Find Your Sustain Ability

Host Dr. Lee F. Ball, Appalachian's chief sustainability officer, interviews Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi. Satyarthi has spent 40 years freeing 80,000 children from slavery. Listen to his journey and his advice to App State students on the latest "Find Your Sustain Ability."
 
Transcript
Dr. Lee Ball: Kailash Satyarthi has spent his whole career saving the lives of children who are working as laborers around the world. Kailash was on our campus today, he actually flew over from Delhi, India, and he's leaving our campus to go straight to London, England. He was here today speaking and meeting students. He spoke to a full house in our Schaefer Center of over 1,000 people and had the opportunity to meet a lot of people. He stayed for a long time and shook hands and took pictures and people were extremely moved by his talk. Kailash was kind enough to stop by the studio. He had a lot to share about his organization and about the plight of child slaves and young laborers all around the world. There's a lot more information about Kailash's organization in our show notes. If you're interested in learning more, please check it out. We'll switch to his conversation now and I hope you enjoy.
L. Ball: Kailash Satyarthi, I want to thank you for coming here at Appalachian State. It's an honor to meet you and I welcome you to Boone, North Carolina.
Kailash Satyarthi: Thank you, Lee.
L. Ball: So for those who don't know, you've spent almost 40 years freeing over 80,000 children from slavery and unimaginable working conditions in India and around the world. You and your family and your colleagues have risked your lives countless times doing this work. You're like a modern day superhero.
K. Satyarthi: Not really.
L. Ball: Yeah. But unfortunately you can't solve these problems alone. I recognize that. There are over still 150 million children working in these conditions around the globe. My work here at the university with sustainability overlaps with yours because we cannot create a sustainable world on the backs of our children. So if we're going to ever find a way to create a sustainable future for the planet and its people, then we must end child slavery around the world that supports the desire for inexpensive goods, where the costs are externalized and subsidized by children. So because of your dedication to children around the world, you were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. But first of all, congratulations, and thank you for this very important work. Secondly, has this attention of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize benefited your work trying to end child slavery around the world?
K. Satyarthi: Thank you, Lee, for this opportunity. First of all let me tell you that I am not a superhero. Superheroes can do the things on their own, but I always believed in togetherness, building coalitions, partnerships and mobilizing ordinary people for this sustainable change in the society to end child slavery and child labor. Though I had been working across the world, almost 150 countries for the last 20 years, with local partnerships and organizations to fight child slavery, we could not move much as I was expecting that people should recognize that it's serious evil that must end. It should have the political priority at local level and global level too. But after the Nobel Prize, it helped definitely. Because for the first time when the Nobel Peace Prize has been conferred to this cause through me. In their 100 years of history, they did not link the need of eradication of slavery and protecting children from it for a sustainable peace in the world.
K. Satyarthi: But they did it, so it was helpful. In fact, I kept fighting that this should be included in the Millennium Development Goals when they were being formulated in 1998, 99. In 2000, I did my best for the demand, organized some demonstrations and parallel meetings at the U.N., But it did not work. There was no mention of child labor or child slavery in MDGs. Then for sustainable development goals, I started the campaign globally, again with the help of many antislavery organizations and child rights groups. We collected millions of signatures and sent it to U.N. secretary-general and so on. In 2014 when I was spearheading this campaign, Nobel Peace Prize was announced. I did not miss this chance. I thought that I should meet the U.N. secretary-general and the governments of the world. Secretary-general was very pleased and convinced that this should be incorporated.
K. Satyarthi: My argument was that we cannot achieve most of the development goals without ending child labor. If, say 152, that time, 200 million children were working in child labor, we can never achieve the education for all goals. If 200 million children are working at the cost of adults' jobs, almost equal number of adults were jobless. Most of the times, these jobless adults were none but the very parents of these children. So my argument was clear that every child is working at the cost of one adult's job. So we cannot achieve that goal of reducing unemployment in the world. In 2014 when I met secretary-general, he was convinced and he suggested that it would be better to find some strong political champions, some presidents or prime ministers. So I immediately used this advice with none other than President Obama. I had a very good conversation with him.
K. Satyarthi: He was convinced and he said that, yes, I'm going to support it. He immediately agreed. So was the case of President Hollande of France and several other prime ministers and president and head of that nations and government. So I was able to gather strong support that child labor, child slavery, child trafficking, these issues should be the part of SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals. And it happened. I succeeded in 2015. So in goal 8.7, all these things were included in the broader framework of the business solutions or employment generations, poverty elevations and so on. Now we have clear agenda and clear commitment for the eradication of child labor, slavery, trafficking. We also have a very clear goal for eradication of violence against children in all its forms, apart from ensuring good quality education for children and not only in primary but also in secondary schools and so many other things.
K. Satyarthi: So that was one of the significant successes after the Nobel Prize. But also in India, I have been able to ask the government and the government has changed the laws against child labor. They have also ratified the international conventions against child slavery and child labor. I fought for strong laws against child sexual abuse and rape of children in India and that was also successful. We worked with the governments in Sweden or in Germany and many other countries that they should increase or at least maintain their overseas development aid for education. That has been done. So in a way, it has given a very strong edge to advance my cause.
L. Ball: I'm very glad it happened for you and for all the children around the world. A lot of people here and around the world have no idea how many children are exploited. Children are in many cases treated worse than animals. I know that these are very complex issues. Can you explain how education has been playing a role in your work?
K. Satyarthi: Well, I have been advocating right from the beginning of my work in 1981 when I started. I learned even without any proper research or any study or evidences, but through the practice, through the practical work, I realized there is a very direct correlation between three things: child labor, poverty and illiteracy. This is a vicious triangle. We have to break it. Each of these things are cause and consequences of each other. If you continue child labor then the illiteracy will remain there. But if we are not able to ensure quality, free public education for every child, then the child labor will continue, at least in the poor countries and poor communities. So that has direct relations. Similarly, if the children remain child laborer and denied education, then they will remain poor for rest of their lives and their next generation will also remain poor and illiterate.
K. Satyarthi: That is intergenerational poverty and illiteracy through child labor. Slowly, people have started listening to that argument. Then we collected some evidences and some studies were done, and not by my organization only, but the World Bank, the UNESCO. ILO did such a studies and this relationship of triangular paradigm has been established. Now it's very clear that we cannot educate all children without eradication of child labor and we can not eradicate child labor without ensuring quality education for all children. There is a relation. We live in the world, which is basically the knowledge-driven world, or knowledge economy. We cannot think of sustainable economy growth in any country or poverty reduction or ending household poverty without an education and without knowledge today. But child labor is the biggest impediment in achieving this. So it is necessary that we have to invest both on education as well as on eradication of child labor.
K. Satyarthi: We are talking about 152 million children who are in full-time jobs. But we're also talking about 60 million children who have never seen the school doors, and another 200 million children dropped out from the schools because of the pull factor of child labor and also because of the pushback through poverty or other things, the family issues or social cultural issues and so on. That makes a vicious circle, that on one hand between 200 and 210 million adults are jobless in the world. One hundred and fifty-two million children are in full-time jobs and 260 million children who have to be in the schools in primary and secondary classes they are not there. That is the problem. There was one study done by World Bank and ILO that if you invest $1 on eradication of child labor, the return would be $7 over the next 20 years. So you can understand that it has a very strong economic imperative.
K. Satyarthi: Then the second thing is that if you invest on education for a child in developing country, then the return would be $15 over the next 20 years. So the best investment for economic growth and sustainability and poverty alleviation or justice, economic justice and equality in society is to invest in education. So that is the relation between all these factors.
L. Ball: So in addition to educating children in these impoverished areas, you also have a campaign, the 100 Million Campaign, did it focus on consumer education as well. Can you speak to that a little bit? Maybe give us an update on how it's going.
K. Satyarthi: Well, while working with children, youth, politicians, faith institutions, academicians in all my life, I have learned the power of youth should be channelized to solve this problem. That is largely untapped for this course. So my idea was that when 100 million, approximately, or a little more, 100 million young people are facing violence. That includes child labor, slavery, trafficking, child prostitution, use of children as child soldiers, or denial of education, health care. This is one scenario. On the other hand, hundreds of millions of young people are willing to take up challenges. They're ready to do something good for the society. So I thought that why can't at least 200 million young people should become the change makers for the lives of those 100 million young people who are deprived of childhood freedom, education, everything. So let 100 million youth should champion this cause.
K. Satyarthi: In this way, while I am addressing 200 million people, young people, simultaneously, 100 million who are deprived will get a strong voice from university students, college students and so on, well-off young people and children. On the other hand, those who are looking for some purpose and passion, those who wanted to prove themself, they could not find a space while studying in universities and their minds are sometimes narrowed down and their purposes and aims of lives have narrowed down for good scoring and better career and more learning and so on. Nothing is bad in it, but that it don't going to make this world a sustainable place. We can not save humanity. We can not save planet and people this way because if you make young people a tool or a lubricant or say part of a machine, this growth engine, then they will feel happy about it that they are the part of growth.
K. Satyarthi: But they do not remain human being with human soul. This is needed in this growth story. So this way, once they start thinking and working using the social media power, they can use internet, they can use other things to be the voices of other children, that will be good for them. They are also big consumers of most of the products which are made by child laborers and child slaves. So if the young people come to know that the shoes they're wearing or the shirt or chocolate they're eating, it is made by child slaves, I'm sure that they would be the first to change it and challenge it. Most of them, I'm not talking about all, but most of them will feel bad about it and they can use their power. So as conscious consumer they can make a difference for the sustainability of businesses and so on.
L. Ball: Child labor exists here in the United States. Can you describe what you know about this?
K. Satyarthi: Of course, I have been working on this issue in the United States for several decades, directly and indirectly through my partner organizations and so on. I know that how children are working not only in agriculture, the largest number of children, child laborers, in USA are engaged in agriculture sector, but also in sweatshops and sometimes the minor victims of trafficking and prostitution and so on. These things are not uncommon. There's a big fight. One of the issues which we ... many organizations and I have been fighting for is for a strong law to prohibit child labor in agriculture in USA. Because 20, 30 or 40 years ago, the agriculture work for children was not so dangerous because the use of pesticides and insecticides and machines and electricity was not so rampant, which is today is a serious problem. I've come across many examples where the young girls and boys are suffering diseases due to inhaling of those toxic chemicals. Sometimes, they are killed while working, operating a machine or electricity.
K. Satyarthi: That is an issue. Now we wanted to focus on one major area, and that is the employment of children in tobacco farms. It's an irony or one cannot give any argument that a young person is not allowed to smoke up to the age of 18, but a young person is allowed to work in tobacco fields at the age of 12 or 10 or 13, they're working in those situations. There is no justification for it. We wanted to focus on this through this 100 million campaign, that young people should raise this voice, that children must not be employed in any form, but to begin with, there should be complete revision of child labor in tobacco farming.
L. Ball: This is a big tobacco state, North Carolina, and especially in the eastern part of the state, there's a lot of tobacco still grown and it's a long history of children working in tobacco fields. In addition to educating children and their families and people around the world, what other strategies do you rely on that makes a difference in your work?
K. Satyarthi: Well, we have been fighting because we believe that investment in education through higher budget reallocation by the government is the key. That should also go with child-friendly education systems. So teachers training, investment on teachers, motivated teachers and so on. That should also be the part of it. So education is the key to many things, including development and social and economic justice, gender justice and poverty eradication. This is the strategy to ensure education ... investment in education for children. That requires social mobilization where people should demand that their children must be receiving good quality, free education, public education. That is also another reason.
L. Ball: Are there programs in place to educate families who are susceptible to the traffickers?
K. Satyarthi: Well, traffickers normally choose those areas which are less developed, uneducated families, deprived people, social deprivation also the part of the social cultural deprivation. For example, the entire Francophone Africa, the western African region, or some parts of South Asia or Southeast Asia, trafficking is quite rampant and in most cases, either the parents are not educated or the children do not have opportunity for education, so they are more susceptible for that. Only in few cases, in terms of the volume of trafficking in the world, some educated people are also lured away on false promises. They are shown some rosy dreams and told that their life would become like heaven and so on. So they are lured away like that and they don't know that they will end up in prostitution or forced labor.
L. Ball: Besides prosecution, what else is being done to prevent the factory owners from exploiting and abusing children?
K. Satyarthi: Well, I would say that child labor is an evil, social evil. It's a mindset issue. A lot of work has to be done to change the mindset of society, that people should feel their child labor is an evil, it causes poverty, it causes illness and it jeopardize education. So social awareness is needed to stop this as an evil. The second thing is it's the crime. So crime has to be dealt through law and order, through judiciary, through prosecution and conviction of the offenders. This is one part. That also requires the well oiled machinery for the prosecution, accountability in the entire system from the reporting to prosecution to conviction so it should reach to some conclusion. Then it is a development disaster. Until and unless we as society, international community, ensure basic things for the parents, social protection programs, permanent jobs, the minimum wages as prescribed under the law, these things are equally important.
K. Satyarthi: Then the accessibility to education. So schools have to be there in the villages and countrysides, teachers should be there in adequate numbers. Development factors play important role. Just the law or the prosecution won't work. The combination of all factors have to be there. So when I'm saying that it's a social awareness, it's equally important that the work has to be done in partnership with the companies. Those days are gone when we considered ... we meaning many of the civil society organizations, considered businesses and corporations as their enemy No. 1. They were culprits according to them. But this is not the case. Now the nature and character and role and power of corporate has changed and one should learn how to build mutual trust. The mutual trust between state, corporate and civil society is very much needed to solve this problem and many other problems in the world.
K. Satyarthi: So the corporations are not, in my opinion, just money making machines. They are also change-makers, knowingly or unknowingly. If they do it consciously for the betterment of people and planet, then they are the real change-maker for good. But if they just ignore those things, then it becomes disaster. But I see more and more corporations are coming forward, the industry leaders are coming forward to solve such problems. That is a good sign. This is also needed. So only prosecution won't work. The consumer should also feel responsible that instead of just calling for the boycott, they should demand certified and guaranteed quotes, which are free of child labor. The combination of these factors will definitely work.
L. Ball: Very holistic approach.
K. Satyarthi: Yeah, holistic approach.
L. Ball: Your wife's been by your side helping you all these years? First of all, how's she doing and how important has her support been to you?
K. Satyarthi: Oh, she has been a strong partner right from the beginning when nobody was convinced that I should give up my career as electrical engineer and I should embark upon this issue which was a nonissue in the minds of people. She was the only one who was convinced. Not only that, but she fought against it with all her efforts. She's good. She's fine. I spoke to her this morning and she was, enjoying with the group of children our Ashram. We had three rehabilitation come education and leadership building centers for the free child slaves and child labors. So she has been learning those centers for many, many years. Decades in fact. She is the mother of thousands of children who have gone through education and learning from those centers and also otherwise won't be freed from slavery. So that is good.
L. Ball: How many children are at the Ashrams at any given time?
K. Satyarthi: We have about 100 boys, 80, 90 to 100 normally and 30 girls in the girls center, 30, 35. Then we have another Ashram, Mukti Ashram, which is in outskirts of Delhi. That is used as the transit home. The children who are freed, they are brought over there and all the bureaucracy and legal work is done during that time. Then the repatriation, reintegration processes begin. Sometimes there are 150 children, 100 children. Even now there are about 100 children in the transit home, about 100 children in the long-term rehabilitation centers and 30 girls.
L. Ball: I can only imagine how stressful and emotional your work is. How do you take care of yourself and manage your work-life balance and make yourself more resilient?
K. Satyarthi: I don't see any distinction or difference in work and life. My personal life is my work and my work is my personal life. I can't recall that we could ... as family we could ever find some time for personal leisures or things like that, because we enjoy being with children, freeing children. That is much more rewarding than going to a leisure place for sightseeing and others. Once in a while we do, but it's hard.
L. Ball: Yeah. Well, you seem very happy. What message do you have for our students here at Appalachian State University?
K. Satyarthi: I enjoyed being with the young people today and also with little bit elderly people since yesterday and today both. They were filled with excitement and the emotions and energy. I could feel that energy inside the hall where I was speaking. I could tell that ... and that I normally say to many young people to transform into three D's, not that 3D cinema picture, but different kind of three D's. So my first D is, dream. If you're allowed to dream, dream big, dream bigger, dream biggest, dream as big as you can. If you are allowed to dream and you want to become a teacher, why don't you become the secretary of education? Why don't you become the vice chancellor or president of university? Dream big. So that's one. But those who dream for themselves and do not dream for others, for society and humanity, they never leave any footprint in the history.
K. Satyarthi: They cannot make the history. They are not shaped the history for the betterment. So dream big and dream for betterment. So that is one D. My second D is discover. Discover the inner power. Everybody is born with tremendous inner power. The power of greed, the power of resilience, the power of love, the power of compassion, the power of kindness, gratitude, all those powers should be ignited and used. Discover your inner power. Also discover opportunities outside. The world is full with opportunities, the world is full with beauty. We have to embrace that beauty of the world and positivity. That is my second D. The third D is, if you are able to dream, if you are able to discover then whom are you waiting for? Do. My third D is, do. Act now. Dream, discover and do.
L. Ball: Nice. Thank you very much. My last question: What inspires you and gives you hope to continue your work right now in this moment?
K. Satyarthi: My inspiration is my purpose and my purpose of life, my mission of life is very simple, that every child should be free to be a child. Every child should be free to laugh and cry and jump and play and make mistakes and learn and dream. So I have learned to celebrate every small success, to remain inspired. There is a reason to celebrate every day because the success ... there are successes smaller, bigger, medium. We should respect those successes. So even if one single child is freed, if one single child is enrolled in school, if one single child is passing out from a school through my effort, I feel the worth. That inspires me.
L. Ball: Kailash, thank you so much for coming today and coming all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. You came here from ...
K. Satyarthi: From India, from Delhi.
L. Ball: Oh, from Delhi!
K. Satyarthi: Yeah.
L. Ball: Then now you're going to London?
K. Satyarthi: Yeah.
L. Ball: So a few oceans. It's a real honor to have you here at the university and safe travels to you.
K. Satyarthi: Thank you. Thank you, Lee.
L. Ball: Thank you again for all of your work.
K. Satyarthi: Lovely. Thank you, Lee.

Appalachian's Director of Sustainability, Dr. Lee Ball sits down with Assistant Professor of Public Health, Adam Hege to discuss his journey from studying exercise science to addressing issues like food insecurity, social determinants of health and quality of life in the rural Appalachia region of North Carolina.
 
Transcript
Troy Tuttle: Define sustainability. Odds are your definition is completely different from the next person’s. Appalachian State University’s Director of Sustainability, Dr. Lee Ball, sits down with his guest to explore the many ways in which sustainability affects our lives. This is Find your Sustain-Ability.
Dr. Lee Ball: So, joining me today in the podcast studio is Adam Hege, and Adam is an assistant professor of public health in the Beaver College of Health Sciences. Adam, thank you so much for joining us today on this cold Appalachian morning.
Adam Hege: Glad to be here. It was a good walk across campus this morning.
LB: Yeah so, in our podcast, Find your Sustainability, we really try to mix it up a little bit and invite different types of people in to talk about different aspects of sustainability and something that I am always extremely curious about are people’s stories and their connections to sustainability. So, if you don’t mind, right off the bat here, to tell us about your story and maybe- you know just kind of how you got to where you are now and your connection to sustainability and social justice.
AH: Okay, I guess my story kind of in this goes back to -- my early professional career, working in a local government setting and working in the parks and recreation setting. Just interacting in that with children, and seeing their lives and the challenges they go through, and working with kids was always something I was passionate about. Within this job, part of my job was really focused on kids health and well-being and giving them an outlet. A lot of the kids I was working with did not have the best home lives and those types of things and so, outside of work I’ve been very active in the United Methodist Church as some people know, and so my faith and my professional life and all those kind of things connect and then I found my passion probably in the last 6 or 7 years for public health and social justice and health equity and really striving in my professional life through my research, teaching, service to really connect those dots and really try to get -- my passion right now is really getting students engaged in that and really trying to get their passions going and seeing that there’s thing in our world and all around us that just are not just, and really helping to get their passion and fire that I’ve been able to receive. I feel like a lot of the students have similar backgrounds to me, a North Carolinian, so that’s really neat and you know connecting it to sustainability is really the world we live in, if we’re not practicing health equity and social justice and these types of things, it’s not going to be sustainable. When we think about our biggest public health challenge facing our world is climate change and if we’re not protecting our earth and protecting our citizens and striving to make a better world, its-- we’re not going not going to be sustainable.
LB: Yeah, great. Can you tell us a little bit about your academic career and how you kind of landed here in Boone?
AH: Yeah so, I -- so that’s, it’s a really weird story. I’m -- my wife if you talked with her, I’ve been in school a lot. So, I started out as an athletic trainer, I thought I wanted to work with sports and be around athletes, in which I still love sports and passion about it. But, I got that first job that I mentioned a while ago, in a local government setting, and that kind of directed me to go back for more schooling because I wanted to be able to affect people much more so than on the individual setting, I wanted to have that impact on community level, societal level, so I went back and actually I have my graduate degree, first graduate degree, here from Appalachian State in Public Administration and I owe a lot of my success now to Dr. Bradbury here at App State in the public administration department. Just seeing the passion, he was able to bring into class-- I could -- I think during that process I was making the connections that there was something bigger and I think throughout my education of history, I was always directed and headed towards public health and just didn't realize it. So, I think piecing all this together and I went on for my doctoral studies in public health and just was able to read and learn all the history of public health and just learn about all the things that it’s involved with. I think if people really take a step back and look at public health, it’s kind of written into our founding as a country and so vital to our world and society.
LB: So, I find it really fascinating to hear peoples stores and how their prior work and academic positions kind of led to what tour kind of doing now. Could you expand on your, what you’re currently doing and tell me a little more about your field and your classes and how they connect to social justice and what you’re doing in the classroom.
AH: Yeah, so I’ll speak first -- I’ll speak first about my research. I kind of-- that’s where my passion is. I have two focus areas in my research, both are focused very much in social justice and have a sustainability framework. My grandfather was a truck driver and so when I was in my doctoral studies I had an opportunity to work with a faculty member and learn about the health and equities that face long haul truck drivers, driving up and down our roads and whether it be in their employment conditions, the practices that are done by trucking companies, they face occupational hazards, it’s obviously not good for the environment, there’s a lot of environmental hazards, public safety issues that we have to factor in so I’m still passionate and engaged in that work and trying to make a difference in through research and trying to influence policies to hopefully improve the practices and policies that are utilized in that industrial sector and then there’s been a lot of discussion right now, during the current administration that’s actually-- our research is actually, hopefully going to be able to influence some decision making so I’m pretty passionate and excited about that. My other works is getting here to app state through my work in the church, through my work in communities, and just realizing in life how privileged I am, I think that’s something I haven’t really expressed very well yet. I recognize that I am a white male and I have had all of the privilege in life that one could have. And I think growing up as a child you don’t really realize that until you get to the age that I am now. And so, when it comes to research I have a passion for people that are facing challenges in particular with food because I feel like food is something that is foundational for people so, food security and hunger and those types of issues have been really something I’m passionate about and within that, sustainability is a part of it. It’s one of the sustainable development goals, it’s interesting poverty and opportunities for people around food, and -- last week I just attended a wonderful conference focused on sustainable agriculture, sustainable farming practices, and how those practices are really -- hold the answers to us addressing issues like poverty and food security that we need to address, and I bring all of this to the classroom. So, courses I teach, right now I teach a community health course and its focused in service learning and getting students engaged in the local community here to learn about the health agencies here, to learn about the complexities that go into keeping a community healthy. We often times think about health as an individual level but so many things that happen to us from a health standpoint are out of our control and -- so we talk about power dynamics and understanding communities and all the factors that contribute to one’s health. I teach a health policy course and that’s very exciting too. It’s kind of the first time I think for undergraduate students where they get into discussions around how policy -- policies that happen in Washington, D.C, policies that happen around the world are all impacting our health on a daily basis. So, to see them get that first taste of that I think and to see that they can actually be an advocate and actually as a college graduate they have a responsibility to an engaged citizen and I think that by the end of the semester with that course they really see that -- that they’re the next generation of people that can influence the world we live in.
LB: Tell me a little more about your students. I mean, do they find sustainability an issue these days? Are they excited about what you are trying to express to them and the connections that you’re trying to make with them in the classroom.
AH: I think so, I think so. I think that’s one thing that I’m good at is I’m really good at connecting with students, because I’m young for one thing. I’ve probably, like I said earlier, I’ve had the same background as a lot of them. I grew up in a rural area here in North Carolina. I grew up with probably some of the same things that they grew up accustomed to, so I can speak their language but then I can also talk about where I’ve gotten to in my life, how that has kind of progressed and the life stages I’ve gone through. So, really making the critically think and pull those empathy skills and critical thinking skills together to understand the challenges that our world faces and sustainability and thinking from a sustainability lens with an eye towards social justice and equity is, within the public health field and the courses I teach, that’s -- it’s pretty apparent. We’re not going to address our-- the main issues facing our country and world if we’re not coming at it from that lens.
LB: Right. Do they respond really well to service and engagement in the community?
AH: They actually do. Teaching a service learning course is actually the most rewarding thing I’ve ever had. We just had our final exam period last week, and for final exam period we don’t have a final exam, we have that the last day of class, but the last exam  day they come in and present about what they’ve done all semester and it is so rewarding to students when they see the syllabus the first day of class, some of them have to take the class and they’re like “awe man, I’ve got to do service outside of class” but then at the end of the semester when you see their eyes light up and how excited they were that they got to engage in the community and how rewarding it was for them professionally, I mean it’s giving the professional connections and they see that but personally, seeing their growth and seeing them get out and see challenges that a lot of them have not faced. I mean we know on our campus that we have a lot of students that have had privileges just like me so it’s good for them to actually get out and see there’s this whole other world out there that they maybe have not experienced. So, when they do service with our health department, local health department, they’re always making sure to get them connected out in the community and get them to see the challenges that they face every day as public health professionals, and then working with Hunger and Health Coalition and Hospitality House and some of the other local agencies that are addressing food security and hunger issues. It’s-- It’s kind of an eye opener for students to see this, I know I’ve had student before that have said -- they’ve told me they’ve never been to a homeless shelter, they’ve never been to a food pantry, they’ve never experienced these and so it gives them a whole new connection with the world that I think that they hadn’t experienced.
LB: So, do you think that it gives them hope that they can make a difference?
AH: I think so, I think so. So, I was just doing some grading before I came in here this morning. I was grading some papers that students did for my health policy class, it was built around their advocacy strategies, their particular policy issue, and it’s amazing to see this semester in particular was a really one that the students really came together in groups and had some really good, important issues facing our country, and facing our world and facing our local communities. To see them make those connections with how their advocacy can make a big difference and how they recognize that being a college graduate, how privileged they’re going to be and they are going to play this role  in influencing the society and world we live in that I think  a lot of student, most a lot like us in the general population, we feel like we can’t really make that difference but when we really read and boost our knowledge and enhance our knowledge about power dynamics and how policy plays out and how we can be that voice for the people that are often time left voiceless. I think it get us excited and gives us a little sense of hope.
LB: Yeah, great. Okay Adam, you and I have spent a lot of time thinking about food security, food insecurity issues, we’ve worked together on project here on campus trying to help alleviate some of the pressures that our campus community are facing with faculty, staff, and student. I’m interested in your professional perspective as to how food insecurity, not really knowing where your next meal, where your next few meals are going to come from, how that affects you and other parts of your life.
AH: When I think about that I go back to that idea of hope. When I teach public health course we start off thinking about people at an individual level, and this sits from the psychology world as Maslow’s hierarchy. We kind of think up this scale in terms of the things that people need from a physiological level, you know we need food, we need shelter, we need those basics needs and when those are missing it’s hard for an individual or person to work their way up that sense of wellbeing and who they are.
LB: So, when you don’t know where your next meal is going to come from, clearly you are going to worry about that and we have enough pressures in this world facing us every day, whether -- how we’re going to pay our electricity bill, or thinking about our next tuition check and you know on and on. Food seems to be the last thing we really need to be worrying about. Is there a silver bullet, you know that we can utilize here in our community? I know that a lot of people are thinking about this, it’s a big problem in the high country, we have kind of the highest food insecurity levels in the whole state and probably the southeast as well, and I’m curious at least from yo9ur perspective if there’s an area we should be really focusing on or if you think there’s an area that we can really make a big difference?
AH: I think one thing I haven’t spoken of yet that I would like to bring into this is the idea of culture. Being in a rural area and even here at a university and growing up in North Carolina that there's a culture phenomenon that we’ve grown up believing that we always have to be taking care of our own problems. People are fearful for asking for assistance and hesitant, they’re like “I’m not supposed to ask for assistance, I’m supposed to take care of my own needs” and so we deal with that and at the same they’re fearful of being judged for having to seek assistance and for facing a life challenge. I know when I’ve spoken with people about this, we’re all as human beings, that’s who we are, that’s who we are as humanity, we’re facing life challenges. It might be food for somebody, and material things for others. The richest people in the world face mental health challenges and face challenges and so I think the big thing is the culture is shifting and that notion that we’re all kind of in this together, that some of us are facing food challenges, some of us are facing other challenges then that we’ve got to really -- I think the cultural issue is an underlying issue that I think we’re, all of us, are kind of fearful to address in our society.
LB: Right, so that makes me think of the need for stronger communities--
AH: Yeah.
LB: - and that’s such an, it’s such an important part of our work in sustainability and my work every day about, you know we focus on building trust and relationships and strengthening our communities within a communities here at -- in the high country at Appalachian State and -- it’s a time where we need to not worry about what color people are or sexual orientation  because everybody has something, a strength to bring to the table and we need all the help that we can get and you know if we see someone within our community that’s struggling we need to lift them up because they have something to offer as well.
AH: Yeah, yeah so that’s very much from the public health world, getting back to the public health world. We focus now, the focus in our field is to take on this asset based approach, to focus on the assets people bring to the situation rather than going to the problems people face, we oftentimes want to be problem solvers and those types of things and often times the people that are facing challenges have the solutions, they just don’t have the capacity and ability to make those changes and so we have to take their skill set and utilize that in the proper way so I really appreciate you saying that. Going off this social cohesion, social capital idea, recently the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Appalachian Regional Commission addressed this Appalachian region of the country. And we are facing major health disparities with food security being one of the issues and what stood out to us was public health faculty when we were looking at there’s all these challenges but the one thing that stood out is we have better social cohesion in this part of the country than the rest country. So, we need to capitalize on that, building this trust, and this ability that we have the ability to help each other in a multitude of ways and that’s another thing as well is there’s not just one type of solution that everything needs to be a part of this solution. I, when I talk about food issues -- a lot of people will talk about food securities being a charity issue and a lot of people will talk about it being a social justice issue, I feel like it’s both. We’re not going to solve the issues without both. We’re facing all of things in our society in terms of people having these debates around charities, social justice, and in the real world of things it takes both.
LB: Right, right. You know that reminds me of one of the reasons we think sustainability emerged as a strength here at Appalachian State because of the place that we’re situated. It is a place that our founders and ancestors and people that came before us here had to be very resilient, they had very strong communities, they helped each other, they knew where their assets were, and I think that’s very carried forward in the spirit of the Appalachian community and the Appalachian experience has that strong sense of community and it will help us in the future if we continue to build on that. Also wanted to ask you I guess to wrap things up, a little bit about your future and what’s exciting you these days, what courses you’re going to -- you’re excited about teaching next semester?
AH: Yeah so, I feel like this is -- we have a lot of challenges facing us as a nation. You turn on the T.V every day and we’re talking about health insurance, we’re talking about the health of our nation, we’re talking about healthcare costs, you know all these types of things so, public health, the field that I’m apart of and so passionate about is at the forefront of what’s going to be providing that solutions. I think we’re at a very pivotal moment in our country too in terms of how we think about health. The United States, we’ve been a little but different from other countries in terms of the way we think about health we’ve historically used what many of us refer to like as a medical model, we like to respond to health issues, which we’re always going to have but, I think this public health approach is really starting to catch on and that prevention, preventing things before they happen and thinking strategically along those lines, it’s exciting to be a part of that and to be a part of conducting research that will hopefully help highlight those aspects. From teaching, I’m getting to teach next semester. I’m getting to teach, the first time I'm getting to teach introduction to public health, and that basically is a general education course that tries to attract students from all around campus and is an entry level for our major. The idea behind the course is to really get students excited about public health and about how it fits into our society and about how it fits into our world at large, it gets me very excited.
LB: Adam H, thank you so much for joining me in the podcast studio today and I look forward to visiting you in your brand-new office in the new Beaver College of Health Sciences that I guess will be open in the fall.
AH: Yeah! Thank you, thank you. We’re all looking forward to it.
LB: Alright, have a great day.
AH: Alright, you too.
Troy Tuttle: “Find your Sustain-Ability” is a production of the communications department at Appalachian State. It’s hosted by our director of sustainability, LB. The show is produced by Troy Tuttle and Meghan Hayes. Dave Blanks records, edits, and mixes. Pete Montaldi and Alex Waterworth are our web team. Find more episodes of this and other interesting podcasts at appalachianmagazine.org or check us out on iTunes, just search for Appalachian State University under podcasts.

Whether she's turning a landfill into an award-winning 3 million-dollar park, or transforming a neglected streetscape into a picturesque, Parisian-cafe inspired greenspace, Majora Carter's vision and drive for sustainable, local living is potent and compelling.
 
 
Transcript
Lee Ball: Here with me today is Majora Carter. Majora is an American, urban revitalization strategist and green real estate developer. Majora Carter is probably the only person to receive an award from John Podesta's Center for American Progress, and a Liberty Medal for lifetime achievement from Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. Fast Company named her one of the 100 most creative people in business. The New York Times described her as the "Green Power Broker." The Ashoka foundation's ChangeMakers.org recently dubbed her the "Prophet of Local." Thank you Majora for taking the time to be with us today.
Majora Carter: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, and yes, this is the amazing podcast studio I think I've ever been in.
Lee Ball: Let's just launch right into it. I've really enjoyed listen to your comments and getting to know you a little bit this afternoon. I'd love to hear about your story a little more, how you came to value sustainability, value the environment, and people.
Majora Carter: I think to start that story, I mean, it really does go back to how I grew up and the kind of neighborhood that I grew up in, which is a very low status community, urban community, in the South Bronx in New York City, which was still to this day is often known as a poster child for urban blight. Very poor community of color, we call it "low status," because there's just been issues around its social, environmental, and economic development. It's never really I think come into its own, at least not for the past 70 years or so.
Our work really has been about how do you show that you don't have to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one. My early work really focused specifically on more of the environmental project based programs, whether they were working to transform dumps into parks, or create greenways around heavily trafficked streets, and also doing green job training and placement systems, and has since moved into real estate development. Because I realized that how communities are planned and developed is really what creates a community that people either feel connected to and place some value in not just because they own a piece of property, because they see that community itself as something that has value, that makes them feel good about being in it. In low status communities, that's often absolutely not what people that are born and raised there tend to feel about the place.
Lee Ball: So was there, when you were a little girl, was there a place that was natural? Some woods, or the river, a place that you just remember going to and spending time?
Majora Carter: I had the benefit of my parents actually taking me out of the neighborhood in order to experience nature. My parents were from the South and even when they moved up, like I had an aunt who had a blueberry farm in New Jersey, and it actually sold more blueberries than I think any other farm did at the time. When I was a little girl, or we had relatives that lived in Connecticut and they had land around their house, so I saw that but within my own community, with it being what was considered an urban ghetto, there wasn't anything like that.
I knew that it existed, but it never occurred to me that there was anything like that there. As a matter of fact, I knew that there was a river right by my house called the Bronx River, and I only knew that because I saw it on a subway map, like literally the name of it. But it was the place where industry was, where prostitutes were, and that's where truckers would go to find them there, and so if anything, my idea of the urban environment was that it was a scary place to be. Just by the nature of it being located in urban area, it wasn't worth speaking about at all.
Lee Ball: Right. I'm fascinated to ... I'm curious how people develop a sustainability ethic, and my experience, my childhood was kind of the opposite of yours. I spent a lot of time in nature, in a relatively small city with your classic kind of suburban neighborhoods, but a lot of wooded areas and wooded lots and ponds and creeks, and the ocean not too far by. I attribute my sense of having a strong sustainability ethic to maybe having a lot of logged hours in that space. So it's fascinating to me that you still ended up with a strong sustainability ethic, but it was maybe because of what you've witnessed, maybe culturally and with the environmental kind of injustice all around you.
Majora Carter: Yeah, and again my idea of nature was also heavily influenced by gosh, what was it called? Mutual of Omaha's "Wild America."
Lee Ball: Yeah, "Wild Kingdom."
Majora Carter: "Wild Kingdom!" Oh, my gosh. Like, we watched that-
Majora Carter: ... as a family.
Lee Ball: (singing). Mutual of Omaha
Majora Carter: Oh, my gosh. I can't believe you remember that, too. All the nature shows, like oh, my gosh, but again, this was not my reality. Of course, that couldn't happen in a place like the South Bronx in New York City, or any urban area like that. But what was interesting, I think my sustainability ethic really came from discovering that all communities were not treated the same, because I was taught like many kids that come from communities like that to measure success by how far we get away from those places.
Like, especially if you're a smart kid who's identified early as being a bright one, you're expected to leave. You're encouraged to leave and go to college, and never return, and people will talk about you because you got out of the neighborhood and isn't that great? I was one of them who's like, "Sure, I'm happy to do that. I really want to." It's like, "I'm a little tired of seeing my buildings in the neighborhood burned down. I'm tired of seeing people that I know and love be killed or be a part of the criminal justice system, and having our neighborhood be thought of as just the epicenter of all the things that are bad about America." I was like, "Yeah, I'm out. I'm totally out."
But it was only when years later and it's true, I didn't come back out of any particularly altruistic reasons at all. I started graduate school and needed a cheap place to stay and that was my parents house. Then, discovered that my city and state were planning on building yet another huge waste facility that was going to bring about another third of the city's waste infrastructure to our community, and a particularly egregious kind that really would have had even more of an impact on the quality of life and health of the people that lived in the community.
There was a moment when I was just like, "Good God, I can just finish getting my degree and get out, take my cheap rent and as it is, and move on as soon as I can, or I can stay and be a part of the solution." That's what I wanted to do, but I wanted to do it in a way that wasn't all about just fighting against stuff, because believe me, there are plenty of people that do that. I'm not saying that there aren't some things that need to be fought, because we do, but there was the other piece around how do you create more opportunities to actually build? So, what are we actually not just fighting against, what are we fighting for?
That's when most of my early projects came to be around, that you took a place that had been dumped on, on the Bronx River, for decades and that I only discovered because there was a US Forest Program that was literally giving tiny little seed grants to community groups that were working around threatened or underserved urban rivers. I got one of those little grants and was able to leverage that, gosh, about 300 times over, into this beautiful three million dollar park, that's winning national awards and I'll speak for its excellence in urban design.
But now, it's only been there for coming up on 11 years this year, and it's like it's always been there, when actually no, it was a dump 12 years ago, literally. I'm so happy about those type of things, but my real focus now is in real estate development because I realize how all communities are dictated by the way real estate is developed in them. You can determine how it's going to either flourish in one way or another. Are they going to be the kind of economic developments that provide health and economic vitality to a community? Or, is it just going to extract the talent that's in there? We think about how do you create a community even looking at it as your own company?
Companies retain talent, good ones know that part of their strategy for staying relevant and supporting their own bottom line is by keeping the talent to help make sure that happens. What we thought when we think about communities that way, part of what we do is we have to retain the talent that's actually born and raised there, and so instead of essentially encouraging the people in those communities that are going to grow up and "be somebody," and have them do it some place else, we want to give them reasons to stay in their own communities. We realized through our own series of data collection tools, that folks were leaving because of mostly lifestyle related situations, and whether it was a good place to get a good cup of coffee, or have a dinner, or buy a book, or have a drink with a friend, or just buy decent groceries.
Those type of things were lacking in our communities, and so people weren't leaving because the crime rate was bad, because it's been going down like every single year since the '90s actually, and people often ... Parks are there now, and people's families are there, and there is a community there. They're leaving because they don't have those other type of things that they have grown accustomed to, because they did all the right things. They got an education, they got a job, and if they want to set down roots in place that's actually going to inspire them. What we're trying to do is build that kind of community so that they want to stay, first and foremost.
We do want to attract other folks there, because we think diversity is really important and we realize that economic diversity is also incredibly important, as well, as is racial diversity, and having them all in the same place, actually I think helps make a much more stable community from all concerned.
Lee Ball: You talked about how you love data earlier today, and you just made me wonder if you had explored a community like you started with and then compared to a community that you have now. I thought of it because I read an article about a street design change, so your classic street with strip malls and no bike lanes, and then compared to a smart growth, new urbanism situation with greenways and bicycle lanes and mixed use residences, and opportunities for coffee, opportunities for taking your dry cleaning right down the road. You increase those personal connections with people because you're walking around and you meet all these people and you make friends, and you're more resilient, and so on and so forth.
Majora Carter: Yeah. I was actually really moved by, similarly, a study or an article I read about after the heatwave in Chicago. It was a number of years ago, but what I found most interesting was there was this study about these two neighborhoods that existed side by side, and they were both equally poor communities. One of the neighborhoods actually had these rather informal social spaces and the other did not, and so the mortality rate in the community that did not have any kind of social space so that people could actually see, if so and so didn't show up and they normally do. Whether it was to like a little green market where they would buy their native fruits and vegetables, they didn't show up today, so people would know.
It's like, "Oh, I haven't seen Miss So and So, we need to go check on her," so in that community where they didn't have those spaces, the mortality rate was extremely high. Yet, in the other one, it was not so high at all.
Lee Ball: Wow.
Majora Carter: The initial data lumped them together to say, "Well ah, it wasn't that bad," at least the mortality rate because they just fudged them together. But when they looked at them separately, they realized they were very low fatalities in the other one from heat related deaths. The only thing that was different that the study showed was that there were those social spaces. There was a sense of social cohesion there, and even though it was a very poor neighborhood, people knew to look out for each other. That, again, it was informally designed, and maybe some of these social spaces might have been technically illegal because they were like fruit stands where they shouldn't have been there, but who cares? It saved some lives when it came right down to it.
So as far as our own work, we've absolutely seen that level of building a space that's social which is a coffee shop, like one little coffee shop that's very attractive, and that folks like to be seen in because it's so pretty, and we knew that they, because they told us through the data that we collected, these are the type of places that they would go to when they leave the neighborhood. So we were like, "We need to build one of these things in our own neighborhood," and collect their dollars so that it stays in the community and it's actually hiring somebody from this community.
But it also becomes this third space that's neither work nor home, and just provides people with a sense to get together. Whether it's economic developments and certainly the streetscape that we've built. Actually, we've added to our own streetscape by actually putting benches in front of the coffee shop, like going down a portion of the street, and little coffee shop tables in front of them as well, so there's this Parisian café type feel which people love, again, to be seen at. Then, there's a greenway that goes down the middle of the street.
So it is actually an incredibly attractive spot, creating those kind of places that allow folks to feel that way. That is what we're doing, and we're doing it because this stuff, if i have anything to do with it, it'll absolutely outlive me but really setting the stage for it to happen. That's the important piece that's really why I get up in the morning.
Lee Ball: Nice. You create parks and natural areas that you didn't have, and so a little boys and girls might have a different experience growing up in the South Bronx.
Majora Carter: Absolutely. They have that experience and it's funny going down there to the park that the people that know me will call it Majora's Park. Everybody else calls it Hunts Point Riverside Park, and it's true. Whether or not people have any idea that I had anything to do with it, especially younger people. They just think that it's been there forever. It's just like, "No, baby" but it's good that they think it's there, because they'll also feel like it's theirs to protect. We've had instances where that has been pressed and like one of my favorite stories is and I was ... This was when the park was probably about six years old, and ... No, four. It was four.
I remember I was actually doing a consulting gig so I was nowhere, I was actually on the other coast, and I saw it, but someone sent me a link to a news report that the park had been vandalized, and it was clearly by one person that just you know like spray painted really not particularly attractive graffiti on it. I remember feeling, I'm 3000 miles away and I'm just like, "What am I going to do?" And I couldn't, I was with a client, I had other stuff to do, and so I couldn't get on the phone and call the commissioner, do anything, or stuff like that. Or I could have but I was just like, "Majora, that's not your job right now."
But by the time I got home three days later, any trace of vandalism was gone. Because the next news story that I saw were people literally saying, "You've got to be kidding. How could somebody come here and do this to our park? Like, this is unacceptable." And because there was such a groundswell of people claiming it as their own, the city literally got rid of every ... I mean, it was much more extensive damage than any one group could handle, but by the time I got home, it was as if it had never happened.
Lee Ball: Well, that's beautiful.
Majora Carter: Yeah. I was like, "I had nothing to do with it." I'm like, "You know what? I've done my piece and just passed the ball on" and that makes me super happy.
Lee Ball: That's community.
Majora Carter: Yes, precisely.
Lee Ball: I have to ask you, you remembered Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom." Do you remember the Native American with the tear in the litter commercial?
Majora Carter: Yeah, of course I do. Oh, my gosh, I lived for it during School House Rock and all the Saturday morning commercials. You kidding?
Lee Ball: Yeah. I mean, that had such an impact on me, and have you looked at it recently? I don't even think he was a Native American. It's really hard to watch.
Majora Carter: It was this really nice I think he was a Jewish guy, might have been from the Bronx if I remember correctly. Yeah, no, he was definitely-
Lee Ball: It might have been the Bronx River.
Majora Carter: It was very funny. It was really funny, but he played that part well. It was good.
Lee Ball: Yeah. Okay, I'm going to ask one more question. What's giving you hope these days?
Majora Carter: What's giving me hope is the perseverance and resilience of folks to continuously be innovative, even though I think there are many out there who think that the world is falling apart, and they're still just doing the work, and really not being afraid of what could happen but really trying to create hope and possibility in their own work. That's what makes me happy. I mean, the work that we've been able to do I think just gets sweeter because I know that I'm responding to the well stated hopes and aspirations and needs of folks who have told me the kind of things that would help make their lives better, and their communities more livable.
I feel like my job really is to put meat on those bones. That's what I do as an urban revitalization strategist, as a real estate developer, and I feel like I've been really blessed and privileged to be in a position to continue that kind of work.
Lee Ball: Nice. Well Majora Carter, it's been a treat talking to you. Thank you so much for coming to Appalachian State and we hope to have you back sometime.
Majora Carter: Thank you. I'd love to be back.

Gina McCarthy discusses what it was like to be in charge of 15,000 people at the EPA and shares why she remains hopeful about our nation and our world.
 
 
Transcript
Lee Ball: Well, thanks so much for being with me here today with Gina McCarthy, the former Head of the Environmental Protection Agency. I'm so excited to have a conversation with you about your work and your history. I've got some prepared questions. I'm just going to go ahead and launch into it. I'm really interested in people's stories and I'd love to hear a little bit about your story that kind of lead you to value sustainability and kind of get on the career path that you chose.
Gina McCarthy: Well, Lee, let me try to explain. Before I do, just let me thank you for inviting me. It's really exciting to be part of the energy summit. I can't tell you how impressed I am with the sustainability program here. The commitment of this university. This is just about one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. All in all, invite me back again-
Lee Ball: Okay.
Gina McCarthy: -because it is quite amazing. I don't know, my story may be a little bit simplistic for folks. I grew up at a time when pollution was everywhere. It was not something that anticipated 30 years in the future. We were just inundated. When I grew up, I lived in the Boston area, where I still live. Boston Harbor was just where all the sewer went. The sewage water went. It was not a place that you could swim. Frankly, as a kid, I did, but that's because my family was pretty limited in means and that was where we went; but you shouldn't have. After a period of time, they'd tell you, you'd better get some shots if you fell in. We had smokestacks spewing black smoke, we had Love Canal happening, we had the Cuyahoga River on fire. It was at a time when people were outside all the time. There were very few attractions inside and so I had a natural connection to the outside world and visual clues that we were messing it up.
I really started my journey after undergraduate school where I did a degree in social anthropology and loved it. I always tell people that learning about primitive cultures has been most helpful in the work in government. That's always helpful, especially with legislators and Congress. Most importantly, I started to discover my interest in public. I went to school in Public Health and Environmental Protection. I ended up getting a local job in my own home town to be the Health Agent there. At that point in time, we discovered a couple of hazardous waste sights, we had some TCE contamination in a well. All of the things that were playing out at the federal level, started to play out at the local level. I just got engaged, involved and eventually was asked whether I wanted to work at the state and I did.
I kept getting asked to do different and interesting things. I think I always treated this as a very human story. A very fundamental core need and value that everybody in the United States would share if you just took the time to explain what the risk was. What you see and if you had solutions to offer that people could embrace. Over time, I think, that's been the key to, at least, my success is to never forget to explain what I do and why it's important and to get all voices to the table to participate in what the solutions are that they can embrace and how quickly. That's what government does. That's what this country has always does as we've built the strongest economy in the world on a foundation of the strongest sets of environmental protections in the world. I'm pretty proud of that. At least for being part of it.
Lee Ball: Did you find that with your work when you connected these issues with people that it really helped how decision makers, maybe give them a chance to understand maybe more deeply instead of trying to make an argument for the environment?
Gina McCarthy: What I found was that how I came into this was through a public health lens and I see agencies like EPA as being a public health agency. We sort of measure ourselves not in birds and bunnies, which I love. I love birds, I love bunnies, so nobody think otherwise.
Lee Ball: Yeah.
Gina McCarthy: It's just not what EPA does. We do public health protections like clean air and clean water.
Lee Ball: Right.
Gina McCarthy: We measure ourselves in lives asthma attacks prevented. Contamination that didn't cause health impacts in kids when they drink the water. That's my measures of success. They're very visceral to people. You can make them understand that by explaining what you do. The further you get away, the more difficult the challenge is. What I mean by farther away is less able to clearly articulate the risk to people and why it matters to them and their families. The interesting thing is, as I think we all know as people, we don't like to embrace challenges that we can't fix. We would rather deny them until something's available. It's sort of a natural instinct. I think the challenge for us, when you move to things like climate change, is that it has always been presented as far away, as about polar bears not people, it's presented in probabilities and statistics when the rest of the world actually think that scientists state facts, not probabilities.
Lee Ball: Right.
Gina McCarthy: The communication challenge has been big. It's such a long term issue that it goes beyond electoral cycles so you have the trouble of asking a politician to do something that won't benefit anybody until after they're well out of office. Then you have early on our challenge was that we were trying to drive solutions rather than knowing we had solutions on the table. I've been doing this for 30 years. It was a hard slog for so many years, which is what's very exciting about today. You can talk about sustainability not just as a goal, but as actions. This university shows that you can be sustainable and live sustainably and how much it saves you in terms of money. That's when solutions take off. That's when it's no longer about what regulation do we need, but who's the smartest investor that's going to catch that new wave of innovation that's going to make more money down the pike? As a wonderful, American capitalist I think it's great.
Lee Ball: Yeah.
Gina McCarthy: It's just the goal line for us. We are so close to being able to really continue to branch forward. It's going to take a lot of effort to move from small communities and campuses to get a broader acknowledgement that the solutions we need are on the table.
Lee Ball: Right. We find ourselves in this leadership role and through the dissemination of responsible knowledge. Knowledge for good. I think that's a big part of our role at the university. Could you tell me what it was like to run the EPA? I can't imagine.
Gina McCarthy: A lot of sleepless nights. It's an agency of about 15,000 people. Maybe a little bit more. I was in Washington. Fortunately, I had the experience of four years as the Acting Administrator overseeing the Air and Climate Programs. I kind of got a good feel for the agency because prior to that I only worked at state and local governments. It was a big leap for me to go to Washington and tackle this, but I had that four years of experience. Then the President asked me if I would really work the next four in his second term to try to advance a number of issues. For him, and for me, it was most importantly trying to make progress on climate. He certainly felt, and I agreed with him, that there wasn't enough progress made when there was so much opportunity.
What the President did really during his first term was to invest a lot of money through the Department of Energy and others in innovation and new technologies that really provided fruit in the second term. It really opened up opportunities for new technologies to shine, which for EPA and for me as the Administrator, it gave me the opportunity to have solutions that I could, through regulation, make sure were available to everybody and do it in a way that would require reasonable progress using already well defined solutions. That's when you can really make progress. I spent a lot of time getting to understand the breadth of the agency. Certainly doing a lot more than climate work.
Making, I think, good progress in water and a new piece of legislation on toxics, which was very exciting. The first bill we've ever had that was strongly bipartisan in many years that was focused on an environmental issue. I spent time in the regions. We have 10 regions and all of them have unique challenges where they work with their regional states to actually make sure that states are implementing the federal laws as they're supposed to and managing the duties that we support them to do to make sure that everybody is living up to at least federal standards. I spent a lot of time trying to work with the agency also to give it a more personal face outside.
The federal government is, for the most part, something that people don't relate to. They know it exists and they pay a lot of taxes to make sure it exists, they never quite see what it does. They don't connect new roads with the Department of Transportation, they just see their own little construction going on in their local area and they don't always realize that it's funded and supported by the federal government and programs. They don't see where that money goes for. EPA is so distant from many rural areas in particular, because we do a lot of work in urban areas because that's where the bigger health implications lie. We have very little visibility. I spent a lot of time trying to make sure that the regions were supported in their efforts to work with states and build up a stronger relationship in the communities that have been left behind.
The communities like what we call environmental justice communities. The ones that really haven't benefited as much from the overall national average of how well we've done to reduce air pollution. They're the ones that need a stronger voice and need the federal government to be there, even if the state government isn't focusing their attention there. It has to be somebody paying attention to make sure the benefits of what we do actually reach everyone. I spent a lot of time trying to get EPA out into the community, working with people who have been left behind. Minorities, low income areas. Trying to form a stronger relationship with rural areas where we don't tend to have the visibility that we have in the urban areas.
Lee Ball: I spend a lot of time thinking about the disconnect between knowledge and practice. We have a lot of knowledge when it comes to ideas related to solving sustainability problems, whether it's with water or air pollution. You've spent a lot of time with your career being very solution oriented. Expressed that really well. Could you speak a little more about that disconnect? It's something that I spend a lot of time thinking about, trying to ... How do we get around that? We've had knowledge related to these issues since the sixties and seventies and we're still dealing with a lot of those same problems. We have the knowledge, but why and how can we turn them into practice using practical solutions?
Gina McCarthy: Yeah. I don't know whether there's any trick to this. I really appreciate the fact that you recognize it. I'm sort of an implementation person. I don't want to do the best thing that nobody will actually do. Do you know what I mean? There's too many people who are looking for the ideal who try to translate knowledge directly into how people should behave. You just can't do it that way. That's not how people operate and it's not how the government in the United States operates. Everything that you do to try to make large change happen, even that you know is extraordinarily good for people for their pocketbooks as well as their health and the health of the overall planet, you have to work hard for a lot of years to make that happen. You have to earn people's trust.
I worked for somebody once in Massachusetts who I grew to have tremendous respect for. He was a state legislator for 17 years and he came to run the agency. He used to ask me two things. I was his Undersecretary. I oversaw policy throughout the state for everything from our normal pollution issues to fish and wildlife. I did it all, right? I was the last stop before big things happened. He used to ask me two questions. First he'd say, "Gina, is this the right thing to do?" By that he meant is this really following what we understand for the science and the law? Is this really going to be defensible. Is this what we think we should be doing as people who care about these issues as well as public servants who have taken an oath to do these things.
The second thing he used to ask me, and it annoyed me originally, but I grew into understanding why he asked me, "Gina, who's standing with me?" He understood what I didn't then get, which was that in the United States, it's a government of, by and for the people. You cannot be, as good as you want to be and as knowledgeable as you are, a benevolent dictator. It takes bringing people with you, because people have a voice. They are the only ones that are going to carry it in the end of the day. Not the politicians. Individuals who embrace what the challenge is and the solutions that you offer them. We're purposely designed to be a stable government. To move slowly and deliberately. You have to understand that knowledge doesn't immediately translate to change.
If you're looking at being a good policy person, you're identifying a couple of things. Who the first movers and shakers are? Who's going to join you? How you do outreach beyond that? Who the people are that are going to be against it? If you do like I do, you bring every single one of them to your table. You honestly tell them how you view the facts, what you think the up sides and down sides are and then you shut up and you listen to them. I have always found, it's not just wrong, but it's inaccurate to put white hats and black hats on anybody. I have had some great friends who work in industry in the private sector who have allowed me to have tremendous success in adjusting policies and regulations to be more manageable and more reasonable and get better results than I ever would have if I didn't open up my ears and give them credit for sharing the same core values I have, but just seeing the challenge differently and the solutions differently.
If you fail to bring every voice to the table, you will miss the flavor and texture of what you're supposed to bring to your job as a public servant, which is not to serve my friends and people who agree that I'm the smartest person in the world, but those who challenge you and those you've never met before. Without which, their support will make whatever you do, as brilliant as it is, fall flat on its face. I've seen that. I've seen things fall flat on their face. Thankfully, not most of the things that I've done, but that usually happens when people fail to listen and fail to understand, at least in government, that you're not working for yourself. You're working for the people. They have the final say.
Lee Ball: That's why we decided to make the theme of this year's Appalachian Energy Summit "Perspectives, Policy and Practice" because we feel like we need everyone's perspective. We need to listen and learn from each other, because there is a lot of challenges and we don't have a lot of time with some of them. We feel like it's kind of an all hands moment. We just need everyone's help. We don't want to marginalize anybody.
Gina McCarthy: I see the anxiety. I've seen it at high levels for a long time on issues of climate change, only because those of us who look at the sciences and listen to scientists really recognize that the risks are very large and the consequences are extreme. The time we have to actually address this is increasingly shorter. The more you look at the science and the rate of change that we're seeing, the more you get anxious about it. One of the conversations I continue to have with folks on this is, I don't disagree with their anxiety, but it doesn't allow you to shortcut the process. Even if you wanted to, you just can't, but you have to be better at the early communication. You have to be better at making it relevant to individuals. You've got to be better at driving solutions before you demand action.
There's a lot of people in this country who feel personally at risk because they're insecure in where their next food is going to come to feed their children. They're insecure in whether or not their job is going to continue or where they're going to get another job at an age ... At my age and older, where you don't want to be thinking about those things. When people are afraid, they look for change, but in many ways they don't want change because they feel like every change makes it worse for them. It makes it more unstable and uncertain. You need to recognize that you're going to have to keep pushing and plugging along, but the best thing you can do is actually what this school is doing, which is to take the solutions you're asking other people to adopt and do it yourself. Show them that it works and it can work.
As a country we need to make sure that people aren't left behind in the solutions. We can't allow people that claimed solar, renewable energy is just for the elites. We have to find financial and economic vehicles to make it available and accessible to everybody. We can't fail to recognize that the coal sector is waning and what do we do with human beings that are left behind there? I'm not going to cajole them by saying that renewable energy and clean energy isn't the future, because it is. If I said anything different it would be disingenuous, whether I'm sitting here or anywhere else. You've got to figure out as a country, what you do with those communities and those individuals and those families to give them a path forward. Everybody deserves one, but they don't deserve to be cajoled into thinking that someone on high is going to bring that back for them. They deserve honesty and compassion and resources to help them get through difficult transitions. That's how we've done it before and I don't know why we wouldn't want to do that again now.
Lee Ball: There is a lot of anxiety and there's a lot of good reason to be depressed if you're paying attention these days, but what's giving you hope these days?
Gina McCarthy: Yeah.
Lee Ball: What do you find that you kind of latch onto that makes you feel hopeful?
Gina McCarthy: There's a lot of really good signs. I think one of the reasons why I'm really happy to be at college campuses is that I don't want the young people here to fail to recognize how powerful they are and their voice is and how hopeful I am that solutions for these problems are available to us today and that we can continue to drive forward no matter what the attitude is in Washington. Prior to the Obama administration, there were literally no steps taken at the federal level on climate change. I know that many of the students here only remember the Obama administration and slightly before it, but they can't think that the federal government is the be all and end all of who speaks for the United States of America and who takes action.
When I was growing up, it was individual communities and individual states. It took many years for us to drive momentum at the federal level for federal laws to be enacted to protect air and water. In the meantime, we didn't sit around. We just did things. We took action. Right now I know that the clean energy train in the United State has left the station. It's not going back. There are remarkable innovations every day. If you look at what's happening not just in clean energy in the utility sector, but look at the transportation sector. It's now the highest greenhouse gas emitting sector in the United States, now that we're continuing to reduce in the utility sector. It looks like it's on the cusp of unbelievable transformation with autonomous electric vehicles. With Volvo just making an announcement that in just a few years they're getting out of the internal combustion engine. Can you imagine that?
It's just remarkable what I see happening. I don't want your students or anyone out there to think that when the federal government is taking a pass and napping for a while, that the United States has to be sleeping. It is so not. People have to do what they can to reconcile themselves to speak up as much as they can, if they don't like what the federal government is doing. The most important thing is for them to work in their own communities, work in their own families, work in their own states. Take advantage of the tremendous opportunities for consumers to get cheap energy. Think creatively. Do science. Do innovation. It's going to continue the progress moving forward. If this administration does roll back some big protections that we've had in place, people won't tolerate it. It'll come back. It's discouraging and it's uncertain, but it is far less from being hopeless. We're just in the early stages of this right now and I remain tremendously hopeful. Especially when I meet the young people of today who get it way before any of us ever did. That's for sure.
Lee Ball: Great. I have one final question for you. I was just curious what you're up to these days and more important what's exciting you in your current work?
Gina McCarthy: Yeah. I'm doing a lot of work with a bunch of constituents just to keep an eye on what's going on in Washington DC, because I do have 15,000 people who I love there and the agency is really at significant risk right now. I just want make sure people understand that risk and the protections that we need, all of us, to work to maintain. I've been at Harvard doing a couple of fellowships. One at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School and the other at the Harvard School of Public Health. I am likely to be continuing that relationship in the fall. They're interested in continuing to explore what I love, which is the intersect between health and climate. I want to make sure we're making the case in the strongest terms possible so that people can relate to the challenge and start embracing those solutions more readily.
I'm also working as an Advisor to a private equity company that focuses on sustainability. It's called Pegasus Capital Advisors. They're a wonderful group of people who are looking at new technologies and new solutions and what's ready and on the cusp of being more broadly disseminated so that we can get some additional sustainability initiatives moving forward and technologies out there that will improve our lives in so many different ways. I'm excited about the work I'm doing and I'm giving lots of speeches so that everybody knows, if I'm not ticked off about what was going on and it was my work and many others hard work that produced it, they have no right to give up. They have to get over it and move forward.
Lee Ball: Well, Gina McCarthy, thank you so much for coming to Appalachian State and Boone, North Carolina. We're just so happy to have you here. Yeah, thanks again.
Gina McCarthy: Lee, thank you for all you do and for all that the students are doing. It's quite a remarkable place and I couldn't be happier.

A history of sustainability in Appalachia and life after coal.
 
Appalachian’s director of sustainability, Dr. Lee Ball, welcomes celebrated author, journalist, historian and playwright Jeff Biggers to the studio for a discussion of the history of sustainability in Appalachia, what a regenerative Boone, North Carolina, could look like and Biggers’ multimedia theatrical piece “An Evening at the Ecopolis: Envisioning a Regenerative City.”
 
 
Transcript
Lee Ball: I’m here with Jeff Biggers the celebrated author, journalist, historian and playwright. He’s currently the leader of The Climate Narrative Project and he serves as Writer in Residence in the Office of Sustainability at the University of Iowa. Jeff is joining us on campus this week, meeting with faculty and students and performing his multimedia theatrical piece entitled, “An Evening at the Ecopolis: Envisioning a Regenerative City. So Jeff, thanks for being here. I’m really happy to talk about your work and am most interested in your story and your connection to Appalachia. You live in Iowa city, but you have some deep roots here in Appalachia. I would love for you to share with us a little about your story and how you came to do this work in the sustainability kind of space and specifically your connection to Appalachia.
Jeff Biggers: Great. Thanks so much for having me. It’s great to be back in Boone and Appalachian State, which I know very well. My family has deep roots in Appalachia, going back to before the American Revolution as Baptist descenders who came down and took an active part in the American Revolution even part of the Regulated Movement, which was of course a rebellion prior to the American Revolution. It sent a lot of people into the mountains. Soon after the American Revolution, my folks continued to go with that Western Migration. Going into Kentucky and the Cumberlands and then just following the sort of trails of woodsmen looking for other areas. They ended up, believe it or not, in Sutherland Illinois. Often when we think of Illinois we think of Chicago- we think of corn, we don’t realize that it’s very long skinny state that three hundred and sixty miles from Chicago is where my family lived. The beautiful place where the Wisconsin Glaciers stopped and we have these amazing upheavals. So we have a very similar mountainous region that you might find in the Cumberlands or even in the Ozarks. It’s incredible biodiversity. So that’s where my family lived for two hundred plus years. As a kid we were uprooted. It’s a community of coal mining. My family came from coal miners in a very rough area in the back woods. So as a young kid we packed up the old ‘64 Chevy and my folks moved us out west, continuing this migration. But we never forgot our roots. That was something that I felt I needed to go back and really discover at one point. A turning point for me, I had two turning points. One was that as a student, I was the University of California in Berkeley in 1981 and I ended up dropping out of school for various reasons and hitchhiking across the country. I was still just a teenager, a nineteen-year old freshman at that point, and I for some reason wanted to go back to Appalachia. I didn’t know quite why. I was hiking along the trail, working in communities. At one point I was working on a farm and I was camping in the woods and I had to hitchhike back to where I was camping. I waited for a long time, I had been bit by a dog that day on the farm that day, so I was really kind of frustrated. Somebody picked me up and I got into the car. I will never forget, I said “did you know that it takes forever to get a ride with a hillbilly back here” and he stopped his car and he said “get out.” And I was like you know I need to get to my campsite, I’m tired, I’m a kid, I don’t...and then I kind of shouted “I’m a hillbilly these are my roots so I can use that word.” He said “get out, we don’t have hillbillies back here, we have mountaineers.” I was kind of perplexed by that and I thought this is interesting. So I said “what do you mean mountaineers?” And he said “Hey if you’re real interested, let me take you somewhere.” This is just on the other side of the gap, Cumberland Gap. It was that nexus where Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky all come together. I hopped into the car and we went and got my backpack. Then he drove me hours into West Virginia and he dropped me off at this farm, this folk school. That really began this kind of long journey home. I stayed at a folk school at a farm all summer working at an incredible place that really wanted to look at the progressive role of Appalachian history. If was founded by the same person who had founded Highlander Folk School in eastern Tennessee. He had gone on to do all sorts of things in his life. His name is Don West. He was a labor organizer, he was a poet and who had national fame. He was someone who had been an educator. He was sort of a godfather of Appalachian studies. He was this old cranky lanky man on a farm who woke me up at 4:30 that morning to go milk cows and begin with this discussion of “did you know”. It was “did you know about the history of Appalachia”. That really rooted me and brought me back. Really it’s been a thirty plus year journey since then to really go deep into understanding who I am, what is this region really about, and what can we learn about Appalachia being on the forefront of so many things in the United States. Don told me one thing, I’ll end with that, you can’t understand America until you understand Appalachia because it’s really been on the frontlines of so much change and shift. I’ll never forget hearing that from him on the farm stuck with and still sticks with me today.
LB: Wow that’s beautiful. So could explain how you’ve experience similar learning communities and learning styles and some of your international travel.
JB: Certainly. One thing that Don did on his farm, and this was thirty-five years ago, was that he began to see the role of self-sufficiency as something we had lost in Appalachia. Part of our struggle, both in the coal fields of where I’m from in Sutherland Illinois and what we have in West Virginia, central Appalachia and other parts down here in the Carolinas, is that we have lost sense of self-sufficiency within the mountains of how we can provide our own energy, our own food and our own sense of place. That powerful sense of self-sufficiency that we can regenerate our own communities is something I’ve seen that not only Don worked on, but many people here in Appalachia and, on a global level, many other different communities.
In the 1990s I spent a year in India in a community very similar to here, it was way up in the Western Gap Mountains on the border of Tamamodo and Karela. There was a similar community. It was a mountain community that had gone through massive deforestation through logging and clear cutting. It had pretty much left the local community in ruin. There was a local boy who grew up there who had become a follower of Gandhi and then went off to a very unique university outside of Calcutta called Santiniketan that had a very much an environmental sustainability emphasis in the 1920s and the 1930s. He met up with some Americans who funded his trip to come the United States in the 1950s to see cooperative movements and other education experience all around sustainability. Of course we didn’t use that word back then, but the idea of self-sufficiency and self-reliance is really about revitalization of who we were. Then this young man went back to his community, but what was unique to me was while he was in the United States he spent a tremendous amount of time in Appalachia both with the Highlander Folk school, the Johnson Campbell Folk School of North Carolina and in this area particularly just to see how people were interacting with their region, with the nature, with their environment. How they really were building on endeavors to be self-reliant, and to be communities that identified with their nature, with their ecology. Therefore, that connection between Appalachia and India, to me, was fascinating. I’ve seen similar movements where people continue to believe that the land does determine our culture. Our ecology does has to be a part of any kind of design. Be it an urban design for a town/city or a rural area.
LB: Jeff, could you explain the role of arts in this work. I understand communities that are very isolated they learn to be resilient because they kind of have to, but have you experienced even in those places art being a strong part of it?
JB: Certainly. I love talking about Appalachia because I love talk about where the first Nobel for literature given to woman. Of course it was given to Pearl Buck. When she arrived in Stockholm they said we love all your stories about China, but we’re giving you this Nobel laureates for your beautiful memoir about being from West Virginia. The fact that this tremendous literary tradition is deeply rooted of Appalachia is telling stories. Be it through the first work of fiction and social realism. To someone like Rebecca Harden Davis who talked about the role of rural immigrants in Appalachia and published in the “Atlantic Monthly” in 1961. To the other end of the arts of this incredible rich heritage of music. I think we often forget about Appalachia being this crossroads of from the Europeans, African Americans and the Cherokee that is beautifully shown in the work of Nina Simone who grew up in the back woods of North Carolina, just outside of Asheville. Who is proud of the fact that the second song that Nina Simone recorded when she became this big star in Jersey, then eventually in New York City, was “Black is the True Color of My Loves Hair”--this beautiful old British Isle ballot that she had learned in the back woods that she had made her own. Talking about this role of arts has been powerful. Probably our strongest one is our role storytelling. That we have the wherewithal to sit around and envision another world, another reality. To take what’s happening today and put it into context for us. To fill in the gaps. To go beyond any sense of data and actually fill it up with people. To give it some meaning to who we are and really tell stories that change people’s lives. Stories that make us think in a different way. I think that that’s the role of arts that I have really come out of. Now at the University of Iowa, I have founded a project called The Climate Narrative Project. There I work with both undergraduate and graduate students to use the arts to tell a better sustainability story, particularly with an eye to climate change. We feel that there is this massive gap between science and in action. That gap, I feel, can ultimately can be bridged through our arts and storytelling traditions and our narratives. That we can learn to use film and theatre and radio podcasts, like this, or the visual arts and sculpture or dance or all the different types of narratives modes and begin to use those as means to tell a better story to do something both in sustainability and climate action.
LB: You know we always struggle with converting knowledge into practice. I think that is one of our biggest hurdles in the work that we do. There is a lot knowledge, we don’t need to reinvent a lot of wheels, but the practice piece is really challenging. I see internationally, I see it locally. I think it’s beautiful that you mention the arts role of with that in kind of active practice. You know, putting boots on the ground that are needed to do this work. I wonder about people’s sense of hope and I wonder with you and your work, how do you inspire hope?
JB: Sure! I think that’s the great thing about being an historian is that you realize that we’ve gone through these dark time again and again and again and again. We somehow manage to always pull through. And once again, let’s just use Appalachia since we’re here. In 1780 was an incredibly dark moment in the United States. We had our Declaration of Independence in July 4, 1776 and I think that a lot of people think we went out and celebrated, that we went to the mall and shopping and it was over with. They didn’t realize that the Revolution went on and it went wrong and we were losing. George Washington didn’t have an army and was an extremely incompetent military commander. He had mutinies, the funding wasn’t there and the south was split. At a certain point there was stalemate and there was this secret negotiation to perhaps giving the Americans the North and the Brits would take the South. On that the Brits came and eventually they shifted to what they called The Southern Strategy. They took Georgia and then they finally won Charleston, South Carolina. They were just rolling up the Carolinas and Cornwallis had warned that they were on their way to get Washington (DC). These were extremely dark moments. I think that we thought the great experiment that Tom Payne had given in the “Common Sense” was not going to come true. At a certain point the Mountaineers, here in precisely where we live, came together. They were actually inspired by a teacher and a man who had both been a minister and had run a log cabin college to begin to engage and march. They came across as the back water men and they came across the mountains. They agreed there would be no commander, but each person would be their own captain and the communities offered whatever they could in terms of materials and food and lead to make bullets. They came down from the mountain and eventually met up with one of Cornwallis’ platoons at the Battle of King’s Mountain. It’s on the border of South Carolina and North Carolina and they had a battle. In fact it the Patriots won and they beat the Loyalists. Something that’s very important about this battle is that we have this idea that somehow the British invaded us when the fact was there was only one Brit on that battle field that day and that was the commander. The rest were North Carolina Loyalists. It was a real civil war for us in the south. The good news is that the Patriots won and it galvanized the continental army. Suddenly we realize that we had a southern army. George Washington once mocked the south saying that they would turn high-tail at the first glimmer of the bayonet, but in fact the Mountaineers had come down extremely organized because they had been working for decades in a movement of independence in the Carolinas. They were able to kind of give hope to the rest of the United States that the revolution was worth it. Thomas Jefferson said that the Battle of King’s Mountain turned the tide of the American Revolution. Of course within that a we had the surrender of Cornwallis in Yorktown in Virginia and were able to then go on and experience the United States. This kind of turning point in our history, these hinge moments. I think that we need to go back to this again and again and see how in fact we can in can come together and we can work this out as different communities, especially when looking at the history of Appalachia. This is very similar to the anti-slavery movement, to the civil rights movement, to the labor movement, to today. I think our challenge, of course, is sustainability and climate change.
LB: Jeff your performance tonight called Ecopolis is it a call to action?
JB: It is a theatre piece with music that basically helps people envision what Boone would look like in the year 2030 as a regenerative city. I was the keynote speaker for a conference here six years ago and it was called “After Coal, we were comparing Appalachia to Whales. My dear friend Tom Hansel had done with Pat Beaver and all these wonderful people that I worked with for years through the Appalachian Studies Program. I left that conference six years ago kind of chagrin because when push comes to shove, I can’t really tell you what we can do with “After Coal”. I grew up in a coal mining community where 80 percent of the county was owned by absentee landlords that the highest unemployment and poverty rate. Our communities were completely left in ruin in terms of discharges. Our creeks were completely sterile now because of the strip mines. We literally had been left with just utter hopelessness. So what could we do after coal? I can really say after that conference here at Appalachian State I began this journey of wondering how do we begin to revitalize our communities. So is took back me to India after that village revitalization program. That fifty years later since he had visited Appalachia, he had recreated and regenerated one of the most beautiful indigenous forests that you have in the Western Gap Mountains. That he had created this completely self-sufficient community that created its own food, had its own cottage industries and really operated in the context of where they lived. I began to look at other models from around the world and I really stumbled onto this role of what they are calling regenerative cities. The idea that we need to begin to look at our cities in not a linear way. Like okay I need electricity, I am going to import it from the coal fire plant and then spew out my coal ash waste. Oh now I need food? I have to import it and bring it up the mountain and then spew out all of my stuff into the landfill with our garbage. When we begin to see our cities in a circular way with a circular metabolism. That we have to have a circular economy, nothing naive because obviously we live in a globalized economy, but that the very needs that we have we can begin to produce. Once again this is how it use to be in Appalachia one hundred years ago. I really began to think about how did it go wrong? We use to live on what we called a agropolis, an agro-town that provided for ourselves. Then after the war, what truly happened was we became a petropolis. Cities that were based on petroleum. Cities that widen our streets, created these long highways, we trucked things in, we began to change completely. That has been a fifty year aberration compared to the centuries of how we’ve actually maintained our communities in the past. So building on that the idea is that we need to create an ecopolis - polis meaning the city and eco meaning the environment. The idea that we go back to the agropolis, but through using modern technology in a way that we can create a city of the future. So we begin to look at all realms of how we interact. We go beyond sustainability because, as we all know, nothing is sustainable and we begin to look at things in a regenerative context. Be it our food system, our transportation, our urban design, our waste management, our water quality. These are things that matter in terms of us as a town and as a city. The final important thing about the regenerative city is how we have to go beyond “doing less bad”. I think this is where you and I have to really struggle with our college and sustainability department. Is that we have this kind of context that sustainability basically means doing less bad to endure what we are going through. We need to adapt to this kind of system. My question for a lot of students yesterday was what do you call adaptation when you are adapting to a failed system? A system that you know is going to collapse? And how do we go beyond doing is less bad to actually doing something that repairs the damage to the ecological system? That begins to enhance nature. That uses that word that a lot of us shy away from. To heal the damage that we have done to ecology. That’s what regeneration asks us: to restore our relationship with nature, to rewild our talents and cities, and begin to have a connection between the forest and the hinterlands or whatever ecological community you live in, a river town like I do, and begin to bring it back into the city. One of the most beautiful experiment is Adelaide, Australia, city of million people. They brought in this urban planner and ecologist named Herbert Gerdes as their thinker in residence. He convened all of these forums. They were a typical city that was facing drought, depended on coal fire plants, imported ninety percent of their food, had a massive problem with their landfill. Basically the idea was let’s revision and rethink how to do this. Today, ten years after that experiment, this is a place that gets sixty percent of their electricity now from renewable energy, eighty-two percent of their urban waste goes to circular compost outside the city. They have tens of thousands of acres that’s using that compost that is dedicated to vegetables and fruit trees. The city planted over three million trees as part of a soil carbon sequestration program and reconnected with who they were not only as desert dwellers, but also desert trees. They created actual district that were one hundred percent renewable and created a transportation, including the first solar bus in the world, which allowed people to walk bike or use public transits that would get them out of the car. They completely transformed their city using that circular way. That is something that really excited me. I thought, “now it’s time to bring back more regeneration back into the coal fields.”
LB: Jeff as we imagine how to turn Boone, Appalachian State, the high country, into a more regenerative space…I was thinking about the design process, the design thinking process. It’s easy to sit around and design stuff on paper. It’s easy for us to talk about it in a sterile room. Can talk about the importance of just walking in our community and experiencing what needs to be done? And the opportunity for us to thrive and not just rely on this adaptive management technique that we tend to fall back on.
JB: Yeah that’s great, actually one of the first lines of my monologues tonight is the “only way for us to understand our city is to walk our city”. We have to literally get out, and walk in our towns. I think you’re right. I think it begins with literally trying to understand our sense of place. It begins with understanding why do we call it King street, who is King? Why do we call it this Knob or that Knob in this town? Why did we name our town after Daniel Boone? Then we begin to, those kind of things may seem artificial and ridiculous, but there’s a sense of grounding us in who we are. Yesterday, I ask all the students, “where does your electricity come from? Where does your water come from? Where does your waste go to? Where is your landfill at? Where does your food come from?” Those questions, once again, begin to talk about our sense of place or our lack of sense of place. From there we begin to envision how we can transform. I think it is very important what you say because we just can’t be in these rooms with just a blueprints. As if I can take these blueprints Iowa, to North Carolina to California to India to Mexico. It doesn’t work that way. Every city has to take what it has and transform and evolve from your own legacy and your own reality of the ecology here and your own needs. The needs of Boone are entirely different from the needs of Iowa City and are entirely different than the needs of Adelaide, Australia. That sense of place needs to be a primer. Then the envisioning process through the community actually then begins to build on not just the experts of the field, but the common sense legacy of the people in the towns themselves, bringing together the entrepreneurs, the farmers, the ecologists, the people who have lived there forever. Who begin to understand this is why you live in this area. This is what you could do here. This is the watershed. This is where this could go. This is how and what use to grow here. This is what can’t grow here. You convene those through a series of forms and then you begin to chart out a vision of the future. I think that this is where the arts and storytelling become important, and something I‘m going to strive for tonight. It's through storytelling, through art, through music. It’s a way to get people to actually see what it could look like. I think our gap between so much science and action is that we have this obstacle, this element of being blocked that we really can’t envision life would be like if we weren’t depending on a coal fire plant or what would life be like if we didn’t have to depend on oil or petroleum based vehicles. I think we have to show people, not in a utopic way, but in a very real way of what Boone, or any town, would like twenty years from now. And if this is what we want, if this is the vision, then we simple have to find the road map to get there. Could be that it’s going to take us fifty years to have a regenerative city or could be that it takes us ten years to create a regenerative city, but you set those benchmarks. A very similar example for you folks would be the town of Oberlin, Ohio. There you have the great work of David Oar who is one of our environmental gurus and urban planners who created the Oberlin Project in the 1990s. The idea is Oberlin set these benchmarks such as in twenty years “We want to have fifty percent of our food produced locally, we want to have reduction of carbon emissions by x amount, we want to have a certain level of energy efficiency, we want to have a certain level of renewable energy, we want to have a transit system that gets at least forty percent of our people out of the cars and are walking or biking like Copenhagen.” So the Oberlin Project, which is a town of ten thousand people, began to envision the future, set their roadmap, create these benchmarks every five to ten years and worked their way through it. Once again this was something introduced through stories, through dialogue and through bringing people together. Which is really the old fashion way of doing things. As you say it is so much more productive and effective and authentic than experts sitting in a room with a blueprint thinking that they have all the solutions.
LB: The Oberlin Project is near and dear to our heart. One of our alumni, Shawn Price, is the director of the project
JB: Oh! I didn’t know that!
LB: David Oar is a dear friend of ours and comes to our Appalachian Energy Summit every year.
JB: Great!
LB: We really respect his work and his vision and his passion. I’m interested about regenerative design. That term and those conversations started a while ago in the 70s or in the early 80s and we are seeing it again. Why do you think that now it’s come back?
JB: You know when it first came out, I think a lot of it came out of Germany at one point. The Germans certainly in the 1990s had a major shift. The role of the Green Party, as small as it was, was able to introduce some of ideas. For example, having a feed tariff with your electricity which would allow you, it you put up a solar panel, to sell back the excess electricity to the power company. That begin to allow for something other electricity for example. Then started to support the growing for solar, wind and, for them, biomass. But I think for them the ideas never took root because of the tremendous force of the oil and gas and coal lobbies. That they were good ideas, but when push came to shove, especially within the energy field, they just kept getting squashed down. I think we all know that Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House in the 1970s. There was this incredible movement. One of our great philosophers Barry Commoner coming out of Washington University who wrote a very important book, The Closing Circle, that really informs a lot the regenerative movement in cities now. They are using his same context of what Commoner was talking about in the 1970s. I think the role of the lobbies, the role of politics and whatnot, I think so much of our work was waiting in Washington to take the first step and it just never filtered down into the communities. In the last few years though, I think we’re seeing a rebirth of the regenerative movement because I think that people realize that the action is going to come local now. I think that now more than ever, I wrote a piece for the New York Times recently saying that cities are going to lead the climate movement now. And that makes me excited and inspired. I feel like we are in a period of Doomsday scenarios. We are dealing with a federal administration that denies climate change. Who is sort of removing so many different environmental regulations and I think that there is this that we’re doomed. That there is not going to be a commitment to the Paris Climate Summit. I come at it in a completely different perspective. I don’t know if that’s because I am incorrigibly optimistic, but I feel like now the burden is on the local communities to take the lead and we are seeing that. We are seeing the role of New York, the role of Chicago, the role of San Francisco. Here you have a very conservative republican mayor in San Diego who has set up a very ambitious role of being 100 percent renewable by 2030. You have the cities saying hey this is our responsibility and we are going to take the lead. I think that we have to remember that seventy-five percent of our carbon footprint comes from the cities. Not so much the little towns like Boone, but bigger cities. But I think even towns like Boone can be in the forefront of this movement. It’s going to be the local entities that lead us in climate action and I think that what we are realizing is that through a regenerative approach, more a circular approach, that’s going to be the most effective, the most successful.
LB: So Jeff, where is your edge, what are you excited about right now? Where do you see yourself right now kind of doing next?
JB: Well as you can tell, I kind of have my hands in many different things, but I am really getting to this old cranky grey hair age that I want to work with young people to train a new generation of climate storytellers and climate leaders. When I went to the University of Iowa a few years ago, they asked me to do some creative writing and I said you know I could, but I’m just not interested. I really want to work on climate change though the perspective of being a writer and through the arts. So I really actually have invested a lot of time to create this climate narrative project. Where I have created fellowships, we work with both undergraduate and graduate students. We take people from all the different departments and we kind of snub creative writers, we feel like they have enough opportunities. We work with scientists, engineers, and people that work in agriculture, which is kind of big in Iowa. We work with educators, psychologists, sociologists, we work with people from every department to come together to sit across the table and to begin to talk about these various themes of sustainability and regeneration and climate change and how we can tell a better story. So they go through a very rigorous practice of public speaking. A very rigorous practice of learning how to make a film, how to do theatre. We bring in dance faculty to teach them how to dances. We bring in visual artist and show them how to make a radio podcast, you name it. We try to train them and give them tools to become more effective a climate activists, to be true storytellers and to become climate leaders. The idea is that this is not a one semester long project. What I’m hoping is that they take these tools and they go back to whatever department they are in and they begin to work with their colleagues, fellow students, faculty and staff to become even better communicators with these tools. I think ultimately that’s going to be our future. That’s something that I’m investing a lot of time in. I think a lot of it comes from spending almost two decades as a journalist and as a historian as an activist fighting the coal industry and realizing we didn’t get very far. We didn’t stop mountaintop removal. My community is in ruins. I have three cousins working underground now who face horrific working conditions. That three people still die every day from black lung disease, a disease that affected so many people in my family. The fact yesterday our President signed a bill rolling back the last of little rules over river protection. We are not going to be able to save my community and central Appalachia until we begin to come up with ways to transition, what we call just transition. A way to regenerate our communities without waiting on some kind of magical wand to happen. That’s the kind of thing that I’m really excited about.
LB: Well, Jeff thank you so much for coming here and sharing your stories. And thank you so much for being alive here on this planet doing this work because we need more people like you.
JB: Thanks so much for having me, really appreciate it.

Are sustainability and social justice answers to the same question?
 
Without social justice and equity, can Appalachian State University, and the world, be sustainable? Hear what Bindu Kolli Jayne, chief diversity officer and associate vice chancellor for equity, diversity and compliance, shares with the university's director of sustainability. Jayne is fierce about making Appalachian's campus" look different,” and has made it her business to encourage and promote “a diverse array of voices everywhere on campus. We need to make diversity the normal;" she said, "not nice to have, need to have.”
 
 
Transcript
Intro: Define sustainability.
Odds are your definition is completely different from the next person’s.
Appalachian State University’s Director of Sustainability, Dr. Lee Ball sits down with his guests to explore the many ways in which sustainability affects our lives. This is Find Your Sustain Ability.
Lee Ball: Hi, Bindu thanks for coming to talk to me today.
Bindu Kolli Jayne: Sure, my pleasure.
LB: You have a really long title. Could you tell me what that is again?
BKJ: It is really long, my name tag is like a license plate that I wear. I am the Associate Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Compliance and the University’s Chief Diversity Officer as well as the University’s Title Nine Coordinator.
LB: Nice, you need a drop down menu on your nameplate.
BKJ: I really do. I know. On my business card it just says, “I do stuff.”
LB: So does mine. Today’s conversation is centered around one topic, the intersection between sustainability and social justice.
BKJ: I was jotting down notes last night about sustainability and social justice, just generally and separately, and one of the themes that came up was this idea that sustainability is very future looking and social justice is very now. When you look at it in that way, you almost think that they don’t connect because one is that we are hoping the future is better than the present and social justice is all about making someone’s current state better than it is now. Frankly, no one is going to focus on sustainability if they’re not in a situation that is fair and just now. Advocates for sustainability, I would argue, have to focus on social justice; otherwise, no one is going to be worried about the future if they don’t feel like they’re getting a fair shake now.
LB: Right, they’re so many people all over the world that are just struggling to make it to their next meal or figure out where they’re going to sleep. I think a lot of people think that is in faraway places, but it’s right here in our back yard in Watauga County and the High Country. People are really struggling and it’s sad that that reality exists and our students and staff face it and probably some of our faculty as well.
BKJ: Sustainability and social justice are also sort of answers to the same question: What do we want our future to look like? What do we need in order to have a future that we are proud of? I think people could answer that question with both sustainability ideals, and also with social justice ideals. I think if we start framing the conversation in that way the connections are really easy to make between social justice and sustainability.
LB: Can you talk about some of the social justice initiatives on campus?
BKJ: Sure, You mentioned before and it is very true, Boone is a very unique area. We are not only reflective of national conversations about race, economic disparities, gender disparities, but we are also this unique community that is very homogenous. I feel like every national conversation is heightened here; because there is such a small pool of people that are affected, the affect is almost exacerbated. Right now the conversations on campus have a lot to do with race, have a lot to do with gender and also have a lot to do with LGBT issues. Those three are not unique to Boone, but I think the conversations have increased in volume in the last… well I’ve only been here a year, so in the last year at least.
LB: I have definitely noticed an increase. It seems like people are aware that the, “people side” of sustainability, the equity part of sustainability is a priority. We have to celebrate our differences and we have to work together because we all have something to share, and we have a lot to contribute to making the world a thriving and more sustainable place. I’ve noticed over the past fourteen years working here at the university that recently in the past two or three years we have really put an emphasis… and it seems like people are really craving this discussion. Are you seeing that with students especially?
BKJ: Absolutely. Are you having a hard time making the connection with students between equity and sustainability or is it natural?
LB: It seems like they just get it. I mean it depends, but for the most part it seems like they can get there pretty fast if they don’t understand it to begin with then it doesn’t take long to lead them there and they will have that “a-ha” moment. It seems like they are right there with you and they are ready to do it. They people want to talk about these issues. I think that the millennials… is that where we are now? (laughing) What do we call the current group? I think that the millennials see each other as being one people. As I said before, they celebrate their differences. Of course, that is not always the case but it seems like a critical mass of people that are wanting to get along.
BKJ: In talking to students in particular, students who are really passionate about a particular social justice issue… I try to make the connection to other issues so they can see that their issue isn’t in a vacuum. It is connected very seamlessly to other issues in our community, but globally as well. Sometimes the response I get, and validly so, from students is, “Yeah but lets fix this first and then I’ll focus on the other stuff, on the global stuff, on the other stuff in our community the environmental effects. I want this micro issue resolved.” How would you respond? How do you respond to students making those [demands?]
LB: I would encourage them to explore their connection to sustainability and practice articulating your own definition of sustainability. I would tell them it’s okay if that is the area they want to work in. If you’re passionate about working in the area of sustainability, then find your spot and try to push the envelope and make a difference. It’s okay that you’re focusing on one issue just as long as you understand the connection to the environment, to sustainable economics, to culture and the many different facets related to sustainability. I would just encourage them to not worry that they’re not making that connection. Just say, “Go out there. Go for it and celebrate. This is great.” I would say harness their power. A lot of us that do this work tend to be a little idealistic by nature potentially. Those students often are too and they have a strong voice. It is something that if they have an interest then people will pay attention. So I was wondering if you could talk a little about cultural diversity and how it plays a role in innovation, creativity and exchange of ideas. It is something that when you have a college campus many cultures are colliding, so instead of marginalizing or encouraging people to be like everybody else… how can we, on this campus and this community, celebrate differences in culture?
BKJ: One of the main things that I like to talk about to frame any conversation about diversity that I have is that often times we talk about diversity as the benefit to those marginalized groups when they are given the opportunity to be included. It is so much more than that. It’s the majority groups that are not getting a full experience because they’re not being presented with ideas, cultures and experiences that are different from their own. By diversifying our campus or any community that we are talking about we are not just benefiting those groups that are now having the opportunity to be included. We are benefiting everyone because the more you have an opportunity for your ideas to be challenged and the more opportunity we have for new ideas to be part of the conversation, frankly the outcome will be for whatever the project is. Cultural diversity has benefits that far expand beyond just the people we are trying to include in the community. The ideas, the products, the research are all going to be better if the community is diverse.
LB: That is such a great point. In a community like this where we have a dominant culture it seems like we have these smaller groups that are different and they come in and have so much to contribute. How can we influence “the majority?” How do we get them to pay attention and get them to see that there are other ideas and other ways of knowing and thinking and relating to the world. They have been in their box maybe since elementary school, and they come to Appalachian and they probably don’t think they are expected to change, they’re just going to class and doing their thing.
BKJ: It’s going to seem like a trite answer but we need to make it normal. It shouldn’t be a nice to have, it’s a need to have. If we want to be competitive, frankly you’re not going to be if you’re just hearing the same ideas you’ve been hearing for the last twenty years of your life. The world is moving way too fast for that to be sustainable, so we need to… I think by making it normal and instead of just talking about it and instead of just saying, “Hey everyone, having a diverse community is going to benefit you in these ways,” we need to show people the boon of having a diverse community. Highlight schools that are doing it better than we are. Highlight areas that are doing it better than we are. Show the innovation and the collaboration that those communities have. It is not hard to find examples of it. They are everywhere. Any community, frankly, that’s being touted for success in any endeavor — the fact that their underlying diversity had changed I would bet money is a major factor in that.
LB: Right, it seems like we need to help people to be comfortable being uncomfortable because a lot of people are just in their daily life and are associating with a lot of the same people. How do we stretch them out of that mindset? We could look at other campuses that are doing great things as a model, but how do we bring that here? Are we doing exchanges or are we doing roundtable discussions? Are we doing big events in Sanford Mall? I’m just trying to think outside the box here.
BKJ: Yeah, recruiting more people from diverse backgrounds is important, but we can’t forget the community that we already have here. By fostering the community of diverse scholars that we have here…like attracts like. If we foster them and make them successful and show that Boone is a place that you can thrive more people will want to come here. I think making sure their voices are heard in every area in the classrooms, in policy making, in decision making, in programs, in speakers series. Making sure that a diverse array of voices is everywhere will make Boone and Appalachian seem like a place where more people who don’t look like the majority of the members of our community would feel welcome.
LB: Yeah, it seems like about every decision we make here on campus we have to be wearing different lenses we have different goals and priorities and interests. I put on my sustainability glasses when I think about a purchase or when I think about any kind of decision within our office or around campus that includes social justice and includes sustainability. As long as we are remembering that priority in every decision then I think what you just said will continue to filter into the fabric of the university on a deeper and deeper level. We just need to demand it, I guess.
BKJ: You bring up a good point where diversity isn’t an add-on. It will make the decision better. If you are thinking about diversity of thought or diversity of experience as you’re making a decision about a speaker to bring on campus or readings to use in your classroom you will have a better outcome. It isn’t a checkbox. You are making a better decision by making that a variable in your decision making process. Getting that out there will be really helpful.
LB: Yeah, so we have spoken about diversity of groups, races, religious beliefs, socioeconomic backgrounds, sexual orientation, gender identity, but what about biological diversity and how it relates? Is that anything you have ever spent any time thinking about, how that part of the diversity realm intersects with this conversation?
BKJ: That’s not my wheelhouse, but we can start talking about it now. So what do you mean by biological diversity?
LB: The variety of living systems in an environment, the variety of species in an environment, biological diversity is just another aspect of diversity. I just thought we could talk about it a little bit.
BKJ: I’m going to sort of go around the question, but I think it gets to it. A lot of our students here have grown up either in the Boone area or have grown up in areas that are very similar to Boone. I think making sure that they have the opportunity to experience areas that look different, feel different, have different interactions that have different people, different systems, all of that is incredibly important.
LB: Right, a great answer.
BKJ: I hope so, thanks. (laughing)
LB: It basically is the diverse array of ecological and human cultures that the sustaining and resilient world is built upon. That’s another definition of diversity. I wonder if we could talk a little bit about the socio-economic piece. I just know a lot of people are struggling in our area. It is a tourist area in addition to being a university town. We rely on tourism and the service industry. We don’t have a lot of other types of industries in the high country, specifically in Watauga County. The ski industry is obviously a big industry that is seasonal. I know a lot of people struggle and you may hear about it some in your day-to- day work, and I was wondering if that was something we could discuss a little.
BKJ: Socio-economic disparities, I think, is probably one of the areas of diversity that is such a clear link to sustainability. When there is high disparities, so people who have a lot, they’re using more of our resources whatever those resources are that we may be talking about. Then there are people who have very little and are struggling to get by, they don’t have the luxury to think about making the best decisions for the future preservation of resources. They’re in the day-to-day “I just need to get by” [mode.] When we keep making that disparity wider and wider, we are moving further and further from our ideals of sustainability. Socioeconomic disparity and diversity and frankly just underlining economic fairness has such a clear link to sustainability.
LB: The fairness part is something that I resonate with. I always feel like that if something is going to be sustainable a relationship between you and your food, or you and your work, or you and your energy systems, then it has to be a win-win. You have to benefit and they have to benefit. As long as it’s relatively balanced and equal, then you have something that is sustainable and it can potentially thrive and be resilient in the future. When people are broke, like you said, they’re not making the best choice for the environment and also they’re own health. We see food deserts here in Watauga County and the High Country. People are shopping at convenience stores because it is convenient and it’s cheap. That is really disheartening and I don’t know how we can really educate our students, our staff, and our faculty to think about figuring out ways to do better. It’s really difficult. The behavioral piece of sustainability is a big challenge for us. In our office, it’s something that we deal with every day. How do you get someone to change their mindset and to make a different decision and open their minds or hearts and think about a person, a food choice, or a recycling behavior differently? That is really tough for us and it is probably something that you deal with on a regular basis — trying to get people to be open minded and less judgmental so that they can benefit from our differences on a cultural and social justice level. Can you speak to that, kind of the behavioral?
BKJ: Unfortunately there is not a one-size fits all in having that conversation with people. For certain groups I will make a plea to their idealism and ask, “Don’t we want to be in a more just, fair place where everyone has the opportunity to succeed?” That works for a subset of people and that resonates for a subset of people, but for another subset and, validly so, that doesn’t… that sort of Pollyanna idealism argument isn’t going to resonate with them. You can make that connection to “your life will be effected, you individually will be effected by this continuing disparity.” So when we were talking about the socio-economic disparity and the effect that has on the choices made by the poorest members of our community, that effects everyone. When the poorest group of our community uses resources in a way, and validly so on their part, that doesn’t think about the sustainability of it, the effect that it has on the community, the effect that it has on the environment. Everyone else is effected by those decisions. By bringing that poorest subset up to just a living standard, a fairer way of living, the decisions that they make are no longer influenced solely by needing to survive, but are able to be influenced by other factors that cause them to make better decisions.
LB: In your position as the diversity officer of the university, if you had any kind of grand big bold ideas, what would they be?
BKJ: Our campus would look different. The people on our campus would look different. There would be less focus on selling the importance of diversity and we would just do it. People from different places that look different, that have different experiences would be on this campus.
LB: That would be great. I could imagine us having a lot of ideas that are merging and I could see us as a thought leader within the university system. I wonder if we could create a smaller version of that somehow in conference. Using the people we have on campus and putting together an event where we could create that on a smaller scale. I know we have the diversity festival and different events. Is there something that we are already doing that I am not aware of or is that something that we could do?
BKJ: So one of the things about those one-off events is that it is great for the day and then…
LB: It’s gone
BKJ: Yeah, the effect can be sort of fleeting. This year we are trying to look at those programs in a different sort of way and make them more sustainable. Some of the things that we are doing and thinking about with that lens… we are doing a sustain dialogue institute. Students will form groups that will meet throughout the year to talk about social justice issues and the groups themselves ideally will be diverse groups so that the conversations and the connections made aren’t a onetime conversation, but will sustain throughout the year. Hopefully relationships will be formed and new ways of thinking will be achieved and new perspectives will be shared. That’s the goal of something like that. We are trying to revamp something as basic as our mentoring program. Right now, we have a lot of programs around campus that have upper classmen mentoring first year students which is great, and it makes a lot of sense, particularly first year students of color being mentored by upperclass students of color. That is a great partnership and relationship we want to be made. The addition that we are doing this year is that those upper class students are then connected to professional mentors. Importantly those professional mentors are going to be connected to those upper class students not just based on whether or not those professionals are people of color. We are going to be very intentional about asking those upper class mentors about “what do you want to do? What do you want to do after college? Where do you want to work? Where do you want to go to graduate school? What are your interests?” So that those connections are made, connections that are made on more variables than just we identify with each other because we are both people of color are going to be sustainable. Those are going to be the relationships that lead to internships, job opportunities, and graduate school recommendations. Those are the connections we want to make.
LB: Will those mentors be both on campus and off campus?
BKJ: Yeah, exactly. Those mentors really are going to rely on what the students need. The upperclassmen will be filling out a fulsome survey about what do you want do, where do you want go and where do you want to work? Depending on what those responses are, our job as educators is to go out and hit the pavement and match our students with people who could really help them.
LB: Could you tell us a little about your kind of day-to-day work in your office and what your responsibilities are here at the university?
BKJ: No day is the same because I wear a couple of hats, which I think every administrator at this university wears a couple of hats. My whole title is Associate Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Compliance and the University’s Chief Diversity Officer and IX Coordinator so a couple of different categories. I think the overarching thing is all of my days are all about meeting with students, faculty, and staff that often times are not having their best days. They’re having an experience that is making them feel unwelcome or, on the title IX side, they have experienced some form of sexual violence. My job I see as trying to… when you’re having a really bad day and everything seems overwhelming trying to provide a clear path to some sort of resolution. That’s sort of the overarching thing that I do and besides the meetings with students, faculty, and staff who are having really bad days, I’m trying to also put into place policies and practices that mitigate the effects of those really bad days for our community members.
LB: Your job, from my perspective seems kind of intense. It’s heavy at times emotionally I’m sure. Do you have any stories or any experiences that are really upbeat and positive that you could share with us that you would maybe want to celebrate?
BKJ: Yeah, every day. I get to work with students who are incredibly passionate about social justice issues and frankly want to change the world. So that’s really exciting to work with a student every day that is going to have an “a-ha” moment. It is exciting to work with a student that is going to do something or make a connection that they are super excited about. If I could take one, one millionth of ownership for setting them on that path that’s a pretty good career.
LB: That’s great. Where were you before you came to Appalachian State?
BKJ: I was at the University of Delaware for about five years.
LB: Okay. What was your role there?
BKJ: I guess either me or the arena that I’m in it’s always a moving thing. So I started at UD as legal counsel, then I sort of morphed into this equity and diversity work and then morphed into the title IX work and then pushed it all together. Then I was the Director of Policy Compliance and Equity at UD.
LB: Concerning your legal counsel work, were you always drawn to equity and social issues with students?
BKJ: I think that’s also why I’m so excited working in higher education. The spark for me for social justice work was ignited in college. That has sustained throughout my career. To see that in students and to know that that spark can often not be fleeting, but change the direction of their lives is really exciting. If I had to pick a moment of why I engaged in this work, is when I was in college I worked at the Civil Rights Project and the civil rights project had two tracks. During my time working there I worked on both sides of the fence: one side was research side everyone working there had their PhD and we are doing research in civil rights issues and social justice issues. The other side of it is people who all had their JDs and were working on the legal advocacy side of it. I decided to go to law school because I thought the JD side of the house seemed really cool, so that set me on the path to doing this work.
LB: I love hearing about people’ s stories and how they got to where they are now. Are you teaching a class?
BKJ: Nope.
LB: No? I’d love to get you in a classroom.
BKJ: Awesome, I’d love to. I mean I have taught, I’m just not teaching right at this minute.
LB: I’m sure you have a lot of free time to dedicate to a class.
BKJ: I love that part. That’s so fun. Anytime I get to engage with students, I eat it up.
LB: We are going to have to look for multiple different ways to get you into the classroom. I think that hopefully people listening to this podcast will invite you to come talk to their class. There are so many opportunities on campus to speak to classes and we will have to explore that a little more.
BKJ: Yeah, you mentioned that my job can be pretty intense and it can be and that can be sort of draining, but the more opportunities I have to engage with students about what they want to do just refills that inspiration tank pretty quickly.
LB: Do you have students that just pop in or wander in your office that have great ideas? It happens to us all the time. Students will be like, “Hey, have you ever thought about composting on campus?” and we are like “Yeah, we’ve thought about that once or twice.” Do you have similar encounters?
BKJ: Yes! One of the negatives of having such a jammed-packed schedule of meeting after meeting after meeting is that I’m not just in my office and available as often as I’d like to be. When I am, then yes. I have students come in. I mean I have a couple of students later on in my schedule today to talk about different ideas they have about how we can do things better. How we can make the LGBT center more inclusive or how we can support students that are homeless or how we can support students that are first generation [college students]. All of those ideas are awesome.
LB: Let’s talk about the students being homeless a little bit. I have encountered them in the past. I’ve known graduate students living in the woods. What are some of your experiences related to that beyond the classic notion of couch surfing?
BKJ: I think we need to look at homelessness as so much more than just not having a permanent address. At the threshold we want all of our students to be successful. We want all of our students to find an endeavor during their four or five years here that they feel passionate about. That’s a lot to expect of someone who is worried about where they are going to stay. Are they going to be safe at night? Forget expecting of a student, that’s a lot to expect from anybody. If we as educators want our students to be successful we have to support the whole student. If a student is homeless, the bulk of their psychic energy is spent worrying about that. If we can just support them and help them to find resources to connect them to housing options. If we can offer them something on campus, if we can make sure that they know there are people that can help them figure things out so they’re not just flapping in the wind on their own. I think that goes really far.
LB: They’re a lot of people that we are not seeing out there. We are not seeing the homeless, we are not seeing the sexually abused. How do we see them? How do we encourage people to take a deep breath and have the opportunity, and maybe listen or put themselves out there as someone who could be a person that someone may approach and talk about struggles they are having?
BKJ: That’s a great question. I think the first step is to be self-reflective and make sure you are a safe place for a people to feel comfortable sharing with. Rather than you or me or other offices on this campus traipsing out students who are from whatever marginalized group we are talking about to share their experiences, we need to make sure that the community that they are sharing those experiences with are empathetic and are ready to hear their full stories. I think that requires a level of self-reflection on everyone’s part. The other thing that I would say is, those students are here. I would encourage our students to… I did this exercise — it might have even been in high school — that sort of stayed with me. This exercise of if something really awesome happened to you, list the seven people you would tell first. Then, on the flip side, if something really awful happened to you, list the seven people you would tell first. Often times there will be a lot of overlap in those two list, but take those list of fourteen people and really look at them. Look at that list and see if there is, on a very first level, people of different races, different ethnicities, different experiences, and different ages. If they’re not that’s a really good sign that you’re world view may not be as broad as it could be. The best way to do that is for you to go out and to engage with other experiences rather than waiting for people who are different from you to enter your world. You enter theirs. College campus is a great way to do that. We have hundreds of clubs and organizations and events. You mentioned it earlier: be comfortable being uncomfortable. Go to events where you don’t know a single person, go there meet someone, tell them your story. Then they will be more comfortable to tell you theirs.
Outro: Find Your Sustain Ability is a production of the University Communications department at Appalachian State. It’s hosted by our Director of Sustainability, Dr. Lee Ball.
The show is produced by Troy Tuttle and Megan Hayes. Dave Blanks records, edits and mixes. Pete Montaldi and Alex Waterworth are our web team. Find more episodes of this and other interesting podcasts at appalachianmagazine.org or check us out on iTunes. Just search for Appalachian State University under podcasts.