Annie Leonard on Protest [rebroadcast]

Good morning. It's Friday, August 7th, 2006. This is up front. I'm Brian Edwards-Tieker on today's show. One of the things we saw over and over is how much protesters are vilified at the moment. And then years later, that they are appreciated. You know, Rosa Parks is an example. At the time of her protests, she was obviously arrested. We all know that. She had to flee the city because she had so many death threats. She and her husband both were fired. They lived in poverty for a number of years. I mean, she was absolutely vilified. You know, today I, you know, she's on postage stamps. Annie Leonard on what the long history of protest and social change tells us about the present moment of crackdown and repression. We'll discuss the new book that she's co-authored with Andre Carruthers. Protest. Respect it. Defend it. Use it. It's Annie Leonard. Next. After the news. I'm Max Pringle with these headlines. The latest Labor Department jobs numbers show U.S. employers unexpectedly cut 23,000 jobs last month. Labor Department revisions shaved 103,000 jobs off payrolls in May and June, but the unemployment rate dipped to 4.1% as Americans left the job market. Today's June jobs numbers from the Labor Department marked a sharp reversal. for the u.s labor market hiring had been rebounding this year from a lackluster twenty twenty five in the face of the conflict in the persian gulf that has sent energy prices surging and put a strain on family budget job growth has been steady if unspectacular president trump has signed two new executive orders seeking to restrict birthright citizenship the move comes just two weeks after the supreme court struck down trump's earlier attempts to limit the right ed donoghue has more on the orders It would limit the number of people eligible to become US citizens after being born in the country. The second would curb birth tourism, increasing visa restrictions on people who want to give birth in the U.S. This will give us the right to do it in a much more forceful manner. but they've taken birthright citizenship and they've made a joke out of it. The president tried at the start of his second term to end birthright citizenship. Two months ago, the Supreme Court upheld a broad conception of it, rejecting the president's previous attempts to declare children born to people in the U.S. illegally or temporarily aren't American citizens. Unfortunately, we had a bad decision, very unfair decision. Our country suffers because of it.

and we're ending it a different way. Opponents had sued, saying the earlier executive order went against the 14th Amendment. The president says he thinks his latest actions would be constitutional. Ed Donahue, Washington. A high school student in Thailand shot several people and killed at least seven at a school outside Bangkok. Several other people were wounded. Charles Dela Desma reports. A witness told reporters students at the Debserun-in-Lanthaburi school hid inside a classroom while they heard gunshots from another building before police officers cleared away for them to leave. About an hour after the shooting, people stood outside the school comforting one another and police and first responders walked around. inside the school. Deputy Interior Minister Polopi Suwinchi has told reporters five teachers died and that the shooter killed his two grandparents at home before going to the school. The minister also said the shooter had died at the hospital. A senior policeman says the motive is still being investigated and that the gun is believed to have been taken from a member of the student's family. I'm Charles Dillotasper. A New Mexico court has ordered Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people's mental health from its platforms and the second phase of a landmark trial. Judge Brian Bideshide said in a ruling Thursday that the bulk of the money, $420 million, will be used for treatment services for young people. The rest will go toward awareness and prevention. screening services and other costs over the next five years. The new penalty is in addition to the $375 million in civil penalties that jurors ordered against Meta in March, after determining the company knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. In the second phase, prosecutors asked the judge to impose fundamental changes at Meta aimed at reining in addictive features, improving age verification, and preventing... child sexual exploitation through default privacy settings and closer oversight. Insurance providers are a warning that global warming could cost European companies billions of dollars. The continent faced record-breaking heat waves and wildfires this summer in countries like France, Spain, and Greece. More from William Denslow in Brussels. The warning is stark, according to the insurance provider Allianz.

Europe could see GDP losses of up to 7% between the years of 2026 to 2030 because of the impacts of wildfires and climate change causing Europe to warm faster. Breaking it down, we could see France losing roughly $240 billion for Italy, closer to $150 billion, with $130 billion in Germany as well. This comes as Europe is warming faster than any other continent. Leaders across the bloc says more must be done to mitigate the impacts. Republican Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said she opposes Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's nomination for the permanent Attorney General job. Her opposition narrows the confirmation path for President Trump's pick to lead the Justice Department, which is holding on by a thread. Lisa Murkowski said she's concerned the Trump administration could proceed with its proposed $1.8 billion fund to compensate January 6th rioters. even though Todd Blanche has issued a formal order terminating it. The California Teamsters Union is suing several state agencies and their leaders, including the Department of Motor Vehicles. The suit claims Gavin Newsom's administration improperly rolled out regulations that paved the way for self-driving trucks on state roads. The lawsuit comes as the state grapples with the potential workforce impacts of new tools like artificial intelligence. also sets up to potential battle between labor and Silicon Valley interests for the state's next governor. The Teamsters lawsuit argues the new rules pose an existential threat to hundreds of thousands of union jobs. The Teamsters asked the court to prevent the DMV from enforcing them and declare that they were implemented in error. The DMV regulations allow commercial trucks and other vehicles weighing 10,0001 pounds or more to apply to eventually operate autonomously on public roads in the state. The DMV declined to comment on pending litigation. Mostly sunny today in the San Francisco Bay Area, highs in the 70s, lows tonight in the 50s. In the Central Valley, sunny today with an excessive heat warning, highs around 100, lows tonight in the 70s. In the LA area, sunny highs in the 90s, lows in the 60s. Those are the headlines. I'm Max Pringle on KPFA. 708 in the morning. The show is up front. My name is Brian Edwards Teaker. Quick note in the interview you're about to hear. We originally recorded this in July, but it only had an abbreviated airing because of our summer fun drive. Thought it was good enough to bring you the whole thing. Hope you enjoy it. Very pleased to welcome back to KPFA's Airwaves, a legend in the world of environmental organizing and communication. Annie Leonard is a environmental and anti-consumerist activist. Best known for creating the film The Story of Stuff, who served as the executive director of Greenpeace U.S. Her latest book is co-authored with Andre Carruthers. It's entitled, Protest, Respect it, Defend It, Use It. It's this...

Whirlwind history of protest movements that have changed the world, accompanied by a hard look at the increasingly hostile environment for protests and dissidents today. Annie Leonard, welcome. Thank you. Always a pleasure to be here with you. It's been a while. Tell us why you did the book. I did this book for two reasons. One is I am a huge fan of peaceful protest. I have seen it work to superpower campaigns over my decades of activism. It works. It's a democratic right. I love protest. And I am very alarmed at how attacks on protest are increasing. I had been at the receiving end of some of that when I was the executive director of Greenpeace. And I realized that if we lose the right to protest, we stand to lose so much more. I wanted to inspire people to respect it, defend it, and use it. I want to talk about the Greenpeace lawsuit in a few minutes. I do want to dwell some on definitions because this is something that often gets people twisted up in nuts. How do you define protest and where do you draw the border around protests that is peaceful? I'm so glad you asked this because there is such a big semantic debate about protest. And as I mentioned in the book, real scholars and practitioners of protest often divide different buckets of protest and persuasion, non-cooperation and disruption, and building alternative structures. These are all different kinds of activities. But, you know, the general public calls it protest. And the book is really designed for a general public. We wanted to use words that normal people use. We wanted to avoid in-group language. And so protest in our use is any time that anybody stands up or sits down or speaks out to take action about something that they're concerned about. We did limit it to peaceful protest. And that is another area where there is great debate, which I am not going to dive too deep into because it's... It's not actually relevant. It is important that peaceful protest includes not harming people, of course. We don't want anyone to get harmed. That's important both because ideally we care about people. We don't want to cause harm, but also because nonviolent protests have a much higher success rate and we want to win. Where it gets tricky is around... property destruction is blocking a road violent. There's a lot of debate around that. That's not really relevant. I think it can be a trap to get too much into that semantics. But we do want to say don't harm people. Keep a protest nonviolent. Some of the protests in this book, it has 42 protests. Some of them were met violently. We still include them because we are talking about the intent of the protesters themselves when we say nonviolent only. Intent being the intent of the organizers. There are often incidental skirmishes at big protests. Yes, there are often incidental skirmishes, sometimes by agent provocateurs, sometimes by people with a different theory of change. But by and large, the intent of the organizers and the mass of participants was to have it be strictly nonviolent. Again, both because of moral and ethical reasons, but also because we want to win. And nonviolent protests have a much lower barrier to entry.

a much greater chance to win. And do you distinguish organized intentional protest from what looks more like spontaneous uprising, say, what you saw in the streets of Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd? You know, I think that that protest was actually organized and prepared. That incredible community rise up happened because of years and years of organizing on the ground. Neighbors knew each other, community organizing. There's a real correlation between the amount of training and organizing that happens beforehand and the success of protests in both maintaining nonviolence and in winning. So often what looks like spontaneous uprising actually had a lot of people sewing those seeds for a long time. So we're putting that in the protest bucket and in the peaceful protest bucket, even though a police precinct got burned down along the way. I'm putting it in the peaceful protest bucket. There was a lot of studies done of all the Black Lives Matter protests, and the vast majority of them had no property destruction, no physical or material harm in any way. So it was vastly nonviolent. And you're not describing a moral problem with property destruction. Tactically, though, it's a more fraught question of whether it helps or hurts. I think it's a really personal question. And there's a lot of nuance. You know, the earth firsters that would put corn syrup in a bulldozer that was destroying an old grove forest. You know, is that morally justified or not? That really has to be a personal question for our book and for my current... work. We are not advocating for condoning property destruction. Again, for the strategic and tactical reason that we want to win. And this country really fetishizes personal property. If we want to recruit people to our side, if we want to enhance the polarization of the good guys versus the bad guys, we've got to be the good guys. And so while I will not... comment on all property destruction ever. There's only one example in this book that includes property destruction. And that was the Boston Tea Party. Something I learned from the book, remembered fondly today, condemned at the moment that it happened by Ben Franklin and George Washington. Yes, George Washington was afraid that the Boston Tea Party might alienate our more moderate supporters. Does that sound familiar? But the Boston Tea Party is an interesting example in terms of property destruction. They were very careful when they boarded the ships to harm nothing but the T that was the target. However, they had to cut one lock and that weighed on them. And the next day, someone returned a new lock to the ship. So the only property that was destroyed and not replaced was the T. But a bridge too far for George Washington and Ben Franklin 18 months before the Revolutionary War, they did change their minds about direct action against the British colonial economy. Well, you know, it's another interesting story about the Boston Tea Party is it wasn't celebrated and sort of branded as the Boston Tea Party for 50 years. And that's because the founders of the country didn't want to be holding up as heroes.

disruptive nonviolent action. And so they did not do that until 50 years later when they felt the new government was secure enough. Then they rebranded it and created this whole narrative about it. And that's one of the things we saw in our research over and over is that at the time, protesters are vilified, condemned, often arrested, often. beaten, harmed, get death threats. And then 50 years later, we hold them up as heroes. So one of our goals in this book was to shorten that time frame. And remember that the people that we see today blocking a road or taking other protest action, they might be the heroes in our grandchildren school books. There's one other kind of definitional distinction I wanted to get into before we dive into more of these stories. And that's the difference between protest. and organizing. I've run into a lot of people who are worried that in the viral social media era, we have fetishized the act of protest itself when often what it takes to produce it or to make it successful is years of organizing person-to-person conversations, organization building, and that we're collapsing our idea of social change into spectacle rather than work. Absolutely. So I often say that driving change is like laying a stone path through a garden. And it might be every fourth stone or eighth stone or 200th stone is a protest. But at key times in a campaign, protest can really move things forward. Nowhere is protest alone enough. You need the organizing to be happening to be building the power to not just pull off a successful protest, but even more importantly to harness the opening it creates. solely on a massive protest without having the infrastructure and analysis and strategy in place, you can't harness the opening it creates. And so then it's a lost opportunity. The book is, it's interesting, it was very hard because it's not about protest movements. It's about protest. It's about 42 snapshots in time, 42 individual protests that each one was part of a broader movement. And I, you know, we often ask ourselves, would, would the wins that these protests help get? Would they have? Ben 1 without these protests? I certainly hope so. I certainly hope same-sex marriage would have happened without the winter of love. I certainly hope that we would have put curb cuts on curbs without the Section 504 protests. I certainly hope so. But in every case, protests sped up the progress for sure. Well, tell us about some of those histories. The Section 504 occupation of the federal building in San Francisco is a bit of our local movement history here. Oh, this was one of my favorite protests. If your listeners haven't yet watched the documentary Crip Camp, I cannot recommend it enough. It's a great look at the rise of the disability movements with the Bay Area playing very prominently and it talks about the 504 protests. So the 504 protests happened in the early 1970s and it was a group of disabled people all around the country did protests at federal buildings. They were demanding the implementation of a regulation.

called Section 504 that would remove structural obstacles to people with disabilities from participating in any project or building or activity that was federally funded. So this was long before the ADA, but that kind of... In most places around the country, people protested and went home. But in San Francisco, they actually occupied the federal building for, I think it was 44 days. I'd have to look back and see. But a long time, it was the largest peaceful occupation of a federal building. And one of the things I love about it is the solidarity. Prior to this, a lot of the people with different disabilities hadn't. created a real group identity. There were people with MS, with cognitive disabilities, in wheelchairs, with hearing or sight disabilities, all of these different kinds of challenges that they faced. And they all came together and helped each other do this. A lot of them hadn't been without specialized equipment or hadn't been without personal aids. And the culture and the systems to support each other were absolutely...

decides to shut, trying to stop them. So first of all, says they're going to stop all food deliveries. One of the participants was a member of the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers came with dinner and said, basically, you're going to let us deliver this food or we're going to go back to Oakland and get all our friends and they let them deliver the food. And so the Black Panthers were able to deliver them. Some of them decided to go to Washington, D.C. to take their protests there. And they needed help getting the wheelchairs. out to the airport and to Washington, D.C. And so local labor unions brought trucks that had lifts to help them. And in one of my favorite cases, the authority is cut off communication. This was before the age of cell phone and internet. So they cut off the phone to try to silence all communication. So. People in the occupation who could sign stood at the window and signed updates and media releases to people on the ground outside who would then translate them for media releases and then would sign news back to them. So it was solidarity in every way that enabled this incredibly powerful and effective protest to happen. And Section 504 got implemented. It seems to get like an important feature of protest and social movements. that goes underdescribed, which is that we often measure them in terms of what they achieve, how they pressure people in power to do something they weren't otherwise inclined to do, but they can have a profound effect shaping the identities and the ties between the people who participate in them. Absolutely. And that's one of the many powers of protest. I mean, protests for sure can pressure decision makers to take different action or give cover to people who want to do the right thing and need that cover. Protests can elevate an issue onto the public agenda. But really importantly, another benefit is protests can build community and strengthen ties. There is something about being surrounded by other people who care deeply enough to put their bodies on the line about something. that you care deeply enough, that strengthens our commitment and builds a sense of community. And often that is the main victory. Look, for example, at another protest in this book is the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. I mean, this is a really interesting protest because on one level, they lost. The Dakota Access Pipeline is running and leaking as we speak, exactly as the protesters had... worried about. However, indigenous rights will never be looked at the same in this country because of that protest. It united tribes from Alaska to the Amazon that came together to stand in solidarity, many who had never met each other before. Thousands and thousands of non-indigenous allies learned about indigenous rights, learned about indigenous land rights. By any measure, the movement for indigenous rights and for water protectors is higher profile and more supported now, even though they lost on that particular pipeline for now. It also put the organization that you were the head of, Greenpeace USA, on the wrong end of a ruinous lawsuit from the pipeline company.

What lessons to draw from that? One of the things this book does is goes through a list of many of the ways that protest is under attack right now. And one of those ways is called a slap suit. Slap stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation. And slap suits are common tactics. It's a kind of corporate legal bullying that powerful and wealthy interests use to silence critics. And they're often effective because they're daunting. There were a couple of gentlemen up in weed, California, who started organizing, really just asking questions and organizing meetings about a bottled water company that was coming into weed. California and was going to tap into their water supply. And they were just worried. It wasn't even hardcore campaigning. And they got slapped with enormously expensive lawsuits. It's scary. I'll tell you, we, so when Greenpeace got slapped for the Dakota Access Pipeline, I was the director. I got served, a slap suit, a $300 million lawsuit for our role in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. So. That was alarming. But Greenpeace fortunately had the resources to fight back. And we felt a moral and political obligation because we had the resources to fight back to do so. There are a number of things bonkers about the lawsuit. And slap suits, let me say, they're not really designed to even make it to court or winning court. They really are meritless lawsuits. And they are designed to silence, intimidate, chill, bankrupt critics. In some ways, there are communication strategy. And in this case, in particular, the original lawsuit was against Greenpeace, a couple of other entities, and John and Jane Doe, one through 20. What that meant was that those were placeholders. that they could add other people to the lawsuit. So they sent a message out to everybody who was showing up in support for the water protectors at Standing Rock. You could be added to this lawsuit. So in many ways, it's a communication strategy. A strategy of deterrence against protesters, not of communicating to the greater public. Actually, strategy of deterrence. It's a communication message to protesters, raise your voice, and we might slap you for $300 million. So it's a... strategy to silence critics, to scare and silence critics. I mean, remember what extractive corporations and authoritarian regimes want is us to be alone, silent, and scared. And the appropriate response is to be none of those. And so that's what Greenpeace did. But I want to mention one other thing about the lawsuit that was bonkers is the Standing Rock protest was 100% indigenous led, 100% by the water protectors there. Some indigenous leaders invited Greenpeace to come in and help with some nonviolent direct action training because they were so committed to it maintaining a nonviolence.

And they know that Greenpeace has a long history in nonviolence training. And we happen to have some indigenous trainers, both that worked at Greenpeace and through the wonderful indigenous people's power projects. So we sent some indigenous trainers there to do nonviolence trainings. And they trained about. 400 people a day to keep things nonviolent. We also sent our solar-powered generator truck because they wanted a way to charge their cell phones. And I asked Patagonia to send some coats when it got cold. That's the bulk of what we did. Nonetheless, the lawsuit said that Greenpeace orchestrated the entire protest. It said that we manipulated Native Americans to protest. So it was not only non-factual, but it was enormously racist in the invisibilization of the actual indigenous leaders. Greenpeace decided to fight the lawsuit because that's what Greenpeace does. It will not cower. It's always held that role in the movement. Tragically, it went to trial in North Dakota. I was the lead witness there, and I talk a little bit about that in the book. It is an oil-dominated state. There was an oil-dominated jury, and tragically, Greenpeace lost that lawsuit. But I will say that the only thing that lawsuit can touch is Greenpeace's corporate entity and bank account. It cannot actually silence Greenpeace, because Greenpeace is not... a bank account. Greenpeace is an orientation of the spirit. You know, Greenpeace is what you feel when you look in your daughter's eyes and promise her a better future. Greenpeace is what you feel in your spine when you get the nerve to stand up at a city council and speak out. No slap suit can silence that. So trying to silence Greenpeace and the spirit that it represents is really a fool's errand. The verdict itself, Greenpeace is still exploring avenues of appeal. Greenpeace is appealing, the verdict. The verdict is many times more than how much money Greenpeace has in the bank. The verdict came out to about $300 million. And so, yeah, Greenpeace U.S. would not survive that verdict if it continues. But again, it's the bank account and the corporate entity won't survive. The spirit will continue to survive. I take your point. But as the person who is in charge of the bank account and the corporate entity, at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, is there anything you would have done different to isolate the organization from those consequences? No, I think the way that Greenpeace survives is by standing firm in its truth and by speaking truth to power and having the courage. And there was a time when energy transfers would have been willing to drop the case if Greenpeace had publicly agreed to a number of things that violated our values and the truth. This was after I had left. But Greenpeace refused that because Greenpeace doesn't carry water for big oil companies.

The only thing I would have done is differently is throw down even harder to fight this pipeline and every other pipeline that wants to violate indigenous land. We're speaking to Annie Leonard, perhaps best known for creating the film The Story of Stuff. She was executive director of Greenpeace U.S. during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Her new book, co-authored with Andre Carruthers, is protest, respect it, defend it, use it. The show is up front. My name's Brian Edwards Teakert, and we'll continue our conversation about it after the news. I'm Max Pringle with these headlines. The latest Labor Department jobs numbers show U.S. employers unexpectedly cut 23,000 jobs last month. Labor Department revisions shaved 103,000 jobs off payrolls in May and June, but the unemployment rate dipped to 4.1% as Americans left the job market. Today's June jobs numbers from the Labor Department marked a sharp reversal. for the U.S. labor market. Hiring had been rebounding this year from a lackluster 2025 in the face of the conflict in the Persian Gulf that has sent energy prices surging and put a strain on family budgets. Job growth has been steady, if unspectacular. president trump has signed two new executive orders seeking to restrict birthright citizenship the move comes just two weeks after the supreme court struck down trump's earlier attempts to limit the right ed donogh has more on the orders It would limit the number of people eligible to become US citizens after being born in the country. The second would curb birth tourism, increasing visa restrictions on people who want to give birth in the U.S. This will give us the right to do it in a much more forceful manner. but they've taken birthright citizenship and they've made a joke out of it. The president tried at the start of his second term to end birthright citizenship. Two months ago, the Supreme Court upheld a broad conception of it, rejecting the president's previous attempts to declare children born to people in the U.S. illegally or temporarily aren't American citizens. Unfortunately, we had a bad decision, very unfair decision. Our country suffers because of it. And we're ending it a different way. Opponents had sued, saying the earlier executive order went against the 14th Amendment. The president says he thinks his latest actions would be constitutional. Ed Donahue, Washington. A proposal to raise the minimum wage in unincorporated Alameda County to $30 per hour.

will not be on the november ballot as supporters it hoped rather than scheduled the measure for the november third election the board of supervisors voted this week to conduct a study this will delay the measure from being placed on the ballot until twenty twenty eight that's unless a special election is held next year Organizers with the living wage for all coalitions said they collected over 100,000 signatures from residents who were feeling the pinch of living in one of the most expensive regions in the country. The county registrar certified the petition as sufficient to require the Board of Supervisors to place the measure on the ballot. Board President Dave Howbert said the economic impacts of such a move need more study. Mostly sunny today in the San Francisco Bay Area, highs in the 70s, lows tonight in the 50s, and the Central Valley, sunny today, with an excessive heat warning, highs around 100, lows tonight in the 70s. Those are the headlines. I'm Max Pringle on KPFA.

7.33 in the morning. The show is up front. My name is Brian Edwards Teakert. We're spending the hour with Annie Leonard. She's an environmental and anti-consumerist activist, probably best known for the YouTube sensation, the film The Story of Stuff. She served as executive director of Greenpeace U.S. during the years that the organization helped out with the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and also the years in which it was hit with a ruinous lawsuit by energy transfer partners, the company that was the target of the protests. She spent her time since stepping down from Greenpeace, working on a book just out from Patagonia, entitled, Protest, Respect it, Defend It, Use It. And we recorded this conversation about our new book in July, and it was the middle of KPA's very abbreviated summer fund drive. When we offered the book as a thank you gift, and consequently, we're only able to air a short portion of this interview because we had to keep time clear for fundraising. I thought the conversation was good enough to bring you the whole thing once we had time to. And thanks to the fact that we wrapped our fun drive up early. Now we do. So thank you to everyone who chipped in. And to anyone who didn't. It is not too late to pick up a copy of Annie Leonard's book. It is still among the thank you gifts on offer at KPFA.org if you care to make a belated contribution to this radio station. All right, let's go back to the interview, pick up with that lawsuit from Energy Transfer Partners targeting Greenpeace U.S. Your opening essay in the book puts that lawsuit against.

protest. That is to say, laws that are becoming more hostile to protest, state bureaucracies that are becoming more hostile to protest, and so forth. First of all, what do you think is driving it as a trend? Well, there's a couple of things driving this trend, which truly is global. And one is the fossil fuel industry. They are behind a lot of these anti-protest laws, slap suits, and crackdowns on protest. And I believe the reason why is they know the science. They know their days are numbered. This is their last window to get their drills into the ground, and they want to do everything they can to extract as much fossil fuels as possible. And with governments that have just neglected all responsibility for people in the planet, like we have here, the last line of defense. are the protesters. And so they are doing everything they can to criminalize, silence, vilify protesters. So it's the fossil fuel industry for sure plays a very disproportionate role. Globally extractive corporations overall are very involved, but especially fossil fuels. But it's also the anti-democratic forces. It's just... part and parcel of the authoritarian playbook. If you look at the authoritarian playbook around the world, how authoritarian's come to and then hold on to power, one of the first things they do is vilify critics. And you see that on Superdrive right now coming out of the Trump administration. They need to vilify critics, including peaceful protesters, for two reasons. One is to delegitimize their demands. If...

An illegitimate detention center, but by considering them all domestic terrorists, you don't have to get into the actual substance of the critique. So one is to delegitimize criticism. But the other reason that anti-authoritarian forces vilify protesters so much is to ready the public to accept more draconian measures against protesters. In the United States, what we're seeing right now is that people exercising our First Amendment rights are being arrested. vilified, shot in the street, locked up for unprecedented numbers of years, and for the general public to accept this, the authoritarian forces just have to convince us all that these people are enemies, which they are not. You mentioned the Prairlandate case. So this was a terrorism prosecution against people in Texas protesting an ice facility. There was some violence at the protest. A cop got shot in the shoulder. But the people criminally charged as being part of an alleged terrorist conspiracy put together by Antifa. This is what's in the charging documents, included someone who wasn't even there, who had shuffled some boxes around in a bookstore. Right. These. These prairland defendants really are sort of the heads on stake approach to silencing dissent. The government picked some people who participated in a protest and gave them unprecedented charges. I mean, they were charged with between 30 and 100 years in jail for participating in this protest. That is absolutely unheard of. And that was to send a message to the rest of us, don't protest. ICE facilities. And as you said, one of the people who was charged to 30 years wasn't even there. He moved some magazines that had anti-fascist literature on them from one house to another afterwards. And he was charged with abetting terrorists. We really need to push back. on this narrative of terrorism. This is what governments in many different countries are doing, is naming people who speak out, especially around Palestine, ICE, around these sort of politically charged issues, naming them terrorists. And they're not terrorists. They're exercising their First Amendment rights. If there is vandalism, if there is trespass, I mean, if there are some crimes like that, we have already laws on the books to handle that and they can be charged with those. That's very different than charging people, many of whom didn't even know each other who saw a Facebook post and went to a protest with 30 to 100 years of jail and labeling them terrorism. So we really need to push back on this very, very dangerous trend of labeling. protesters as terrorists. So what purpose do you think the terrorist label and excessive charging serve in the eyes of the people who are bringing those charges? Two purposes. One is it allows an aggregation of charges. If you label someone terrorist, you can get away with greater penalties. But the other is it scares everybody else from participating. Participating in protests themselves.

or supporting these people. In many ways, what we see in Prairieland and in Spokane, the anti-ice protesters there, in a number of these cases, is an attack on solidarity. If they can go after protesters with a conspiracy and terrorism charge, that broadens the net of who they can bring in. That means if somebody tries to get a lawyer for one of them, if somebody shares a... Facebook posts of concern about them, they can all be brought into this net of conspiracy and terrorism. So that label allows them to prosecute people who were not actually involved in the protest under discussion. So it really is an anti-solidarity attack, which is very dangerous because what we need now more than anything else is solidarity. I keep going back and forth on whether actions like this are the last gasp of a desperate regime that realizes it's increasingly unpopular or like the six or seventh step down a spiral towards autocracy. I would say two truths can exist at once. I think it's going to get a lot better. I mean, a lot worse before it gets better. We're seeing... You know, the term of structure tests. Jane McAlevy's term, the labor organizer. Yes, right. We're seeing the authoritarian's do structure tests to sort of see what they can get away with. I mean, we all heard Steve Bannon said that the reason they put ice in airports was to test if the public will accept it, to get ready for the midterms. You know, San Francisco airport earlier this week, a Ukrainian... immigrant was detained and abducted. They are testing what they can get away with. And I think their end game is, or probably not the end game, but a point on the way is the midterms. Can they deter enough people who share our values from voting? Can they deter, can they suppress turnout altogether? They're testing to see what they can get away with. And that's where solidarity and peaceful protest matters so much is that we need to speak out. We need to ensure that we are not cooperating with these forces. We need to have a resoundingly loud, peaceful, diverse, broad. No, you cannot do this in our country. So anyway, yeah, they're both in their last gas, but it may be a long last gasp. And it's going to get worse before it gets better. Another category of increasingly prevalent deterrent action against protests that you articulate in that essay is. Extrajudicial violence, violent police crackdowns at protests or violence by vigilante groups that are tolerated by police in the area against protesters. Describe the role that plays in attacking protest.

That is terrifying because there is such a double standard in terms of how racist and authoritarian individuals or government people are allowed to use violence with impunity. We saw after Kyle Rittenhouse shot some people at a Black Lives Matter protest, he was... celebrated on right-wing talk shows. He was offered jobs by Republican members of Congress. He was treated as a real hero. And again, it's a communication message. They're not going to silence, get rid of protesters by shooting every single one of them. They're going to try to silence protesters by saying, if you speak up, if you attend one of these Black Lives Matter protests. you could be killed and there will be no accountability. And the only way that we can beat this is by scale, huge numbers of people showing up and saying no and by maintaining nonviolence. You don't talk about it in the book, but I'm curious how you think about protests organized on the right. I believe that everybody in this country has a right to free speech and peaceful assembly. And while... I may disagree with people on the right. They have every right to gather and voice their opinion. But like some of the mechanisms that you posit for social change, right, a protest can force a confrontation between a government and a public that doesn't like what the government is doing but doesn't have to think about it most of the time. Or in some cases, a protest can call the public's attention to inform public opinion around an issue. Do you think protest works the same way for people with reactionary politics? I think protests can be very effective on their side, as we saw in the Tea Party and some other cases. They have a huge advantage, which is Fox News. So they have their own massive communication. system, and I hope everybody donates to KPFA so that you can one day rival Fox News in your reach. But clearly their protests work for some people, but I'll tell you that we have most people. And this is really important. The things that we're asking for, safe multicultural communities, clean water from our taps, a healthy environment, a democracy that is free and fair, these things that we're calling for are really mainstream normal positions. Most people agree with us. Most people don't want their babies born pre-polluted with 150 industrial chemicals. Most people do want the Earth's climate to stay in that range in which human life can continue. And this is really important to remember because if we look at the mainstream media, we might feel overwhelmed or like a tiny minority, but we are most people. And so what we need to do is focus on...

reaching those who share our values, which again are most people, and helping them move from being alone and concerned to together and active. We don't need to recruit 100% of the people. We don't need to convince the hardcore right-wingers to change their mind. We need to convince the decent people in this country. to take action. And we saw that in Minneapolis. They had about 85% of the public participated in resistance in some way. You know, at the time of Martin Luther King's, I have a dream speech, which now is, you know, painted on murals at schools and is celebrated so much. Only about 20% of the people supported him. I like to remind folks that what he did not do is say, Oh, let me pause and grow that number. Let me water down my demands. Well, let's ask for only 5% reduction in segregation a year. No, he just went forward. We have far more than 20% of the people with us. If we can move from being alone to being together and active. And that's why we wrote this book, was to invite more of these protest-adjacent or protest-curious people into the resistance. A question I've wrestled with is whether... some of the most archetypal successes of nonviolent protest, like the civil rights movement. are a product of like very historically specific circumstances. A moment in this country's history when there were huge unified media audiences, you know, three TV broadcast networks, and if they sent a camera crew down to the lunch counter sit-sit-in or the march or what have you, they could get footage of the ensuing violence by Southern police. to what was effectively a national audience. We're not the same today. You know, we're fragmented as audiences. People are distrustful of any information they get because so much of it is cooked up. We're algorithmically mediated. Do you think it changes what it's possible to achieve? I think it's definitely made it more of an uphill battle. Also, I'd add to that the lack of trust in institutions, the lack of trust in messengers. It's definitely a harder situation than it has been in the past. That said, we have a lot of things going for us. Again, we have most people. We can communicate. for virtually free with lots and lots of people immediately with these supercomputers in our back pockets. And another thing is that people are fed up with the way the country is going. This is, you know, economically, culturally, socially, politically, in so many ways, people are fed up. So we can create our own historic moment to win about unprecedented change.

There are many, many stories of protest moments, many of which I did not know about before I read your book. What did you learn putting it together? What piece of history most surprised you? One of the things we saw over and over is how much protesters are vilified at the moment. And then years later that they are appreciated. You know, Rosa Parks is an example. At the time of her... protests, she was obviously arrested. We all know that. She had to flee the city because she had so many death threats. She and her husband both were fired. They lived in poverty for a number of years. I mean, she was absolutely vilified. You know, today I, you know, she's on postage stamps and elementary school names. And I was in Montgomery a couple of years ago. And I saw there's a bronze statue of her on the curb where she is thought to board the bus. I thought, what a difference to go from death threats and vilification to a bronze statue. And we saw this over and over and over. Often it's about 50 years before we collectively realized these people were helping our society. And so one of our goals is to shorten that time frame. Shorten our time frame. That's one of the things we learned is how classic the vilification is at the time and then how they're heralded much later. And at the time. She would have known the threats and harassment were a certainty. She would not have known that the success and eventual heroification were. Right. That's another thing we learned from doing this is she was a regular person who knowingly stepped into a very difficult situation and was willing to accept those repercussions, which she surely knew was coming. She was a regular person, but I prepared one. She had recently been to the Highlander Center to do a training in nonviolent resistance to segregation. She held the local office in the NACP chapter there. You know, she was prepared. But she was just a regular person, just like all of us. And every one of these cases in here, it's just regular people who felt morally or scientifically compelled to take action. And so I found that really inspiring. Any one of us could do this. There is a history of labor protests here. And it feels like today... labor protests moving like just very different circles from environmental actions or Black Lives Matter actions. That was not always the case. Tell us about some of the moments the struggles have come together. Well, you know, Earth Day, the original Earth Day is in here. And I know many people sort of poo-poo Earth Day as sort of hallmarkerification of a corporate-sponsored event. But the original Earth Day very much had at its core of workers' rights, union involvement, racial justice. The original Earth Day was a really fabulous bringing together of cross movements. And I have a number of quotes from participants who.

We're not just talking about the trees and the bees and the flowers, even though we love all of those too. And so that was a real example. I'll tell you also, when you look at the movements around the world that have fought authoritarians, there is none that has succeeded without deep involvement with the labor movement. And so we really have to both support the labor movement and build more and more bridges. between labor, racial justice, social justice, environmental, climate, women's rights, all over these movements, we've got to be one if we're going to win this. And that's specifically because of the labor movement's ability to just kind of slam the brakes on business as usual by not showing up to work. Right. Labor is more skilled and more able to engage in non-cooperation than the rest of our movements are. They've got the experience. They've got the resources. They've got the positions. They've got the know-how. And the more that we can support them and unify with them, the better. When you encounter people who are new to protest. What do you find most consistently missing? What do you wish they knew? That's interesting because we've just done this U.S. tour where we were talking about this book. And we had events specifically with people new to protest to hear what their questions were. And we heard a lot of fear. People are afraid to protest. And that's why we need communities so that people are not alone doing it. What I wish they knew is what a meaningful way it is to live. is to live in your truth and take action and be an activist. This is not about, you know, come over here and join us and we'll be martyrs and, you know, be self-righteous and scold you for not carrying a bag to the grocery store and eat cardboard tasting veggie burgers. You know, this is not about, like, come over here and be a martyr. This is about come over here and meet all these wonderful people and have a really rich, rewarding experience. be part of this community. It's just, you know, as Paul Hawken once said, it's not a way to get rich, but it's a way to live rich. So I wish people knew how wonderful it is to be involved in fighting for a better world. Yeah, there's something very reassuring about finding yourself in the midst of a big crowd that's on the same side. Right. You know, when I was back at the story of stuff and I was really deeply researching about consumerism and the sort of false trap of thinking you can buy your way to happiness, I did a bunch of research about what actually makes people happy, what provides real satisfaction. And it turns out it's not a... new car or a pair of boots or couch. It's very consistent across political, cultural age, all these different demographics. It's very consistent. This is once you have your basic needs met, if you don't have a roof and food and your basic needs met, more consumption actually can make you happy. But once your basic needs are met, it's three things that most contribute to a deep sense of satisfaction and meaning in life. One is having a sense of purpose beyond yourself in life, having a sense of meaning.

Two is the act of working with others towards shared goals. It could be a sports team, could be a PTA, but it could be an activist group. And the third is a strong network, a strong social fabric, a network of community and friends. And the awesome thing here is that fighting for our democracy, fighting for our planet, fighting for racial justice. gives you all of those things. So how fortunate for us that the very things we need to do to get our country back on the path of the promise of a multiracial democracy are also the very things that make us happy and give life meaning. So that's a really fortunate coincidence. And Leonard, I think that is a great note to end on. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I hope everybody will respect, defend, and use protest and have a good time doing it. Annie Leonard, possibly best known for creating the film The Story of Stuff. She was for many years executive director of Greenpeace U.S. Her new book, co-authored with Andre Carruthers, is protest, respect it, defend it, use it. And again, the book is still available for a donation of $19 a month to anyone who cares to make a belated contribution to KPFA Summer Fund Drive at www.kfa.org. A little bit of housekeeping before we let you go. I'm going to be off for the next week, mostly camping and backpacking in the eastern Sierra. So Teresa Wears Bianca is going to be in for me on Monday with our normal lineup of John Feffer and Dr. Swartzberg. I am sure she would appreciate questions from you for Corona Calls. And the best way to get them to her ahead of time is to send them to the email address we've set up for that purpose. Corona Calls at KPFA. On Wednesday, Philip Maldry's filling in. That's going to be the morning after primary elections in his home state of Wisconsin, which I expect he will be interested in discussing, given that Democratic socialist Francesca Hong appears poised to run away with a Democratic nomination for the governor's office. Cap Brooks is good enough to be covering for me Thursday. Teresa Where's Bianca will be back on Friday and then I will be back with you a week from Monday. So I hope it is a great time for everyone involved. That's going to do it for Upfront this week. We are weekday mornings at 7 a.m. We post information about our topics and guests at KPFA.org where you can also dig through archives of past programs. If you'd like to give us feedback on something you heard or suggest something for us to cover or someone to interview, send an email to Upfront at KPFA.org. And again, questions for Monday's Corona Call segment. Send those to Corona Calls at KPFA.org. A big thanks to the people who make the show. Our producer is Kimya Akbari. Our engineer is Kirsten Thomas. My name is Brian Edwards Teakert. Thanks as well to Max Pringle for the news headlines. Remember, if you're incarcerated and postal mail is your easiest way to reach out, you can send a letter to Upfront. KPFA. Sunday morning.

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