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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.
Voiceover - 00:00:03:
Welcome to Revolutionary Optimism. Living at this time in history, we are challenged with a convergence of crises that is affecting our daily lives. Issues like economic hardship, a teetering democracy, and the worsening climate emergency have left many Americans feeling more despair than ever. To respond to the challenging times we're living through. Physician, humanitarian, and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified revolutionary optimism as an infectious, contagious, self-created way of thinking and living on the path of love, where you unleash your personal power and you #UNIFY with others to build movements that catalyze bold and transformational political action, putting love at the center for our collective repair, justice, and peace. In this episode, Dr. Zeitz is talking with Rylee Haught and Jay Waxse, two leaders of Climate Defiance, a brand new youth-led group dedicated to using disruptive, peaceful, and direct actions to ignite change at the scope and speed necessary to avert the worst impacts of the climate emergency. Climate Defiance launched in April 2023 in response to the Biden Administration's approval of the Alaska Willow Project, the largest oil-drilling project on public land. Since then, they have staged disruptions at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, a Fifth Avenue fundraiser for President Biden in New York, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm's keynote address in Birmingham, Michigan, and many more actions. Rylee is 24 years old and a born and raised West Virginian. She's a recent graduate of West Virginia University with a bachelor's in psychology and is a Recruitment Lead at Climate Defiance. Jay is a trained and published engineer from Omaha, Nebraska. Rylee and Jay are deeply passionate activists who are working at the front line to build a political movement for love.
Paul - 00:01:54:
Welcome Rylee and Jay from Climate Defiance. So great to have you on the podcast today.
Rylee - 00:01:59:
Thanks so much for having us.
Jay – 00:02:00:
Yeah, excited to be here.
Paul - 00:02:03:
So, describe to our listeners, what is Climate Defiance and what brought you to Climate Defiance at this time in your life? journey. Why don't we start with you, Rylee?
Rylee - 00:02:15:
Yeah, so Climate Defiance is a new youth-led org, and we're focused on utilizing mass and disruptive direct action to confront the folks most culpable for the climate crisis we're currently in. And I got involved with climate justice-specific organizing at the Colburn Blockade last year in April at the Grant Town Power Plant in Grant Town, West Virginia, where Senator Manchin makes over half a million dollars a year from his family's trucking company that ships coal waste to that plant. It was the first of its kind, as far as an action goes, that I'd ever heard about happening in West Virginia, so I was really excited about that. And yeah, I met the co-founder of Climate Defiance, Michael there and he reached out to me in February and asked me to get involved with Climate Defiance, so that's how it started for me.
Paul - 00:03:05:
Okay, over to you, Jay.
Jay- 00:03:07:
Yeah, so it's a cool path that has brought me to Climate Defiance in my own personal journey because the thing that initially drew me to purpose was to try to advance clean energy and I wanted to really become a solar engineer and all that was to limit the impact of fossil fuels on our warming planet. And so I did that for a long time. I got a little disenchanted being in a engineering and science type atmosphere mostly because I'm an organizer to my core. And so eventually worked for Bernie, worked for some other organizing groups and I moved here to DC to kind of continue that. And I was working with one that just was, it was really, really difficult to see the kind of performative kind of the consultee type of work that we were doing in our organizing that wasn't very impactful. And so after a time with that, we unionized, so that was great, but then I realized that it wasn't the spot for me. And so went to other avenues and I had heard about also this coal-bearing blockade, and I was just seeing it and just was like, oh, wow, this is direct. This is a clear way for people to demonstrate with no questions about it, what we approve of and what we don't, in this case, Joe Manchin's dirty plant. And the connection with that and the Poor People's Campaign, Reverend William J. Barber was out there on a Palm Sunday with a day after that action that we did to blockade the plant. So to have Climate Defiance and Poor People's Campaign be the two biggest parts of my activist history, come early part of this year, Michael reached out another very tangible, very direct action when we first disrupted Ali Zaidi, the key climate advisor to Biden's Administration. I heard about that, he invited me and I said yes, and the rest is history because I couldn't move away from this part of the movement.
Paul - 00:05:14:
Great, thank you so much, both of you. I just want to honor the choice that you made to enter this kind of work. I do think it's critical, and I think we're living in an auspicious moment in US history where we have a choice to make as a country to either go for climate repair or it's going to be climate destruction. And I honor the bravery that you're undertaking to be part of that movement, the Climate Defiance Movement. So I wanted to ask you, I think I know the answer to this, but it sounds like you're targeting current government officials, including the President, the vice President, the secretary of energy, and so forth and so on. Those sounded like all Democratic targets. Are you also targeting Republicans? And how are you handling the targeting of the candidates for the presidential election? Because we have Republicans, we have Democrats, and we have Cornel West as the third-party. How are you all thinking about the 2024 election?
Jay - 00:06:19:
Well, you know, I think that the beautiful part is that our focus was very clear from the beginning. We announced with a blockade of the White House Correspondents' Dinner. We did that. The President right now is Joe Biden, who is a Democrat. Sometimes skews enough to the right that I kind of question what some of these party labels mean sometimes. But no, I think that as far as the targeting goes, I think the strongest way that really drew me in to really loving how morally focused these conversations are from like a citizen perspective and a democratic perspective, small to democratic perspective that when we have politicians that are out there saying one thing and they're saying this to try to allure young people or allure environmental focused people to vote for them. And then they get into office and they make it very clear that it was a to say no more drilling on Federal Lands period in Joe Biden's case. He had a few more periods. But, think that that in a sense is... the in a wide focused target and ends up It's ended up being who it's been. You can kind of see who we've targeted on our Twitter, but the Biden Administration with the key focus connected to that hypocrisy and then really just outright lying to potential voters. I know that that's been a motivational source. that has felt centering.
Paul - 00:07:55:
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I agree with you. I believe that we should hold our political leaders accountable. For integrity with the words that they say. If he made a commitment, like I'm not going to do drilling on Federal Lands, then he made a commitment and he didn't keep his word. So that's a breakdown in integrity, his integrity, in his commitment to us as voters. And I think our job as citizens is to hold political leaders accountable when they say one thing and do another. And they don't like that, by the way. They don't like to be held accountable. They like to say whatever they want and do whatever they want. And I think that's what Climate Defiance is doing. You're bringing integrity to commitments. So I think that's so important at this time in history. And so I, I'm pretty sure I have this right. Do you know, has President Biden declared a Climate Emergency?
Rylee - 00:08:52:
What do you think? No, he is not. And he has the authority.
Paul - 00:08:57:
Do you think that either him or whoever is the next President of the United States, do you think that the climate crisis, the Climate Emergency is so bad that the President of the United States should declare a Climate Emergency? What do you think about that?
Rylee - 00:09:14:
I think we're both in agreement that yeah. Absolutely.
Jay- 00:09:19:
I mean, we look at this month alone, the hottest June on record, the hottest seven days in July on measured record. Antarctica, it's the middle of winter down there. It's not forming ice. This is one of the first years on track history ever that it's not forming ice. So it is literally emergency by definition. And a lot of our scientists, friends, um, that are involved with Climate Defiance have been screaming this at us as well. There's nothing but an emergency mode that we must enter.
Paul - 00:09:53:
So agreed a thousand percent and it's way overdue in my personal opinion and I think that there's some work that we need to do to clarify what we mean and what we expect the next President to do in terms of declaring a climate emergency. So I'll give you my quick riff on this. I would say we want an executive order issued on day one of the new administration. And we want it to be a whole of government response. We want to create a task force where every department and agency of the US federal government is mobilizing to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions and to radically accelerate adaptation and also to go carbon negative, do carbon removal and also to research and develop governance for direct climate cooling. So it's four pillars of climate transformation. Also, I think the President should use their bully pulpit and mobilize all the private sector and all faith leaders and all of our society to understand the magnitude of the challenge that we face and the opportunity that we have to actually solve the climate emergency. So I'm still, as a revolutionary optimist, I still believe that we can solve this emergency, but not if we continue with same old, same old, half steps, incrementalism, lies, et. cetera. So anyway, I don't know. If you have any other thoughts about what you want the President to do, now would be a time to put that on the air.
Rylee - 00:11:38:
In addition to everything you just said, I think sticking to the promise of ending new drilling on Federal Lands period, period, period is like really crucial. And I'm glad you brought up the bully pulpit because that's something he's really lacked in as far as mansion and cinema. They seem to literally have Biden in their hands somehow and offering nothing in return. It's deeply frustrating to me. So yeah, there's so much more he could be doing and said he would do that he's not that are easy steps that are steps he can take. He just needs the political will and the pressure behind him to do that.
Paul - 00:12:20:
Thank you. Rylee? Any other thoughts about what you want the President to do in terms of declaring a Climate Emergency?
Jay - 00:12:29:
Yeah, you know, I think you really nailed it. I'd love to get those pillars, you know, again, to trust to carry forward. And I think that as a democracy, which we have some aspects of it that are fledgling right now, but to really reinvigorate that which is again a main motivational force for us is to, as we were mentioning with the boy, pulpit and really just looking at what representation we're going to get to an actually healed place. I know that intersectionality is so important, it's becoming more understood, but as we look at healing, the healing of the planet is also going to come through the healing of our past and our people. And so if we're talking about representation of indigenous people who have never had a treaty really upheld, they've been dispossessed and their land stolen from them, and they have the solution, many of the solutions to protect our environmental mother and an ecosystem that supports us. And so with that representation, leaning into connecting with them. And, you know, the other core part of a really troubling piece of American history is that, you know, our enslaved people built so much here in DC, built up so much of this, of this land. I think if we don't see proper representation with those communities along the way, then we'll never get to a solution that is one that actually works instead of it just being top down. So I think the people are ready to help contribute, give answers, throw down for protecting our one home.
Paul - 00:14:10:
Thank you, Jay and Rylee for those ideas. I think they're really right on. I think you're right. We're on the cusp of the, we're at the very beginning of the climate emergency and its disruption that we'll experience. So all the heat waves and the flooding and the smoke that we're inhaling from fires in Canada, and this is happening all over the world. I think it's important for our listeners to understand that this is just the very beginning of the disruption that we are all going to experience because the climate emergency has been left unchecked by our political leaders. They're failing to respond to the situation that we're facing and that is not acceptable anymore. It's not workable. We can no longer just let that go on the way it is. So that's the first point I wanted to make. And then secondly, I wanted for the record you to know that on the second episode of this Revolutionary Optimism podcast, a candidate for President, Marianne Williamson, committed to declaring a legal Climate Emergency if she would be elected President. So that's the first time I know of a candidate in this cycle that has made that kind of commitment. And I wanted you to know that. Thirdly, I want to second the motion of you, Jay, about intersectionality and the opportunity that we have to Unify with the racial justice and racial equity movement. I'm very much connected with that. We have a couple of episodes on the podcast. That movement for racial reparative justice is calling for radical reparations and radical truth-telling for people that have lived through the black experience, but also it's multicultural and multiracial. Native Americans, Hispanics, other BIPOC populations that have also been disenfranchised by the laws of our country. Those things need to be repaired and that's where part of the response can include taking on addressing the Climate Emergency. So I think there is a direct link there. So I want to go on and ask you another question. I want to take a step back from the policy world. Sorry I got into that zone, but I do want to ask you, Rylee, and then you, Jay, can you share with us an experience that you've had doing one of these direct actions? I know Rylee. when you and I met, you had just come back from an action somewhere, and you had black and blue marks all over you. I want our listeners to understand how you're being treated and also the impact of you on your body, obviously, but also emotionally and your wellbeing. And also, Jay, if you could share a little perspective on that, I think it would be helpful for everyone to hear. Over to you, Rylee.
Rylee - 00:17:09:
Yeah, so we went to Detroit to the Free Press Breakfast Club where Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm was the keynote speaker, was speaking actually the entire time. I feel like it was just her, her breakfast club, but we pulled up and we attempted to peacefully walk past security and that did not go over well. They had security picking us off one by one. They choked one of our organizers by the necktie, drug somebody else out by their ears. For me, I just remember I was holding on to the railing of the staircase we were trying to get up and as I was holding onto it, this guy came up behind me, didn't see him and he was just ripping me from behind over and over again and he was doing it so aggressively that I didn't want to let go for fear that I would be flung head first into the floor. So I just continued to hold on and he shoved me over from the side. I fell on the ground. I might've hit my head. I really don't remember. I just remember crawling back to the staircase to link arms with Betty because I was just like, I need somebody to hold onto and then we sat down in front of them. I watched them throw this girl over us on the staircase, all the way down the stairs. Actually, they did that to multiple people and then eventually they grabbed me and Betty and got us separated and was dragging me by all fours, almost lifted all the way off the ground. So I'm being suspended by my own body weight, which sucked and then got me all the way, drug me super fast all the way to the very front of the hotel doors and then I heard another security come up to them and say, you need to let her stand up, we're being filmed. And so the only reason they even let me stand was because they knew they were on camera at that point, which little did they know, I guess, that they were on camera the entire time. And so, yeah, basically they let me stand up for a second. My heels were off. So I tried to let, I was like, I can't walk in these. Can I fix these real quick? I fixed one of them and then somebody yelled, just get her out of here, just get her out of here. And then they basically kicked me out the door on the way out and I was left with a bruise all the way. I mean, I still have faint traces of them, but it was this entire forearm. The other forearm, I had two really distinct lines on the side of my thigh from being thrown up against the staircase. I counted at least eight bruises. It was not fun at all. I had never experienced violence like that at any of these actions. So not to deter anybody because this was the one time I've seen such, well, not the one time. We also, it was Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm at Politico too, where we were brutalized. That was really scary. But yeah, so I guess that was my experience at, was that the last action? That was the last action that I did and I've taken a small hiatus to try to just chill out, relax, and so now I'm back in DC no longer chilling out and relaxing.
Paul - 00:20:28:
So I want to clarify something. Climate Defiance stands for peaceful, nonviolent protest.
Rylee - 00:20:36:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we all agree ahead of time. We talk about it.
Paul - 00:20:41:
That's like a condition of working with the climate Defiance movement, right?
Jay - 00:20:46:
Yes.
Paul - 00:20:47:
Okay, so with that stance that you're taking, peaceful, nonviolent protest, you were physically brutalized by representatives of the Biden Administration. Do I have that right?
Rylee - 00:20:59:
Well, by private security forces, like we don't know who necessarily was operating this private security, because it may have just been like the hotel security, it may have been her own private security, but either way, we had pre-announced, you know, they knew we would be there, they knew we've been peaceful, they've actually, the Secretary of Energy's seen us before, and we didn't do anything violent. So, yeah, it was really shocking when it happened, for sure.
Paul - 00:21:28:
And how are you doing emotionally?
Rylee- 00:21:31:
Don't ask me that right now. I mean, it's a lot to handle because at the end of the day, I have friends and family who already don't understand why I'm taking the action that I'm taking. And so to come back to them and tell them, yeah, I was beat up today for the first time. I've never been beat up before, never been in a fight. When I say I'm nonviolent, I couldn't even, even if my morals were like, actually no, I'm cool with the violence, I'm down with it. I'm not, I'm just not that kind of girl. So it was, I mean, it shook me up. It shook up my friends and family for sure. And it makes them want to continue to encourage me to stop. And so like facing that resistance from people who I know genuinely love me is, it's hard to deal with. And it's hard to explain myself to them because they're right. This shouldn't be happening to their daughter, to their granddaughter, to their cousin. Like it just shouldn't.
Paul - 00:22:24:
Thank you for sharing that. That is a real challenge, right? I know I have the same thing in my family. Like, I might get arrested today and, you know, they don't like that. But my stance is from a place of love and from a place of love of all the people living on the planet now, including myself, my children, my grandchildren, and also I imagine future generations. And I think of those future generations as looking back and thanking you Rylee, thanking you Jay for doing what you did because you're creating the possibility that we can actually solve the Climate Emergency. So I hear that challenge. I'm just giving you how I respond to the resistance that I face in my family, just as a way of offering. Okay, Jay, I know you've been doing this stuff. Tell us, can you share an experience that you personally had and whatever lessons you might've learned from one of those experiences?
Jay - 00:23:27:
Yeah, there's a lot there. It's been so active since when we got started with our first disruption and nonviolent direct action disruption. And so like I'm finding that out as we go. And just to add something to what Rylee was saying, as well as that like, They can, people can look at what we're doing and let us know if they think that we're even acting illegally or about the risking arrest. So we're definitely resisting the state and trying to understand what is the line there. But the real legality here, private security is not, it's assault to be touching people that are trying to walk into an event. And so they're acting illegally as quickly as we are showing up. So I wanted to give that caveat as well. But yeah, with these throwing ourselves into very unknown waters, we've seen the full range of it, learning so much. But yeah, for me personally, I think that. The lead up for me is probably the most difficult time, especially like... With the action later today, I'm actually pretty calm, pretty excited. I know most things are set in motion and it feels good. I'm so glad, thank you so much for asking us about non-violence, because I think that that's something that I wish I would have said even earlier, because it is such, it's the core of what we're doing. And it can change anything. We ask M.O. King behind you there, Martin Luther King behind you, Dr. King or Mahatma Gandhi, it's limitless. But I diverge because I'm really trying to like, put better words to what the emotional landscape is for me before and after. I think like that 24 hour, like kind of the night before the day of the action is the most difficult part for me, because I do a decent amount of just some of the coordination and some of these and trying to make your Duxer in a row. People have answers and stuff. And, you know, I'm really proud of our safety and our care for one another. And we've grown that all along the way. But just, yeah, knowing and feeling that we're doing as Climate Defiance as strong as a job as we can to really make sure that people feel safe as possible. People feel heard and seen and empowered and an equal member of the reason these actions succeed is because we're all getting together. So I think that it's beautiful because I'm really stressed about that. I'm really like emotionally frayed out from it. But it is also connected to the thing that once it's coming, once it's happening, and when we get done and are celebrating, it's connected to how good it feels to be together after that.
Paul - 00:26:28:
Yeah, thank you, Jay. Thanks, Rylee. I think when we, I wanted to touch on something that I learned from you guys when we met the other week. about the sense of belonging that you just mentioned, Jay. You talked about you're working with your millennials or your Gen Z, I'm not sure you're in that. Youngers.
Jay - 00:26:46:
Admeno, Gen Z.
Paul - 00:26:48:
Okay, and I'm a baby boomer, so we have three generations here on the... on the... podcast. So I think it's what you said was really deep and important here. which is that... when you join together. with people. from all three generations, let's say. Gen Z, Millennial, and Baby Boomers, an Intergenerational Movement, that it's a sense of community, of belonging, of solidarity, of support, of safety. And I want you to share for a moment about that because I think that's the secret sauce that I think you can use to kind of bring more people into the climate-defiants movement. So can you share your sense of belonging? and how you're personally experiencing that. We'll start with you Rylee and then over to Jay.
Rylee - 00:27:43:
Yeah, I think... Uh... It's been huge for me because, you know, I'm a native West Virginian, as I mentioned. My first climate justice organizing happened last year, because this is just not... It's really difficult to see solidarity within the climate justice movement, specifically in Appalachia, because of how deep the Fossil Fuel Industry ties are there. And so yeah, entering this space was a whole new world for me, for sure. And I think just in the sense of belonging and how we portray ourselves as an intergenerational movement but also youth led, it kind of just, it makes me feel like it's a good representation of Mother Earth defending herself when we can actually see a large variety of different ages, occupations. all kinds of different walks of life coming behind this because you know we're not just these hippie tree hugger environmentalists that Biden is taking off right now. It's like, no, we want people to understand that it is our futures. It's all of us. It's not just the people who claim to care about the environment right now. Because we all should, we all eat and we all drink water and take baths and all these things are being put at risk right now. So yeah, the sense of belonging for me, it just, it feels like a huge reflection of just like of how important the work we are doing is, because you wouldn't see this kind of variety of folks if it wasn't crucial and like a big umbrella of folks that are understanding that this is crucial.
Paul - 00:29:32:
All right, Jay, tell me about your personal experience, about your personal sense of feeling a sense of belonging. Like, what does that feel like for you in your heart, in your body?
Jay - 00:29:45:
Yeah, you know it. It really feels like family. I keep going back to that. Our comrade Justin says it all the time. It is the feeling from the start. And it's also just like literal family. There's those of us in these spaces and in these actions that are mother and son, brother and sister that are coming through. And when we first started combining and showing up in spaces right before an action or before we're about to throw down and this and that, I just find myself looking around the circle and just not only feeling it, but just being in awe of some of our people that are there. And I feel like again, very similar to the Poor People's Campaign and the community there, I would be so foolish to not continue to work with and to be with these people. And so I think that that belonging, It makes me feel good because if I have that like-mindedness and like-heartedness that I see in this group, then it's really what I kind of realized I've been looking for all along in my career. And Bernie was a step to that. These aspects of activism really were a step to that. But yeah, it just feels like we're part of a unit of a family that's been called to be in the same space that it's just so empowering because we're even more than the sum of our parts and that all of us individually, it's just really been a wowing factor of what out of say there's 12 people in action, what each person is contributing in terms of what they feel called to do. So just really witnessing that, playing a part in that is... It's been just cosmic. I've been saying that a lot recently.
Paul - 00:31:43:
So on the cosmic note, I want to just say that my experience of movement building is that you as leaders in the Climate Defiance movement, youth led Climate Defiance leaders, you are coming at this from an authentic place of love and caring and you are driven because you're looking at the future and saying, we can do better. And what happens is that you create like a force field. It's like you're, you create your energy field and you can pull people in. So I hope our listeners will feel that from this podcast and they'll be drawn into exploring and even joining Climate Defiance because this is just the very beginning. We need massive, peaceful, nonviolent protests to wake up our country and our policymakers that the status quo is no longer workable. And we need bold transformational action, toot-sweet, like immediately. So thank you for your leadership and thanks for being on the podcast today. And I'll see you out there on the next demonstration. Have a great day.
Jay- 00:32:56:
Thanks.
Paul - 00:33:06:
Jay and Rylee shared their lived experience of facing climate challenges in their hometowns. And they also demonstrated physical, emotional, intellectual bravery in their willingness to take direct action. They were subjected and brutalized with physical assault when they do these efforts. And they remarkably used those experiences to strengthen their resolve and to retain and expand their commitment to addressing the Climate Emergency. They both reiterated that Climate Defiance is committed to peaceful nonviolent protest. And I was really touched by the insight that they shared around the importance of a sense of belonging and solidarity and community that is being created with Climate Defiance stakeholders and the Climate Defiance movement as we go forward. So I also wanted to share that on the day that we did that recording of the podcast, I actually did join them at a protest down in Washington, D.C. Our group interrupted the annual Congressional Women's Softball game, and we jumped onto the field when West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito, the captain of the team, came up to bat as she is a strong proponent of the Mountain Valley Pipeline that will transport liquid natural gas through her state. And we interrupted the game for about 15 or 20 minutes. We decided not to get arrested that day. And I also was serving as a de-escalator. And I was in conversation with the police while we were protesting and telling them that it would have been not looking good for them to arrest us on the middle of a baseball field. In the days following the protest of the annual Congressional Women's Softball Game, I was reflecting on my experience and I wrote a short poem that I'd like to share with you today. It's titled, Climate Emergency Defiance, from my depths. Feeling zen and joy in being deployed. in the face of opposition. In the eye of the sniper's rifle. In the face of the police forces. In the face of resistance. In the face of derision. In the face of denial. We belong in this stance of interlocking arms and hearts. Chanting our truths. We are putting love at the center. Feeling Zen and clear. Feeling zen and safe. Willing to live. And willing to die. All love. Love all, serve all. Unify. Thank you and have a great day.
Voiceover - 00:36:13:
Are you ready to be part of the revolution? To learn more about revolutionary optimism, please visit drpaulzeitz.org. To explore building movements, please visit unifymovements.org. Revolutionary Optimism, transforming the world one episode at a time.