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To respond to the challenging times we are living through, physician, humanitarian and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified “Revolutionary Optimism” as a new cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Revolutionary Optimism is itself an infectious, contagious, self-created way of living and connecting with others on the path of love. Once you commit yourself as a Revolutionary Optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, #unify with others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace, always keeping love at the center.
Paul - 00:00:00:
Welcome, Margaret. Thanks for joining the podcast today. I'm truly honored to be with you.
Margaret - 00:00:06:
Thanks so much for having me.
Paul - 00:00:08:
Congratulations on the second edition of your fantastic book, Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth. I love this book and strongly recommend that all my listeners go and read it. I'm actually going to start at the conclusion and focus on that right now, because you are saying in the conclusion, all in for all life. So that is an invitation in my mind to invite everyone into this effort. And actually, is that your idea? What is your idea about all in for all life? Can you explain that?
Margaret - 00:00:46:
The climate emergency is epic in scale. It threatens all of us, all humanity, but also all the animals on this planet and the plants and the just amazing ecosystems on this beautiful planet. It's all, we are all at risk here, like in tremendous danger. And so the invitation to go all in, it is to act like this emergency is an emergency, to realize that your future has been stolen from you, and to join into climate activism. And I believe the most effective way to do that is through nonviolent civil disobedience. And to me, that's the best way to go all in for all life. And that doesn't mean that you have to get in the streets and get arrested, right? For example, myself personally, I have not been arrested. I work in a different capacity in the movement on the fundraising side, and at Climate Emergency Fund, making grants to activists, which is important in its own right, and also the book, whatever. But so those are my ways of contributing. But everyone has something to give, something to, I mean, it can be a monthly donation, it can be cooking for activists, it can be doing child care for activists, or helping them with their books, their accounting. What do you have to offer? How can you go all in for all life and transform yourself in response to this moment.
Paul - 00:02:33:
Beautiful, I love that. And I really support your efforts in that. I do agree with you that nonviolent, peaceful mobilization, peaceful protest, is essential right now, because as you say, policymakers and business leaders and many folks in society are not understanding the magnitude of the climate emergency. And so getting media attention and waking people up is really important, as you know. I sometimes, when I get into the reality of what's happening, for example, we're hitting 1.5 degrees of warming Celsius this year. And experts had said it wasn't gonna happen till like the 2040's or 2050. We're gonna get to two degrees of Celsius of warming way before 2050. And we don't know, as you said, whether humans or other animals or plants can survive, warming of the planet, hot house Earth as they say, at that level of Greece. So I really feel like we're living at this auspicious moment in human history. And I want to ask you, do you agree? Is this an auspicious moment? It's either we take bold transformational action right now and focus on repair, or we are gonna go down a path of destruction.
Margaret - 00:03:58:
Absolutely, that is the choice. That is the choice. Recognize the emergency and just do everything we can. Just totally reorient, reorient our government and our institutions and money and how the government spends. Towards saving as much life as possible. It's, I mean, in some ways it's like, oh, that's a wacky political theory, but in some ways it's like, are you kidding? Of course we should do this. It's the only possible rational thing to do, but you know, our systems are just stuck. They're in the inertia of normalcy.
Paul - 00:04:36:
Well, I want to follow up on that. I think you said that we're stuck in the paralysis of normalcy. Can you tell us the history of the climate mobilization and the effort that you led to declare a climate emergency politically by governments and by society, by other stakeholders? What was the, where are we with all that? How many cities, how many states, how many countries, how many corporations have said that this is a climate emergency that you agree that based on your definition of that?
Margaret - 00:05:07:
2,336 jurisdictions and local governments, so from the national and international, the EU declared a climate emergency down to cities, and those declarations cover over 1 billion people. So, yeah, one billion people live in a geography, whether local or national or international, that has declared or state level, that has declared a climate emergency. So what we did at climate mobilization. Is like conceptualize that campaign and get it started. In a few, first in a, you know, nonprofit organization declared a climate emergency, then a city government did, then another city government, then we did about 10 of them, mainly in the Bay Area. But the first declaration was Hoboken and then also Montgomery County here in, or in Washington, DC. So here on the East Coast that we were doing some as well. And, um, Yeah, it just, and then when Extinction Rebellion came along, and we kind of, we shared this tactic with them. We said, you know, this is something, because the thing is, activists need wins. Right? Like to build power as a movement, you need to, um, have some kind of return on your efforts. And so declaring a climate emergency. We thought was a good way to. To set the record straight, to just say the truth from the official body and that we need a World War II scale or massive scale mobilization, that should be the response, an overriding national and international priority. And just to, you know, for some revolutionary optimism, You know? There's movies about and billionaires want to like, Terra Formars? Right? Go to Mars and make it habitable. Like, and that is probably not gonna happen, but you know, it's a vision. It's a vision for human potential, right? We can do that here.
Paul - 00:07:23:
Let's terraform Earth.
Margaret - 00:07:25:
Yeah, we can intervene in these processes. We do not have to be just passive idiots just like waiting for it to totally overwhelm us. We can do something here. And so anyway, the climate emergency declarations tried to get that on record. And it was, you know, successful in some ways. In 2019, climate emergency was word of the year because usage of it had gone up 10,000%. Right? It was like a new. It's like an intervention into the lexicon, eh?
Paul - 00:08:06:
A culture shift.
Margaret - 00:08:07:
Yeah, culture shifts, there you go.
Paul - 00:08:08:
Can I just take a moment, Margaret?
Margaret - 00:08:10:
Sure.
Paul - 00:08:10:
I want you to really receive this, so if you can put on your receptivity.
Margaret - 00:08:16:
Okay?
Paul - 00:08:17:
Thank you for your pioneering leadership and all the people that you worked with in the climate mobilization, extinction rebellion, sunrise movement, and many others at the local level around the world. You said it in a passing statement, oh, well, the EU did it. The EU is 27 major governments, major economies. It's huge. This was a huge step forward in our global quest to respond to the climate emergency by calling it what it is, as you say. So I just want you to really receive the kudos that and my personal appreciation, and I know all of my listeners and millions of people who you'll never meet appreciate the leadership that you're taking, so thank you.
Margaret - 00:09:04:
Oh. That's very kind. It was a very exciting organization and campaign. And we also at the Climate Mobilization. I'm very proud of a document that we produced called the Victory Plan, which is a hundred page document written by Ezra Silk and supported by me. He lays out what World War II scale climate mobilization could actually look like on a policy level, because it's a metaphor that people use, but to actually try to think that through. So anyway, I think that was a major contribution as well.
Paul - 00:09:44:
Yeah, so it's five years, like that was like that work, like you were the word of the year in 2019. It's four years later. And the way I am observing it, I feel like humanity in general, and Americans in specific, are acting like a herd of buffalo. Stampeding off the cliff into their almost probable certain extinction as a species. So while it was a great step forward, we're still not there-there yet. And I just just want my for my listener sake, I want to ask you, has the United States federal government, the President or the Congress declared a global climate emergency?
Margaret - 00:10:25:
No, no, there's no climate emergency declared at the national level or international level that the United States is involved in. But there is an activist group in Washington, DC. Called Declare Emergency that is taking disruptive action, campaigning for exactly that.
Paul - 00:10:42:
Oh, I wanna meet those folks.
Margaret - 00:10:44:
Yeah.
Paul - 00:10:45:
Thank you, I didn't know that. So I understand that as you know, we're entering a political election cycle coming up to the 2024 election. So I'm wondering if you know of any presidential candidates that have expressed publicly their willingness to commit to declaring a climate emergency using the powers of the presidency, which is what I think you need personally to do what you're wanting, what the victory plan calls for. So do you know of any?
Margaret - 00:11:18:
So I believe Marianne Williamson has said that she would support declaring a climate emergency. And Cornel West, I am not sure.
Paul - 00:11:28:
Okay, so we need to check on that. But yes, actually Marianne Williamson was on an earlier episode of the Revolutionary Optimism podcast. And I asked her directly if she was president, would she declare a climate emergency? And she responded by saying that at first, she would reach out to the private sector and offer them pathways of engagement, like what FDR did in World War II. And if they don't agree, then she would go ahead and issue a legal climate emergency declaration. So what I wanted to ask you, if you were president, Margaret Klein Salamon, and you had the power to assign an executive order declaring a climate emergency, what would you have the US federal government do? And do we have a draft EO? They're called, we call them executive orders. And as activists, we write them sometimes and like try to get them taken. So is there a draft EO for a climate emergency? And what would you do if you were president?
Margaret - 00:12:35:
Okay, so first of all, I wanna say that my ambition is not to be president, but I would like to be like the therapist general or something, like top, top national therapist, that would be my ambition. But because I think, you know, we're really crazy right now. And-
Paul - 00:12:54:
It's like a surgeon general, but-
Margaret - 00:12:56:
Exactly.
Paul - 00:12:56:
But you wanna be the top, you wanna be like the top climate therapist. I love that idea, yeah.
Margaret - 00:13:02:
Yeah, that's my ultimate ambition. But if I was president, I would declare a climate emergency, I would ban the expansion of the fossil fuel infrastructure. It is truly insane that we are continuing to build out pipelines and new fossil fuel facilities. I mean, so-
Paul - 00:13:24:
Are we subsidizing fossil fuel industries with the federal government?
Margaret - 00:13:27:
They're the most profitable industry in history. It's just- Like I said, I mean, it's on this epic scale of good and evil. Um. But uh, yeah, and then I mean, we need. It's very hard to answer the question, what should we do? Because there's so much to do. We have to transform our energy system and our agricultural system, and we need to rewild, and we need to. Just like figure out how to keep our agriculture going and have enough food for the world. And we need to, you know, like terraform earth and just try everything that we can. So, and that's kind of the idea of a climate emergency and all in for all life, right? It's just, I mean, that the government, again, this sounds both radical and common sense, but the government should spend without limit to save as much life as possible, right? It shouldn't be about like balancing the needs of the corporations or whatever. It's, this is the priority. This is it. So, Yeah, but just as chief national therapist, therapist general, I would just wanna counsel the president and the team about like, how can we go bigger? How can we go more ambitious? How can we do it faster, right? And just get everyone to get into that mindset of incrementalism as just a road to disaster. So.
Paul - 00:15:12:
Thank you for that. And I hope you will serve in that role someday. I think you would be great at it. And I think our country and our world certainly needs that. I think it's a brilliant idea. So I also, in your book on page 58 and 59, you talk about climate doomers, the people that are hopeless. And I sometimes think that I might be a climate doomer in disguise as a revolutionary optimist. Because as I really understand what's going on, I sometimes do get despairing and hopeless and wanna just like roll my head under the covers and never come out. And, but I think based on your definition of a climate doomer, I don't think I am that because they say, forget it, it's over, just grieve and prepare for the end of days. And I'm not willing to go there. So I am a revolutionary optimist, but I wanted to ask you, do you ever have days where you personally, like this is a personal question for you. Do you ever like not want to get out of bed? You want to give up? You want to just go out on a kayak on a river and say, whatever, whatever. And if that ever happens, what do you do to get yourself out of that and back on the saddle of, you know, mobilizing humanity to implement a response to this crisis.
Margaret - 00:16:36:
Right, so that right, this is an example of how working on oneself. Can. Impact how much one is able to contribute to the larger mission. And. I mean, so I am pretty good at turning my terror, which is so intense, into activism and into work. One might describe me as a workaholic. But. So yeah, that's how I deal with it when I, oh God. When I took a week off between Christmas and New Year's, I was at this lake and the lake just froze over and then melted and then froze again during these crazy temperature swings. And I was, I mean, it's, I really do feel a kind of, pressing fear that drives urgency that I then pour into the work. And that, which is, I mean, I'm a, whatever, everyone's different. But I think that the basic model that I'm talking about of being freaked out, being a doomer, because holy shit, the situation is terrifying. If you are honest, if you are rational, if you are living in truth, you look at that and you say, oh my god. So, but then what happens after that? Right? What do you do with that? And my recommendation in the book is to. Is to welcome it and process it and not try to fight it. Feel that grief, you know, like cry. About what's happening. Grieve the future that you thought you had, you know, the goals that you wanted to do that climate emergency is going to rob from you. Like, and then, and feel that terror and feel it at all. There's so many, it's like, it's like the full range of human emotions one can have to the climate emergency and process them and talk about them. And then take all of that energy, huge amount of energy, and direct it towards effective climate activism. I think that's the way. I think that's the prescription for living in this. Nightmare. That we live in.
Paul - 00:19:07:
I love that. And since revolutionary optimism is a contagious, infectious choice about how to live, I think we'll weave that into its definition. So, you know, as a climate activist and a revolutionary optimist. How do you recommend folks relate to other people or other institutions that are resisting the wake-up call or are resisting or opposing the kind of response that you're talking about? So I think one of the things that I'm exploring for myself personally is instead of, Uh, ignoring or fighting the the opposers, how can I embrace them and with from a place of love and bring them with us on this journey? Because I think it's an all hands on deck, imperative and opportunity. And we can't do it with half of us we have. We need all of us to and all the people with power and influence especially to join the quest to to save the possibility of humans generations.
Margaret - 00:20:25:
So thank you. Yeah, I think the answer is nonviolent civil disobedience. And if you think about Martin Luther King, for example, and the civil rights movement, their actions were not hateful. Right. That's the point. Nonviolent civil disobedience, peaceful civil resistance in which the activists embody the spirit of righteousness that they demonstrate through their actions. How seriously they take their cause and what they're willing to endure. To because the cause is so great. So yeah, they need to, when someone is ready to switch, from being an oil executive to going all in for the movement, which includes donating large amounts of money. When someone's ready to switch, okay, yeah. Yeah, everyone does have a place in the movement, but as long as some, as long as an institution is perpetuating the status quo. Through normalcy. Then absolutely they deserve to be a target of protest.
Paul - 00:21:45:
Yeah. So thank you, Margaret. Thanks for your leadership. Thanks for this fantastic book, Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth. And we look forward to staying in touch and having you back on the show during 2024.
Margaret - 00:22:01:
Thank you. Can I wait, sorry, can I ask you a question?
Paul - 00:22:04:
Sure.
Margaret - 00:22:05:
How did you feel reading the book? What was your emotional experience?
Paul - 00:22:10:
It was helpful for me because I especially liked the pathway. That you created in the book, the five steps basically, is how I saw it. Yeah, five steps. Step one, facing climate truth. Step two, welcoming fear, grief, and other painful feelings. I've definitely done step one. I do step two like kinda every three hours.
Margaret - 00:22:35:
Yes, yes.
Paul - 00:22:37:
I've reimagined my life story. You know, I was telling Marianne Williamson, I have a one-year-old granddaughter, Bertie Lou, whose birthday is actually today. And a year ago when she was born, I kinda did the math and thought she's gonna be 80 and 2100. And it kinda really, unleashed me even further into like, we have to take action now-now. So that is how I'm seeing my life through my grandchildren. Entering emergency mode. I'm with you. I'm there a thousand percent. I'd love to work on a draft executive order that we can pressure the next president to implement. That's how I would operationalize it. Or I would get arrested. I have been arrested and we'll do it again. Join the movement and disrupt normalcy. This is an interesting question because my family, we have climate activists and we talk about not carbon shaming anyone. You know, like if you eat a piece of meat or if you eat a fish, we're not going to shame you. If you get on an airplane or you drive a petrol car, we've kind of eradicated climate carbon shaming, we call it in our family. On the one hand, on the other hand, we have to change the way we do business at every level, you know?
Margaret - 00:23:51:
I think the focus should be on being an activist. So like, I mean, I don't think shame is necessarily the right approach, but. The encouragement should be, you know, get involved in the climate emergency movement. I think an activist that's doing that and then, you know, eats a burger. Is like helping much more than someone who, you know, is giving, trying to focus on their lifestyle over politics.
Paul - 00:24:17:
Point taken, yeah, exactly. So I see your five steps as like a living cycle, you know? It's a journey. It's not step one linear and you're one, you know, go through the five steps and you're done. This is an ongoing cycle of exploration internally and externally and. And I always say, what can I do as an activist today? You know, how can I serve today? So I think that's an ongoing quest of mine to figure that out, because I'm where you're at, and I thank you for your leadership and for helping bring me along to where we need to be. So I appreciate your personal mentorship, and your vision kind of woke me up. So thank you.
Margaret - 00:25:03:
Oh, thanks, Paul. That, to me, is the most meaningful thing a person can say.
Paul - 00:25:17:
Margaret Klein Salamon is an amazing revolutionary optimist. Her track record as a leader in the climate emergency movement is par excellent. And I would like to salute her for integrating mental health in with advocacy and activism. She was very clearly committed to direct action and nonviolent peaceful demonstration as the key element that's needed now to generate the political will and wake up our politicians and our country. And the world to the state of the climate emergency. Welcome rabbi Arthur. It's a great honor to have you here on the Revolutionary Optimism Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Arthur - 00:26:04:
Well, thank you. Just naming it Revolutionary Optimism is enough to bring me there.
Paul - 00:26:11:
I wanted to ask you to share your wisdom and your thoughts with our listeners. Regarding the auspicious moment that we're living through right now. In both US history and globally in the context of the global climate emergency. I know many people know you as a rabbi and a leader in the ecological and environmental movement. And you're also a PhD in American history. I don't think most people know that. So I wanted you to like kind of weave together. Your wisdom from both of those parts of yourself. And share what you think is possible now.
Arthur - 00:26:50:
Well, the first thing is that it occurs to me, he said it's an auspicious moment. The word auspices from Latin originally meant they would sacrifice an animal and check the intestines. Then from that they would get some vision of the future. So I think you're probably right that it's a moment in which our guts are, we're in danger of being sacrificed by our own corporate leaders in the climate crisis, by our own some of our own political leaders in what you might call the democracy crisis. It's funny that you mentioned the two origins that I have, the rabbi origin and the PhD origin, because I've been feeling myself tugged in the last year by wanting to deal with the PhD origin. Even more and I've spent the last 45 years dealing with what comes from the deep spiritual teachings of a living Torah which can change and does change and we have changed in our own generation. So both of those elements, I keep asking myself the question. The spiritual teachings of all spiritual traditions. Teach that love is more important than greed. All human beings have some element of greed, protective, self-advancing, and most human beings have some element of loving neighbors, sometimes they define neighbors in a very narrow way. What? People do look at the earth and fall in love with a tree, with a flower, and that's a very broad kind of love. So how do you write love into a constitution? Somebody, I can't remember who, says that justice is love in public. And I think that's true. And justice means that you take seriously the value of each person who is in your community and each person. And each living being and elements we don't even think are alive, like a river, like a mountain, but are crucial to life in the planet. And it was a- Those beings and treating them just like treating them with respect, not tormenting them, not subjugating them. It turns out to be just as important as not subjugating or tormenting other human beings. So I've been spending time this last year or so. Least on the one hand, maybe it's three hands or four hands trying to, um. Imagine, what a loving constitution for the United States might be. And how do you? American Jews respond to the upheaval in Israel. And can we learn from each other? There have been upheavals here. Nothing has big. In proportion, I mean, if you add 10% of Israelis, 10% of the whole country have been in the streets or doing other kinds of civil disobedience against what's essentially a racist and fascist government. If there were 10% of Americans in the streets or doing other kinds of civil disobedience, there would be 33 million people. Our biggest demonstrations during the Trump administration, our biggest demonstrations against what was a kind of clumsy, neo-fascist government was about two and a half or three million, just one percent of the country, not 10 percent of the country. Now, one of the things I said we could learn from the Israeli experience. Is this is a small country. It's much easier to get together 10% of the country if the country is small, not as a country is big like this, but small like this. And maybe we should be learning. That very effective anti-fascist action could be centered around crucial small pieces of the US, the Bay Area in California. New York metropolitan area, the Boston metropolitan area, Washington DC metropolitan area, that it might be valuable for us to think about what it means to do that. And people now are in terms of the, Supreme Court's attempt to subjugate women are now organizing in states that people thought were heavily Republican states, and they're winning majorities, and they're acting in the states, not only in the United States at large, but in a given state that's supposed to be Republican, but are winning majorities.
Paul - 00:33:36:
Let me ask you one last clarifying question. As a historian and a spiritual leader. You have said that you were spending a lot of the last year. Thinking about. And crafting your ideas about a new constitution. For the United States. What brought you to that insight that that was a possibility? And do you think this is the time when that kind of transformation? Is possible in the United States.
Arthur - 00:34:05:
It should be, it needs to be. It has happened before. In fact, the first constitution of the United States was called the Articles of Confederation. And when an important group of Americans decided that that government was too weak to protect them, they got together in Philadelphia and they just ignored it. It was a provision in the articles about how to amend the article. They didn't bother. They invented a new way and they adopted it. And that's the one we call the Constitution. But there've been major changes. The Bill of Rights was an attempt to say, okay, you need a stronger central government. Well, there need to be limits on the stronger central government. That's why the Bill of Rights. And then in the post civil war period, the reconstruction period, the country. The country realize, there had been deep political changes and the old constitution wasn't enough. So they adopted three amendments that were really a new constitution. And during the New Deal. Not with changing the words of the Constitution, but changing the words of laws. So labor unions, which had been practically crushed before it were elevated, there were all kinds of changes that changed the real Constitution of the United States. It happened again in the 1960's, where the black community was presumably had been freed in 1865, but then jammed into not quite slavery, but very restricted and subjugated place. For a moment. God. Equality and then were pushed back again. In the 60's, they weren't pushed back, but we've been living through a reaction, a reactionary period of an attempt to undo for sure the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, especially the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And Yeah. My new draft constitution begins with an article that wasn't even in the Constitution. Nobody could imagine why it would have to be. It's Article 1, Earth. And a whole set of provisions. About how the United States needs to respond to the crisis of the earth, atomic bombs, H-bombs, CO2. I always keep remembering the end of T. S. Eliot's great poem, Waste Land. He writes, this is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. Well, I think the H-bomb is a bang and the CO2 is a whimper. And we have both of them sitting there ready to destroy the planet. And the whimper is doing more in fact than the bang to destroy the planet. Well, what is the, there must be any decent constitution. And we now have states and have adopted. Green amendments, they're called. And in fact, one of them in Montana, just this week, a judge ruled in a case where a bunch of youngsters from five to 19, I think. Appeal that the government of Montana was destroying their right to a visible environment. And that that was unconstitutional in Montana. And they won the first level of the court case now. God knows what will happen when they get to the Montana Supreme Court. But the court ruled that there was a law that has recently been passed by the Montana legislature. That violates that constitutional provision. Well, there ought to be such a green amendment to the US Constitution. There ought to be an amendment which creates a floor and a ceiling for income and wealth. So we don't have this. Insane. I mean, multi-billionaires on one hand, and people who can't even afford food on the other hand. That's insane. There needs to be a constitution saying this and saying, or the Senate. And the presidency and the Supreme Court are all anti-democratic. They're not just undemocratic, they're anti-democratic. The Senate actually has a provision in the Constitution saying you can't amend, you cannot amend the equal votes of the states, big ones and little ones, that's the huge one. You can't amend that they have equal provision, equal votes in the Senate. But you can do what the British did with House of Lords, which is reduce the powers of the Senate, and that ought to be in the Constitution. A popular vote for president. And a universal, you know, there's nowhere in the Constitution. The Constitution as amended says, you can't restrict the ballot on account of race. You can't restrict the ballot on account of sex. And you can restrict the ballot on account of age for people over 18. But it never says anywhere, every citizen of the United States has the right to vote. Period. Don't come with rules, you gotta produce your driver's license. You gotta produce this and that and the other. No, every citizen. Of the United States has the right to vote. In whatever jurisdiction they live in for all the governments, state, local, federal. And that and what's more in the Constitution I drafted. Like Australia, every citizen has the right to vote. Every citizen has the obligation to vote. It's a rule. And you get, in Australia, you get fined if you don't vote. There are waves, for instance, making voting day, election day, holiday, so people who need to work. Can have a day off? To vote. We don't do that. There's a built-in anti-democratic bias to the present Constitution. There was a lot of excitement in the last week or so. Ohio, some people who wanted to prevent women from having the right to an abortion and maybe down the road. The right to birth control. Ohio tried to restrict its referendum. So it would be very hard to amend this Constitution, which says that there is a right to abortion, et cetera. And it was an outpouring of voters, the people who supported that amendment thought, oh, it's midsummer, people are hot, people are bored, they're not gonna pay attention. We can pass this amendment to make it very hard to amend the constitution. Well, didn't work. And the referendum turned out to be very important. And next fall, there's gonna be a vote on an amendment that would put the right to an abortion in the Montana constitution, in the Ohio constitution. Well, Everybody got all excited about it. How about there being a national referendum? People of the United States would vote to the poll show, would vote for a serious bill about the climate and a serious bill about people voting. But there's no provision for a national referendum. There needs to be. Success of what happened in Ohio should be teaching us. So that's in there too. So that's the kind of thing I've been trying to do with the vision of. It's a spiritual vision. In secular terms. Did I say this wonderful secular teaching, justice is the face of love. In public.
Paul - 00:44:46:
Right, that was Cornel West. So thank you for that wonderful. A vision that you've shared and for your leadership and for your big hearted commitment to moving humanity forward in responding to the time in emergency and also to the what we call constitutional rot or the democracy crisis that you described so eloquently. So thank you so much for being on the podcast. My deep love for you and respect and. Have a great week ahead.
Arthur - 00:45:01:
Thank you, Paul, and thank you for Revolutionary Optimism.