RESISTANCE: reclaiming an American tradition, Iowa City, Iowa, February 22, 2018

- [Janet Lyness] Hi, good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for today's presentation by Jeff Biggers, writer, author, performer, and educator, who will speak to us today on Resistance, Reclaiming an American Tradition. I'm Janet Lyness, ICFRC Board Member, and host for today's program. I am pleased and honored to announce that 2018 is our 35th anniversary for hosting community luncheon forums to address topics of international interest. We thank our members, our volunteers, and our interns for making these forums possible since 1983, the last year that Robert Ray served as governor of Iowa. Makes you somewhat nostalgic, doesn't it? I want to acknowledge our university and community sponsors, the University of Iowa's International Programs, the University of Iowa's Honors Program, the University of Iowa Center for Public Policy, and the Stanley U of I Foundation's Support Organization for their financial support. And I thank today's special sponsors Paul Weller, and Sara Rynes, and Joe Wegman. I also thank City Channel 4 for professionally recording our programs for Cablecast on City Channel 4 and 118-2, and the U of I Library's digital archives. At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce Jeff Biggers. Jeff Biggers is the American Book Award-winning author of several works of history, memoir, journalism, and theater, including the United States of Appalachia, praised by Citizen Times as a masterpiece of popular history, and State Out of the Union, selected by Publishers Weekly as a Top 10 Social Science Book in 2012. Biggers is the founder of the Climate Narrative Project, an arts and advocacy project for schools, universities, and organizations. From 2014 to 2017, he served as the Sustainability Writer-in-Residence at the University of Iowa. He also served as the Campbell Stripling Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Wesleyan College in Georgia. Jeff Biggers' Resistance reframes today's battles as a continuum of a vibrant American tradition, chronicling the courageous and often squabbling resistance movements that ensured the benchmarks of our democracy, and served on the front lines of the American Revolution, the defense of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the defeat of fascism during World War II, and various civil rights movements. Resistance is a provocative consideration of the American Revolution in its unfolding promises. It brings to life early Native American, African-American, and immigrant struggles, women's rights, and the pioneering environmental justice movement and their presence today. Biggers shows us how a republic of resistance has served as a de facto truth and reconciliation commission for our history, especially in times when our nations and its leaders need to be held accountable. So please join me in welcoming Jeff Biggers. Thank you. - [Jeff Biggers] Thank you so much, Janet. My father had been a county prosecutor at one time, in Southern Illinois where we're from, and he was also the local preacher. So can you imagine growing up with that? Very difficult to argue with your parents when they can take you to court. And not only that, my dad, if he couldn't get you on truth, he would get you on righteousness. I really appreciate you introducing me. Let them call me a rebel, and welcome. Oh my God, I'm reaching that middle age where I can't read with my glasses or without. Let them call me a rebel and welcome. I feel no concern for it. But I should suffer the misery of devils, right, to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to the one in charge, the one whose character is that of a soddish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. And believe it or not, he's not talking to the current occupant in the White House, the man whose name we can't mention today. Thank God I'm in Iowa City, I can say that. I got a problem. I'm sorry, Ed, but I'm going to resist here right off the bat. I can't use this microphone. I can't use this microphone! And Mike Carbury knows why, it's all his fault. He's the one who brought me into town many years ago. You see, I come from the coal fields. And I saw my 200 year old farm strip mined into oblivion. I grew up with a grandfather who could barely tell me stories because of black lung disease, and I read today in the New York Times that we have now found the worst cluster of black lung disease in years in West Virginia, a needless disease diagnosed in 1831. And 60% of this electricity is coming from my coal fields. 60%, and of course we can't wait for Warren Buffet and mid-America to eventually turn that into wind. You know, within a few years, we've been promised 85% of our electricity will come from wind, and that's amazing, and that's something we should applaud. But right now, 60% comes from coal. Yesterday, in 24 cities on the East Coast, we broke a record of temperatures. It was 76 degrees in Central Park. But more important to me, it was 45 degrees higher in Alaska. And yet we burn coal. I can't use this microphone today, because there is, it's not like it goes here and just goes into a little fairy behind the wall. There's little Peter Pan and Tinkerbell going, making this electricity for us. I know exactly where this comes. Where does our electricity come from? That's the first question I ask all of our honor students who come to Iowa. Where does your electricity come from? And very few people know. I'm not going to ask you. But it probably comes from Muscatine, from the grid, and it's burning coal, coal ash. Three coal miners will die tonight from black lung disease in 2018. And we spent $300 billion last year in tax dollars dealing with extreme climate issues. And yet, we burn coal. Resistance. Why resistance? Well Thomas Paine, who wrote that great quote at the beginning, Thomas Paine, of course, said it's petitioned and resistance. Resistance. And of course, resistance now, we read about it every day in the newspaper. We see the Kardashians with their Pepsi bottles being part and leaders of the resistance. We see in the headlines that Google and every other corporation is going to lead the resistance, that Hillary now is going to be the leader of the resistance. And I think, is that what Tom Paine had in mind? I mean, when I think of resistance, of course, I just don't speak about it glibly. My children are Italian citizens, from my wife's country, and we've just returned from her sabbatical and we go to the Piazza and they talk to "Di no ne no no" and they know the Resistenza, of course, referred to an armed revolt against occupation who took on the fascists and the remnants in the civil war. That resistance was violent and bloody and destroyed a country, and saved a country. When we think of resistance, of course, I think of Sophie Scholl, because today is the anniversary that a young college student defied the Nazis and called on her fellow students to say, do you know how your grandchildren will look at you, to know that you have done nothing to stop Hitler? And on this day, in 1945, that 21 year old girl was guillotined. And she said Oh, but what a sunny day, if my death can bring awareness to what we've done in Nazi Germany. When I think of resistance, I think of Nelson Mandela of my generation. I think when, in 1985, I was 22, and a college student. And I sat in a jail in Washington, as part of a campaign to blockade the doors of the South African embassy, because our president, whose name will remain unmentioned, had said Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, and he supported apartheid. When I fly, I still fly into National Airport in DC. I can't mention the name of that person who supported apartheid. And there we were in 1985, and I'm sitting in the jail cell with a lot of students and with my boss. At that point, I was going to night school at City College in New York City, and I worked for Riverside Church in the Upper West Side, and there was this man, William Sloane Coffin. Of course, I realized at that point, if you really wanted to be important, you needed three names, you know, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel don't-know-his-middle-name Hawthorne. And Bill Coffin, of course, was this larger-than-life Yale chaplain who'd come to Riverside. He was amazing, he had studied classical piano at Boulanger in Paris, and the war broke out and he became a secret agent, and then he came back and he had his illumination after the war. But he became one of the first CIA agents that nobody knew about. As he was going to Yale, and then he became this great theologian, one of the great trainers of the Peace Corps. And I'm sitting in jail and I'm restless, and I'm thinking, my God, Nelson Mandela has been in prison longer than I had been on this planet. It was hopeless. Isn't it stupid to be protesting right now, to think that we could block the doors of the South African embassy? And Bill, who had this great, you know, New York accent, he's Reverend Sloan in Doonesberry, and he's just like, you don't understand, Biggers. He said hopelessness adapts, but hope resists. And Bill had learned that from his college students, because in 1961, when it was college students from Fisk, and all these great historically black colleges who began the sit-ins, who began the freedom riots, that Bill, as a Yale chaplain, got on that bus, in 1961, one of the first riots, and he went down, and he was beaten up and arrested in Alabama. And here was this big guy, here was this secret agent, here was this man who had been one of the founders of the CIA. Here was a man who loved the fight, who could brawl. And he wanted to go fight back. And it was the college students that told Bill, huh-uh. Hope resist non-violently. And it was the students that began his incredible journey as one of our great speakers for nonviolence in this country. And that was an amazing thing of resistance, of what the students have taught us. I think all of us have seen by now that extraordinary, extraordinary, God, you guys are all looking awfully serious out there, you know. Let's loosen up here a little bit. We saw that extraordinary video of that girl named Emma Gonzales, you know, from Parkland, you know this incredible, as anybody not seen that video? Okay, we'll talk later about this. She's got a shaved head. Every morning on Twitter, she shaves her head, and she's become quite this figure, but she gave this extraordinary speech that has been shared 30 million times at this point. She was on CNN last night at the Town Hall, and she was extraordinary. She was a little flippant, but she was extraordinary. And Emma, I'll never forget, she's there, and I'm watching this with my kid, who also walked out in Iowa City. He's a high school student. And Emma said, we are going to change the laws because we have Tinker vs. Des Moines on our side. And I thought, holy cow. I actually used a different word, but we're on TV, so I can't use that word. I said this kid just invoked Iowa students. How cool that a 17 year old child understands the history of resistance, and that it came out of Iowa, in Des Moines. I remember, well, I wasn't even born yet. There was the great family named The Tinkers in Des Moines, and they wanted to protest the Vietnam War. And they put on a black armband, a 13 year old child. And her school said, nuh uh, you can't do that. And she went back the next day and they suspended her from class. And the school announced you could not protest the Vietnam War. And so the student's family took them to court. Meanwhile, the kids, who are so smart, said, well, the heck with you. If I can't wear a black armband, the Tinker kids wore black for the whole school year. That's kind of why I'm wearing black. Also, I didn't have anything else to wear. And they took it to the Supreme Court. And they won their case. The Supreme Court said our constitutional rights to protest do not end at the school front doors. And so here's Emma Gonzales down in Florida, saying she has the law of resistance on her side. Isn't that an amazing court case, think about it, in Des Moines, we're invoking. We come now back to Tom Paine. Tom Paine, there are no statues to Tom Paine. There are 1,123 Confederate statues in this country. Think about that. There are statues to people at Iowa City I've never even heard of. In Southern Illinois, we don't even have one single statue to a coal miner. But there are no statues of Tom Paine, with the exception of one little place off of an exit in New Jersey, and New Rochelle, in front of his home. The man who coined a very simple phrase, the United States of America, a man who galvanized our nation at the very moment when we were ready to give up who we were. You know, Tom Paine came as an immigrant to remind us that America is best seen through the eyes of immigrants. And it's immigrants who always will save us. This man, he was a failure. He had lost two marriages. He was a failure in debt. He was someone who couldn't keep a job. He was someone who essentially left England as the dregs, the ingrates, someone who wouldn't make it with today's future immigration policy. Or perhaps he would. He comes to America and he's lifted off the boat. He's picked up typhoid, and the only reason he survives is he had a letter from Benjamin Franklin, who he had kind of conjoled and met by chance in London, as an introduction. And he gets to America and he can't believe what's going on. He's not terribly a political person. He's someone who has left his Quaker faith, and someone who's trying to understand what this New World was about. It was a float of resistance in Philadelphia. And there was this new generation of young bloods who couldn't deal with this group that just wouldn't budge, who wanted to pass some sort of reform. People like John Hancock and George Washington. Who even after our American patriots were shot down in Lexington in 1775, here's John Hancock, and we all learn about John Hancock and the Declaration of Independence, but we don't realize that John Hancock, of course who presided over our Congress, had signed a lot of awful declarations, including one in 1775 right after the gunning down of our American patriots in Lexington and Concord, that he was willing to offer an olive branch. That please don't misunderstand, we want to stay part of England, that we would never rebel. And Tom Paine couldn't believe that. He's like, what are you doing? How do you expect to win your independence? And he realized, at some point, you have to pick sides. And the shooting of American patriots in Lexington and Concord, a brutal shooting, was what changed him. It says there is a moment in history where you must decide, just like a shooting at Parkland High School, or a shooting at Columbine, or a shooting of Gabby Giffords. I had the misfortune of being the second journalist to go to the hospital for Gabby, because I happened to be visiting my parents in Tucson that day. And I realized nothing has happened. So Tom Paine said we have to pick a fight. That's who you are as an American. Do you know that in 1619, when we had Jamestown, the Brits, of course, brought in immigrants. And of course we have to realize our country was not founded by the British empire. Our country was established in Jamestown by a corporation, the English merchants, who had a contract. That we founded this nation on capitalism. We founded this nation on companies who have been corporate enablers of authority. And in 1619, this British company, this English company, realized they needed different immigrants. They brought in the Poles, who are much better glassblowers and artisans. But they didn't give them the rights to vote. And in 1619, think about it, the Poles rebelled and went on strike and walked out. Almost since the first imprint of a foreign figure on this American soil, we've had this resistance. And within days, the Poles won the right to vote. And of course, the 20 Africans who had been brought in as slaves, led by Angelo, didn't have that right. But they began their resistance movements immediately by refusing to work, by running away, by soon creating their own rebellions. And of course, within three years, the indigenous people in the area began their attacks. And this resistance has continued. And that's what Tom Paine wanted to talk about. Tom Paine said we have to see resistance as an agency of renewal. We have it in our hands to create a new world. That resistance is not, as the Department of Defense says, to confront and disrupt civil authority. No, that resistance is an organic response to our inalienable rights of who we are. We are having to fight off an attack on our democracy right now, of authoritarianism. We're having to fight off the corpulent enablers who are allowing these kind of policies to happen. That they are attacking us from outside. We're not disrupting civil authority. We are making sure that we the people have a voice in the public commons to protect our inalienable rights. That is what Tom Paine said, that this was who we were. We had a natural right to resistance. A natural right to resistance. He was fed up with the complacency of these Americans. Complacency of so many people. I think often we think that on July 4, 1776, we declared our rebellion, the Declaration of Independence, and the next day, you know, we went to the mall to go shopping, 'cause there was a three day sale. And we don't realize that the revolution went on for years and it went bad. You know, there were secret negotiations to give the North to the Americans and the South to the Brits. And just think what would have happened to country music if that had happened. - [Audience Member] Good one. - [Jeff Biggers] That was all right? - [Audience Member] Yeah. - [Jeff Biggers] I've used that one for years. You know, I'm from the South and just... And we had these leaders who were willing to throw in the towel. And we had poor George Washington, who was just incredibly incompetent, just a really poor military leader who just couldn't fight for the life of him. He was a land speculator. And I don't even want to go into George Washington, although I'm going to trash him in about five minutes from now. And Paine said, we need to galvanize who we are. That complacency. And that complacency bothers me here in Iowa City, 'cause I'm with my family right now, right? We're all together in this. And yet I'm speaking at this wretched microphone that's powered by coal. And my dear friend Jim Hansen is coming tomorrow to speak on climate change. Jim, our great NASA climatologist, that good ol' farm boy from Iowa. He's been very generous to me and my work. Jim Hansen came down to our coal fields, I'll never forget, eight years ago and got arrested with us hillbillies, to try to stop mountain top removal strip mining. Here's this government scientist who said, I cannot hide in the subterfuge of academia. I cannot go write another paper about climate change if I don't come and get arrested with you. A man who gave up his position. A man who wrote an extraordinary document to his grandchildren. And I keep thinking of Jim, you know, just telling me, Jeff, those coal trains are death trains. And every time I'd go out toward hills or I take my dog to take a walk and I see the trains come by and the ships and trains of coal coming from Wyoming and coming up from Illinois, going off to Chicago, going all throughout, I'm thinking of the death trains. And of course, Jim was held accountable. We can't talk about death trains within the historical context of what happened in the Holocaust. But thousands of people have died in our coal fields. And our future is facing that same sense of calamity. When you have millions of people who now are climate refugees. In Italy, the most dangerous border now is not between Mexico and Arizona, but is the African immigrants fleeing desertification and drought, coming into Italy. 4,000 died last year in the boats, we think, we don't even know, trying to get to Sicily. And I'm thinking of Tom Paine. What would Tom Paine do, knowing that 60% of our electricity comes from coal. What would Tom Paine do if he knew four blocks from here, we had a coal fire plant. Probably the last big tin school to burn coal. And none of us did anything last year. When the university president said, we're going to close it down in eight years, and we gave him a beautiful headline, we're going to burn coal for eight years and we're going to pat you on the back for that, as if that's some sort of achievement. When we can easily flip the switch tomorrow. It's equipped to go to natural gas, which is just as bad. But we simply don't need it. Ball State University, instead of building and putting $100 million into a football stadium, decided to go to geothermal. And so Ball State, of course, is this amazing school that operates on geothermal now. And so the answers were there. That was my wife saying move it along man. She smiles but she's wicked. And nevertheless, she persists. It's so funny, Tom Paine published a young poet in 1775. Her name is Phyllis Wheatley. Phyllis Wheatley, of course, was an enslaved African, who wrote this masterpiece. And she wrote a letter to George Washington and said, for every action, let the goddess guide. It is women who be at the front of the resistance. And Washington wrote her back a letter saying, thank you so much, I'm your humble servant. We forget, of course, that women like Katherine Goddard published the Declaration of Independence. She was a defiant publisher, someone who had been a journalist, taken over from her husband and family, who gave, at the bottom of John Hancock's name on the Declaration of Independence, Katherine Goddard, Baltimore, come and get me. Incredible act of resistance of women. So what did Tom Paine do? He was worried that we were about ready to lose. In 1776, things were getting bad. We had massive mutinies. We had no more soldiers. The army had collapsed. The South, don't even talk about the South. George Washington could not do what Hannibal did, and to raise an army. He could not do what Eisenhower did, with great speeches. And so he asked Tom Paine to do something. And so he had been on the front line. He put his musket aside. He cut back through enemy territory from New Jersey to get back to Pennsylvania. He couldn't believe what had happened, of course, that the Paoli Tavern had seen a massacre of American patriots. And the irony of the Paoli Tavern was not lost on Tom Paine. Paoli, Paoli, it wasn't just an Italian restaurant where you got pizza. The Paoli Tavern where American patriots were gunned down was named after Pasquale Paoli, probably one of the most famous people in America. He was the leader from Corsica, because Corsica, in 1755, won their independence from France, created a congress, and published their first constitution 20 years before the Americans. And so our sense of American exceptionalism, we're the first country with a declaration of independence, as Number 45 had said at the United Nations, is not true. We are following in the tradition of many incredible movements around the country. These are the times that try men's souls. I'll never forget, I read this onstage at Writers Resist last year. And a young woman from Gambia, Gambian-American, she goes to City High, and she stood up and interrupted me and she said, man, these are the times that always try women's souls. These are the times that try our souls, let's say. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country. But he, or she, who stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of all men and women. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. Paine began to write his pamphlets called The Crisis. And they became great bestsellers. They were read around the campfire. And of course the great mythology is that George Washington read this to his troops, and then they won their famous battle crossing the Delaware back into New York and New Jersey. We don't know if that's true, but that's not what's important. What's important, where's my creative writing friend? Oh there he is, okay. What's important is we used the role of writers to galvanize the nation. That John Adams said it was not the sword of Washington, but it was the pen of Thomas Paine that won our American Revolution. And John Adams hated Thomas Paine, 'cause he was a commoner. I'm going to finish with this. Every issue we're dealing with today, Thomas Paine dealt with, that is at the root of who we are as a nation. Because next week, hundreds of kids on our campus are going to be living under a state of constant fear. Our children, who are covered under DACA. Because the monstrosity, this toupee in the White House and the Congress refuse to look at immigration reform, refuse to allow 1.8 million Americans, kids who are brought here as children, the right to stay in our country without living without fear. And so you as students on campus will have to decide, what are you going to do? Tom Paine talked about our nation as the great refuge and asylum for all mankind, for him as an immigrant, as a refugee. What are you going to do next week when your fellow students lose their protection under DACA and now are wanted as outlaws? In 1801, Thomas Jefferson went before Congress and said, we have made a mistake. We need to make this country an asylum for all immigrants. What are we going to do? Are we going to correct that mistake? Just like Eleanor Roosevelt told us in Arizona in 1943, when she went to the Japanese interment camps and said, I can't believe we have done this. We must have undo the mistakes of the past. Next week, we will struggle with our freedom of the press. As a journalist, I've been called now an enemy of the people by the man who will remain unnamed. And I think, well, big deal, man. We've been called the enemy of the people forever, especially by people like Stalin. But in 1798, John Adams was so threatened by the media, by fake news, that they passed the Sedition Act in 1798 which said if you criticize the president or the Congress, you can be put into prison. And they imprisoned a whole series of incredible journalists, because John Adams didn't like being called His Rotundity. And the journalist defied them, and they kept publishing. Men and women editors in Philadelphia and New York, and this really nasty newspaper that was wonderful in Philadelphia called The Aurora. And they went after him and they said come and get us. And they were on the run and they couldn't stop them. And finally, the country woke up and rebelled, and Jefferson was swept in in the 1800 election. And we threw out the Sedition Act. And it was Jefferson who said it was the journalist who led the resistance in this country. That's what we have to think about. A third issue, of course, is something as dear to our heart as Black Lives Matter. And this is where we have to think about George Washington a slave owner. We have to think about George Mason, the forgotten founder, who was also a slave owner but had said, slavery makes us all tyrants. And George Mason refused to sign our Constitution, even though he's the person who put happiness into the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He said there cannot be happiness if we're slave owners, nor the enslaved. And we only compromised our Constitution to appease the corpulent enablers of the South, of South Carolina, the cotton growers, the rice growers, and the factories that were using their cotton in the North. In 1789, think about it, George Washington is the president in New York City. And he's making this wonderful speech about freedom. And there, watching him, is Oney Judge, who's the slave to his wife. And Oney hears about this freedom. and eventually Washington moves from New York City to Philadelphia, for the second residency for the president. And in 1796, Oney realized, she overheard at dinner, that George Washington's wife, and I'm blanking on her name, what was her name? - [Audience Member] Martha. - [Jeff Biggers] Martha, of course. - [Audience Member] Martha Washington. Martha had told her niece, I'm going to give you a slave as your wedding gift. She was a dour slave, meaning she would be in perpetuate you know what I'm trying to say. And Oney heard this, and she was in Philadelphia, where you were not allowed to own or bring in slaves, except for the members of Congress. And they had to move them every six months. And so George Washington would pretend to go back to Virginia every six months to move the slaves in, and then move them back out to circumvent the law. And Oney, as they were eating one night, slipped away, got on a boat, and she went up to New Hampshire. George Washington was furious. He put into play the Fugitive Act of 1790. He went after her, he sent emissaries. He threatened New Hampshire senators and governors. But they mocked him, saying, you're the president. How on earth can you go after a slave now? They went after her, even after he was no longer president. He sent his son-in-law. He tried to kidnap her. He held full-page ads to go after her, because he had lost so many other slaves who had run away, including his favorite cook called Hercules. And Oney Judge defied him to the bitter end. To where she finally, as she was on her death bed, had her first interview. She said, I am poor, I have nothing, but I have my freedom. That was the American resistance who said Black Lives Matter. And finally, I'm going to end with our environment. I wrote this book, which will be on sale for 19.99 at Prairie Lights on July 4th. But you can pre-order now. And please do it at Prairie Lights. I did a reading last night for another book, and Prairie Lights was mad at me. I forgot to bring them here today. So after this, let's just all march back to Prairie Lights and you can buy that other book. 'Cause what am I but a salesman? I wrote this book in a fit of passion, not far from Corsica, where my wife was on sabbatical this semester. Because last summer my son came to me, he's 12 years old. He didn't walk out of school because he had strep throat. You know, these kids with their excuses these days. But last summer my 12 year old son came to me on the day that Trump announced he would pull out of the Paris Accords. We're the only nation out of 197 nations that refused to be a part of the Paris Climate Accords, which even in themselves was insufficient. Jim Hansen blasted it, it was a fraudulent accord. And we can't even get there. Of course, our Iowa City Council has spent years talking about climate change, and now we're finally going to have a little climate plan that is so deficient, it's not even worth talking about. Fairfield has a much more rigorous climate action plan. It passed years ago. Dubuque, I love Dubuque. They passed a climate plan three years ago that is twice as ambitious and what we're doing here in Iowa City. But we won't talk about that. And my son said, is there any hope? And how do you look at your 12 year old son when you know what Mike Carberry has been fighting all of his life for clean energy. How do you answer your son when you know it's 45 degrees warmer today in Alaska? How do you answer your son when you have interviewed African refugees in Sicily who have lost their children in boats? How do you answer your son, is there hope, when you know who is in the White House? Of what the EPA has done? And I said hey, you know, in 1782, Tom Paine wrote about the Americans in Paris. There was this man named Abbe Rynal who had wrote this book about the American Revolution from France. And he said you've got it all wrong. It wasn't a fight over taxes and representation. It was a fight over transformation. That our resistance movement is what defines us as Americans. It was an act of renewal that now we can see a new world. And as the Americans were negotiating with the Brits for the final resolution of our departure in 1782, in Paris, Thomas Paine said do not let arrogance drive you. That you must do two things. You must work with the rest of the world in a global cooperation. And secondly he said you must see science as the temple of humanity and make your decisions based on science. This was in 1782. And think about it, 200 years later, or whatever it is, we pull out of the Paris Accords. And so this book was for my son to say, this is your generation now. This is your resistance. You have it in your hands to make the world what you want. But it begins now. Not in the complacency of the rest of us in our generation. Not in the subterfuge of academia. And I'm an academic and a scholar. Not in this risk-free sense of privilege, but that you're willing to walk out and put your life on the line as if it matters. So thank you so much today for having me, thank you. - [Janet Lyness] The high school students have been leading the sensible gun control movement in the last week. Do you think their resistance can make more headway than Moms Demand Action or other groups? - [Jeff Biggers] Thank you, yes, thank you. You know, five years ago I went back to Arizona and covered the mayhem with our immigration in Arizona and wrote a book about it. I was moved by a group of high school students. Tucson was affected by a law that banned Mexican-American studies. That in a school district that was a majority Mexican-American, they were not allowed to teach Mexican-American history. Of course, that law was passed by a rabid right-wing Tea Party legislature, of people who had largely immigrated from Indiana and Illinois. The kids walked out, they protested, they occupied. They fought, and fought, and fought. And two months ago, Wallace Tashima, federal court judge overruled the state after eight years of waiting. It was the kids who refused to give up, and not the adults. The adults ended up in this kind of circular firing squad and attacking each other. But it was the young kids who never gave up. Tashima, of course, is a hero of mine. He's an amazing judge on the courts, who was in fact in the interment camps in Arizona as a Japanese young American. He understands the power of youth. Of course, the kids in Tucson realized they were in the 50th anniversary of the walkouts in LA, of East LA when Chicano students, you know, took on the largest school district in inequality. So eventually it led to some changes. Of course, they were following the footsteps of the Birmingham Children's Crusade, when in fact in Birmingham, no one could get their act together, and it was the children who said, we will go face the dogs, we'll face the powerful water hoses. And thousand of children in Birmingham were arrested. It shocked the nation. And within one week, the businesses and lunch counters were desegregated. And then two months later, of course, the schools were segregated. That Mother Jones in 1903 led the Children's March of these kids who in child labor. That in fact, it's kids who I think speak truly truth to power. They don't get caught up in the quagmire of politics. They're very common sense-y like Tom Paine. That this does not make sense. In Iowa last year, we were all too busy to pay attention. Joe Bochum is rightly pissed off at us because we didn't go to Des Moines, Des Moines in February of last year pass one of the most horrendous extremist gun bills in America, that I strips law enforcements right to inform a gun seller if that gun owner's permit has been suspended, which means if you have a lunatic who loses his permit, at law enforcement, you are not allowed to now go tell the gun sellers not to sell a weapon to that kid. We also passed a law that was mocked on every single comedy show that made Iowans look like a bunch of hayseeds because we passed a law that said if you're under the age of 14, you have any rights you want to play with a weapon as long as you're with a sober 21 year old, and how many sober 21 year olds do you see in Iowa City? so the kids are going to change things, and I think the mothers are going to be right there with 'em. - [Janet Lyness] Yes, we could talk a lot more about guns, and I'd be glad to join in. James Hansen advocates the use of nuclear power to fight climate change-- - Is it your question Mike? - [Mike] Of course it is. - [Janet Lyness] You recognized it, okay, I'll finish reading it though. - [Mike] It's the last one by the way. - [Janet Lyness] Okay, so he advocates the use on nuclear power to fight climate change even though nukes are dirty, dangerous, expensive, and will take too long to deploy to do any good for fighting climate change. Should I resist the hell out of him? - [Jeff Biggers] You should and we have and you have, and we have amongst our allies a lot of disagreements, the Sierra Club posted a major victory this week in Pennsylvania, they said we're going to, we have a legal agreement to shut down a coal-fire plant in 12 years which will then shift to a natural gas in Pennsylvania, and we said that's a victory? And meanwhile you have Jim Hansen who's our hero saying we don't have any time, time's up. Either we switch to nukes, or whatever we can do, or it's hopeless, and I agree with Mike 100%, we've tried to hold Jim accountable, I've been to the Navajo nation, I've interviewed people who've dealt with uranium mining, its devastated the rez, its devastated New Mexico, the amount of water you need with nukes alone, the money it takes to build nuclear plants, and now it's going anywhere from nine to 10 billion dollars, that to me, if you really want to talk about high stakes, you can't go with nuclear, but there are many other options. We can't be Pollyanna about solar, I have solar panels on my house, cost very little. Got my loan out of the credit union, we pay per month, we went through Moxie Solar, it provides about 38 to 40%, and we have a really crappy house too, completely covered by solar. We can't be Pollyanna though, we need major infrastructure to do this, but it can happen through renewables, and I think that's what we're seeing is if there's a will, there's a way, and we can work this out, and I think Jim Hansen should be praised, but also held accountable for his views, so I would say go and do a sit in tomorrow night for Jim. - [Janet Lyness] Okay, the writing on this looks amazingly familiar, but I'll ask it. The Iowa's legislature is debating a bill that essentially would turn pipeline protesters into so called terrorists, your thought please, and there's a hashtag #waterislife to include in it. - [Jeff Biggers] All right, as you've learned so much from our Meskwaki friends, water is life, and think about it, there were three indigenous villages and the last leader here, before we so called took this land as part of the black hawk purchase, black hawk was in presence, there wasn't much of a purchase. We tend to forget what happened truly in Iowa with our indigenous people. But, the leader of the Meskwaki, and I'm blanking on his name, it's the name of the county, he starts with a P, he said, whatever you do, don't seed your corn where we have buried our dead. And of course as we know, the whole river, we used to live up on the bluff, is full of indigenous burial sites. The 99.9% of Iowa has been transformed. I'm from strip mining Southern Illinois, we thought we had been ruined, 99.9% of Iowa has been stripped of your native prairie. And the prophecies of the Meskwaki are coming back, and so here we have it once again, and I went from following Arizona's yay who tea party legislature, that was crazy, two years of my life, death threats, seeing that kind of fight in Arizona thinking whoa, I'm happy to get back to Iowa, and now we have a legislature who has these crazy bills that if you try to do any kind of disruption or illegal activity, or civil disobedience like our wonderful 100 Grannies that you can be prosecuted by Janet's office for terrorism, and by federal authorities for terrorism. And think about that in this state, and so yes we have to get back to Des Moines, once again I feel lie we've all betrayed Joe Bochum in these days, because we are so busy dealing with Washington that there are these wild laws going through so quickly in Iowa that can have incredible impact on who we are, allowing the pipeline to go through, but in many other respects, any farmer who doesn't want a pipeline in his back yard and goes out and throws a rock at that pipeline can be called a terrorist, and you have to really ask is that who we are as Americans, and so these laws really need to be confronted. Once again, you got a funny question? These are all so serious. - [Janet Lyness] Well, I like the first part of this, after we get today's video of your speech to go viral on YouTube, if you had only two minutes to speak to all of America's junior high and high school students, what would you say about their efforts to reduce school size, school, I can't read this last, school shooting, thank you. - [Audience Member] You're welcome. - [Jeff Biggers] All right. Tinker vs Des Moines. You know, I'm a cub fan, so Tinker, Evers, and Chance was our chant, you know? You're like the only one who gets these jokes man. Tinker vs Des Moines gives you the right to protest, and until our kids walk out daily, I ask my son what are you doing back in school today? Keep walkin' man, and don't stop until you get to Des Moines. That until we do this, there is going to be no school safety, my wife who trains teachers at Western Illinois University and she works in the quad cities, we cringe last night to watch the CNN town hall, and to hear that they're going to arm teachers, or want to arm teachers and janitors and anybody else. And think about that absurdity of that that we're going to put on special windows, and I think that's what we have to talk about with our kids is you can't stop. Can't stop, won't stop, as all you hip-hop people keep talkin' about. And that's what the young people have to do today, until we make these changes. There are very few moments in history that we call hinge moments, when something has happened that makes the rest of us finally wake up out of our complacency, and that's what happened with Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks had been an activist for years, she was a young woman, she was a union activist, she had worked with my hillbilly, she had gone to this wonderful folk school in Eastern Tennessee called the Highlander Folk school which led the civil rights movement and trained young people, and she had done so many thing, and it was just in that one moment among many protest that Rosa Parks had this hinge moment, and I think now we are in a hinge moment just like we are with the Me Too moment, in fact I kind of feel like we're gettin' ready to go back into 1968 right now, and that's a beautiful thing, but it's only when we keep the ripple of resistance going. - [Janet Lyness] Google, Facebook, and other companies are moving to Iowa to get 100% wind energy, yet the U of I continues to burn coal and biomass until 2025 when it could buy at 100% of renewable energy today and shut down the coal plant, should we resist? - [Jeff Biggers] Yeah, whoever wrote that is after my heart. The coal-fire plant, it doesn't create electricity though. The coal-fire plant creates steam, and that steam goes up to the hospital, so that's the Trump card of the university, well Jeff, do you want to shut down the hospital? We have a son who has a very serious disease, we've been to the hospital a lot. Do I want to shut down the steam, you know? And that's when I say well, have you ever been to Ball State? Ball State had the same decision, in 2008, after our great flood, we had the choice to get tons of FEMA and federal money to completely re-vamp our system, and our die in the wall coal people on campus refuse to consider it, and they rebuilt the same fail system. Adaptation does not exist when you adapt to a failed system, that's not adaptation, that's called failure. When you spend 61 million dollars on concrete to raise the road one foot above a hundred year flood plane that floods every two or three years, you're only doing it for one reason, because you want to get to the stadium faster for the games, and we know that. God, that Southern preacher thing's coming out isn't it. - [Audience Member] Amen. - [Jeff Biggers] Amen. And so I'll end with this, I want to end on a good note, because I'm looking at McBride. Students, once upon a time we actually had a intellectual who was our president. Thomas McBride is my hero. He was this great scientist who was really into fungus, and he wrote this amazing book about the biology of Shakespeare. He was a renaissance man, he had turned the presidential mansion into biodiversity mecca, he was someone who completely challenged the country. Think about it, once upon a time our president of the University of Iowa was one of the most nationally renowned ecologists, he was head of the Forest Association, he with Shimek and two other professors realized there's no money in this state, we'll take our own money, Shimek being great son of a immigrant and refugees, and they went and bought what now is our most important research station in Northern Iowa, and McBride gave this incredible speech in 1890s, which you can read about on July 4th $19.99. and McBride said in 1890s dear Iowa, act now, we must see tres as sacred as anything else in our nation, we must plant a tree on every farm, every creek, every plot, everything, we used to have agroecology on the Pentacrest, now we have pesticides. And McBride said if you don't act now, you will pay for it in 100 years. He was talking about the obvious reality of erosion and flooding that we deal with today. Thomas McBride should be a household name, our current president needs to be bombarded with Thomas McBride books, and we must confront what's going on with this coal-fire plant, the audacity to claim a victory that in 10, eight years we're going to shut down a coal-fire plant which is ridiculous. This is, the theme semester this semester is sustainability, and the newspapers say we have 96 classes for sustainability. Colorado state has 982, Stanford has 1,300. This is a laughing stock of sustainability, and we have to confront that when we're putting nearly 100 million dollars into making sure the seats in the football stadium are a little more comfy for our behinds. Where are our priorities? Thomas McBride is rolling over his grave and I'm worried his grave is just going to float down the river from erosion, and we must act, and it is in your hands as students and as retired faculty, and as the few faculty who still will talk to me to hold this campus accountable, because we can gentrify, we can have all these great high rises with no energy efficiency restrictions, we can build all these high rises with no renewable energy mandates. We have four urban little baby gardens, and my brother from Madison, where are you again? You keep hidin' back there. Madison has 293 community gardens. We can talk about being a progressive town, but we're not going to be part of the resistance until we step out of this complacency and really hold people accountable, and that starts with ourselves. - [Janet Lyness] Well we now conclude our presentation, I want to give one more big thank you to Jeff Biggers for his presentation and for his encouragement to resist, thank you. I also thank our sponsors, the University of Iowa International programs, the University of Iowa's honors program, the University of Iowa public policy center and the Stanley U of I Foundation Support Organization for their generous support, and we also thank today's special sponsors Paul Weller and Sara Rynes and Joe Wegman, and we thank City Channel 4 for making our programs available to viewing audiences. And Jeff, I am very delighted to give you as a very small token of our resistance, or actually, of our thank you for joining us here at the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, and it's our very coveted Iowa City Foreign Relations Council mug so, - [Jeff Biggers] Great, thank you. - [Janet Lyness] Thank you, keep up the resistance. Thank you. and we are adjourned.