Fund Drive Special with Annie Leonard: What We Can Learn from Pivotal Moments of Protest in History

Good morning. It's Tuesday, July 28, 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 was executive director of Greenpeace when a pipeline company filed the lawsuit that threatens to snuff it out of existence. Now she's out with a sweeping history of protests that changed history. We'll discuss her new book, protest, respect it, defend it, use it. Next, after the news. I'm Max Pringle with these headlines. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodemir Volodymyr Zelensky are expected to meet with President Trump today at the funeral of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham in Washington. It's the first meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump since the two leaders launched a joint war against Iran and a chance for Benjamin Netanyahu to smooth out strains in their relationship. According to the White House, the two leaders also plan to discuss the framework agreement in the U.S. and Israel signed with Lebanon over the Israel Hezbollah War and the expansion of the Abraham Accords. Trump is also set to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky today ahead of Senator Graham's funeral, which will be their second sit-down this month. Graham will be eulogized today during memorial services across Washington. Trump is expected to deliver remarks at the Cathedral in Washington. Graham was an advocate for Israel and Ukraine in their conflicts. French authorities have ordered nearly 4,000 more people to evacuate from tourist sites on the Atlantic coast. The returning heat wave threatens firefighters' fragile hold on a vast wildfire west of Bordeaux. The blaze in the Gironde region has burned an area four times the size of Paris. It's forced 220,000 people to evacuate across both France and Spain. Mark Tucker Carlson has more from Bordeaux, France. It's black, it's charred. You can see the earth, all the fuel and the earth has been burned off. Fires have been burning here for several days, and firefighters have been working to stop the blaze from advancing by setting pre-fires and building fire lines to help block the advance of this.

wildfire and right now behind me firefighters will soon start spraying water to keep the cinders from continuing to burn and reigniting any fuel that's actually left behind but you can see this forest is black except for the green tree tops that are remaining and crews for the last several days have been knocking down trees to help build that fire line to prevent the wildfires from advancing That's Mark Tucker Carlson. A magnitude 7.1 earthquake has shaken Kumamoto on Japan's Kyoshu Island. The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami advisory for the Ariaki and Yatsihiro seas. but it was lifted within two hours. Prime Minister Sonsei Takaiichi has urged residents to avoid the coast and announce the government task force to assess damage and prepare for rescue operations. Reports indicate injuries, damage to infrastructure and blackouts. The fire and disaster management agency says the second floor of a shopping center in Kashima town has collapsed, trapping an unknown number of people. Authorities also have warned of possible strong aftershocks. No abnormalities were found at a nearby nuclear plant and train service has been suspended for safety checks. German authorities say investigators have found what appears to be a claim of responsibility by the suspect in the fatal attack near Berlin's Pride Festival over the weekend. The suspect was killed in a confrontation with police on Sunday. The day after investigators say he drove a van into a crowd near the festival's closing party before apparently cutting others with a machete. A Polish woman was killed and 31 other people injured. Germany's interior minister said today that investigators are evaluating a mobile phone that was found in the van. The German federal prosecutor's offices confirmed the existence of video announcing the intention to carry out an attack and pledging allegiance to the Islamic State Group. The Build Daily first reported on the video. The United Nations reports that cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan has killed nearly 500 civilians in Afghanistan and wounded more than a thousand others between October and June. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan says it's mandated to report only on incidents inside the country. Pakistan denies killing civilians in the fighting and accuses Afghanistan of harboring militants, which Kabul denies. The new UN report also highlights the harsh restrictions faced by Afghan women under the Taliban government, including a deadly crackdown on clothing in one city and rules that implicitly sanction child marriage.

Wall Street was mixed in early trading with chipmakers getting hit the hardest again after a huge sell-off in South Korea. South Korea's Cosby Index plunged nearly 11% today on heavy selling of computer chip-making stocks that have been battered recently by fears that the AI boom may turn out to be a bubble. Striking CNH sugar workers will return to work today in Jasmine Crockett after going on strike over a month ago to protest a proposed contract that cut into sick days, ended retiree medical benefits, and gutted overtime rules. Union representatives said during the first week of negotiations, CNH held firm, but last week... The company seemed to move a bit on a few issues. No further details of the negotiations were given as both the company and the ILWU Union are still in negotiations. Mostly sunny today in the Bay Area, highs in the 70s, lows tonight in the 50s, in the Central Valley. A heat advisory is in effect, highs around 100, lows tonight in the 60s. In the LA area, sunny, highs in the 90s, lows in the 60s. Those are the headlines. I'm Max Pringle on KPFA. It is just before 708 in the morning. The show is up front. My name is Brian Edwards Teakert. Before we launch into this morning's interview, I want to give you a quick update on how your radio station is doing. We have just made the call on ending this summer fun drive. And although we struggled a little bit yesterday, we are going to stick to our goal of trying to end this sooner than any fun drive I can remember in the summer. That means that for better or for worse, we stop fundraising in 27 hours and 52 minutes. And in that span of time, if we're going to hit the goal that KPFA needs to pay its bills, we have to raise just over $54,000.

That is far more than we have raised during any comparable span of time in this fund drive. It seemed possible yesterday morning when we made the call. It now looks slightly desperate after tough fundraising results last night. But we're going to try because that's all you can do. We are asking you. to come through before our time is up at KPFA.org or 1-800-439-5732. Towards that end, your fellow listener, Sahar, who's in San Francisco, has given us... The largest challenge we have been asked to make in a single hour of this fun drive. Buy a lot, Sahar is offering to double $2,400 if we can raise $2,400 to match her. I'm announcing that now before we start the interview, because it's going to take every one of the 50 minutes we have left in this hour if we are going to make that $2,400. If we do, we have a shot at making KPFA's goal by 11 a.m. tomorrow. It all comes down to you. KpFA.org. 1-800-439-5732. All right. Our fate is in your hands. We're going on with the show. Get listening to Up Front. I'm Brian Edwards Teakert. Very pleased to welcome back to KPFA's Airwaves, a legend in the world of environmental organizing and communication. Annie Leonard is an 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 protests 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. So 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 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 anytime 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 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 um 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 your 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 and 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.

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 um 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 got to be the good guys um 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. And 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 government, 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 timeframe. 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. 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. This was long before the ADA, but that kind of demand. 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 beautiful. And the creativity. So they're inside this building, choosing to leave, the government 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. 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 at 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 protest 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, 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, um,

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, couple of other entities, and John and Jane Doe, 1 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 talked 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. Any Leonard's new book is protest, respect it, defend it, use it, co-authored with Andre Carruthers, just out from Patagonia. A place that's unusual these days in that they spend money trying to make good books instead of making books hoping to extract money from them. It is oversized hardcover full of full-color photographs, 273 pages in total. It's got 42 capsule histories of ground baking protests starting half a century before the American Revolution and running all the way up through the present, along with essays by Everyone from Rebecca Solnit to Jane Fonda to Fabiana Rodriguez and Dolores Huerta, Nimo Basse, Maurice Mitchell, and in afterwards by Robert Reich. This is yours for a donation of $19 a month or $190 all at once at KPFA.org or 1-800-4395732. And if you can find two minutes in your morning to donate for it, we could really use the help. We made the call, even as the fundraising was slowing down yesterday, to hold firm on ending early. This fund drive will be over for better or for worse in 27 hours and 30 minutes. In that span of time, we have just over $53,000 to raise if we're going to have the money we need on hand to pay our bills. And that comes down to you. KBFA.org, 1,800-439-5732. This is it. We are running out of time this hour to try to make a strong finish possible. We were given the largest challenge that anyone has had to make in a single hour on KPFA. $2,400 from Sahara in San Francisco. Thanks to three people who have already donated this hour, anonymous people in Berkeley and Union City, and Elizabeth, who's in Berkeley as well, we have raised 540. We have 1,860 to go, and I'm out of time. KPFA.org, 1,800439 5732. We'll be back with more from Annie Leonard. After the news.

I'm Max Pringle with these headlines. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodemir Volodymyr Zelensky are expected to meet with President Trump today at the funeral of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham in Washington. It's the first meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump since the two leaders launched a joint war against Iran and a chance for Benjamin Netanyahu to smooth out strains in their relationship. According to the White House, the two leaders also plan to discuss the framework agreement in the U.S. and Israel signed with Lebanon over the Israel Hezbollah War and the expansion of the Abraham Accords. Trump is also set to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky today ahead of Senator Graham's funeral, which will be their second sit-down this month. Graham will be eulogized today during memorial services across Washington. Trump is expected to deliver remarks at the Cathedral in Washington. Graham was an advocate for Israel and Ukraine in their conflicts. French authorities have ordered nearly 4,000 more people to evacuate from tourist sites on the Atlantic coast. The returning heat wave threatens firefighters' fragile hold on a vast wildfire west of Bordeaux. The blaze in the Gironde region has burned an area four times the size of Paris. It's forced 220,000 people to evacuate across both France and Spain. Mark Tucker Carlson has more from Bordeaux, France. It's black. It's charred. You can see the earth, all the fuel and the earth has been burned off. Fires have been burning here for several days, and firefighters have been working to stop the blaze from advancing by setting pre-fires and building fire lines to help block the advance of this. wildfire. And right now behind me, firefighters will soon start spraying water to keep the cinders from continuing to burn and reigniting any fuel that's actually left behind. But you can see this forest is black, except for the green treetops that are remaining. That's Mark Tucker Carlson. Striking C&H sugar workers will return to work today in Jasmine Crockett after going on strike over a month ago to protest a proposed contract that cut into sick days, ended retiree medical benefits, and gutted overtime rules. Union representatives said during the first week of negotiations, C&H held firm, but last week the company seemed to move a bit on a few issues. Mostly sunny today in the Bay Area, highs in the 70s, lows tonight in the 50s, in the Central Valley. A heat advisory is in effect, highs around 100, lows tonight in the 60s. Those are the headlines. I'm Max Pringle on KPFA. Just before 7.34 in the morning, the show is up front. My name's Brian Edwards Teakert. Help!

My last fundraising appeal does not appear to have moved anyone to action. This is it. Our fund drive ends tomorrow morning. And we are stuck with what we've raised at that point. Right now, what we have is just over $53,000 short of what we need. If you care about this radio station, if you care about our efforts to make these fund drives shorter. We need to hear from you now. Any thank you gift that has caught your attention during the fund drive is available at KPFA.org or just make as big a gift as you can and include a note that says the thank you gift is KPFA. The book we're discussing this hour by Annie Leonard is yours for a donation of $19 a month or $190 all at once. And whatever you donate, we can count if we receive it in the next 25 minutes. towards a massive $2,400 challenge that is our best shot at getting KPFA to the finish line by tomorrow morning. We have $1,860 to go.kfa.org, 1,800439 5732. Back to the conversation with Annie Leonard about her book, Protest, Respect it, defend it, use it. 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. Your opening essay in the book puts that lawsuit in the context of a greater global trend 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 in 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 and 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 and 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 the anti-democratic forces can vilify tactics that protesters use and can lump them all together, sort of guilt by association, label them as terrorists, label them as threats to security. If they can vilify the people writ large, they don't have to get into the substance of the debate. I mean, we saw this in prairie land where protesters were rightfully protesting abhorrent conditions in 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 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, 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. purpose do you think the terrorist label and excessive charging serve in the eyes of the people who are bringing those charges? Oh, 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 Prairie Land 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. We're speaking to Annie Leonard about her new book, protest, respect it, defend it, use it. It is 273 pages, hardcover, oversized. It's a coffee table book. And it is our featured thank you gift for a donation of $19 a month or $190 all at once, which we can count towards our $2,400 challenge on this.

penultimate morning of fundraising at kpfa.org or one 800 439 5732 the book has 42 capsule histories of groundbreaking protests straddling almost three centuries there is early american history From the Boston Tea Party, a now very acceptable act of political property destruction, to the Jerry Rescue in Syracuse, New York, when a organized group of abolitionists broke down the door of a jail to free a man being held under the Fugitive Slave Act. It rounds up international protests from Gandhi's Salt March in 1930 to the Women Life Freedom protests in Iran just four years ago. Environmental protests from the First Earth Day in 1970 to the South African protests against Shell Oil in 2022. the rising tide of indigenous protest from Ecuador's Yasuni to the Standing Rock occupation in North Dakota. Labor protests from the Flint's sit-down strike in 1937 to the day without immigrants in 2006. An anti-fascist resistance from the mass protests that stopped the Holocaust from coming to Bulgaria under a Nazi collaboration of this government. to the uprising against authoritarianism in this country today. It's got 13 essays by iconic contributors from Rebecca Solnit to Fabiana Rodriguez to Jane Fonda and Robert Reich. And it's out on the publishing arm that Patagonia has opened. We've interviewed a couple of their authors. And you can tell them these books that the publisher, you know, which is a profitable outdoor gear company that is now owned by what is effectively a nonprofit trust, they're not... publishing to make money off books, they're putting money into making beautiful books. They shell out for a lot of art and photography and high-quality printing materials. This thing is stuffed with photographs and artworks of everything from banner drops to arrests to mugshots to archival documents with print and lithographs of early abolitionist actions. It's yours for a donation of $19 a month or $190 all at once. If you donate for it, we will be able to count it towards this $2,400 challenge, which we have, yikes! 14 minutes left to make at KPFA.org or 1-800-439-5732-1-800- Hey KPFA. I have more of the interview to bring you.

I'm going to take a leap of faith and hope some of you donate while we go back to Annie Leonard. 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 um 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 um 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. 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 US 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 Hawkin one said, it's not a way to get rich, but it's a way to live rich. 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. 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. 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 in 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 US. Her new book, co-authored with Andre Carruthers, is protest, respect it, defend it, use it. That book is our featured thank you gift for the nine and a half minutes that we have left this hour. It's 273 pages just down from Patagonia, hardcover, oversized, stuffed with full color photographs. Most of it is 42 capsule histories of groundbreaking protests straddling almost three centuries, ranging from the Amazon to South Africa to India to abolitionist agitation in pre-revolutionary North America to some of the most groundbreaking protests of the past several years, including in the streets of Minneapolis. It takes you from protests over the environment to acts of anti-fascist resistance. Things you definitely heard of, like the Boston Tea Party, described in a new light, I did not know till I read this book, that both George Washington and Ben Franklin condemned the Boston Tea Party because they were afraid that the property destruction might alienate moderates. It also describes actions that... Don't get recounted that often. Like the Jerry Rescue in Syracuse, New York. I only know about this because I happened to cross a bronze monument to it on a bike ride. As a group of abolitionists who just kind of got together, broke down the door of a jail to free a man who was being held under the fugitive slave act. and wrote that into municipal history as a piece of identity for the people who live there. It's also got essays by Rebecca Solnit, Fabiano Rodriguez, Dolores Huerta, Nimobasi, Maurice Mitchell, Robert Reich, and many others.

Whole book is these kind of short bites of insight on the history of protests, on the global trend of making it more difficult to protest that we're enduring right now. And the nice thing about the short spites is you can pick the book up and, you know, you can read something short in between other tasks instead of aimlessly scrolling while your brain gets sucked out through your screen. Most importantly, if you donate for the book at $19 a month or $190.90 all at once, we can count your donation towards our $2,400 challenge. In the final sprint of this fund drive, we have 23 hours and a few minutes left to make KPFA's goal, over $50,000 left to raise, and just under $1,300 left to raise if we're going to make this challenge. That comes down to the next seven minutes.kfa.org, 1,800, 439, 5732, 1,800, hey, KPFA. You know, when she was talking about the things that actually make us happy. Right? A life lived with purpose, a sense of purpose greater than yourself. Working with others, a collective agency to make a world better than the one we're in now. These are the kind of things that come from being part of a place like KPFA. You know, in this moment when the wealthiest companies the world has ever created, have invested vast sums of capital and expertise into monetizing our every action, turning every click and scroll into a commoditized, surveilled marketing opportunity. How incredible is it that we have a place like KPFA? You know, a common, something that exists through our own solidarity. It is something to cherish, to treasure, to build, to protect. And something we're asking you to come through for in the five minutes we have left to make this $2,400 challenge. KPFA.org, 1,800-439 5732. Join Valeria, who just donated from Oakland and Brianna in San Francisco, who picked up a copy of the book. Hope you enjoy it, Brianna. The anonymous person in Kenwood, who's become our first monthly sustainer for the hour. KPFA.org, 1,800, 439, 5732. We've now got... $1,11313 left to raise and five minutes to do it. KPFA.org, 1-800-439-5732, and Anonymous in Walnut Creek has just gotten us closer. $885585 left to raise. Kpfa.org, 1,800-439-5732, and because I've only got one caller on the line right now.

And my pitch may have run its course. I'm going to bring on the person who is warmed up, stretching, and ready to sprint on. Handing the baton to you, Kat Brooks. Well, thank you, Brian Evers Teaker. He must mean drinking coffee and cleaning the muck out of my eyes. But I did perk up as soon as I was connected to hear that we are talking about resistance this morning. And that is how we are inspiring you to give to this station, which is a station of resistance. See, look. what I did there and that is what you were supporting. You are adding more tools into the resistance toolbox when you give to KPFA and ensure that these kinds of conversations. on this kind of show, on this kind of station, it can remain on the air. This is really putting skin, right, in the game. The right does it so well. They do so well funding their news outlets and their papers and their think tanks and, right, all of the things that they're using to increase fascism in this day and age, all the things that they've been using as they deliberately marched towards this moment that we find ourselves in, we gotta be just as deliberate y'all. We have to make sure that everything that we need to push back, fight back, stand. up, resist, build the world that we want to live in, build that community that the author of the book was talking about in the last clip. with brian right that's our assignment that is the assignment of right now build the movement and y'all know i am so big on political education and the know how don't just get out there and flail around right that's not the time this is not the time for that this is the time for strategy and being tactical and being connected right getting out of the silo stop eating each other and eat together instead in a community of resistors we are a community of resistors at kpFA and and you support that community and you are a part of that community and part of how you demonstrate, right, that that community energy and effort is by pledging during Fund Drive. You pledge by going to KPFA.org or calling 1-800-4395732. There are two sustainers. Look, my job's already almost done. There are two sustainers on the board. We need one more or more, but one more minimum in order to meet the goal, right? Getting a sustainer pledge in for this book. that Brian has been talking about, profiling protests and the importance of protests, the history of protests, the power of protest and resistance. That's what time it is. That's the moment. This is the moment. And I'm sure Brian is that, you know, we're ending, the fun drive. tomorrow tomorrow morning we're done dada over that doesn't mean that we don't still have to raise the additional 52,505 dollars by tomorrow we absolutely do we need that money the goals are the bare minimum as i say often the fastest way to get us to raising that 800 plus dollars that is left in this massive challenge of this hour is for you to become a sustainer give what you can five bucks a month 10 bucks a month 20 bucks a month we'll get you a copy of the book how about that and it will also get us to meet this match

KPFA.org, 1-800-439-5732, 1-800. Hey, KPFA. Well, there's one more caller. Brian, we'll see what happens. Back to you. It's a bit of a squeaker. Okay, we have raised, towards that $2,400 challenge, we have raised 1,895 that puts us $500 away from making it, less whatever is being donated by the two people on the phones right now. We have a minute and 10 seconds left to get over the top. Yikes. KPFA.org. 1-800-439-5732. This is it. There's only one more morning of fundraising. Our fund drive ends in 27 hours and one minute. We're asking you to join Donovan, who just chipped in from Cupertino. Hope you enjoyed the book, the people who've come through anonymously in Walnut Creek and San Francisco, 45 seconds to ensure that we claim that $2,400 challenge.kfa.org, 1,800, 439, 5732. Oh, we just got $100 closer. We are now at $405 left to raise. KPFA.org, $1,800. Hey, KPFA.com. You're tuned to KPFA 98.1 FM in Berkeley, KPFB 89.3 FM in Berkeley, KFCF88.1FM in Fresno online at KPFA.org. Donations that come in for the next few minutes will count towards our challenge. I'm out of time to ask. So, KPFA.org is the best place to donate. Every phone line but one is free at one.