Sierra Club Executive Director Sees New Energy for Climate Change Fight

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Conversations on Healthcare. This week we welcome former
NAACP Chair, Ben Jealous, new director of the Sierra Club on his quest to tackle
climate change by focusing on climate justice. Now here are your hosts, Mark
Masselli and Margaret Flinter.

Mark Masselli: Our guest is active in the most important issues of our time, police brutality,
climate change, and equity. And as you're about to learn, he brings a unique and
[00:00:30] powerful voice to help all of us understand these t opics.

Margaret Flinte...: Benjamin Jealous is the new executive director of the Sierra Club. It's America's
largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization with nearly
four million members and supporters. He has had a distinguished care er in
activism that he's putting to use now to save the planet.

Mark Masselli: Well, Ben, welcome to Conversations on Healthcare.

Ben Jealous: Thank you. It's good to be here.

Mark Masselli: Yeah. And of course we want to address the environment, but you u sed to lead
the NAACP [00:01:00] and we think it's essential to start with the death of Tyree
Nichols in Memphis. There are louder and louder calls for police reform to deal
with what's seen as a systemic issue in law enforcement. Tell us what should be
do ne.

Ben Jealous: We have to get right to the root of the problem, which is frankly how law
enforcement started in this country tells us how it needs to be shifted. Law
enforcement throughout our country started as a colonial project. In some areas
it was s lave [00:01:30] patrols, in other areas it was red coats, in other areas it
was Spanish colonial forces. Some places it was the US cavalry. Why is that
important? Because we do such little training in things like use of force, just one
day at the average a cademy for instance, that it's actually the culture of the
department that defines how force is used even more than the law itself. And
it's time for us to press pause and ask what do we need to keep us safe in the
21st [00:02:00] century? [Inaudible 00:02 :02] have done that. Places like where
Cornell University's based, Ithaca, have figured out a couple of things.

One is you don't actually need police for traffic stops. A lot of the worst things
happen during traffic stops. We use meter maids for meters. We can use people
who are unarmed for traffic stops and frankly that would take care of a lot.
Something else they've figured out is that about three quarters of the people
who apply [00:02:30] to be officers come from the 1/10th of the American
population that has an authoritarian personality, that has the type of
personality that the person feels a need to be respected no matter what. And
that's a lot of what you saw in that video was officers demanding that Tyre
simply do what he's told whether it's righ t or not, whether it's just or not. And
that's a real problem. The city of Ithaca, [00:03:00] the last eight years, has
added a second psychological test with a lie detector to detect people who have

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authoritarian personalities and three out of four office rs who apply, they have
to turn down for that reason.

But what they've seen is they don't get the same complaints that they do
against the group of officers who were selected prior to that change. When you
can actually recruit people with a spirit to serv e and not a spirit for adventure,
you just get better results. And when you frankly [00:03:30] use other traffic
professionals to stop people, not folks with guns, not folks with license to kill,
you don't get the extreme problems that this represents.

Mar garet Flinte...: Well, thank you, Ben, so much for those insights. And we seem to be seeing a
real shift in the public's perception. We wanted to get your reactions to a
political morning consult poll that showed three quarters of registered voters
conside red police violence against the public to be a very, [00:04:00] or at least
somewhat serious problem. And 62% think that police violence against black
people is widespread and it's common. It seems like lawmakers can't ignore that
kind of public sentiment except perhaps at their own peril. And I'm wondering
what your thoughts are on this. Do you think that we'll see new legislation
forthcoming?

Ben Jealous: I think that we will. I think that we'll see increasing consensus. One of the things
that we need to do is to make sure honestly, that cases of police abuse are
[00:04:30] visible regardless of the complexion of the victim. In the black
community, we are very well organized and we have a special problem and we
make sure that there's attention to it. But w hen you look at the statistics,
there's a lot of unnecessary police abuse against white people, against Latino
people, against Asian Americans, against Native Americans, and it's
disproportionately against low income people of all colors. In any of those
c ommunity, it tends to be low [00:05:00] income people who get the most
abuse. We've got to have the full face of the problem visible so people
understand this isn't just about making black people more safe, it's ultimately
about making all of us more safe.

Mark Masselli: Well, I think that's a really good point. It's about all of us and there's a rainbow
of colors, but racism courses through our society in a negative way. And the
American Public Health Association, many others say racism is a public health
crisis. [00:05:30] And you stated we can end racism, and I just want to connect
back to your first answer, which is really talking about this long history of racism
and I'm wondering what your ideas are of how we can end racism and what the
steps we need t o take will be for our society.

Ben Jealous: Yeah. Again, just to kind of bridge from what we were just talking about, I want
to be really clear the reports on police violence, the live subject studies done by
professors like [00:06:00] Phil Goff at the Jo hn J College of Criminal Justice at
University of New York, shows that when somebody's killed, it's actually
authoritarian behavior far more than implicit bias or racism that's determinative
in whether or not somebody's killed. An officer who rates high au thoritarianism

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but low when it comes to racism, low in implicit bias is very likely to kill you.
When it's the opposite, they're much less likely to kill you. And so when
[00:06:30] we're dealing with a public health crisis of this case, police violence
ag ainst unarmed civilians, unjustified, we've just got to be clear on what we're
dealing with. When it comes to -

Mark Masselli: Yeah, go ahead.

Ben Jealous: Yeah, no. Racism absolutely impacts health in all sorts of ways. Some of them
surprised in the magica l belief that black people need less pain medication that
many doctors seem to have. With that said, [00:07:00] at the end of his life, Dr.
King was trying to get us to all recognize that racism, in addition to being like a
boot on the back of black people , if you will, is ultimately a wedge that's used to
divide our society. And in the process, is used to maintain mass poverty because
people at the bottom of our economy are unable to come together and to stay
together, it seems, across that line of racial division. And that's why, as I
discussed [00:07:30] in my book, never forget our people were always free. You
see a change in the definition of race and of racism in the early 1700s, 100 years
after the experiment starts down in Virginia. Prior to that, ra ce was a word for
tribe. After that, race was the part of this fiction, this pseudos scientific fiction
that there were multiple human races and that black people were somehow
subhuman.

And so we've got to understand both sides of [00:08:00] that yes, thi s is used to
oppress people, it's also used to divide people and everybody who's trapped in
poverty pays a price for it. And while there's 16 million and change whites
strapped in poverty, about 8 million blacks. And that's important too.

Mark Masselli: Bu t in the issue of the health, we just had Dr. Lewis Sullivan on our show who
graduated in 1954, the year of the Brown V Board of Education Landmark
Decision, and he noted that there were 2% [00:08:30] black physicians in the
country at that time. And today there are 5%. Seems like there's a real structural
limitation in terms of making sure that there are people like me that I see who
are providing me healthcare. It seems to be very entrenched. Wondering what
your thought about how do we break through that because that's a long term
challenge for us and it doesn't seem like we're making any progress from 1954
to 2023. That's not the type [00:09:00] of increase that we would expect.

Ben Jealous: Yes. We see down in Florida, you get a hint on it. The governor of Florida wants
to ban teaching of black history in high schools, AP level black history. What he
doesn't want to talk about is that under his tenure, the state schools, I think,
have gone from around 30th to around 35th in the country. And so when we're
talking about things like creating doctors in the black community, you can't
separate it from the fact [00:09:30] that our community is disproportionately
poor. And so you deal with hurdles that are related to race and discrimination of
people based on col or, but you're also dealing with hurdles often much bigger
that are based on the systematic under education of poor people of all colors in

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our society. And what makes it hard to really understand is that our country is
much more comfortable talking about racism than we are talking about the
continued discrimination and obstacles for the poor to really [00:10:00] realize
their full potential, make their full contribution to society.

And when you study poor whites, when you actually control for poverty, you
see that a lot of these hurdles are just simply much more universal. And so Dr.
Sullivan's right, we do need to deal with the racial barriers that are there that I
teach at the University of Pennsylvania. It is heartbreaking to hear what black
students ar e subjected to, the way that they're isolated from other students
because again, of these lingering [00:10:30] notions that somehow black people
are less intelligent or less capable, and that's heartbreaking and it's wrong. And
yet, such a high percentage of the black community has been trapped in poverty
so long, we would be fooled if we thought that the only barriers are racial
discrimination. It's also simply the symptomatic under - education of children in
low - income families in this country.

Margaret Fli nte...: Well, Ben, thank you again for sharing those insights with us. And if [00:11:00] I
may, I'd like to talk with you now about the environment. The Sierra Club
committed to retiring coal plants, preventing new fossil fuel plants from being
built, work ing to stop the expansion of fracked gas, but we've all recently heard
former vice President Al Gore with his usual complete passion pointing out that
despite so many efforts, emissions are still going up. As you tackle your new
role, what are your thought s? Why are we not [00:11:30] making more progress
to save the planet?

Ben Jealous: We fundamentally have to decide that this is a problem that we're going to fix
as a nation. And for a lot of people, they agree the environment is important,
but it doesn't rank in their top three or four issues. And so that's part of what
I've focused on is simply building a bigger, more robust movement, more
inclusive movement, [00:12:00] and then helping us connect the dots. So many
places in this country, we're worried ab out floods, the 100 - year flood seems to
come every year. And we're not having real conversations about the
opportunities we have to actually slow down climate change, stop climate
change. We at Sierra Club have run the most effective campaign in the countr y
when it comes to slowing down climate change. We've shut down more than
250 [00:12:30] coal - fired power plants. What I'm excited about now is that we
are both focused on shutting all of them down, stopping the expansion, and at
the same time really inves ting in industries that promise to quite frankly create
jobs while helping us save the planet.

We have huge, some states right now, six year backlogs in getting new solar
panels installed, [00:13:00] getting new solar power farms up. We're focused on
cutt ing that red tape. We, as a country, need a greater sense of urgency and I'm
hopeful, quite frankly, that the Inflation Reduction Act, the associated
infrastructure bill, all the resources there for building new industry, for

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expanding solar and wind capac ity will ultimately have Al Gore happier in a few
years. I think we're turning the corner right now.

Mark Masselli: Well, [00:13:30] let me pull the thread on the Inflation Reduction Act because
the Sierra Club was very influential in supporting the Biden administration. I
think we had, Margaret, Bill McGibbon on just before that passed, who's a John
Muir recipient from the Sierra Club. Obviously a great person talking about
really the significant benefits in climate change that were part of this act. And
h ow are we going to wisely spend [00:14:00] this 300 billion committed to
climate change in the law. I say that in the context of reading that the oil
companies have reported $120 billion of profit. That sounds like it's going to be
an enormous fight to hav e. They have the resources to do what they want.
What are your thoughts?

Ben Jealous: Yeah, no. We're going to have to stand firm against them and quite frankly, they
have been relentless in seeking [00:14:30] to open up new drilling. And if we let
them do that, it will absolutely keep the planet accelerating towards its death.
The good news is, quite frankly, we are at a tipping point in our economy and
the 300 billion in the IRA, frankly, you get up to over a trillion when you include
the associate infras tructure bill and the loan fund, [00:15:00] is exactly the type
of force that we need to tip our economy in the right direction when we're
creating more and more jobs by industries that save the planet rather than ones
that kill it. And what the oil and ga s industry knows is that their days are
numbered. They're trying to extend them as far as they can, but concerns about
peak oil are real and quite frankly, the awareness that they [00:15:30] are
setting up a very destructive situation on planet earth, I th ink people are in
increasingly aware of. At the end of the day, we used to just fight stop things.
Now we get to fight to also accelerate the building of industries that will create
new jobs and make it possible to sustain our planet [inaudible 00:15:52].

Mark Masselli: But then some of those new -

Ben Jealous: [Inaudible 00:15:55].

Mark Masselli: Right. Some of those new jobs are widening highways, which is sort of
counterintuitive [00:16:00] to the fight against fossil fuels. How do you -

Ben Jealous: Look, there are block grant funds in there that can be used exactly in the wrong
way. And where people are trying to do that, in Wisconsin for instance, we are
right there pushing back.

Mark Masselli: Mm - hmm.

Ben Jealous: We'll spend a lot of energy honestly helping state officials, county officials, city
officials across this country. We're the only group that can do it because we're
so big and we're in every state and we're in most [00:16:30] metropolitan areas
helping them understand that the money's there and how to best use it to have

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the best impact. Unfortunately, some of the infrastructure bill block grants,
some of the IRA block grants were written so widened, so broadly, they can
absolutely be misused. But that's where citizens got to stand up and mak e sure
that their local officials do the right thing.

Margaret Flinte...: Well, it's so important that you have people on the ground in every state and in
these areas where [00:17:00] these meetings are happening. As we speak this
time of year, community d evelopment block grant funds are given out and
people can come out and testify and make their thoughts known. But I
understand you're also taking part in a listening campaign. We certainly know
young people are a key to climate activism. We've been inspire d by Greta
Thunberg, as has just about everybody else, I think, who's ever listened to her.
But what are young supporters telling you? Are you hearing anything that
surprises you, are there new messages in what people [00:17:30] are asking you
to do among our young people?

Ben Jealous: I think a lot of young activists are heartened by the fact that we can finally see a
future for the planet. There are things we have to do that every nation has to
do, but there's a path there. I just got back from being in S eattle with a bunch of
young people who quite frankly fell in love with the outdoors during COVID, and
it's [00:18:00] really led them into greater activism. And that gives me, frankly, a
great sense of hope. Our theory at the Sierra Club for 130 years is the more
people you get into the most beautiful places and the outdoors, the more
people we will have that are committed to saving the planet, to reserving the
wild places and wildlife. And it's nice to see that cycle continuing to work with
today's young people and to know that COVID, in an odd way, helped to speed it
up.

Margaret Flinte...: [00:18:30] Interesting.

Mark Masselli: I want to get back to the young people and their activism. When you were
younger and led the NAACP, not that you're old now, but you were quite young.

Ben Jealous: I just turned 50, so my AARP card showed up.

Mark Masselli: [Inaudible 00:18:46] -

Ben Jealous: [Inaudible 00:18:47] like you've been declared old.

Mark Masselli: But the NAACP, its climate justice program issued to repor t assessing the impact
of the nation's nearly 400 coal power plants on people of color in low income
communities. And now you're getting involved, [00:19:00] as you've said, in
local campaigns around industrial pollution and power grid, which really, again ,
affect vulnerable populations. I'm wondering, in addition to getting young
people into the right physical environment, what are your other thoughts about
how do we empower those without political power? And that's just not young
people, that's sort of a writ large. Many people feel this is too large, I don't

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know what I can do because this problem is so large. How can I meaningfully be
[00:19:30] engaged?

Ben Jealous: Yeah. The good news is that there's need for people to be engaged literally
every place in this country. The frontline of fighting climate change runs through
every state capital, it runs through every county government, it runs through
every city government. And so people can really take on sort of jurisdiction that
they feel comfortable wit h, they feel they can have an impact in. And filling up
and speaking out really does make a difference. I think as organizers, [00:20:00]
we often take the old for granted at our peril. The activists at any point in
American history tend to come from a rou nd or below university age or around
above retirement age because both groups perceive themselves with having
disposable time. And both are eager to have changed the planet. One's about to
take control of it, wants it improved. One's about to leave it and define their
legacy. And as I move into being sort of amongst the elders, if you will, and I had
[00:20:30] a grandfather who didn't live to see 44, so 50 for me feels like a real
milestone.

I'm just kind of increasingly reminded of our responsibility to organize multi -
generationally to not take the old for granted. And we see, again, the real hope
because as it moves, when I was in Congress, it was easy for people to feel
disconnected. Big bill has to get through Congress, what can I do from here? But
now that [00:21:00] the decisions are being made at every city council, at every
county government, at every state government, there's just a role for everybody
to play. I encourage people, go to sierraclub.org, sign up and get active with us
and we'll plug y ou in where you are and how you want to be involved.

Margaret Flinte...: Well, Ben, I'm going to give you an opportunity to maybe focus on another large
sector, if you will, within the country that can make a difference. Our audience
is made up [00:21:30] of many people who work in, practice in, or get their
healthcare in community health centers around the country, 30 million people
from 1,300 organizations, 9,000 sites. What can they do to address health
equity, climate justice, racism? Do you see that as another lever that can be
activated to try and make a difference on these issues?

Ben Jealous: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's so many things to be done with community
health clinics and the people who rely on them. I have family members who do,
and [00:2 2:00] we're very supportive of Total Healthcare in Baltimore, which is a
federally funded health clinic. One, honestly, it's to really speak up about what
has impacted them, what has impacted their families if people are coming in
with kids with asthma, an d actually drawing the connection for the city council
person, making them understand that their constituents get it. That, for
example, if you're in West Baltimore, Total Healthcare, again, is the federally
funded health clinic that serves that area. We s till have a trash incinerator
[00:22:30] right over West Baltimore, a bunch of incinerated trash, and it goes
right into the lungs of young people, it drives up the asthma. Still operating

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buses that are dirty buses spewing out things that irritate people' s respiratory
system.

Both of those are problems that can be fixed. We have the power to generate
power for this region without relying on burning trash. And we have the power
to power buses with funds in the Inflation Reduction Act and associated bills
[ 00:23:00] to buy buses for cities so they can drive through those
neighborhoods and not worsen the asthma epidemic. I would encourage people
to take a moment to think about how their government might be able to make
sure at least that the next generation d idn't have to cope with what they've had
to cope with, the things that keep them coming back to the clinic in many cases
and speak out and get involved.

Mark Masselli: I really like the optimism of we have the power [00:23:30] and people need to
connect themselves to that. I think our audience knows that this is Black History
Month and you've written about your family's own history in your new book.
First of all, congratulations. The title is Never Forget our People, We're Always
Free: A Parable of Americ an Healing. I wonder if you could just share with our
audience, you've had such a remarkable life with such an incredible arc, always
working towards justice and doing the right thing with so many world figures,
but tell us about the book [00:24:00] and al so your family roots.

Ben Jealous: Sure. This book was quite a journey for me. In the middle of writing it, I figured
out that our family was cousins to Robert E. Lee, and my head kind of exploded.
Had the NAACP, it's kind of the last person you expect to find in the family tree
anywhere was the head of the Confederate army. But there he was. And it really
forced me to wrestle with the fact that we are much more of an American
family than we realize. [00:24:30] We are much more connected than we
realized. B arack Obama and I are both cousins to Dick Cheney, the former Vice
President Dick Chaney. Just think about that. And separately through different
branches of family trees. My book is really written with an urgent desire to help
us see how much we have in c ommon, including the struggles that we face. One
thing that's thought to be unique in this country is [00:25:00] handgun deaths
that really uniquely impacts black people, young black men. And yet we don't
even talk about the fact that there is a higher rat e of suicide amongst old white
men than there is homicide amongst young black men.

The two things, by the way, what drives that suicide rate, what drives that
homicide rate, the factors, there's a lot that actually overlap, including that both
tend to go up in the wake [00:25:30] of areas where factories have been closed,
for instance. One of the things I talk about in the book when it comes to health
is the importance of showing the full face of the problem. When we pretend
that the poor, for example, are all or mostly black, public opinion shifts in a
negative way towards everything public, including public health. When we show
the full face, when we show that [00:26:00] there are twice as many whites in
poverty as blacks, for instance, twice as far as th e numbers, 16 million and
change versus 8 million and change. When the photographs reflect that full

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diversity, public opinion shifts in a positive way because people see themselves
reflected in the problem.

An example of that is the opiate epidemic, pand emic really, in our country. For
the longest time, we pretended it was just a black problem and the response
was this is criminal and we need [00:26:30] to lock these people up. And then as
it shifted into the middle of the country as trucking routes from Mexico, as a
result of NAFTA opened up and we saw heroin pouring into the middle of the
country not coming in exclusively through the ports as it had been historically. A
bunch of sheriffs wrestling with opiate overdoses en masse for the first time
decided to start publishing photographs of the corpse of the people who had
died. And drug abuse is [00:27:00] pretty constant across racial groups. And
what people saw for the first time were all of the young white people that were
dying from heroin, that were d ying from overdosing on pills.

And then public opinion shifted. This wasn't just simply a criminal scourge that
needs to be dealt with, this is now a health crisis, it's a crisis of addiction and
what we need is rehab. And so yeah, that's part of what giv es me hope is that
the American people, when the media actually shows them the true scope of
the problem, respond in a logical way. Unfortunately, [00:27:30] when we allow
racism to continue to cloud how we communicate and what images we show,
well, that c an have a negative impact too, as it has in this country for centuries.

Margaret Flinte...: Well, Ben, may be a little bit of a philosophical question. I know that you had an
early experience growing up in northern California with the beautiful redwoods.
I understand your home today is in a designated bird sanctuary. And I'm curious
with the weight of the issues that you have decided to make [00:28:00] your
life's work and to tackle, how does all of that influence your stamina, your
courage, your ability to tackle these major issues of our times? What's the
benefit of that exposure and intimacy with nature and what's your message to
young people about all of that, or not to young people, all people, that is.

Ben Jealous: Yeah. A couple things. One, as my who le life kind of comes full circle, I started
out organizing when I was [00:28:30] a kid against clear cutting redwoods. As
you reference, I've grown up camping in them and literally camping inside.
Redwoods draw their water through their branches, they dra w from the clouds
more than from the ground. When lightning strikes, the base will burn out and it
creates a cave that the tree continues to grow around. Native Americans would
sleep in them when they were hunting. As Europeans came, European hunters
slept in them. And as a child, I camped out in them. And when I heard that they
were clear [00:29:00] cutting redwood forests, I got pretty outraged as a young
teenager and got involved then. It's nice to come back to this movement. But
what a life lived in the outdoors has taught me is that the outdoors really is the
best place for young people, for all people to learn leadership.

And what really defines a leader is the habit of getting more calm when
everybody else is freaking out around you. And what the woo ds and what the

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water teaches you is that if you freak out in the woods or you freak out in the
water, you can die pretty quickly. You can die for exposure [00:29:30] quarter
mile from the road if you're lost in the woods at night. You can drown in a
manne r of minutes on the water even if you thought you were a great swimmer.
And so it's part of why my parents raised me in the woods, it's part of why I
raised my kids in the woods is that if you're going to raise strong kids. It's
important to really teach t hem how to manage their anxiety and there's no
better teacher than the wilderness.

Mark Masselli: Oh, that's great. Ben, I want to thank you for joining us. I want to congratulate
you on this new book and encourage all of our [00:30:00] listeners to pick i t up.
And also for your new position at the Sierra Club, but more importantly, your
voice of trying to find the common thread that unites all of us together as we
fight through these difficult things. And also, thanks to our audience for being
with us. You can learn more about conversations on healthcare and sign up for
our email updates at chcradio.com. Ben, thank you so much.

Ben Jealous: Thank you. God bless you.

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