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Getting Comfortable with the Uncomfortable · Politics Between Us

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: It is easy to feel like political conversations have completely broken down.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Everything feels loud and urgent and binary.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't think it has to be that way.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think politics gets a lot more interesting and a lot less toxic when we try
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: to listen to each other,
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: we try to hold space for different views,
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: and we try to stick together through the hard stuff.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Alison B.A., and for the last 25 years, I've worked in law and politics here in Maine.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm Luca DeAngelis.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in my twenties.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I live in New York City, but I grew up in Maine.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly,
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of the time I am pretty disillusioned with politics,
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: but Alison is the person who I keep talking to anyways.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: For the past decade,
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: we have been having these honest,
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: messy conversations ever since I was an intern with her at the ACLU of Maine
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: when I was just 18.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: So this is Politics Between Us,
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: where we see what happens when we talk about politics with curiosity instead
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: of certainty.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, everyone.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back, Allison.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Last episode,
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was co-hosting with a surprise co-host,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Lucas Sinclair, but it's great to have you back with me.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Super happy to be back.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Today, we are going to be talking to Carol Wishcamper.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: For those of us who've worked in advocacy, Carol Wishcamper is a very well-known name.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: For over 50 years, she has been in around politics and policy.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: In the 1970s, she was elected and served as the chair of the Freeport School Committee.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: In the 1980s, she was appointed and chaired the Maine State Board of Education.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: And later in 2012,
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: she was selected to serve as one of five commissioners in the Maine Wabanaki State.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: The Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: which was,
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: importantly, Luca,
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: and I'm not sure you and I have talked about this a lot,
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: but it was the very first Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: to focus specifically on indigenous child welfare.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it was really like, I remember it, but I didn't know Carol then.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: It was incredibly important.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: And today she advises nonprofits and advocacy organizations across the state.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Plus she jumps into partisan advocacy.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Every election cycle, whether she likes it or not.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it is hard, honestly, to overstate the breadth and depth of her impact in Maine.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: But in addition to that,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: Carol is one of my closest friends,
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: which makes me a wee bit nervous about today,
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: because she probably knows just about everything about not only my politics,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: but my personal life.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: So...
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I certainly know that,
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: and I think that's kind of part of the reason I told you we had to invite her on.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes the things that make us nervous are really good for us also.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And in addition to all the things you said about Carol's background, I just...
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know from everything you've said about her that she is direct and incisive and
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: a really expansive thinker and someone who seems to really move easily
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: between thinking about the personal and the political,
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: which is something that you and I love to do.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it really makes her the perfect Politics Between Us guest.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we should just bring her on.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Here we go.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome Carol Wishcamper to Politics Between Us.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's wonderful to have you here.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: I know when I hear people who are guests on podcasts say, I'm so excited to be here.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, feeling more like Allison, a little apprehensive and can't say no to Allison.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then I met you,
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: Lutha, and even harder to say no to you in terms of just unattracted to youth.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so it feels like a waterfall here in that...
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: You and Allison have known each other for a long time,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_03: but there's about 30 years between you and Allison
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: and I have known each other probably for about 10 years now,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: and there's 30 years between us.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: So in some ways, there's some analog to my relationship to Allison and hers to yours.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: I was just thinking about that actually this morning.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm like.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: SAT tests where you had to find the analogies.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_03: This is to this.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: And how is Carol to Alison as Alison is to Luther?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: 30 years between us.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: That is, I love that way of thinking about it.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: I actually, I hadn't made that connection for some reason.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I love that we're a waterfall today.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's jump in.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Carol, we want to start at the beginning.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And do you have a first political memory?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it's a strange one.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: So, I am now 83 years old.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: I was born in 1942 during World War II and during the age of the Mayville.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: And in 1952, Adley Seidenson was learning against Flight Eisenhower.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: It was radio days.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: Not much TV at all.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: He had a TV.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: He mostly had test patterns for most of the day.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: So, radio jingles were big.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember walking to school and kids were all singing this song from
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: the Walt Disney version of Smell White.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_03: Whistle while you work, Eisenhower's got the power, Stevenson's a jerk.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: And it was probably the first song worm that I can remember.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I was probably nine years old and I've still got that damn song in my head.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: And it was especially annoying because it was an attractive jingle, but I shaded Eisenhower.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know why, but my parents were for Adlai Stevenson.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so, I don't know if they ever talked directly to me about politics, but I heard them.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like,
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: Jewish people don't vote for Republicans,
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: we vote for the working person's champion, and Adlai Stevenson was it.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, so that's my first memory.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: Not really understanding the strong feelings, but they were very strong feelings.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: And there was this accordance between what I was hearing in terms of the jingle and
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: the different reaction of my currents to that.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: Stevenson was not a jerk, Eisenhower.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very specific memory, which is fun.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember my specific political memory was Barack Obama walking on stage at
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: the 2008, when he was elected, my parents waking me up.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's fun to have a very specific one.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Some people, it's a little bit more ambiguous.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it sounds like your parents were Talking about politics
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: in your household growing up,
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: though, do you have memories of them kind
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: of talking about politics very much?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: That's the most salient memory was the Adlai Stevenson.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: They were not politically involved, if we would think about it, but they were concerned.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I would say that I would characterize the household that I lived in.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_03: I lived in an extended family situation with a great-grandmother, widow grandmother,
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_03: Great grandmother,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: widowed grandmother,
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: childless aunt and uncle who were sister to my grandmother, my parents, my brother.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: So we're six adults.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so we mainly listened to adult conversation.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: And there was a pall over the household in terms of what was happening in Germany
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: and what people were hopeful would happen here, post-World War II.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: that was the time when people had hopes that we would be a different kind of country
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: than we'd become.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: So there were,
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: you don't remember it as a very political household,
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: but there were these kinds of discussions happening.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: This is one thing that I'm really wanting to tease out with the two of you.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm hoping it took more of a conversation than an interview.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: But the word political has so much different kinds of means and vagaries.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so when the two of you approached me about coming on this,
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: it's like, I'm not, I'm not political.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: But I am political.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: You can't not be political if you care.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not a politician, although I almost was a politician.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: I had brief flirtation with that back in the early 1990s.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't feel that I'm political in that sense.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_03: But yet,
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: this is a word that may not have much resonance at this time,
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: but the word that keeps coming to me that's sort of this,
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: A confusion is the word polity.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: Are you familiar with the word polity?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: The polity means the way we organize ourselves
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: and the way we govern
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: ourselves.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the framework.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: And then underneath, politics is the way we make things happen.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: And policy is what we make happen.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's sort of direct what it is that you value and want to see.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think when I was younger,
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: it felt like there was a moral sense of the polity And less of the sense
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: of bipartisanship that was so polarized that nothing could get done.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: If you think about it,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: in the early 50s,
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: we were still coming off of the New Deal when we experienced the fact
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: that government could work for people,
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: government could solve problems, and we were hopeful.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's funny you say that because I think...
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: I guess I'd never thought to use the word polity,
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: but that is probably a better description for what I think of as politics,
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: because a lot of the reason why Luke and I started this podcast was
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: because we would have these sort of just like intense conversations about like
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: a policy or a political figure.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then 10 minutes later,
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: we'd be talking about sort of what kind of life do we want to live
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: and how are we connecting with our community?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think that's why I still love politics.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of hate the horse race,
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: but I love the conversations that are underneath,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: which is how do we want to organize our lives?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: How do we want to organize our communities?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's politics to me.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's interesting because to me,
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Alison and I have been talking a lot about community
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: and how people feel like they lack community.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I think your description of polity makes it...
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Seemed like kind of the connection between politics and community a bit more,
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: which is, I think, a helpful frame for us.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: I think that word is missing from the national dialogue because right now
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: the polity is being challenged.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: The polity is our constitution.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's our three branches of government.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's all the things that are breaking down and not working right now because of
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_03: the authoritarian figure in the White House.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: They don't pay any attention to that.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: But that's from the frameworks that we've moved under since we became a nation.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: Our initial founding document was the polity statement.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: And now it's breaking down without anybody even talking about what's happening
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: and what we need to do to agree on what is the polity for this time.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: How do we, I don't think we can go back and recover, but I think we need to think about Luca.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: This to me is the fundamental tension between Luca and I.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: It is an idea of,
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: and I've talked to you about this, Carol,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: I still believe maybe naively that our systems can survive,
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: they can hold,
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: that maybe even they're valuable,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: although don't push me too hard on that,
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: but you know, that there's something in the In the system that's worth preserving.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas Luca, I think, well, I'll let him speak for himself, Carol.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: But, I mean, to me, that is the fundamental question right now.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think what I hear young people where I work talk about is they don't believe in
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: the system at all.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: They don't believe in the polity.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: And Luca, what about you?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Where are you today?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think that's why you maybe see people so focused on, like,
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of more local community building efforts because they have no faith that
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: the federal government or large institutions can create a sense of community
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: or like can organize people to come together.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: You have to look to smaller people.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Institutions, more local community to get that.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to get it from the federal government because we have no faith in that.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we feel like we are completely controlled by We think that it's fully going to be a thing.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, wow.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's already a thing, and we just haven't organized the AA group.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I am closer to Luca than I am to Alice's on this point.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: And that I really believe that we are moving towards collapse,
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: that not only is the total government system collapsing,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: but everything else,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: education, house care, all those things that are policies that are...
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: Reflective of the collapse of the larger government system.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: And frankly, I don't know how it gets repaired.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not sure that we need to repair it to what it was.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: But how, again,
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: this is what is missing for me in the national conversation and what resonates
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: with me.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: I don't hear anyone in either party or even outside a party talking
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_03: about imagining what it could look like in this time when Everything has changed.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: We have technology.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: We have AI.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: We have all the kinds of things that we didn't have before.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: And as we do that,
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: we lose the local organizing system of small communities,
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: of small groups of people coming together.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: And when we lose that,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: then I think we're all feeling a little bit of drift in
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: that we don't have those local communities that we can trust in.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: And how those get amalgamated into a larger unit,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: because it has to be, But,
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: if we start really thinking,
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: I should add the box, should we really be a globe of nation states anymore?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: Nation states were important in the early times when there was not a way to communicate.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so people first organized very locally and then it got larger at the cities and
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: then nation states and then regions and whatever.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_03: But nowadays, those seem like artificial costs and artificial boundaries.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: And how do we Organized at a more personal relational level,
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: but yet have
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: networks to the broader world.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Big, big questions.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Big questions.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: I, do want to get like,
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're going to end up returning to this,
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: but I do,
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: I have a curiosity that I want to follow,
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: which is I'm doing the math in my head,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Carol, and you were roughly my age in the early 1970s, I believe.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: So if I went in 1943 and you are how old, 30?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm 28.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so it was in the late 60s.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Late 60s, early 70s.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: I graduated from college in 1965.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So right around 1970.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a time when,
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: you have a lot of instability in the U.S.,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of protests and the Vietnam War and Kent State shootings.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: That also seemed like a time when, like, there was a lot of instability and uncertainty.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember how you're processing that now?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so if I could take myself back to that time, I remember sort of two lived memories.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: One was being on the Boston Common in one of those anti-Vietnam War rallies,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: and another one was watching TV at the 1968 convention when the police came out
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: and were beating brutally.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: People who were there protesting.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_03: And then the other image,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't there, but TV and news, image of the student at Kent State being killed.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: So what happened then was that youths energized.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: And we came together and we were allowed.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I do think that youths were able to eventually create the tipping point that
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: the U.S. had to withdraw from the war.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: Youths were empowered and self-empowered.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: And it's surprising to me over the last couple of years that there's not much more activity.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I know that there has been some,
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: especially around Palestine, and it was brutally repressed on campuses.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: But it was also brutally repressed during the Vietnam War, and so it didn't go away.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't really understand.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: Every year I kind of wait.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: It used to be that on campuses things got...
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: Buttoned up, boiled over in the spring.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: Living in New England,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: so I always thought about spring and the emergence of the energy coming back up out
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: of the earth.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: Other parts of the country didn't have that,
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: but it was also in the spring, close to the end of the semester.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: People were really whatever they were feeling in terms of frustration and pent up
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: and whatever, and there was expression.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so for the last number of years,
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: I sort of thought, okay, spring is going to come and something's going to happen.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't even expect it anymore.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think that in the 60s,
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: There was still more faith in government than there is now.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: And even though we were distressed with it, we felt like we could have some sort of impact.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: And we did.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: We did.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it was a time of,
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: feminism was just coming forward in the early 70s and people were feeling empowered
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_03: in new ways and in some ways putting on new skins.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't see where I feel right now like we really need A new skin,
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: and I don't see where it's coming.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I feel like in some ways,
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: and I've used this analogy with Allison in terms of some of the personal stuff
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: that I'm aware of,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: in general,
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: almost everyone I talk to,
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: you all feel like we're lobsters without shell,
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: and that the new shells aren't, you know how to grow the new shell?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's the constant distraction that will take us out of the discomfort
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: and numb us, which is, I think, a really important distinction as well.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like Luca,
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: what you're saying,
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: everyone's going to be in a phone anonymous meeting in another decade.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: There's constant numbing.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I just your answer was is a little heartbreaking to me because to hear that even
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: through all of that,
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: there was kind of like an undercurrent of optimism is hard because I feel like
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: the dominant emotion is an undercurrent of nihilism.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at protest movements right now or what I see,
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Online or hear from my peers is just like,
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: there's no belief that things will change even with mobilization.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Largely because of the concentration of power at the top of the system.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll tell you my most cynical part, basement of me.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: So Joe and I are...
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: We are big donors to political races, local, to state, to national.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: And at this point, I show up because I feel like I have to.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't think it really matters at this point because we're so stuck.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: And the Supreme Court is on for at least 30 years.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: So even if
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: we get the House and the Senate and we get Democratic leadership,
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: Who are those leaders going to be?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even hear rumblings.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: You guys are closer to this than I.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even hear rumblings about who would be the Speaker and the President of
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: the Senate.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: Where are those fresh voices?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: Where are the fresh visions?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: And where is the thinking beyond, well,
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: we'll restore the money and we'll build all back everything that's not taken away?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's not the answer.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: The systems were failing or we wouldn't be in the situation we are now.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: So putting more band-aids and building out those systems again,
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: that would seem to me to be coerced and seen.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: As you're talking, Carol,
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just feeling this sort of the incredible heaviness in my body and really aware
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: of,
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: in many ways,
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: that's what I'm trying to avoid feeling when I say,
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: let's just, I need to believe in the system.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: Because I don't, I don't know how to, I don't, I don't want to give up.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: I have found incredible meaning in politics and in the struggle.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: And while everything you're saying resonates,
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: I have this hope that if we could just give people something to believe in,
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: and if we, you know, that maybe the system is the thing to do.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: But it's really hard to sit with that feeling.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's the one I don't actually want to sit with.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: It feels too big.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: Let me give a little background to Luca.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: He doesn't know much about me.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: So for a number of years, I was doing leadership development in nonprofit, most likely.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: But if I were still coaching leaders and running leadership programs,
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: the thing
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: that I would be forefronting most was helping leaders tolerate this concept.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's the skill that's needed.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: Because until we are able to really face what's happening and be discomforted by it,
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: we're not going to have enough pain to change.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Can I tell you a little anecdote?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, please.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: I can't remember if it was April or May,
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: I went to a two-day workshop with a woman named Nama Wong in Detroit.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: Nama Wong is a Shen Buddhist monk from Hawaii for maybe 20 years, starting in her 20s.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: We joined the Hawaiian legislature and she in a read spirituality
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: and political activism in a beautiful kind of way.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: And she's emerged in the last year, too, as a thought leader.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: So one of those anomalies,
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: I came back from Detroit and my plane was almost an hour or more early getting
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: into Portland.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was going to meet my husband, Joe, and he decided it was the weekend of the Democratic Party.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: State convention here.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: And he'd gotten invited to one of those receptions and Tim Walsh was coming.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: But he was going to go and hang out there until I got back.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: Got back early, so I went with him.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I was having a conversation with two friends who were very political.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: We were talking about all this stuff.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: And then one of the guys said,
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: this conversation is too, whatever, whatever, maybe heavy like Alice.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: I said, what's bringing you joy?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I said,
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: I just came from a conference in Detroit where 175 people sat in a room and talked
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: about collapse.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, how does that bring you joy?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I said,
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: I can't tell you how relieved my body was to be in a room where people were talking
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: about we're not in full collapse,
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: but we're enough into collapse probably at this point that we're not going
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: to go back.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_03: How are we going to organize ourselves to do what we need to do to Survive to
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: the extent that we can't.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: How do we feed each other?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: How do we house each other?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: How do we do all of these things?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that was so hopeful to me to be able to have that real conversation versus all
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: the other stuff that we sort of throw in between us and can't untend it.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's one of my favorite phrases of you, Carol,
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: that I use all the time,
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: which is we have to imagine a new system while we work in the old one.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: And that is not a binary, I think.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think that is fluid.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: fluidness.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: How does a lobster survive without its skin until the new skin gets set?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_03: Hides.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was like, I don't know the answer.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know,
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_03: there must be some,
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: if we look to nature,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: if we look to biomimicry,
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: to look at some of those things,
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: it's like,
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: how do we Yeah,
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: naked and clothes at the same time with armor that's going
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: to help us see just what's happening to us.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: But I think we have to be also a little bit naked in terms of the fact
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: that this isn't working and we're all scared to death and we don't know what to do.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how it feels to the two of you,
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: but it feels like actually the candidates who have been making
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: the most headway have been those who seem to,
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: maybe it's a stretch to say sit with pain, but certainly speak of pain.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: In a more direct way.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: Luca used to when we when Graham Plattner was running in the US Senate race here
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: in Maine,
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: he was really describing how it felt like Graham was the kind of guy
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: who would come actually shovel your driveway with you.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not the same.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: But there's something that feels similar.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: That idea of a candidate of not just him,
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: but other candidates around the country who are naming what they see,
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: even though and not initially saying that they know how to fix it.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, can I use my not Graham Plattner example,
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: which is,
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think Zohar Mamdani shows up in a similar way throughout the city,
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: really like taking part in the activities of the city,
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: like side by side with his constituents.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And when he's speaking, I think he's able to
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Metabolize people's pain and disappointment and frustration,
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: but
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: he is able to hold that within himself while also holding hope.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's the recipe for a successful politician,
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: is to be able to hold people's frustration and also give you a vision, at least.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: I was in Chicago a month or so ago, and we went to the Obama Library.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so much video of the campaign and the whole trajectory of this presidency.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: And to see him out with people,
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_03: to hear his speeches,
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: to see him popping people,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: leaning down to a woman in a wheelchair, facing the head of a baby, holding a kid.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: There was just a humanness in that presidency.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: That we don't see anymore.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it gave all of us hope that there's a human being in the presidency who cared.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and yet, let's go the other direction, though.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Trump got elected because he was able,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: I would say,
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: because he was able to make people feel seen who hadn't felt seen in
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: a very long time.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: So it's easy for us to see it on our side when someone shares our values.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, I think there is a...
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: There are many people who have felt after Hillary Clinton calling people a bunch
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: of deplorables.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: Dehumanizing happens on both sides of the aisle and all around in between
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: the aisles,
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: which is something I struggle with now is how to hold true to my own values
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: and positions while wanting to make a lot of space for People
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: who believe such totally different,
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: you know, things than me and trying to understand how to hold on.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel it almost feels like that centrifugal force of a swirling,
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: you know, everything's going around.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like,
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: how do you hold true,
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: in your own self while trying to make space for all those little colliding particles
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: of different people's beliefs?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: And how,
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: how do we make everyone feel seen,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: even when they believe something that's fundamentally opposed to,
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: to your belief, or Or does that matter?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think it does, but I don't know.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Do you, Carol?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Do you, Luca?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: I struggle with it in that I really have a hard time in me being with folks who are
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: so opposite to me in terms of what I value and see as the way that we want
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: to organize ourselves, live together.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I recognize I have an intolerance in me that I make what they do.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard not to look at politics and you have to –
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: similar to the way, Carol,
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: you continue to give to these campaigns,
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: if I'm going to believe in politics as electoral politics and our current system
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: of electoral politics as a –
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Way to make change.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be, you know, it's a persuasion.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's still,
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: you have to leave room for persuasion and hope that people,
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: you can, you know,
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: get people to see things differently.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess, but it's not easy for me.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to say,
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: this feels like a bunch of bullshit because Luca,
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: you're constantly,
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're just being kind of nice, pretending to be a little bit more open.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: You can go with Carol, all right?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know you.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of like, I want other people to do it.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay, great.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Roll me out there.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it's the fundamental starkness of us.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that we have other than each other to such a degree that we are demonized.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really hard to even keep one blood pressure down and not to have a civil conversation.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: And we don't see it modeled by our leaders.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: And we don't have... Can't say, I don't have birth.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to feel like, you know, a young...
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Gay guy from New York with a liberal arts education.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know,
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: you don't feel like the messenger that's going to be the most popular
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: in these conversations.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, but so right there, right, though, you're also saying you're a messenger, right?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I guess what I'm curious about is, like, how do we just go and listen?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not quality.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: I think we come back to that.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_03: So how do we move beyond our own personal stuckness?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: To some kind of a framework or conversation that we can have
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: that will promote people coming together to look at our humanness
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: and what's important if we're going to be able to survive.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: And then within that,
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: to have our differences, but also find some places that we can come together.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean,
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think it goes not only to the polity,
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: it goes back to your very initial, like,
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: A statement of that if you were coaching any leader now is to sit with discomfort.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, all of this requires sitting with discomfort.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: It just does.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, our very being can be challenged and that does not feel good.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: I know that there's a movement afoot and there's a small effort here in Maine
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: for citizen assemblies to bring people together,
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: to have conversations, to say, what's happening here at Freeport?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: What do we look like?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: What's our demographic?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: And what do we care about?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I think there are some things that we care about,
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: whether or not we agree on what the budget's going to be or how we,
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: what the curriculum is in the schools or all of that.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: Because if we don't look at those fundamental things that we have to provide
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: for our well-being, there's no well-being.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: We've got to a few things.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: We've got to come back to the local level and figure out how we're going
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_03: to Pave our rooms and feed our people and provide housing for folks and medical care
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: and all those things that we're dependent on, some kind of stuff this work.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: I went to see Adrienne Marie Brown speak here in Maine a few weeks ago.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Adrienne Marie Brown, one of the, I think, more brilliant activists.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: Emergent Thinking, was that the title of her book?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: Emergent Strategies.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: Emergent Strategies.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: Emergent Strategies.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: Just a spectacular mind.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: And she had the audience in a really interesting place.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: She said, they were asking about the upcoming election, the students in the audience.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: And She was saying, we don't have politicians who know how to do democracy.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that's because we don't practice democracy.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: She said, how many of you practice democracy in your own homes?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: How many of you as a group decide how you're going to spend your money?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: How about in your places of work?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Is it a democracy?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: Do you actually do this as a collective?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: She's like, we don't practice these skills.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: So don't be surprised that we don't have a functioning democracy right now.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it really struck me.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh, man.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: That sounds messy.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to bring democracy to everything I do.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, it's so much easier to just be in charge.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right, Luca?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know how I like to be in charge.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Could it be like a democracy, but Allison isn't?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, Allison democracy?
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I make the final decision?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Or is that a
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: clean ship?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you definitely run a monarchy.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: And it gets confusing because on the one hand,
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: We don't function as a democracy because we're either too authoritarian
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: or we don't function as a democracy because we defer to each other
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: and we don't make decisions.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so we disempower ourselves, but we overpower.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so what's the middle of that?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: Because neither one of those work.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a clarity that needs to be recalibrated
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: because it shouldn't be either we disempower people
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: or we've given some people too much power.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: I keep thinking if I just maybe we should get rid of politics entirely or not
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: the quality, but maybe politics.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: And if everyone just took care of their street,
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: I suppose that doesn't work as exactly in big urban areas.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, that idea of a smaller, a smaller group of shared.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I don't know.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: The local politics of the building, though, it gets complicated.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, OK.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_03: The politics of the street are going to work.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what kind of pay do you want in or who's going to spend?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's like a hungarian association in that we...
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: As advanced as we are in our civilization,
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_03: we don't know how to come together and make decisions for the benefit of all.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the hard part is we talk about the need to go local,
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: but then some of the most divisive issues are when you get to the hyper local level
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: and you're thinking about the politics of the building or the politics of
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: the neighborhood.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's like.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: It feels.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that's, I mean,
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: to sort of pull some of these threads together,
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: or at least the threads of the podcast, I mean,
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think this is,
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: I can feel it even in my body sort of like standing a little differently
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: as I say this, like, this is why I care about politics.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: This is why I care about the polity,
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: is that it's really interwoven with our lives and how we live a good life
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: and how we Experience this very short time we have in this body and that it's
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: of value.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's so important to me and why I've loved talking with Luca for
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: so many years and Carol love talking to you,
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: every week about even if it's messy,
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: get into the mess, like get in, get in, get in and you get bruised, you get bumped.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: You're going to,
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: you're going to make mistakes,
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: but it's like that there,
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: at least if this is the system we have right now,
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: let's play in the system while we're imagining the new one.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: But I really, I think I had this maybe, you know, I don't know.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: I had this hope that maybe sharing some of these conversations would give people
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: a space to let it be messy and say, oh, you know what?
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: I do sort of see how this could be connected with You know,
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: part of my actual soul life here, my purpose here.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: Get into the mess.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's Allison's political catch phrase.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: Carol's just sit with discomfort.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: And yours look good.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't found one yet.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to think one up for myself.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: I, I feel like I give me 30 years.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: We don't have that time.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: No, I know.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_03: So what I observe is that you show up.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: And that's so important.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's one of the things that you need more of is people who don't know
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: the answers, who maybe are scared of getting messy, but are going to show up anyway.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll mess our way through it.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's very kind of you.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I feel like it is hard to stay engaged in politics, though.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's very easy to want to kind of just disengage,
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: especially when you have just like this undercurrent.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, generationally, there is totally this vibe that The world could implode in 10 years.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, spend your money and go on vacation and disengage.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very hard to stay connected.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean,
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: that's something that I've,
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: why I was really interested in this conversation with you is even though you don't,
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: I guess,
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: think of yourself as a super political person,
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: you have stayed connected to these conversations for your whole life.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like what, what keeps you engaged?
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_03: So, I think the word political is the red herring here.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: In that, yes,
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: I have to be political because there's things I care at DC about and that I value
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: and that I need to stay engaged in ways
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: that those values are apparently transmitted.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_03: So, can't avoid politics because that's the process.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: Or how we organize ourselves in the comedy.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_03: The politics is the process.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: Politics have to look and be the way it is.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's something that we can examine on how we do our politics.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I guess you're right.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: There are certain things I really care about, so I'm always going to be.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's not, I guess the level of engagement might ebb and flow.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: And you show up here every single week.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know how often the two of you do, but it seems like every week or every other week.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: Here you are on a podcast having difficult conversations about the topics.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: Luca, before we close, do you want to ask the very final question?
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we'll definitely ask the last question.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was just thinking if I have anything, but I don't think I do right now.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so Carol, I...
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: If I came to you tomorrow and I said I was ready to give up on politics,
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: what would you tell me to actually do?
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: What would your prescription be?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_03: So it's the same question in some ways you asked me in terms of how do I stay in?
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_03: That there's no alternative.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_03: If we get out of politics, then...
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's something that we can't avoid if we're going to live in a communal society.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you're just like, you can't.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: You could take your money and go on that desert island for 10 years and wait till the collapse.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know, is that really what you want to do?
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a famous Carolism.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you really want to do?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've gotten that one before.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's an offer.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you really want to do?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're like, oh, no, it's not.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Carol, I can't thank you enough for coming and talking to us.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: I am so grateful that I get lots of your
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: wisdom on a regular basis.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm so, so pleased that you got to spend this time with Luke and I.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it's always just a total delight.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for sharing your wisdom and your time.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: I've been following this podcast and it's fun to sit with the two of you
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: and feel your energy and nice to engage with you, any of the thoughtfulness.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Carol.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is a Politics Between Us conversation like none other we've had and it was really special.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:35
  [music]