Enjoy your day! Your kids, it is clear, carry a little bit of you forward with them.
"My mother told me to see how a guy's father treats his mother to determine how he will treat me – 51 years happily married later I can say she was right."
– Selma's gift to Marilyn G. in San Diego
"My mother's mother raised 5 kids during the Great Depression, and she taught me to care for and reuse things rather than replace them."
– Pauline's gift to Pat H. in Royal Oak, Mich.
"There is always time to enjoy a cafecito – an espresso Cuban-style – together at least once a day with family or friends (or more in my mom's case!)"
– Elina's gift to Joseph R. in Los Angeles
"Mom kept our door open for our friends, for drop in visitors, for people who needed a place to stay in all sorts of conditions – great as a kid, with some actually weird people living there for a bit, but life-changing as an adult and in our family."
– Johanna's gift to Kirk B. in Bozeman, Mont.
"The strength of persistence I exert in my daily life as a teacher comes from the gift my mother shared with me when she raised me by herself in the 1970s."
– Elaine's gift to Nigel W. in Ashland, Ore.
"Passion for acquiring knowledge - I remember trying to match the stride of my mom, a 6' woman with an Afro (read: 1980's), while walking to the public library which was several city blocks away."
– Tyler's gift to Deva F. in San Diego
"How to endure, persevere, and thrive against the odds — when pressed, tenacity can often see you through."
– Carrie's gift to Mark B. from Washington, D.C.
"Have a really strong floodlight when sailing into a new harbor at night – that's literal but could be quite metaphorical."
– Billie's gift to Michael V.
"My mother taught me, through her regular actions, how to go out of one’s way to connect with other people — across social divides — to put others at ease and lift them up."
– Claire's gift to Chiara C. From Durango, Colo.
"Mom shared her love, knowledge and respect for the natural world resulting in four very impactful, dedicated scientists and two artists, all of whose work is intrinsically entwined in making the planet a safer, better and more connected place."
– Margaret's gift to Liza M. in Santa Fe
"She showed me racism was nonsensical and evil."
– Paul E., Stanford, Calif.
"Finding god, great spirit, love in nature"
– Eila's gift to Kirsi J. in Pittsburgh
"By recovering from Tuberculosis that almost killed her in her late teens, she taught me the value of never giving up when the going gets tough."
– Florence's gift to Tom T.
"Nature is so beautiful and amazing....everything we see around us is a gift to enjoy!"
– Conover's gift to Aileen G from Seattle
"Don't give up something you love to do just because the leader/teacher/coach/authority is a jerk."
– Peggy's gift to Sweeney W.
"She let me try anything when I was a kid, short of burning down the house, which translates into my approach to this day – and which my wife might say is embodied in the frequent statement 'Oh hell, I can build one of those but much cheaper!'"
– Mary's (aka "Big Red") gift to Ritchie B.
"I learned to cherish the pretty darn healthy, French-Canadian DNA she gave me."
– Martha's gift to Lee B.D. of Plantation, Fla.
"My mom made sure that me and my siblings had a love and appreciation for nature and being outdoors from a young age and I’m so grateful for that."
– Kelly's gift to Phoenix M. of Ramsey
Editor's prerogative: My siblings, when they found out what was afoot, piled in with their one lesson from Mom. I couldn't risk family discord by omitting them. Here's to you, Rosemary!
"The importance and JOYFUL obligation of civic duty and civic relationships - voting, donating blood, checking on elderly neighbors, addressing grocery cashiers by name."
– Rosemary's gift to Marianna F. in Durango, Colo.
"Mom instilled in me an interest in and appreciation for the foods and traditions of other cultures."
– Rosemary's gift to Kara C. in San Francisco
"If you see me coming, get out of the way: if you see me coming, MOVE!"
– Rosemary's gift to Gregory F. in Berkeley, Calif.
Photo above is my mom taking her first looks at her first grandson – my now-17-year-old son. Douglas Fischer/EHS
El’gin Avila joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss how the gig economy has upended what we think of workers' health and rights.
Avila is a Ph.D. student studying industrial hygiene at the University of Minnesota, founder of Equitable Health Solutions, director of Environmental and Occupational Health & Equity at the Bluegreen Alliance, and a senior Agents of Change fellow. He talks about where he finds optimism in occupational health, and the importance of merging the labor and environmental movements.
The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast is a biweekly podcast featuring the stories and big ideas from past and present fellows, as well as others in the field. You can see all of the past episodes here.
Listen below to our discussion with Avila, and subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Brian Bienkowski
Today's guest hanging out with me is El’gin Avila, a PhD student studying industrial hygiene at the University of Minnesota, the founder of Equitable Health Solutions and the Director of Environmental and Occupational Health and Equity at the BlueGreen Alliance. Avila is also a senior fellow, he was part of our very first cohort of Agents of Change fellows. He talks about how we got into occupational health, how the gig economy has upended what we think of workers’ health and rights and the importance of merging the labor and environmental movements. Enjoy. All right, I am super happy to be joined by El’gin Avila, El’gin, how're you doing today?
El'gin Avila
Can't complain? How about yourself?
Brian Bienkowski
I'm doing excellent. Excellent. So El’gin was part of our first cohort. I'm so glad to have him here today. And we have something in common. And that is you are from Detroit. So tell me a little bit about growing up there and when and how you became interested in science and environmental health?
El'gin Avila
Yeah, sure thing. So I'll try and make it relatively brief in that regard. But try to distill everything down. But growing up in Detroit was good. I didn't actually grow up for most of my life in Detroit, I grew up right outside of it. But I was born and raised up until I was about five in Detroit. And after that I moved to Oak Park, it was really interesting. Um, you know, first, the driver was to secure like, you know, a long term healthy, you know, job that could be like a physician. So I always thought science was really interesting to me, because it was about understanding, you know, who we are as people who, you know, or, I guess what also composes the world? And also kind of starts asking those questions that made you really think deeply and critically about the world, so, and about people too. And so that's kind of how I got into it. Just always been a naturally inquisitive person and curious person and not really liking you know, no, for an answer, and just really simple answers, I always liked the complex.
Brian Bienkowski
I'm wondering if this was the case for you, too. But so you're now, we're gonna get into this, but you're now looking at environmental and occupational health. I know growing up in that region, or me, it's been, family members, especially but the worker and labor rights aspect of Detroit with the automotive industry and thinking about how unions were embedded in my blood. When I was at family gatherings, everybody's talking about union deals and contracts. And so I don't know if that was your case at all. But I'm curious if that played at all a role in your interest in kind of workers’ rights and occupational health?
El'gin Avila
Absolutely. That's a fantastic question. Actually, it didn't play a role into it until I turned about 18. So I kind of have like a different background. So I actually graduated high school when I was 16. I got around to about 18, was when I really started looking into other fields besides just medicine, and started looking into occupational health a little bit more. And I started drawing those parallels as you're, as you're talking about, in regards to occupational health, safety, etc. And that kind of made me think, oh, well, I could just, you know, be an occupational health physician. You know, I thought that made a lot more sense for me, since I was still trying to go down that route. But I think I always had in the back of my mind that, you know, being involved in occupational health was somewhere that I wanted to go, it actually kind of relates to the job that you currently have now as the director of Environmental and Occupational Health and Equity at the BlueGreen Alliance. And, you know, essentially, that's a combination of labor and big green organizations, which will, I'm sure we'll talk about later on down the line. But this is funny that you mentioned it, it's always played like that background role in terms of where I ended up progressing. And you know, it makes sense. My mom was also working heavily with UAW. She also worked for Chrysler. So it makes a lot of sense that, you know, that's where we’d end up.
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, if you grew up down there, it's like the automotive industry touches your life. There's no doubt about it. But you you glossed over something really fast that I'm not going to let you gloss over. You graduated high school at 16. What? What did you do?
El'gin Avila
Yeah, so that's actually a really, like, interesting conversation. This is one of the things that my mom was actually really supportive of, she knew that I always she knew that I could get easily bored in class. And she knew, you know, kids just inherently when they're bored, they get disrupted, right. So third grade came around. And I was just sitting there in class. And, you know, I just got really bored, I just got fed up. And so when my mom picked me up from school one day, she was like, what did you learn? I told her nothing. And she was just like, what? I was like, yeah, didn’t learn anything. And so she was just like, well, that's not normal. You should, you should always learn something. She was like, well, you go back to school for a week. See, if you learn something, if you don't, we going to figure this out. And I was like, okay, so I went back to school, and lo and behold, I didn't learn anything. And that's not to say that I had a bad teacher, I had a fantastic teacher. I can't think of her name right now off the top of my head, but I loved her. She was so supportive. And then I went to fourth grade where I had another supportive teacher as well. And that, they had me do a bunch of tests to make sure that I was, you know, not just lying about like, I didn't learn this stuff. I already knew it. And I ended up getting promoted. So I got promoted to the fourth grade, middle of the school year. And yeah, this, I was lucky, I guess, because my mom was really supportive in that regard of allowing me to kind of push, push the boundaries when it came to education. So yeah, and I also had a late birthday. So yeah, that's how I…
Brian Bienkowski
Well, good on your mom for recognizing that. I wonder how many kids are bored in class and either act out or just aren't paying attention and chalked up to, to misbehavior instead of advanced? I mean, you were just, you're just advanced, so good on her for recognizing that. So. So fast forwarding a little bit. So you went down the road, to Ypsilanti there for undergraduate work at Eastern Michigan University, and you were introduced to research helping PhD students collect data on childhood obesity risk factors. So tell me a little bit about the research that you helped with there. And what do you take from this early introduction to research? And what spoke to you about it made you want to pursue it as a career?
El'gin Avila
Yeah, sure thing. So at the time, I was actually doing two intern, two research internships. One was heavily lab-based, I really didn't like that. I thought it was far too disconnected from you know, the community. And so this project seemed right, more like, right up my alley. I was always interested in nutrition. Some of that came from, you know, just me playing sports, wanting to really learn a little bit more about it. And one of the things that I didn't expect to, you know, take place from this project, was just my understanding of the process of research. I thought just maybe, maybe I could, you know, possibly pursue a PhD. But, you know, I was still thinking like, oh, maybe medicine. But this was really an opportunity that I found to really fall in love with research, and to really see the, the impact that it could possibly have. So with this project, we're going to Detroit homes, we're talking to families, we're figuring out, you know, what are their typical exercise routines? How does weather play a role into these multitude of factors, really changing the way that people not only perceive their own health, but also the way in which they interact with their built environment. So that really kind of groomed me into this, this space of public health. Although this wasn’t necessarily a public health project, it had those elements of it, looking at, you know, health from a population standpoint, looking at the most vulnerable populations that really gave me a great introduction into public health, and is really shaped, who I am now as a researcher and as a practitioner.
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent, excellent. And before we get to where you're at now, and how you've kind of taken that experience there, tell me about a moment or event that shaped your identity,
El'gin Avila
A moment or event that shaped my identity. That's really tough. There's like so many in life, right?
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, it's a big one. It's a big broad question that, that sometimes people really like to answer, and sometimes I have to edit these because they take 40 seconds of silence to think about it. So yeah, anything, you know, personal or professionally, really. Just something that stands out that helped that helped shape you?
El'gin Avila
Yeah, sure. Thanks. I think I would say it would be me actually graduating from the master's program. I don't think…I think a lot of people could understand why this could, you know, be valuable, but I don't think people understood what it necessarily meant to me as a person. First off in my family, like my immediate family, I was the, yeah, I was the first person to get a degree. And I'm the, I'm the youngest. And that's not to say that my siblings aren't capable, but that just it pushed me over this mental barrier that I really had, in terms of, you know, collecting degrees or, you know, reaching my achievements, right. So the first one was really helpful, but the graduation from George Washington University that really got me because, you know, all of us, we walk out with debt. But the fact of the matter is, is I, El’gin Avila, a Black kid from Detroit was able to not only go to George Washington University, but actually graduate, and like, actually get that master's degree from that, that was huge. That's huge. I don't know too many people from Detroit, let alone people who live in Detroit, or who are even around my age, who have a master's degree, and are able to actually come from the exact same environment that I was. And there's, obviously, I just want to be some type of catalyst for other folks, but also like that resource to kind of push other folks along and experience, you know, reaching their dreams to some degree, and to continuously rebuild and recreate new goals, you know, once they meet those goals.
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, you're, so you're doing that, so you haven't, you didn't stop at the masters, and that's a, that's an excellent moment. You know, I can, I can imagine. Was your family there? Were they able to be there for you?
El'gin Avila
Yeah, yeah. And Dr. Ans Irfan, my, my brother, he's, he was able to be there as well. He also graduated in the same class as me. So it meant a lot.
Brian Bienkowski
That's, that's great. And fun fact, that Ans was the very first guest I had on this podcast, and we fumbled our way through figuring this out together. So yeah, a little, little callback there. So now you're focusing on disparities in environmental and occupational health. And like I said, you're, you're continuing to work on this research. And you're pursuing a PhD, right?
El'gin Avila
Yes I am, yep.
Brian Bienkowski
Right. So, tell, tell us just kind of broad strokes, you know, 10,000 foot view. Tell us a bit about occupational health disparities. What are some of these vulnerable jobs that you're looking at? Walk us through some of the health disparities in these fields?
El'gin Avila
Sure thing. Yeah, so occupational health is a really interesting place. So you get to, you get to experience a really like, a wide gamut of issues when it comes to, you know, the way or what people are being exposed to, on a daily basis. So let's look at this, for example, occupational health. Heat stress right now, that's one of the main things that we're talking about at this moment. Because federal OSHA issued an advance notice, you know, about two, maybe three months ago, so heat stressed, so, so climate change issues. So we get to really look at those, those complex, but also connected issues. And so who are most likely to people who are going to be affected by this? Most of the time, people think outdoor workers, but in reality, indoor workers are also at risk for this exposure. So, I think about the folks not only who are farm workers, think about the pesticide appliers, but also think about those manufacturer workers who are working inside, and are also being exposed to extreme heat indexes. And typically, those are lower wage workers. Sometimes they're union workers. But think about those folks who work at those bottling plants. Think about those folks who work in Detroit, who are a part of unions sometimes, but sometimes they're also not a part of those things, or those union relationships are not nearly as strong as some of our other counterparts. So they really lose out on a lot of opportunities in which they can advocate for themselves, protect themselves a lot more effectively. And that really, that really makes it really difficult for folks to want to engage. So then we also think about folks who are undocumented. We also think about those folks and how their relationship with, with being in a workplace, and especially for someone that is in a non-union workplace, how their, their fear, their very reasonable fear of retaliation from an employer can really impact them as well. So there's a lot of vulnerable, or there are a lot of vulnerable populations in the workforce. And it's kind of my job to kind of expose that. That's how I kind of see it.
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, that's excellent. And I think I would be curious to hear your thoughts about this, that the last two years in my mind, this has become a little more crystal for folks with COVID because we had meat plants that were being forced to stay open. And that was kind of obvious. I mean, you're talking about a largely immigrant workforce that has very few labor rights. So I think more people kind of knew about that. But now I'm thinking too, about cashiers and these essential jobs. I shouldn't use air quotes. They are essential jobs and while the rest of us that work from home, were able to kind of comfortably get through the pandemic workwise, maybe not comfortably otherwise, but folks were forced to go in. So I'm wondering if you think these issues are kind of more on the radar? And if you're seeing, if that's a good thing. Are we seeing some positive movement because now people are forced to reckon with this with COVID?
El'gin Avila
Yeah. I always think anytime you shine a light on an injustice, you're doing something positive. The issue is, is how do we make sure that that spotlight stays on the issue, and it doesn't become something that falls to the wayside? Right? And by that I mean, you know, how do we keep the momentum going around protecting these folks, especially those who are considered essential workers, right? Oftentimes, they are the folks who are forgotten, especially if they're in rural locations. Oftentimes, like media, they focus on the big city exposures, they focus on the big city injuries, et cetera, et cetera. So I personally think is a great thing that we're focusing on the everyday worker. For example, essential workers, we're thinking about cashiers, we're thinking about minimum wage workers. A lot of times people still aren't associating younger workers, such as people, myself, or people who are in high school, college, etc, with essential working positions, such as being a cashier, such as being a barista, such as being a cafeteria worker, such as, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So how do we make sure that we protect those folks, and I think this is their time to continue raising the issues that are present within their workforce and within their work environments. So that way we can, we can hopefully, you know, make change.
Brian Bienkowski
I'm glad you brought up the rural aspect, I live in a very rural area, and it becomes a more complex issue, because there's there now there's less health resources for folks who are forced to go to work, there's less public transportation. There's this whole, there's this whole new complexity of factors. So I'm glad you brought that up. I think we often are a little, this is my biased view, but I think we're a little urban, urban centric with these issues. But I'm really curious about your focus currently on the gig economy. And I, I am, I am not entirely sure what this term means. I immediately think of Uber driver. That's all I can think. So if you can kind of define what we mean by the gig economy, and then walk us through the ways these emerging workforces kind of face unique occupational hazards and disparities.
El'gin Avila
Hey, I would be remiss if I did not mention at this very time, no one fully understands who or what comprises the gig economy. So you're not alone. You're absolutely not alone on that one. So for the purposes of my dissertation, which is going to be on gig workers, I kind of narrowed it down to electronically mediated workers for this, but let's keep it broad. So folks understand really what or who really comprises gig workers. So essentially, the gig economy is anything, or, I like to describe it as, anything that really consists of those gig type jobs are those independent contractor type jobs. That is alternative or non-traditional in terms of a work arrangement. So let's break that down a little bit. So when I say non-traditional of a work arrangement, I mean, things that deviate from the nine to five or the eight hour a day, 40 hour work week. I mean different types of work arrangements than that. So let's say someone who has to work 12 hours, one day, they get three days off, and then they had to go back for 12 hours and is kind of geared towards their at-will or their task-oriented job or work schedule. So I like to think of that as okay, you're, you're really being hired for a job or a task, not necessarily to work for a company or for an organization long term. And your pay is based off of that task, it’s not going to be based off of how many hours you did it is going to be based off of the task. So that consists of anyone that literally can be shoveling snow, but who isn't necessarily a qualified or an employee for a company. That could be for could be rideshare drivers, it could be delivery drivers. It could be folks who are on Etsy, and there's they're creating items for folks. Really, it comprises of people, or it comprises of jobs that are considered gigs. Think about a gig, it typically only lasts for about a day. Sometimes it can be lengthened, but yeah, there's really no very clear crystal definition of it. So my apologies, I can't give you a beautifully concise one.
Brian Bienkowski
Actually, at the end, you did. I am embarrassed to admit I never thought about the word gig, as that's the reason it's called the gig economy. I was thinking like gig like a gigabyte, or some kind of digital term. But that, that makes a lot more sense. And so, so when we think about these folks, um, uh, my assumption is that that some of the worry is they don't have, they're not subject to some of the labor laws, because they're not going through traditional employers or something. Is that, is that the risk? Is that what you're looking at?
El'gin Avila
That's part of the risk, right? So there's always, there's always a, well it depends the answer that we can always give. But really, when it comes to this, it is about that, that potential risk, or those lack of protections that are associated with those jobs. So think about, you know, we can make this as simple as think about that person who's working gigs, they work for a band, that's kind of the typical gig thing that we're thinking of. That person is getting paid per show, they're not getting paid, per, you know, a set or so they have to account not only for their own taxes, they have to account for their own equipment, they have to account for their own resources that they use. And so as a result, they have to think about, okay, I need to account for 20%, roughly, of for our taxes. We need to account for, you know, this person's health care or shoot, if I can afford the health care, you know, how, what kind of arrangement do we have in place for this other person who's also working with me on this gig? So there, you're absolutely right, it really comes down to whether or not there are protections around those gig workers. And right now, we're seeing that there really aren't protections for gig workers. And a lot of companies who employ gig workers are really trying to find ways in which they don't have to bring along that additional liability. They want to, in some cases, continue to misclassify workers to avoid that extra expense.
Brian Bienkowski
And that was my next question that I think you just answered. So you're not seeing any kind of policy catching up to the fact, because this is exploding. I mean, during, I mentioned COVID, earlier, I know at the grocery stores, everybody's having shopping done for them. And you know, it started with Uber, and now it's kind of spider-webbing in all aspects of our lives. So basically, the policy is not keeping up.
El'gin Avila
Exactly. You're absolutely right in that regard. And that's kind of part of what I wanted to do in my dissertation was just to kind of show, okay, there's this peer reviewed, scientifically-approached method that was used in order to, you know, explore, and in some cases, analyze the data that we collected for these gig workers, right? So I wanted to kind of use this as more of an advocacy tool for folks who engage in this gig workspace. And you're absolutely right, the policy is not keeping up with it. We're having a lot of issues in regards to worker misclassification. Think about that California Assembly Bill it was back about two, three years ago, and which Uber spent so much money they devoted, I think it was tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign in order to beat that Assembly Bill. And essentially eliminate this or prevent gig workers from actually being qualified as employees. Because they lose a lot of autonomy with their jobs. So for example, they lose autonomy when it comes to the hours that they or, I'm sorry, the wage per hour that they have. So say for example, they can’t negotiate with the, with the customer, whether or not they should be charged a little bit more, they have to rely on those tips, and just hope that a person really just you know, gives them a fair wage. So yeah, policy is absolutely not keeping up with it.
Brian Bienkowski
And I have to imagine in this field, and others, we often think about, you mentioned earlier, pesticide exposure. So when I think of occupational health, you think of very specific hazards to your health. I worked in a factory and there was multiple guys missing digits, you know, just cutting steel and missing digits. So there's just kind of the regular physical impacts. But can you speak to some of the mental health aspects of occupational health? I don't know if your research has gotten into this or if you've digging, dug into the research, the literature but what, what is going on on that front?
El'gin Avila
Absolutely. I'm so glad you brought this up. So one, I really want to touch on this concept from NIOSH called the total worker health approach. It's been something that a lot of folks have already, you know, known. A lot of occupational health specialists have been advocating for. But especially when it comes to folks who are, you know, involved in the EJ climate change space, they already knew this, they just didn't have a formalized title for it. But NIOSH's total worker health approach is essentially looking at a worker holistically and thinking about, you know, what source of additional exposures or non-traditional exposures can impact the health, can impact the health, excuse me, of a worker. So, for example, like you're bringing up mental health, so I'm thinking about what sorts of psychosocial exposures is a worker exposed to at work? So let's keep thinking about gig workers. In this case, specifically rideshare drivers or delivery drivers. Think about the driver or that worker who was exposed to workplace violence during the job. So that's an exposure. That's a psychosocial exposure, and it's a physical exposure in some, in some ways, but that has altered the perception of that person and the perception of whether or not their job is safe. Likely that that's probably what has been altered in that case, right? So, with gig workers, since this space is so new, and is going to continue evolving, which I really want to harp on, it, this issue is going to continue to persist, we're going to continue to have more worker misclassification unless we focus on the policy of it. But in this regard, we're thinking about that worker violence that that person is experiencing, how does that impact their health? How does that? How does this experience impact their perception of whether or not their job is safe? Whether or not their support staff is going to actually assist them through this process? And if they don't get that assistance, how did that impact their mental health and their perception of safety? So that's kind of the first questions that I have to answer. Through this investigation, the next steps will be able to look a little bit more directly at the mental health implications of this kind of gig work, especially as it continues to evolve and as the work continues to become a little bit more dangerous. And the reason we think it is going to become more dangerous is because automation and other economic and environmental factors are going to continue to keep evolving, and going to continue to force more gig kind of oriented jobs moving forward. Sorry, that was a long-winded answer.
Brian Bienkowski
No, not at all. I'm wondering outside of the gig economy, if you've noticed any progress on this in kind of more traditional jobs. I know just, I was talking to my sister last night, and she works for an engineering firm in Detroit, and they have now switched to two day, two day work weeks at the office, three days at home and, on the face, maybe that's not a mental health positive, but in my mind, my sister is a mother, you know, and she, this is good for her mental health, she's able to work from home and not have to commute down I-75. But um, so I'm wondering if you're seeing a renewed focus on mental health in some of the traditional workforce, if you're seeing any, any bright spots there?
El'gin Avila
From a research standpoint, or just from practice?
Brian Bienkowski
Either one. Just as somebody who's kind of engaged in this field, if you're, if you're noticing a change in that direction, I know, as an environmental journalist and editor, I'm seeing a lot more of the connection between mental health and the environment, mental health and climate anxiety. Just in sports. I mean, you are, I know we're both sports fans, the amount of attention on mental health now in sports. It, this wasn't like this growing up, when you were a football player, basketball player, you didn't talk about mental health. So I'm wondering, we're seeing it in other aspects of society, are you seeing kind of traditional employers pay more attention to this?
El'gin Avila
I think so. But only because the market demands it. Only because the potential employees and the current employees are truly demanding it. And that might not be necessarily directly a demand, but those could be indirect demands. For example, when the situation, or, I can't call it a situation, I'm sorry. When the murder of George Floyd happened when I was living in Minnesota, during the time, a lot of companies and a lot of organizations, especially nonprofit organizations, sat back and thought, okay, I need to figure out how we as organization are going to respond to this, because it's clearly not right. So how do we respond to this? What sorts of initiatives what sorts of programs are we going to have to do to not only, one, respond to this for the public’s sake, but also for the sake of our employees and our potential employees? So I think companies and organizations are forced to think about this right now. And that's a market demand. But I, I can't speak necessarily to the research. I think a lot of the research right now is focused on COVID and its mental health impacts, which is fantastic work and it is, you know where it should be. But I just don't think a lot of folks now are focusing in other respects, on that kind of research.
Brian Bienkowski
So this leads me nicely into. So in addition to your research your, as you mentioned, you're the director of occupational and environmental health and equity at the BlueGreen Alliance, which has focused on uniting labor union and environmental organizations to kind of jointly tackle environmental challenges. So thinking about kind of merging these two movements. So tell me about the alliance's work, what you're doing there, and why it's important to merge these two movements of labor and the environment, which have kind of operated in silos for too long.
El'gin Avila
Exactly. And I think that's the reason why I was I was kind of drawn towards it. One, I had a colleague who spoke highly of the organization, and also did some work with them. But also, I really liked the that idea of really focusing on communication, when it comes to solidifying, and not necessarily centralizing, but, kind of creating this cohesive message between, you know, labor groups and those big environmental organizations. So these labor groups that we particularly work with, it's over a million members that essentially, these are partners. They, I won't say they oversee, but they represent. So I really liked that impact. I really liked it, because BGA is not only a national organization, but also a state organization. So it really allows us to even engage with environmental justice organizations, which is what I'm kind of spearheading, and I'm trying to kind of formalize that process a little bit more. And really creating this opportunity in which we as an organization, you know, who we're engaging with our partners on a regular basis, such as the United Steelworkers, I want us as an organization, as well as the organization themselves, and our partners want us to engage and become a lot more efficient with the work that we do, with the equity work that we're trying to build internally. And the work that we're doing externally. How do we inject that equity and justice into it? So that way, one, we're better EJ allies two, we represent, or we represent our workers a little bit more, and also their families a little bit more effectively. Because that's oft, often been an issue that we've seen. To get to your question a little bit more. We really like seeing the dichotomy in the conversation that happens between the labor organizations and big green organizations. Sometimes it's really like butting heads. But that's solely because of who we're trying to represent and how we're trying to get there. We want to make sure that we're doing it as efficiently as possible, but also in a collective, cohesive, and holistic kind of approach moving forward. So I've really enjoyed the work that we do there. And I'm really fortunate that I was able to, to really be able to focus on the equity and, and justice piece of it moving forward.
Brian Bienkowski
I, you know, when I was prepping for this interview, I wasn't totally aware of BlueGreen. And I looked them up and it got me excited, because this nexus has always fascinated me. Again, going back to where we're from, and kind of the labor, labor movement there, the labor rights there. And then my career as an environmental journalist, I found the folks where I live now, I can almost always find common ground, when we talk about workers’ rights and labor rights. And even if we disagree wildly, politically, we can agree on those things. And so I'm really fascinated by this. And I'm excited to see where it gets going. And I think a lot of these merging of movements has happened in the last few years, I'm thinking of Black Lives Matter, focusing, you know, bringing financial stability and economics into the equation and not just in climate justice, kind of bringing all the groups under one tent. So very cool work. I'm excited to see what, what comes with this.
El'gin Avila
I appreciate that. And I certainly agree with you, I think the combining of these movements, it kind of speaks to the connectedness again, in which we all are, or our missions are all connected. Like, again, when it comes to environmental justice, and especially when it comes to, you know, Indigenous folks, for example. They've already understood this concept far more than us. There's never been any propaganda that has blinded them to this element of connectedness that we all exhibit, especially in regards to the environment and especially in regards to people.
Brian Bienkowski
Right, and for so long that what's, what's torn us down in this, in these spaces is the corporate the corporate folks say they are coming for your job, the enviross are coming for your job. And the environmental folks have been saying, hey, coal work, coal work is bad, coal is bad. And like you said, we're all, we all want the same thing? We want healthy families, we want good jobs, we want clean air and water to drink. And if we all get in the same room and start from that standpoint, even if there is a little bit of butting of heads, like you said, I think I think we can find some common ground. And these kinds of these kinds of things. Give me optimism, so I'm really happy to hear that. I only have a couple more questions. But I did want to ask you so you are. You are a sports fan. And I, much to the chagrin of my wife, I'm constantly watching sports. Just, I just love sports. So tell, what did you, what did you play growing up? And who do you, are you still, are you a Detroit sports fan? What teams are you following?
El'gin Avila
That is a totally fair question. Um, I am definitely still a sports fan. I by default have to be a Detroit fan, Detroit lions, pistons, etc. fan. And that's okay. The reason why I say by default is solely because I, I have friends now who are playing in the league who played for someone else. And it just feels really strange liking, liking one very specific team. But I will say this, though, I definitely still am a Detroit fan. I always want our city to do well. And I always think about the implications of when we do well. What does that grant us. I say hopefully in the future that Detroit Lions fans will be able to experience some wins though. But I played basketball, football, I did the field events when I was in high school as well. I swam, which was actually my best sport. I had a terrible knee growing up. So I, like, swimming, I just fell in love with it. I love being able to split the water and actually feel me getting faster. And that, that experience that was fantastic. And it's a, it's an event or it's an experience that you can only rely on yourself. And I think that taught me a lot in terms of being really self-determined, a self-starter, and so on and so forth. But I love sports.
Brian Bienkowski
Yeah, that's great. You know, swimming and I cycle now two, I was a runner. I played, I played football growing up and I boxed in my late teens, early 20s. And learned a lot there, learned that I shouldn't do it, because I use my brain for a living but, oh, yeah, it's, there's, there's such a science to it. Yeah, there really is a science to it. And yeah, but, but those cycling and, and swimming, those low impact sports that you can do into older age and finding as I near 40 are really good ones to stick with. Because as you get older, you don't leave those behind. So, the last question on this. Just because I'm curious, do you think the Lions are going to be able to turn it around in the next couple of years?
El'gin Avila
Hey, I've learned to never doubt an underdog. I've learned to never doubt Detroit folks. I've never wanted to doubt them either. So I think there's always a possibility, right? Um, I think though, we'll, it totally depends. If we start seeing some changes in front office, and we start seeing a change of culture. I think those are really good indications as to whether or not we're turning something around here, but they have pieces. And you know, those Lions folks, I mean, folks on that team, let's be honest, they do not like losing. There's a reason why they still ended up picking up a couple of wins this year. And I think that they made a smart move getting the offensive tackle this year. I mean, yeah, this year, you know what I mean? But yes. Definitely a smart, smart decision. I hope they're going in the right direction.
Brian Bienkowski
Yes. Well, I love the optimism. My dad teases me because he has told me for years, I've been following them son for 50 years, and they're never going to be good. So it would be nice to, nice to prove my dad wrong one of these days. Speaking of optimism, and I'll get us back on track here to finish up. Tell me, I like asking folks what they're optimistic about in the research field they're looking at, and you've given us a little bit today, especially with the BlueGreen work, but I wonder if there's anything you'd like to add? What are you optimistic about right now, when it comes to workers’ health and workers’ rights?
El'gin Avila
I think I'm really interested in regards to the shift of market demand. I'm really excited about that. When you put the control or you put the influence back into the hands of the people, I'm always excited about that, because that means that people are thinking critically, sometimes. But most of the time, people are thinking critically once they start getting power back into their hands. And I mean, at the end of the day, if, if people collectively make a bad decision, I'm okay with it. But I really feel like this, this trend we're seeing right now is going in the right direction. And by that I mean specifically I think people are becoming smarter. I think our workforce, especially as Gen Z kinds of starts, starts working. I think they're gonna be, they're gonna blow millennials out the water. They have so much access to information, they do not take no for an answer. If they feel it is reasonable they do, they definitely do not. My niece is 19 years old and she constantly reminds me of that, and I absolutely love it. I think this new workforce will either push us into the right direction of some of our EU partners who are pushing for more thoughtful, just human rights geared, you know, benefits for workers. I think Gen Z can do that. I certainly think millennials can do it as well. But I'm really excited to see this market continuously pushing, folks, I think it will eventually get us over the hump. And we'll really start protecting workers, you know, in both the private and public space. And hopefully that eventually means that OSHA will be able to start putting forward some good work and, you know, start cutting down on those timelines that they have, that’s my only criticism that I'll share about OSHA right now.
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. Well, that is an optimistic view of the youth. The youth will lead us forward on climate and workers’ health and rights. And we are we're, we're so grateful for them. So El’gin, this has been so much fun. I really enjoyed catching up with you. I wish I saw, saw you folks more. But the last question is what is the last book that you read for fun?
El'gin Avila
That's a fantastic question. I'm actually reading one right now for fun, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed from Paulo, oh my goodness, I always mess his last name up, Freire? It’s Portuguese, and my dad is Dominican so sometimes I want to mix the two. But I'm reading that for fun. I actually really like it. I always love books that evoke critical thought. And just really hearing his perspective in regards to oppression is really connecting a lot of dots for me. And I get excited whenever I connect dots, because that means that I can connect dots to other topics. And I can see parallels, so I really loved it.
Brian Bienkowski
Excellent. I always laugh at the books that all these Agents of Change folks read for, quote, fun. They always seem, there's a heaviness to them that sounds very interesting as I look at my stack of, you know, comic books and graphic novels that I feel like, I feel like I'm failing. Well, El’gin, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it and go Lions.
El'gin Avila
I appreciate it. Thank you so much. It's been fantastic catching up with you as well. I wish we could definitely do it more. Maybe we can in the future. But yeah, it's always good connecting with, you’re fantastic people. So are Agents of Change.
Lewis presents 19th-century Senegal at a time of turmoil. She explores how French colonialism and demand for peanut oil in Europe created a peanut boom with lasting repercussions for Senegalese agriculture and reinforced a system of slavery that persisted long after France had banned it in territories it held.
EHN spoke with Lewis about her book and writing about agriculture and the environment in Senegal today.
The peanut comes originally from South America, where it evolved and spread throughout the continent. It was probably taken quite early by Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors back to Europe, and from Europe to Africa. Peanuts were grown on a small scale and in kitchen gardens along with other complements to a diet … so, not at the same scale as cereals like millet or folio in Senegal, but grown probably like okra or cowpeas.
It expanded once there was a demand for peanut oil in Europe during the Industrial Revolution. They needed oil for maintaining their machines and steam engines. Before petroleum, they also needed oil for lighting. And, of course, they were killing whales for oil. A society that’s killing large sea mammals for oil obviously needs a lot of oil. But then, the main driver became the soap industry. Peanut oil has very similar chemical properties as olive oil and could be substituted up to a percentage in the Savon de Marseille.
Kajoor’s sandy soil environment was perfect for the peanut. I knew that a long time ago there had been a more robust peanut economy there; peanuts from Kajoor were so well-prized in Europe. Was it the peanut that created the expansion of slavery? In West Africa, there were people who were born enslaved. But there came to be a demand for labor in Kajoor, and that brought people enslaved through war. Why was there war? In part, because of economic developments related to European presence and capitalism.
I’d been reading a book about slavery in the 19th century, and there was a brief reference to a Sierra Leonean Protestant missionary named Walter Taylor, who established a shelter for runaway slaves in Saint Louis. I found that this Black missionary from a British-held territory had 20 years of letters with the mission directorate in Paris.
Even though Taylor was working, in a way, for the colonial enterprise, he had such an interesting backstory as a Black man in a white-dominated colonial system, as an Anglophone in the Francophone world, and as the son of liberated slaves who'd grown up in a community of people who had been liberated. I became a little obsessed with his story.
There was a movement of enslaved people from the interior trying to get to Saint Louis as a kind of promised land. But the process of claiming freedom was administratively difficult. Arriving runaway slaves would have to register with the city and say, “I declare I have a right to my freedom.” But then they had to wait three months. And within those three months, a slave owner could come and reclaim that person.
The court preferred people not bring these matters before the court, so a slave master might find the person and say, “I can leave you alone if you pay for your freedom.” But who has that much money? So Walter Taylor had the idea to take up a collection in the church. He realized there was an opportunity to evangelize among this group, who were open to the mission because it had helped them.
Taylor was trying to build a career for himself in the mission. He needed converts. But as a person who'd grown up in a community of liberated people, I think he really did care for them, and their stories resonated with his own on some deeper level.
Lat Joor became damel, was forced out by the French, and then came back through dubious methods and betrayals. He was jockeying for influence to keep his throne. He thought for a while that the French could be a tool to help him do that — before he started to understand, as maybe all colonized people eventually understand, these people are not here to help you, they are here to take your land.
Lat Joor had a lot of enslaved people. I found letter after letter in which he wrote to the [colonial] governor or commandant to say, “Please return to me my slave.” But Lat Joor is an epic, heroic figure in Senegalese history because of his resistance to colonization. I think my book shows that that resistance was not always straight. There was some collaboration before there was resistance.
I wanted to include women’s voices and others who weren’t part of the elite. I also wanted to include the voices of the enslaved. I found some stories in the mission’s archives and court records, narratives of how they came to be enslaved and how they came to be free. Trying to tell this story from that perspective was really important to me, especially because sometimes an approach to popular African history tends to create hero narratives as a corrective — a very sensible corrective — to hundreds of years of denigration of African culture and history. But I also wanted to show the whole history, to say we have complicated stories about people who are not just good or bad, because we're all complex characters with different motives, who at different points in time err on the side of goodness or evil.
I see Senegalese agriculture scaling up, trying to be like American or European agriculture. The same ideas of industrialized agriculture predominate. There are some small movements here, but what Senegal probably needs is extreme regenerative agriculture, and I don't particularly see that happening. I see the agriculture industry is largely business as usual — fertilizers, pesticides. Let's modernize. That's something you hear a lot, which means becoming like the industrialized agriculture of America,Europe, China, or even India. All of them have their imprimatur on the way Senegal sees its agricultural system.
The baobab tree is so omnipresent in Senegal’s history and understanding of itself. But at the same time, it's so endangered. When I travel in Senegal, I think about all those lost trees, and the amount of history they represent, because baobabs are so long-lived, almost like redwoods. It’s hard even to fix our imagination on what it means to be in the presence of a thousand or two-thousand-year-old tree, right?
Our human living memory is only like 110 years old. But the baobab tree — how long is the living memory of that tree? It's incredible to imagine how many shifts humanity has been through in those 2,000 years.
In a couple of chapters, I mention a period called the “hunger years,” brought on by cyclical drought. People were at the whims of the natural environment that pushed them to make political or economic decisions. You’d see more conflict sometimes, people migrating to the city. It’s really interesting to get the broad sweep of history and see how climate is its own character in the book.
Today we’re so insulated, especially in America. But even in Senegal, a certain class of people is really insulated from the reality of the climate. What’s the impact of that over the long term? We just keep cutting things down, not paying attention to what the signals are telling us.
The climate’s part of it, but our political decisions are more often than not what determines access to food, safety, water, all of it, which brings us back to Slaves for Peanuts. Unwittingly, the consumer of French soap was driving continued enslavement in Africa. It’s important to understand how our choices impact the larger system, the larger world.
Lewis’ book is published by The New Press and available from independent booksellers and online vendors large and small.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Dr. Rupa Marya and Dr. Raj Patel join the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to talk about how practitioners of modern medicine and public health are trained to be technicians rather than healers.
Senior Agents of Change fellow Kartik Amarnath spoke with Marya and Patel, who are authors of the book Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, published last year. Marya is an associate professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and founder and executive director of the Deep Medicine Circle. Patel is a best-selling author, award-winning filmmaker, and research professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin.
The three also discuss how the medical system comes into conflict with climate justice, and how colonialism and capitalism impact human physiology and contribute to what is seen in the clinic.
The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast is a biweekly podcast featuring the stories and big ideas from past and present fellows, as well as others in the field. You can see all of the past episodes here.
Listen below to our discussion with Marya and Patel, and subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher.
Kartik Amarnath
Okay, we are here with Rupa and Raj for the Agents of Change podcast. Thank you both for being here.
Raj Patel
Thanks so much for having us.
Kartik Amarnath
So I thought we could start off with an intro question for listeners who don't know who you might be or what, what work you're involved in. So, you've both written quite intentionally and beautifully about how you draw from your life experiences and family histories in ways that inform the work that you do. So, to start off with, could you briefly share about who you are, and how that has gotten you to where you're at?
Rupa Marya
Oh, my, okay, here we go. Let's see. I was born to Punjabi immigrants in what is now occupied in unceded Ramaytush Ohlone territory, what has always been, what is now called Mountain View, California. My parents came here, you know, looking for a better life for their children after the damage of colonialism had, you know, set so much in disarray in Punjab, where they're from. My ancestors are farmers and warriors and concubines and, you know, everything in between: artists, mathematicians. And I just grew up very drawn to the beauty of this place where I live, in the what's called San Francisco Bay Area. The smell of the bay groves, the sound of the great horned owls, the feeling of a redwood grove, the beauty of the ocean here—I was watching In the moonrise, it was full yesterday as I was driving over the Bay Bridge, home to Oakland, where I live now. And just really grateful to be a part of this landscape here and to be working in this place amongst so many amazing people. So that's me.
Raj Patel
And goodness, well, that's, that's a hard one to follow. I'm Raj Patel. I'm also a product of empire. You know, my family are born in what, Kenya and Fiji and I was born in London. And we get I mean, I'm very much also a product of that sort of causal vector. I'm, when I first saw hunger in India, I lost my shit, I was, god knows, five years old, but I carried that image back with me to the UK. And honestly, I've been working on hunger issues ever since. So I've pinged around a number of places. I worked at the UN, I worked for and against the World Bank, and even infiltrated the World Trade Organization to learn more about international trade policies and to do some work with groups like La Via Campesina, the International Peasant Organization around food and hunger. And so I've done, I studied and researched food systems and capitalism, and why it is a bad thing. And that kept me in worlds of writing and communication and activism. Over the course of a few books, and now film, till now, where I find myself in occupied Texas, the state that fought for slavery twice, it's important to say that just because our Leftenant Governor here in Texas has been pointing out that there's a new institute here at the University of Texas called the Liberty Institute, the sole purpose of which is to stop people at being free to teach things. So in a tweet, that was one of those spectacular self-owns I've ever seen. The Lieutenant Governor said that, you know, the Liberty Institute was about shutting us down, and shutting down the kinds of conversation we're about to have. So I'm looking forward to having it.
Kartik Amarnath
All right, I appreciate the energy. So both of, both of you are here, at same time, because you both co-authored a book that was released a few months ago. And for listeners who aren't familiar with your book, what, what is it about, what led to its inception, and describe specifically what you mean by “deep medicine”?
Rupa Marya
It is about, it is about the ways in which our bodies and our planet and our societies are damaged through the same processes that brought Raj and I here, to, you know, Turtle Island. It's about understanding the forces that have shaped our world and actually shaped our immune responses and have shaped our cellular responses, and that these things are translated from the social structures around us down into the very, into the very reactions and interactions of ourselves with our own bodies, and with the, you know, with the more than human entities around us that are required for our health, such as the microbes and the viruses and the archaea that live around us and that support and shape, how our bodies respond to the environment. And so this book, “Inflamed,” it was such a joy to write it with Raj. Through the process of writing it, we realized that Raj and I are related through many families, which has been kind of fun. But it's, you know, deep medicine is what's happening right now with the Oakland Unified School District, with two, two educators, two Black educators who've been sitting for 18 days in front of a school on hunger strike. And I've been called to offer my medical support, and the Do No Harm coalition is supporting all the med students and young doctors. Because these teachers know that when you shut down schools, so there were 12 schools on the chopping block, all in the Black, you know, predominantly Black schools, Black and Brown in the flatlands of Oakland, which is the place of Oakland hardest hit by air pollution, hardest hit by COVID, hardest hit by all the toxic exposomes or exposures that have been created to destroy Black bodies in this society. And school closures is just another part of that damage. And so when Moses Omolade and Andre San-Chez sit and put their bodies on the line by starving themselves to bring attention to the fact that closing the schools is a way of further harming these communities, privatizing the public school system is a way of harming these communities. It’s the same colonial tactics that are used to disrupt and destroy those, you know, community-led and publicly owned commons in other countries that the United States still in gages in around the world is happening right here in Oakland, is happening all over the United States with a public school structure. So when they sit there and they do this hunger strike, they are engaging in deep medicine. They are understanding that, that the consequence of closing the schools isn't just that kids have to be moved to other schools. It's destroying a heart of a community. And it's letting those kids know that their education, that their community is not important. And what that leads to in terms of trauma responses, stress responses for the families, for the children, for the communities, is part of that damage cycle that signals inflammation and inflammatory disease by the time these kids are, you know, 15,16, 20. When I was first call to intervene in this hunger strike and support the health of the two hunger strikers that we, you know, check their labs and check their blood and checked everything and you know, they look like healthy, you know, 30 something year old Black bodies. But when you look a little closer, you see already the traces of chronic inflammatory disease in the body, that are, that were unknown to these hunger strikers that made this experience way more perilous. So deep medicine is, is the, you know, stop, to stop thinking about our health as something that is, you can seek solely as an individual. That yes, you must go as an individual to take care of yourself. But if that's where you stop, that's going to, that is the, that is not an acceptable way of moving the needle on health parameters more broadly. And so when we engage in strikes, when we withhold our labor, when we push and force the structures that are damaging us to become structures of repair, and structures of care, when we transform them, then we can have better health outcomes, not just for our one individual self, but our whole community. And not only that, the communities of all the other entities that are interrelated and interwoven in their existences with ours. So it's starting to understand those, the weaving together of our relationships, that still exist, that colonial medicine and colonial capitalism actually forces us to sever those consciousness, that consciousness and, and, and actually purposely sever those relationships. So deep medicine is bringing back those relationships. But this is a, you know, obviously a much longer conversation. But I've just been thinking about Moses and Andre as they've been, you know, as they've been sitting with me every day and talking about this. What it means to put their bodies on the line to get health for their children through keeping a school open.
Kartik Amarnath
So a lot of listeners of the podcast come from the medical field or allied health professions, public health, environmental health sciences, and that sort of thing. And we've definitely been socialized in this country to, to cringe and potentially run away when we hear these buzzwords like colonialism or colonial capitalism. And I was wondering if you could speak to why it is important for us to understand today's maladies from the context of the fact that this country is born out of colonial capitalism.
Raj Patel
Well, you know, the, there is the temptation to think well, you know, words like “capitalism” and “colonialism” or just the you know, the language of the woke crowd, it really just doesn't have anything to do with what I'm doing in my noble profession as a, as a part of that the, “the frontline workers,” lifting up people's health, and battling all this misinformation on COVID. And so no, you know, don't, don't you just come with your capitalism and colonialism, you have no idea. And of course, Rupa is that frontline medical worker. And it, medicine has always been in the frontlines, but not in the way that you think. You know, there is this idea that Columbus came over, and then after he wreaked havoc and that after the genocide, that there were a bunch of very well meaning medical professionals who wore their white coats and sort of dabbed the brows of the people who've been assaulted and like “were awfully sorry, we're not with him, we're part of what we're proud of. We don't want to believe in colonialism and capitalism, we’re the good guys.” And of course, that is rubbish. And it's important to remember that the medical profession is part of the frontier of colonialism and capitalism, we wouldn't have, we wouldn't have the genocides that we've seen in Turtle Island, without the medical profession. And if you think, well, that was then, obviously it was a few bad apples, but everything's going to be fine. Now, bear in mind that one of the, one of the sort of shocking statistics that we found in our research was just that in 2016, when 56% of white Americans believed the lie that Black skin is thicker than white skin. Now that you know this, this bio myth is part of what allows white folk to believe that Black people don't feel as much pain as white people do, because the skin is thicker. So it's a lie, it's rubbish. And it's a sort of medical artifact of racism. But 56% of white folk believe that in 2016. 40% of incoming white medical students believe that and after four years of medical training, 20% still believed it. Now, you can't have that kind of data, and believe that medic medicine somehow sits above the fray of society. Medicine is not just part of society, but it in fact, in its frontlines, and its worst manifestations, is actually part of the mechanisms of oppression. And, you know, one of the ways that we talk about this in “Inflamed” is to say, well look, the way that medical, that medicine individualizes problems, blames patients for being uncompliant. And not being not, just not taking their bloody medicine when they should, when the diseases for example, like diabetes that they suffer, are ones that are socially generated, and their, and patients capacities to be able to comply, and what an interesting word that is, from, from the medical professional, give patients capacities to be able to both afford insulin and rent and food and care are constrained by precisely capitalism. So I mean, I think that for folk who shudder a little at the idea of invoking the words “colonialism” and “capitalism,” it's really worth asking, ‘Why are you so nervous about this? Where did where does my nervousness come from?’ If capitalism is so great, why is it still weird to say it? I mean, I was at Berkeley teaching, and I said the word capitalism in a discussion of sort of liberal foodies, and it was like, I'd farted in a lift. People were just not interested in saying the word “capitalist” at Berkeley. And you would think, you know, if there is if there is a sort of “temple of wokeness,” it would be there. And even there, the liberals’ skin crawls why? What's so difficult about saying it if it's good, and what's so hard about acknowledging that it's bad if you don't like it?
Kartik Amarnath
Raj, you just mentioned, briefly, just how profoundly embedded the medical system is within capitalism. So, jumping off of that, one thing that I thought might be fun to do in preparation for this conversation was to crowdsource questions from folks who have read your book. And some of them might actually be friends of yours. So the first question I have comes from one of Rupa’s students at UCSF, and she asks: How does medicine come into conflict with local ecology, climate justice, and equity? So for example, if the healthcare sector were a country, it would be the fifth largest emitter in the world. So with that in mind, what are some of the contradictions at play when we say that everyone deserves health care when the health system itself is so deeply embedded within the violent system that is colonial capitalism?
Rupa Marya
I mean, there is no real contradiction because the healthcare system that we live in is not, doesn't want health care for all. It's health care for some, and it's some health care for some and more health care for others. It's extremely inequitable, there's nothing equitable about it, it's never been equitable. Even within everyone who has access to the health care, once you get into the health care system, and you go for surgery, if you're a woman, and you happen to have a male surgeon, you're going to have a 30% increased likelihood of dying from that surgery just because he's a man who performed the surgery on you. So that patriarchy, which is a part of the colonial project, and then part of the architecture of dominance is, is part of how we understand ourselves and operate within the medical system. So this idea this, you know, very, this very important idea that everyone should have health care, and everyone should have access to a healthy environment that they live in is a very important idea, but it's not a part of the healthcare system. Not at all, as we just saw as the single payer bill just fell flat on its face thanks to the cowardice of Ash Kalra and the California state legislature on the, on the assembly floor. It, there's so many vested interests in keeping the healthcare system based very firmly in a capitalist colonial space. And so if we want, you know, a healthcare system that is a part of the solution of climate justice, environmental justice, working within the local economies and ecologies to uplift people, then we are going to have to fight for it and dismantle, simultaneously dismantle this one and move the power into building a better one. And that is hard, hard work. And it's the work of many different people in sectors and groups. But that absolutely is the work of the day. That is the work of, that is the deep medicine is to restructure the system not to simply try to put a, you know, a climate person in charge of how we recycle at UCSF. That's not it. It is looking at where we source our food from, why when we have so much food we buy through UCSF are we buying it through Cisco, when we have some of the best farms and small farms in the entire country within 150 miles from here. We could support all of their livelihoods of those farmers by simply advancing contracts doing like a giant scale CSA to get that food, you know, brought in to feed the people healthy organic food. But instead I walk into the candy store, to the what do you call it the gift shop at the base of the hospital at the Children's Hospital. And there's an entire wall of you know, cancer producing substances available for children. Highly processed, lot, lots of sugar, lots of high fructose corn syrup, lots of artificial flavors, artificial coloring, that stuff is toxic. It's like selling cigarettes to children, and we do it in the hospital itself. And so the amount of contradictions that are present in, or are apparent, contradictions that are present, just belie the fact that it was never really there for the health of the community, it was never really there for the health of everybody. It's there for a profit for these industries. And that's what it's been constructed for. That's how it operates. And so if we want something that operates differently, we're going to have to fight for it. And we're going to have to keep building the alternatives, which you know, is happening right now.
Raj Patel
Rupa, did you hear this thing about emissions from the, from the NHS? So there was a story about a, well, we began this question with observing that, that medicine is 10% of, of if that 10% of US emissions or something. And in Britain, the NHS did an audit of where its carbon footprint was, and 25% of its greenhouse gas emissions come from medicines. And the two sort of big individual single points of that are one, in anesthetics and the other, in the propellant in inhalers. And so, the, you know, the story is that in one of the things that they want to do to green the NHS is to move people away from propellants driven inhalers to, you know, these sort of powder based diskhalers or whatever they are. And, you know, absent from this conversation, is anything about air pollution? Right, you know, it's not well, why do we have so many bloody asthmatics in the first place, it's all you know, we've definitely got to make sure that these asthmatics’ footprint, right, individualizing, yet again, is shrunk, rather than understanding the sort of structural causes of why it is that these medicines are required.
Rupa Marya
Which is why this book was so much fun to write with Raj Patel. Not just for his utter charm and, and its silliness. But, but…
Raj Patel
We did over zoom, so it was fine. But…
Rupa Marya
But it is, you know, the way that Raj is able to zoom out like that is so, it's, that's the, that's the whole point of deep medicine is to stop fetishizing the individual as the site of disease or the site of the solution and to start looking at how these things are actually built through, through society and through choices that we're making as a society. Or that actually we the people are not making, but that you know, very few people are making and we suffer the consequences of. And so when we say that diabetes is a socially generated disease, that is a very important thing to understand. Because that means that rates are, what, if there's a profi,t if there's, if there's a reason for corporations to gain from that phenomenon, that, that phenomenon won't, it won't stop, it won't, it'll just keep going. And so if we want to be saving our, you know, our eyes, our kidneys, our hearts, our brains from the assault of diabetes, the high insulin levels, the high glucose levels in the blood and the toxicities that these produce, we have to start generating a different kind of social exposure and a different exposome. And that's what we talk about in the book, and deep medicine is really operating on the level of the exposome, let's change the exposome so that we can have less damage to our bodies and to the planet.
Kartik Amarnath
Yeah, you both touched on you know how the health system operates, its many institutions and what their institutional priorities are and how those are, in fact, not necessarily aligned with the priority that is health and wellness that we would assume among these institutions. So, someone who works at the NIH and has read your book has asked me to ask you, how can institutions relevant to health and ecology such as the NIH, CDC, FDA, EPA, etc., how in an ideal world, how would they, you know, operate with more of a deep medicine approach? From your perspective.
Rupa Marya
They would move their funding from solutions that, again, hyper-individualize the problem. So maybe spending less money on genetic analysis of each individual and how they will individually respond to an individual therapy that costs $37,000 a shot, for example. And start looking at how the NIH can start shutting down the toxic metal foundry in East Oakland that's causing, you know, air pollution so that the people who live in that neighborhood die 10 years earlier than people who live like five miles away. That the NIH can start mobilizing funding to start dismantling the sugar industry, to dismantling the hold of, of food subsidies going to these mono cropping agricultural projects, to start reimagining the food system to be one that actually heals people instead of harms them. So there's so many levels at which the NIH could move their funding to support community immunity, wellness of people from, from the place in which they live, to empower them to, to mobilize actions on things that most of these communities have already identified are a problem: uranium mines in Navajo territory, here in East Oakland, where I live, there's like, the community knows exactly what's poisoning them and making them sick. So the NIH could just call those communities and say, hey, what do you think would help your diabetes, asthma, and Alzheimer's rates, and they would outline it. You know, our communities are over policed, our communities don't, aren't, you're shutting down our schools, we're forced to breathe toxic air, there's no trees planted in our neighborhoods, we're seven degrees hotter than the rest of Oakland, there's no clean water, there's lead in our paint, in our ground that our children are exposed to. So like, all the sum of all of these exposures are going to drive these illnesses. So instead of obsessing over, you know, the one shot that's $37,000 a shot and how one person will respond to it, let's start looking at population level health and solutions that are really driven by community groups. So that's how I would say, you know, that's how we can move these things in, in forward.
Raj Patel
And, what I mean, that, that's the, you know, that idea of communities holding knowledge is pretty central to, you know, the, the ideas in “Inflamed,” right, that, you know, this book has just a ton of references at the end. And it's because we love science. And we're, you know, in the sort of colonial history of the National Academies in, in the institutions of the university, part of the sort of founding ideas, whether, there are some people who can know things, and some people who can't, just as in the same way that, right, you know, there are some people who can feel things and other people who can't, or whose feelings matter and whose feelings don't, or whose knowledge matters and whose knowledge doesn't. And generally, in the history of the National Academies, the folks whose knowledge doesn't matter are working class communities, are communities of color, are Indigenous folk, and those communities have knowledge. And so you know, what, what we're offering in “Inflamed” is not a kind of burn it down approach, though, that we do appreciate the value of a good control burn. What we're what we're interested in is, you know, first of all, that these institutions should stop the harm that they're doing. Just stop that's, that's actually doing something good, stop it. But also, recognizing that good science comes from good peer review. And many peers have been denied a chance to review, and many peers’ knowledge has been denied the chance to be considered as knowledge even though in fact, it is, and it is science. And so that's, I mean, that I think is really difficult. And I'm in conversation with the National Academies right now around some of the obesity work, and they're in the process of understanding that obesity isn't a disease. It is something that comes as a result of a range of other social phenomenon. And that, you know, understanding that obesity is not a disease, but is in fact something that is, you know, we're gradually understanding as a comorbidity and hopefully, you know, the sort of fat shaming idea that goes behind that gets to be named and recognized for what it is. But then we get to move to think about community power as part of that, that discussion and community knowledge and understanding why, you know, what are the vectors of high BMI. Then all of a sudden, that becomes much more interesting conversation, but it dilutes the power of the academies to, to be, you know, sort of loci of knowledge. And that's a good thing. So, you know, I mean, I think that that's one of the things we talked about in “Inflamed” is how certain kinds of knowledge has always been marginalized under capitalism and under colonialism. And that knowledge, actually, is the knowledge that is required for us to save ourselves.
Rupa Marya
Yeah, take, for example, the work of Tiny Gray-Garcia, a poverty scholar in East Oakland, with Poor Magazine, and how you know, she's formally unhoused. And it works with other unhoused and formerly unhoused people to advance solutions of poor people, like basically building their own housing. Take that versus here at UCSF, Marc Benioff, billionaire, gives, bestows upon the university, a $30 million fund to start a, you know, study of homelessness, you know, instead of just like buying those people, houses, the 8000 people on the streets of San Francisco. Though, we know that, you know, we don't actually need to study it, and it almost becomes obscene to study it. Like, let's study the impacts of how colonialism and capitalism crushes the body and see what we get as an outcome with this, you know, destroyed humanity and dignity of a person on the streets of San Francisco. So that's where the, the you know, the problem is thinking that the solutions will come from the top, that the solutions will come from the academy, people who have no lived experience, but are studying it, as opposed to the people on the ground who can tell you exactly what they need. They need wraparound services, they need mental health services, they need a home where they can lock the door and be safe. They need a community to live with, you know, the things that our community members say, are the solutions, they're not the thing that needs to be studied. Those are the solutions. And so that's how, you know, that's the work of decolonizing is understanding that, you know, power must be redistributed. It's been purposefully kept away from those people who are suffering the most from the impacts. You know, when we think about, you know, fat shaming, there should be capitalist shaming, there should be like, let's shame the real, you know, the real source of the pathology, not the body's response to that pathology that the body is just doing what it does in the face of such violence.
Kartik Amarnath
To that and, you know, really identifying the source of pathology, being able to meaningfully listen to the very people who are in question for a particular research project or health related investigation—clinical practitioners, public health practitioners and practitioners, you know, aren't trained in, in any of these skill sets. So what kind of curricular changes would you see in terms of how practitioners are trained in an ideal world, and Raj, Rupa mentioned that, you know, the asset you provided to the book was really providing that macro view understanding the political and economic systems related to the physiological outcomes. And given your career investigating, you know, system, food systems, farming capitalism, and how they can cause social harm, do you have any recommendations on like, particular social theorists or anything in the humanities that might be legible for people who might be invested in this kind of approach, but don't have the access to where to start?
Rupa Marya
Oh, can I just say, if I were to design, public health training and medical training, the first year would just be spent listening to community members. So if you're going to school in San Francisco, you go sit with Tiny Gray-Garcia, you go sit with Corrina Gould, the Indigenous Ohlone elder, you go sit with Cat Brooks, with Anti Police-Terror Project, you go sit with Moses Omolade who's sitting in front of Westlake Middle School starving himself, that you start, you go to those places where people are suffering, and you just sit and you listen. Because doctors are terrible at listening. We interrupt our patients within the first 11 seconds. We are not there to listen to what people are experiencing, we are there to enforce our agendas and just get you know, get on with the next thing. And so that, that art of listening is lost upon us in colonial medicine and, and in public health as well. So I think that assuming that you are not an expert and starting to listen to the real experts is what I would design the first year of curriculum. And then in terms of reading, there's so much good reading to do. I think everybody right now should, you know, you know, there's like, people used to go do like a year of service, right public service. I'd say every single person coming out of high school should go and be on a pipeline, frontline resistance camp with Indigenous Grandmothers, because they are the most effective people at lowering greenhouse gases. And if we want our youth to understand what is happening, what has happened, and where we need to go, that would be the boot camp I'd recommend for every you know, graduating senior before they go to college, just go and you know, serve some time, cook some meals, take out some trash, do whatever the grannies tell you. That would be probably the most useful thing that I think people could do. But in terms of reading, I know Frantz Fanon is a, is a great place to start looking at some of the work of Linda Smith in decolonizing methodologies, understanding, you know, how to think about these things in different ways. There's a lot of incredible Indigenous authors and writers who are doing this decolonizing work also out of Africa.
Raj Patel
You know, and it's, it's not as if I have the monopoly on systems thinking. I mean, Rupa, I mean, that was the joy of, of doing this book is that we sort of melted into each other in a, in a, in a beautiful, Zoom sponsored way, with, you know, in terms of our sort of knowledge and expertise and ideas. And so that's…I mean, if people are looking for something to read, I’d recommend “Inflamed” by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel. I mean, honestly, we, you know, this book is designed in part for folk in the healthcare community to be able to hook through what y'all already know about health care and understand where it sits in broader worlds of social science. And, yes, I mean, we drew on just so much in terms of poetry. So Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s beautiful poem, “Pando/Pando,” is, we had permission from her to have it in the book. But you know, there's there's poetry, there's Indigenous history. “Our History is the Future” by Nick Estes is something we, we particularly enjoyed, as we were reading the book. And yes, Franon, Frantz Fanon’s work is just required reading for health professionals because he was a health professional, engaged in the work of decolonization. And, you know, it's worth just looking to him. But also, you know, “The Condition of the Working Class in England,” Engels, it's an epidemiological textbook, but it's also readable enough to break your heart even now. And it's, it's a really lovely book. And it was, it comes at the same time as you know, Rudolf Virchow. And so there's a lot in the medical world that provides the bridge for social science, but just you know, we have it all in “Inflamed,” and, you know, which is available from all good, independent bookstores, I'm contractually required to say.
Kartik Amarnath
Thanks for that. So, this question is sort of particular. But let's, let's give it a shot. So everyone in this conversation is of South Asian descent, we’re a part of numerous South Asian diasporas, at least within an American context, but not limited to the American context. South Asians are overrepresented in the medical field, along with other occupations that you know, professional occupations, and sustain the systems that impact our health. So examples would be finance and law. Your book covers debt and the health impacts of debt for example. Do you see any value in organizing South Asian clinicians and other professionals given our overrepresentation and as a colonized peoples ourselves in terms, especially with the fact that, you know, these professions are so essential to sustaining the systems that make us sick?
Rupa Marya
Yes. Especially because some of the, my South Asian colleagues are like the worst behaviors, when it comes to medical racism. So just because everyone's brown, skin folk ain't kinfolk, right? So just because everyone's brown doesn't mean that everyone is down with understanding how systems of racial hierarchy and caste play a part in, in, in those power structures today. So I think that this work of education and unlearning is something that we have to do together as, as South Asian community. And for me, that's been, some of the most beautiful connections I've had are with people fighting, you know, caste-ist violence and, and dynamics and people fighting for, you know, fighting anti-Black racism, here in Oakland and meeting other South Asians who are involved in this work is, is for me, probably one of the most… I mean, this is what happened when I met Raj and his wife, Minnie, I just felt like I found my family. Like, this is my, you know, these are the people who make sense to me, and I like to work with and be with and sit and break bread or roti with. And so that, that, that is, that is actually extremely important that we bring our aunties and uncles and our cousins and our community along in this work. Because our presence here as settlers in, on stolen land, it's important to become aware of who we are in where we are and what the presence of our diaspora does, and how we carry with us our caste violence and our, and all those things that are, they don't just disappear from us, as we, you know, end up ceding other territories. So absolutely, this is very critical work.
Raj Patel
Yeah, I mean, I'm at, I met my partner through the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, it’s a group. And I'm not saying this is like, you know, woke Desi Tinder. But I'm saying it because it, it was an organization that's very actively took a side in class divisions in the South Asian community, right. This is an organization that fought for the rights of trafficked women against a powerful and politically, politically-connected Desi landlord in in Berkeley, and that was how it started. And then through understandings of how race is the modality through which classes lived. And understanding that class privilege needs to be consigned to the pyre that we use to get engaged in a process of class suicide. But that modality will always involve some sort of inflection through race, and through the ways in which we're interpolated here, in this particular part of the world, in this moment. That activism matters, so that we can call out, you know, upper class Hindutva family members, because, you know, I want to bring my aunties and uncles along, I also recognize that they are part of the problem. And, you know, many, many of my family are Hindu fascists. And that's, you know, I mean, I think organized, one has to recognize what the lines are in this battle. And as Rupa’s saying, you know, that this is a battle line where you do have people who are pretending that caste doesn't exist. And certainly pretending that class doesn't exist, and that we're driving these kinds of divisions around, you know, Hindu supremacy in the South Asian community that are absolutely vile. And ultimately, you know, that there's, they're picking aside in the class struggle, and that's really important to remember, because purely identitarian organizing is, you know, is a sort of death sentence here. And that that's why I liked ASATA is because it was an organization that really picked a side in this class battle. And this, that side was not accidentally the side of workers, of exploited women and trafficked women, and women surviving domestic abuse. So that's, you know, that this is to say, yes, there is definitely a role here. And that many, many South Asians and part of the part of the diaspora are enemies in this in this pool.
Kartik Amarnath
If you can leave us with some takeaways, especially during these unprecedented—the buzzword everyone's using these days, unprecedented times, challenging times. There's a lot of darkness out there. Where do you both draw inspiration from and where, what are your suggestions for folks who are aligned with you, interested in your approach to these issues? What would you suggest they do in terms of determining where they belong in these bigger decolonial struggles for, for justice?
Raj Patel
Um, so the, look, if you want to figure out where you are, you just need to find the right psychiatrist and lie down on the bench. Obviously not. So this whole process of figuring out where you belong in the struggle is something you only find out by trying to fit, trying your hand in struggle. This is not the sort of thing that you can figure out with a notebook and a long walk on a beach. This is practical and engaged work with other beings. So, actually, you know, I lie. There are ways in being on a beach puts you in touch with so many powerful forces and powerful beings. And that's and that's a good thing. But ultimately, here we are holobionts that call ourselves human. And here we are trying to figure out how it is that we relate to one another. That's work that you can't do on your own. And in any case, you are not a single being. So the advice here is to get involved in the struggle, to roll up your sleeves, and start engaging in finding these movements. So, you know, if you're in, you know, in what is currently called the United States, then, you know, look at the kinds of organizations that are trying to reconstruct and build through this, like the Deep Medicine Circle, an organization that Rupa founded on which I'm honored to be the treasurer. So over to you.
Rupa Marya
Yeah, that's what's bringing me a lot of joy is the work with the DMC the Deep Medicine Circle. So we are women of color-led, worker-directed nonprofit that is healing the wounds that we've identified in our book. Healing the wounds of colonial capitalism, through food, through medicine, through story, through learning and unlearning and restoration. Our work right now, we are, our cornerstone project is this farming as medicine work, where we work to get land back to Indigenous people through our land back solidarity program. We reframe farmers as health stewards not only of the nutritious food they grow, but through how they take care of the soil. We de-commodify food and we reframe food as medicine or, I should say, we reassert it because it has been in all of our cultures before those things were purposefully separated. And so that work in, in our collective has been so inspiring, working to get back a 38 acre parcel of land back to Ramaytush Ohlone elder Cata Gomes. She formed her land trust recently with the help of our land back solidarity program director Hasmik Geghamyan and that, that is just beautiful to hear the elder sit and talk about, let's get those cows off that land across the way and bring the Tule elk back, let's bring the beaver back, let's bring the salmon back. The assertion that she and her family with 200 words will start learning their language. It's just magical. It's beautiful. It's inspiring. It's so healing on every level, it's healing. So every time we're down at the farm, and I get to hear the flicker or hear the mountain lion or see the lynx or watch the hawks giving birth to the next generation, we had four hawks last year, there's you can see there's clearly more babies in that nest coming. It's just beauty and all the food will be growing will be just giving away to our community members in San Francisco who are oppressed by the manufactured crisis of hunger. So this is, this is the work, this is the exciting opportunity and, and we all must find ways to do this kind of work. What we'll be doing over the next three years is creating a toolkit to share with communities around Turtle Island to share what we did so that people can apply what, what they can to their communities to construct similar or, or take what they can and leave what they don't want to help move land back into a thing that heals not a thing that harms and so that's what, that's what we're working on right now. It's, and that brings me tremendous joy.