Green Minds Ep. 25: Communicating Technical Information

Hey there, SSDN. Welcome to another episode of the Green Minds Podcast. This episode... is focused on communicating technical information and really a lot about what we do in sustainability to different and diverse communities. How do we do that? We're going to learn a little bit more. We have a special co-host this episode, and that is Jessica Reed, the sustainability analyst for the city of Raleigh.

She is also an author of a book called Planet Now, Effective Strategies for Communicating About the Environment. So she's really excited about this topic. Our guest is Anthony Flaccovento, who is with the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, Ruby, who you may have heard over the last year working with SSDN on how do we do this work.

Buckle up and listen in for this wonderful and long episode. P.S. Normally I try to keep these episodes to about 20 to 30 minutes, but there was so much good conversation, we let it go over. This episode is just shy of an hour. Thanks. Thanks. Glad to be here.

Jessica, you're too young to write a book. I don't believe that you actually wrote a book. I think that's fake news. I'm just going to start right off. I want to start this in an adversarial way and put you all the hosts on the defensive. No, that's impressive. That's impressive that you've

already got a book. That's terrific. Good on you. Also, in addition to Ruby, which is the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, I have a small organic farm in southwestern Virginia. We've had it for about 30 years, raised fruits and vegetables. That is what I aspire to. The older I get and the more I work in this, the more I'm like, I just need some acreage out in the middle of nowhere where I can grow what I want to eat.

and not have to deal with this. Well, it sounds like we're going to be doing some experiential learning today if we're in an adversarial position. We can workshop this. I love the energy. Anthony, we're going to start out with kind of a softball question, but it's one that I love.

And that is we've asked most of our guests, who is your sustainability superhero or who is your sustainability inspiration or what, as the case may be for you, that helps keep you focused and going on this? Yeah, if you don't mind, I'll mention two. So probably my number one is Wendell Berry, who's an author, a poet, kind of a social commentator, and first and foremost, a farmer.

in central Kentucky. And I've met Wendell. I went to his farm and I've met him a few other times. He, what I love about Wendell is several things, but probably most profoundly. All of his work around climate, around soil health, around the environment and around our various economic and social problems. are very much literally grounded in his life as a farmer. And an awful lot of folks in the environmental movement, and for that matter the social change movement more broadly, are not.

grounded like that. They have their own base of experience and it's legit, of course, but a lot of the movement resides in people's heads and that's to its detriment. Wendell's somebody who... connects the body and the mind every day of his life, and his writing reflects it, his thinking reflects it. So he's my number one. The other person I'll mention is a fellow who passed last year. dear friend named Martin Miles. Martin was the first tobacco farmer in Southwest Virginia to take us up on

and offered to start raising and selling organic produce on a fairly large scale. At the time, I had recently started an organization called Appalachian Sustainable Development, for which Meg Jameson. worked for a short period, as a matter of fact. And among the things we did at ASD, at Appalachian Sustainable Development, was we started a food hub, which is still going today, long after I left.

20-some years in. It's a major food hub. But initially we went out to the most rural parts of southwest Virginia to recruit tobacco farmers because we knew that tobacco was in decline. And most thought we were nuts. Produce? Nah. Organic produce? What? Martin, at the time, a good 58, 60-year-old man came up to me and he said, I think I'd like to give it a try.

And he became not only a great organic farmer, shifting away completely from tobacco and doing strictly organic produce plus goats, but he was always... so humble about it, and at the same time, so excited to be, as he once put it, I'm happy now to be growing something that people can eat, as opposed to tobacco. Between Martin and Wendell Berry, I draw a lot of inspiration and pleasure. That is great sentiment. I really appreciate that.

Something that we talked about last month, a lot of times when I ask the question, you get the great, like the people who influence different fields and whatnot. And sometimes it's these speakers. that you see out and about, but very few times do we get people that actually mention someone they know. And there's just a different type of inspiration that comes from that. And it's consistent and it holds you accountable. Thank you for that.

And then we have Jessica's going to lead us off with our questions today.

Yeah, thank you for that, Anthony. Now to dive into some of our questions for today, our first one is, what are some key strategies for explaining technical sustainability and climate change concepts to diverse audiences? with different perspectives and education levels. Sure. Well, I would probably, there's a diverse number of diverse audiences and I can only speak with some credibility.

on probably a couple of them. The main one I would say would be farmers and working class folks, rural people would be kind of the group that I've spent most of my adult life as somebody born in Manhattan. I grew up in Baltimore, but I've now been in the Appalachian countryside for two-thirds of my life for the last 45 years. both in the sustainable development work that we were doing at ASD.

in food and farming as well as in forestry and wood products and carrying over into the experience with doing this more political work that we do at the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative. It's absolutely essential that you be able to communicate complex things in a way that rural and working class people not only can understand, but won't shut down right away.

Now, the other group that I have a little experience with, I may or may not get to it because we don't have much time, is kind of more the consumers.

people who tend to be, I mean, they could be in the countryside, but they could also be in suburbia or the cities, who in general want to do right by the environment, but... struggle to translate that into everyday decisions and tend to become kind of almost weird about it, like apologetic if you throw something in the trash instead of the recycling bin or apologetic about your carbon footprint for driving.

X amount of miles. And it becomes this almost weird dance with a lot of people around guilt. And at the same time, trying to excuse behavior that is really maybe not that great for sustainability. So that's that's like another whole audience that I think is pretty dang important for you all to do the work that you do. But the grip that I'm most tied into.

with is basically working class folks primarily in rural areas. So a few, first a couple of rules of thumb. Number one, fewer words, fewer syllables. Way better. Way better. It's not that people are stupid. It's not that they don't have a vocabulary. It's that in particularly in this era that we live in of such extreme and heightened polarization, country people as a on the whole, I'm speaking broadly, country people assume.

That if somebody talks a lot, doesn't clearly make any specific point, and uses a lot of big words, that they either don't know what they're talking about, or they're trying to pull the wool over your eyes. So clarity and concrete examples are critical. So number one, don't talk so much. We talk way too much on the liberal end of the spectrum and in environmental and social justice worlds, just way too much. Second rule of thumb is...

Remember that most people in the countryside who generally don't like environmentalists, they resist environmental regulations, again, broadly speaking, think that liberal politicians who want to... regulate this and that are bad. But actually, both my experience and research shows they have a deep environmental ethic. They just prioritize things differently.

Research out of Duke University shows that people in rural areas care about the environment to the same degree as people in cities and suburbs. But they tend to value land use. Farmland preservation, clean water and water access. Those are the kinds of things, very local, concrete, immediate things in their lives that are their environmental priorities and things like climate change or transitioning to green energy.

are just much further down the list. So we make a huge mistake and alienate people if we think they don't care about the environment because they don't care about the exact same environmental things that we do. Second big difference in how country people generally deal with environmental issues is they don't want big government solutions. They want bottom-up solutions.

What can we do and what can local officials like yourselves or state or federal people do to help us solve these problems ourselves? That's what people really want. I mean, kind of everybody wants that. Everybody wants to. be able to take care of things. But on the liberal side, we're much more inclined to jump to government mandates, government regulations, and government-funded solutions. And when we do that, the door slams.

If on the other hand, we started seeking the wisdom and the experience of people in the countryside, the farmers, the fishermen, the loggers and foresters, the small business owners. we would probably find some pretty innovative solutions out there. I know I've seen them. And by going to them and saying, hey, we value your expertise, how do you think?

We should deal with the fact that we've got this carbon imbalance. What should we do? I think that's, again, a critical step. Last thing I'll say, and then I'll let you ask another question, is... The idea of using concrete examples, so very important. And that's true of everything, not just environmental issues. That's true if you're trying to communicate about economic issues and kind of complicated big economic policy, social issues.

If you start with something that's concrete and, if possible, fairly local, And that thing can be part of the solution or it could be part of the problem. It can be a bad thing. But if you start with something concrete that people can immediately connect with and then you zoom out bit by bit to what. what we might do differently at the level of policy. You've got a much better chance of engaging people than starting at the top. 97% of scientists say that climate change is an existential threat.

Our carbon has surpassed 430 units. We've got to do it. If you start there, you can get nowhere. Even if you remove the hysteria that I mocked.

and simply said that stuff very dispassionately it's too politicized and besides people are overwhelmed by that yeah right and that leads back to that guilt you were talking about too it's it's partly the guilt but in the case of a lot of country people it's the it's again it comes back to it is a little guilt but it's more resentment because again i can tell you that most farmers most people work the land

have really a strong knowledge of the land, but for about 40 years now, they've been told that they're uneducated because they don't have college degrees necessarily. Some do. And as a result, they feel very much dissed. And yet they know that if a PhD from Yale came and tried to work their land.

for a week or two on their own, they'd be in deep shit. They wouldn't know what to do. They know they have knowledge and expertise that is valuable. We need to honor that. So again, when we start with that.

and start with the concrete it it can really open doors something you said that really stands out to me is that idea of shared values because i personally believe that everybody has something they care about that connects to sustainability and climate change but it's really about the framing and so whether it's something around community health or economic prosperity It might look a little bit different for all of our diverse groups that we're talking to, but.

There are ways that everybody can come together to support what's best for our communities and our environment. But you're the one doing the work to be able to do that research and understand the best ways to reach people. appreciate you sharing some tips. And I know that all of this advice came from a lot of experience working with these communities. So curious, Anthony, about

What misunderstandings have the communities you've worked with had about climate change and climate solutions? And if there are any examples that come to mind that are informing these tips and strategies that you've shared? Yeah, so part of it is that, and again, I both blame my side, which is the sort of progressive left side of the political spectrum.

the extreme right because they've done a masterful job and a relentlessly masterful job for many years now in trying to sow division and basically tell their audiences.

that they can't trust these eggheads from the city, these liberals, these academics. So it's a two-way street. I've gotten that before. There's plenty of blame to go around, right? But regardless of... that or sort of given that one thing is that a lot of what people in the country feel what working class people feel is that climate solutions like most environmental solutions are about taking away their agency

taking away their rights. Somebody else is going to control my land. Somebody else is telling me how to farm my farm. And there's many pieces of this that are partly true. As a generalization, it doesn't really hold water very well, but there's enough bits and pieces that have elements of truth, of outside control, intentional or not, that... that has led people to believe that solving the climate

Crisis means the government taking my land or taking my equipment or dictating to me in an almost like Soviet-style way how to manage what I have. And that's true not just of farmers, but of fishermen. people in a lot of walks of life, in a lot of rural occupations as well. It's true of small business owners who are making stuff. Also, they have similar fears. So I think that's one of the biggest...

sources of, I guess it's a misunderstanding, but to me it's more appropriately understood as one of the biggest reasons why people resist. And again, it's a mix of myth cultivated by the right, but also enough reality to give people a sense of that. My approach to that has often been to really enable farmers. and in our case mostly farmers, but we've also done it with loggers and others, to meet a much higher environmental standard.

by providing them opportunities and incentives and markets rather than by scolding them about what they're doing wrong. So, for instance, we had a sustainable wood products business for a number of years during the 2008 recession when the housing market tanked. It died, but it was kind of on its way up till then. But what we part of it was a it was a thing where we took logs that were harvested locally in Virginia, Tennessee.

We sawed them into boards. We kiln dried them in a solar kiln and a wood waste kiln, and we made them into hardwood flooring. And we were able to get a small premium because they were both beautiful. They were non-traditional wood species and because of the environmental pedigree that came with it. But the loggers were not forced to do it.

we offered them about 25% more per log to follow a set of environmental standards. And while many were not willing to do that, plenty were. Similarly, with those tobacco farmers like Martin, We did not go in telling them that tobacco was killing people and it was also poisoning the creek. We said, hey, we found markets, big markets, pretty good paying markets for organic produce, peppers, tomatoes, you know, kind of everyday stuff.

You want in. And plenty over time said, yes, we want in. And so part of the solution, I think it's not always the case. Sometimes you need strict rules. You need mandates. You need boundaries. You need stop. certain things. But for the most part, people respond better to opportunities and incentives than to mandates. And remember that rural people

I feel this way and I'm a transplant to rural, but I've been here most of my life now. Rural people relate to the environment more as livelihood. The environmental movement, the climate movement has tended to look at the environment and. and pitch it, cast it as a thing that needs protection from bad human behavior. We protect the environment from...

from bad chemical companies, from the big ag, from all that. And again, while there is some of that is absolutely needed, what... rural people want is they want to be able to manage the land well to get things we all need they don't think of the environment as something that they're not part of they just want to do it the best way so they can keep doing it for generations and so we can enable that and help that sometimes with technical expertise sometimes information coming from

Organization like ASD or through Cooperative Extension can help farmers reduce their pesticide use, help them build their soil biology so that they can sequester carbon rather than emit carbon. So fundamentally, what we don't want to do is tell them they got to get away from the land. We want to just help them use the land the best possible way. It reminds me of a conversation that I've had.

with numerous students mainly through teaching, the difference between conservation and preservation. And that tends to be political. politicize as well because one group wants to protect it in a pristine way. The other group is like, we can manage this without destroying the land. We actually know what we're doing.

we have this land to use. It's not just something to look at. It's to provide. This is speaking to me a lot. My very first job out of my undergraduate degree was working in rural Virginia on the coast.

doing environmental um chesapeake bay policy enforcement oh yeah and they did not like this young chick from the city coming in but it I almost say that everyone should kind of go through that and have that tough conversation and that really vulnerable conversation with people on the other side, because you learn that.

I think exactly to your point, I think a lot of strategies that will help our environment are already employed by folks in the farming community, in the fisheries community. Their whole livelihood is... working with the land right in a city and you go into an office and you look at data and you plan it you lose that connection and think you know what's happening but you may not yeah and just to be clear i'm not saying that

Every or even the vast majority of small family farmers and forestry operations and fishers are all perfectly good stewards of the water, the land. Agreed. But. If we want them to be good stewards, because we need the stuff they produce, we eat it, we heat with it, we get our power from it, we build our homes from it. If we want them to do that, we have to start by recognizing that they do bring a certain amount of both care and expertise to it. And that opens the door for them.

to then welcome other information about even better ways to do it. That's the point. It's not just a leave me alone thing, but it's how do you open that door.

I think most of us who are members of SSDN know that climate action and sustainability solutions are always about trade-offs, and it's rare to find a perfect solution, but when we can... When we're able to use that positive framing and optimism and talk about things like opportunities and incentives that make people feel less threatened and can better understand how they can support and conserve the environment.

that they view as a very large part of their livelihood and their community, then that's a way that we can...

reach people oh yeah and so and that actually brings me into my next question so rural urban bridge initiative research shows that rural communities in particular don't like climate doomism but we know that climate change threats are very serious and they're here. So many of us have recently experienced or heard about the devastation from Hurricane Helene, and many rural communities have been part of that, unfortunately. And so how can we still talk about climate change?

a way that sometimes involves optimism and positivity, but also conveys that it is serious and already taking people's lives and destroying communities. Yeah, that's a really good and a tough question, and I don't have a good answer for it. The reality is that it is an extraordinarily urgent problem. It's also like a lot of environmental problems, but in its own unique way.

a cumulative problem so that every year of either inaction or insufficient action magnifies the stakes for the next year. All of that is very true. However, the way we've gone about it is that essentially, since the kind of dawn of the climate awareness era, you could say it was Bill McKibben's book. 1989, the end of nature, or you could say it was maybe the Rio conference in 94 that launched the idea of sustainability. But it's really only a couple decades to three decades old.

We have been, we, on the sustainability environmental side, have been talking in a pretty cataclysmic, we're all going to be dead soon sort of way. Almost from the beginning. Yes. And I would suggest that we've actually delayed action and made it harder because unfortunately that... played into and became a major part of the rural-urban divide and of the larger ideological divide that handicaps almost everything we do in this country, right? So the urgency...

is even more acute than it was at the beginning. But at the beginning, maybe 25 or 30 years ago of this movement, people were talking like, if we didn't do something in the next 10 years, we're all screwed. I think that there has to be another way to engage people, because if let's say this, let's say that we concluded that our five year plan was to shift the.

the narrative and shift public opinion so that five years from now in 2029 we had most working class a majority of working class A majority of factory town cities, people where it's mostly manufacturing, and a majority of farmers and rural people on our side trying to solve the climate problem, rather than people who are either skeptical, in denial, or just hating.

everything about us. Let's say that was our goal. If we develop strategies towards that goal, my theory... is that we would be much further along at that point and much more in a position to take transformative action beginning roughly five years from now than if we keep on the same path we're in now.

Because for a lot of farmers, and I'm not saying that all farmers are in the same boat on this. There are farmers in the Midwest who've been through wildfires like nobody's ever seen that destroyed their farm and their family home. There are farmers who've been flooded out like nothing before. But for an awful lot of farmers, and I'm kind of one of them in a lot of places, the idea...

That every time we have a major storm, or every time there's a drought, or every time there's a flood, it's climate change. Kind of sounds like the sky has fallen. Kind of sounds like... Everything conveniently falls into your narrative. And I know that my grandpa back in the 30s.

went through environmentally catastrophic things like nobody's ever seen since. So how does that explain climate change? Farmers and others who live on the land have stories that show that the weather and the climate has always been difficult. It's always been problematic and it's periodically been catastrophic for their livelihoods and their communities going back a lot way before. industrialization put all the carbon into the atmosphere. So again,

I'm not saying that to try to say that we don't have this urgent problem and that the science doesn't support it. I am saying that a tone of extreme urgency, I think, has put off the broadly based. alliances we need to actually solve it. And so even at this 11th hour, I think we still need to start by finding common ground on solutions like... farmland preservation, making farming profitable, making fisheries profitable, integrated ways to preserve fisheries, ways to reward and incentivize.

people who manage forest and farmland to use the best soil building practices to sequester, et cetera, et cetera. There's plenty of places to start where we have a ton of room to make real concrete gains over the next. four to five years where we would actually be making an impact on climate. Biden's approach to getting, you know, electronic vehicles and the infrastructure to support them as well as more green manufacturing is another piece of that.

It's not all farming. We could make enormous gains and start building allies instead of making more enemies and just position ourselves. I think before it's too late, some people think it would be too late, but I think it's not too late in five years to start taking more profound and more decisive action. But we won't do that.

unless we have a much broader and more diverse array of allies. It just can't come from highly educated city and suburban folks. It can't come from them alone. It can come in part from them. Yeah, excuse me. Yeah, that is really helpful. And it sounds like sometimes you need to focus on those concrete solutions and not always leading with climate change, just to help people be able to implement and access the strategies that will be beneficial for their community.

communities, even if for them it's not about climate change specifically. And that's in stark contrast to in the city of Raleigh, where we often are able to lead with climate change when we're talking about our climate mitigation and resiliency.

programs and so we have our own share of climate impacts like urban heat and flooding and so we're able to talk about climate change as we're implementing our various programs and doing train the trainer sessions with our community members and explaining how they can prepare their

communities, their neighborhoods, and talking with their friends and families and coworkers about these issues. And I know that those conversations in Raleigh often look very different in rural areas, but you're still able to find those ways to. appeal to people to help us become more prepared for when these disasters strike. I want to just get your take on this too. This is something I've thought of.

It relates, I think, to this conversation, which is I think the doomism comes about and we talk about a lot when we talk about mitigation, because coming out of the gate, it was like, what can we do to stop this? from changing. But we know that the climate is going to change regardless. It's just how fast it's changing or how much it's changing that's the shock, I guess, of the recent movement.

you know, we're starting to now transition a little bit more into this adaptation conversation. And I almost feel like to your point, Anthony, maybe having that.

be part of the conversation earlier on would have helped like we're going to try to slow this but we are a species that can adapt and so let's look at how we can adapt as well because we're still going to be here we're not going to die off I mean, we might, there might be an asteroid at some point, but assuming we stick around, how do we adapt to that?

And then kind of rework society. And I find it funny too, because I think some of the things we look at now as solutions are things that people did in the early 1900s before a lot of materials and things were. or out and and the convenience of it all before the convenience society we we we did a lot more things that were environmentally friendly

That's one of the things Wendell says. He says our households, and he wasn't just talking about rural, our households used to be places of productivity, and now they've become places almost entirely of consumption.

We just don't do much for ourselves anymore, a lot of us. Yeah, so I think the adaptation conversation is definitely part of it, and it's something that probably a much wider group of people... can wrap their heads around and have now because it part of it is it plays into a couple of values that are not lost in in rural and also in places like immigrant communities which are a real um

Although people don't practice it as much anymore, but like frugality has been a bread and butter thing for like my Italian immigrant. parents and Latino communities and Asian communities that have immigrated, but also across rural. Frugality was always a big thing, being able to make the most of what you have.

I don't know about in your part of the world, but around here, a lot of people say, looking back on their childhood, people are like my age, they'll say we were poor, but we didn't know it. And that's because people were accustomed to making the most of what they had. So frugality and along with it, self-reliance.

are really big things. And if you take self, I mean, some people take self-reliance and go in the prepper direction. I'm going to build a concrete bunker and I'm going to stack it with 4,000 cans of green beans. That's an individualistic approach. But if we could cultivate a community self-reliance approach that sort of starts with the way after these North Carolina and Georgia floods and so many other times.

The community comes together. People are coming out with chainsaws. People are coming with water, et cetera. Make that a more permanent feature where what we're looking for is a community that is more not only prepared for disaster. But in its everyday functioning, that community is sort of building its own self-reliance, its own ability to solve its own problems and take care of its own needs.

No community is an island. It's not going to ever reach 100%. But so many places have become so dependent. You know, like, I don't know if this statistic is still true, but 20 years ago, Iowa... imported 95% of its food. That's like an absurd level of dependency. An incredibly agriculturally rich state would starve if they had to stop importing. That's nuts. So on smaller scales, local communities, regions could begin to cultivate this.

The government can and sometimes does invest in that sort of bottom-up resilience, doing it more so over the last four years. And that, again, is a great place because that is part of the mitigation thing.

Absolutely. What do we need to do to be prepared for disaster? But the other great thing about it is it starts creating relationships again in the community in a really... exciting way you know whether whether it's the farm to consumer relationship or whether it's a business developing materials and supplies for another business i mean it's yeah it's a great way to enter the conversation It's a great conversation. I love this. Yeah. So another.

Really interesting note that I saw in the rural urban bridge divide research was that rural communities often prefer universalist messages to messages that mention racial groups.

But we also know that environmental injustices and environmental racism are really big issues in our communities. And so how can you still talk about climate change and environmental issues in a way that resonates with with rural communities while not ignoring and making sure that you're bringing to light the racial and socioeconomic components of them.

Yeah, there's a there's a lot of research that's been done in the last 10 years on this. There's a way of approaching complex social issues, economic issues called the race class narrative in which. you put them on essentially the same footing that again whether you're talking about housing problems or health care or economics or the environment you always speak about both and you speak about them sort of

if not simultaneously literally, you speak about them at the same sort of plane, not one first and the other much later. And that, although research is mixed on it, that's one way to begin to grapple with it. Because there has been certainly an effort on and a lot of more progressive leaning political people have done more of what's sometimes called this race forward approach.

And then there's people who've done kind of class without mentioning race at all. The idea of a universalist approach, which is sort of a fancy word. for saying about every issue that we're grappling with and every policy that we want people to consider supporting is that we're putting it in terms of us. of a shared need, a shared opportunity. Now the us in the universalist frame is not totally universal because oftentimes it does include pointing the finger.

at some bad actors, which is oftentimes like plutocrats, corporate elites, CEOs who make 350 times what their average worker makes, et cetera. So it's not a message of kumbaya, love everybody. We want this to benefit everybody. It's a message that starts with the knowledge that we live in an incredibly unequal society. economically and politically, and that a very, very small group of Americans...

are the beneficiaries of that extreme inequality. And the universalist approach to climate or environment or economic issues basically starts with, we don't need to worry about them. They're doing fine. The rest of us, the rest of us share some common problems. The rest of us could share solutions together. That's the universalist approach.

Yeah, it sounds like there's a really important balance to strike when it comes to how individualistic you want to make your messages. Because in some cases, like here, it sounds like even with a universalist message, you want to show why.

why a certain climate solution or policy would be important to helping an individual who maybe feels like they've been left behind for many different historical reasons. But also, as you alluded to, mentioned earlier is the issue of guilt tripping and also not wanting to make somebody feel like it's all on them to be able to contribute to a solution or that you have to be perfect because what we really need is everybody making.

imperfect lifestyle choices that are ultimately sustainable but inviting everybody to feel like they could be part of these ultimate solutions right and for and for rural white people working class and poor rural white people, two of Ruby's founders, actually, both brilliant authors, contributed, I think, great insights to this question of, well, you...

It's not right to avoid race. When you think about what Native Americans and African Americans and Hispanics and blah, blah, blah have been through. We can't just pretend that we're all starting at the same place now. Ruby's not saying that at all. But the insights were these. Arlie spent, she just came out with a book about Kentucky and Appalachia.

But previously, she wrote a book called Strangers in Their Own Land. And it was her experience getting to know about 10 or so households in rural Louisiana, small town Louisiana. And one of the things these folks told her was this. image and these are all white people that they felt like they were stuck in line the line was supposed to be the line to kind of a better life a little more prosperity a little more comfort a little more security

But they never moved forward. And in fact, they seem to be losing ground, going backwards in line. And people on the right persuaded them that the reason they were going backwards in line was because of immigrants or black people. or women, or whatever. But the legitimate gripe they had was that they were right, that they were stuck in line, that they were going backwards rather than forwards, and nobody seemed to give a damn.

Kathy Kramer had a similar insight in doing research like Arlie's, but in Wisconsin, two dozen different rural communities in Wisconsin over the course of several years getting to know people. And what she said was that the resentment that came from rural white people was definitely...

racially tinged. There was definitely racism tied into it. But she said, we're failing to understand these people if we don't also understand that just as important to them was a sense of injustice, that they... had also been screwed but it was no longer fashionable it was no longer a public priority it was no longer part of the conversation to say hey, these rural people, including rural white people, have also gotten the raw end of the stick for about four decades. They've lost ground.

They're dying at an earlier age than their parents. Their economic fortunes are actually declining faster now than people of color. None of that was part of the conversation. So they felt like. Oh, all the attention went to people not like them. So that's part of why a universalist message we think is going to be more effective because it recognizes that yes.

People of color have gotten the raw end of the deal in so many ways for so long in our country, but so too have predominantly white people in some of these rural enclave. Just one more quick comment on that. So that you take the fact that just this past summer. the Biden-Harris administration finally got through a portion of this financial relief, debt relief for black farmers.

I think it's originally they wanted to do four or five billion. I think it was closer to two billion. And in the initial one was resisted. It was white farmers and.

right-leaning legal groups that challenged the original one in court it was basically money settled and they said why just black farmers white farmers are struggling too my belief is that The historic disenfranchisement, the taking of land through chicanery and a Farm Bureau, USDA that was so racist, absolutely had to be addressed with...

funds targeted for black farmers. It's just there's no other possibility. But part of the reason that as soon as Biden tried to do that, there was this backlash, this white backlash, was rooted in part. Because an awful lot of white farmers had come to believe that their grievances never are addressed either. What if, leading up to that, billions of dollars to black farmers, just in general...

we had prioritized the needs of farmers in a way that maybe that resentment and backlash would not have materialized nearly so much. And that that settlement, white farmers would have applauded it and say, yeah. My black farmer brothers really gotten screwed. That's what should have happened. Yeah.

I think it's also really important to note that we want to make sure that as we're implementing a lot of these climate solutions like solar energy and electric vehicles, that we're not continuing to leave these groups further behind who've already been... historically left behind. And so we think about that a lot in Raleigh when it comes to equitable access to clean energy sources where ultimately you're saving money, right? And so if you aren't able to

afford some of these upfront costs, then you're losing out and you're continuing to get more and more behind. And the same thing can happen with rural communities who are already having a harder time accessing some of these or have or disinformation that would make them not choose some of these solutions that could help them moving into the future. And a resource that I think really explains this well is the book Revolutionary Power by Shalonda Baker.

So I would recommend that to the audience, too, as we think about how we want to make sure that we're uplifting all of our communities and all of the groups within our communities at one time as we move towards a more sustainable, healthy.

Well, guys, this was a fabulous conversation. Anthony, we always like to ask another fun question on the way out. And that is we have a, I don't know, we basically have this. We call Take a Question, Leave a Question segment. And so we'll ask you to leave a question with us that we can ask somebody else, the next guest that we have. But first, we want to ask you.

Our last episode was about funny moments. And so what kind of funny moments have you had, either from campaigns or conferences or any type of events that you... you go to and speak sure well more than a few that's for sure but i'll i'll relate one from my 2018 congressional campaign that's pretty old now but uh this story. It's a little bit funny, and it's just also a little bit hopeful. So we heat our house in part with wood. We have solar panels, but...

they go into the grid. So we heat with wood and we heat our greenhouse with wood. So I'm out cutting wood from this time of year through March every year. And in March of 2018, I was running for Congress. And I was out on a property that I'd never been on before. The landowner was a friend of my wife's and she said, yeah, come on out, cut some, got some trees down, go ahead and cut them up. I was out there cutting up and.

A fella showed up, a young man, maybe mid-late 30s, big old boy, who kind of eyeballed me like, who are you and what are you doing here? And so I told him, I said, so-and-so gave me permission. Okay. So he takes out his chainsaw and he goes to work, too. And after a while, he introduces himself. And I say, you know, hello. And I said, I'm Anthony Flaccovento. And he goes, are you that fellow running for Congress?

I said, yeah, that's me. And he said to me, buddy, if all of my friends could see you out here busting your ass like this, every one of them would vote for you. And it was a great story. And he went on to say some other really profound things about his kids and other things. He was a very bright fellow. But what it said to me was that too many people... who don't trust us politically or ideological too many people on the other side of the spectrum one of the things they think is that all of us

just have desk jobs and don't know what a hard day's work is like. And so I think being out and doing kind of the stuff that has been done for generations in rural communities. whether it's farming or gardening or putting up hay or cutting wood, is one way of showing that we're not that different and of building some bridges. And doing it without photographers and a news crew. Yeah, my hair was just not quite right for the moment. I used to work on a farm in high school and into college.

I still think about that. Like, man, that was some hard work. It is hard work. It is hard work. Well, thank you so much for joining us.