Conversations in Social Justice:

Podcast transcript

 

Cath Heinemeyer, lecturer in arts and ecology at York St John University, talks to Thimali Kodikara, producer and presenter of the Mothers of Invention podcast (@MothersInvent) about the intersections between climate justice and social justice, grassroots activism and the inspiring stories of women of colour as the innovators and leaders of the environmental movement.

 

Catherine: Hello, and welcome to the Institute for Social Justice at York St. John. This is one of the first in our exciting series of podcast Conversations in Social Justice. And for this podcast, we are talking climate justice. And we have got, I think one of the best people we could possibly have to interview to talk about this. And I’m going to introduce her in just a minute. First of all, I’ll introduce myself. My name is Catherine Heinemeyer. I’m lecturer in arts and ecological justice at York St. John, and I was told you can interview anybody you like for this podcast interview. And because it was climate justice I wanted to talk about and the implications that has for curriculum at York St John, I went straight to my very favourite podcast, which is called Mothers of Invention. First of all, it’s brilliant title for a podcast, I discovered this podcast right at the beginning of lockdown, and probably like a lot of you. I wasn’t feeling great. At the beginning of lockdown, the world seemed to be imploding. And not just because of COVID, it felt like COVID was coming on top of a whole set of layers of other global crises, poverty, inequality, racism, climate change, running away with itself, ecological crisis. This podcast when I discovered it, it was a massive thing for me, because what it does is it assembles stories, interviews with people from the grassroots, right up to CEOs and presidents of countries who are actually doing things about climate justice at scale. They’re innovating. They are coming up with solutions from the frontlines. They’re people who are having to deal already with the consequences of climate change and climate injustice. And that’s why they’re the ones who are coming up with really great solutions. This podcast, just to give you a brief idea, within the first couple of series I learned about Solar Sister in Africa, which is finding employment as well as community energy for rural communities. I heard about women working within the US evangelical Christian culture to bring climate justice conversations there, about people taking their governments to court for not taking action on climate change and winning, people who are innovating in circular economy in the fashion industry, creating models of fashion that don’t create waste, people creating green jobs and green businesses with the most marginalised communities, people learning from indigenous people. I could go on and on and on. Basically, this stuff is all already happening. These stories are all there for us to learn from and I feel like this podcast gathers them all together. So today to finally know introduce my guest, this is Thimali Kodikara, who is one of the presenters and also the producer of the series of Mothers of Invention. She co-presents with the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson, and with comedian Maeve Higgins. Thimali and Maeve both live in New York and Mary’s all over the place because she’s one of the elders of the United Nations and is a warrior for climate justice. So as I say, this podcast has been a fantastic discovery for me as an educator, and I’m so delighted to welcome you here Thimali so that you can share some of it with other people in the York St John community and anybody else who might be listening today.

 

Thimali: Well, Catherine, how do I frame that introduction and hang it on my wall of my tiny Brooklyn apartment? That was amazing because I’m usually making the podcast and on the other side of it, though, this is a very special moment for me and slightly uncomfortable, but I will suffer through it in your good company. So very excited. Thank you for having me.

 

Catherine: It’s a first for both of us. So we look after each other.

 

Catherine: I find climate justice a difficult thing to define. Can you can you tell us how you understand that term?

 

Thimali: Yeah, climate justice, is the Human Rights aspect of climate change. So you know, when we discuss climate, certainly in, you know, in the global north context, we try and sort of commit it to numbers and statistics and a lot of very heavy data, which is all incredibly important and incredibly relevant. But as Mary often puts it, you know, she doesn’t understand why the image of climate change is always you know, a polar bear. She’s like, I love the polar bears, but also it really should be sort of an indigenous woman working barren fields with no access to clean water sources or available water sources and you know, with an enormous family of children to look after, and no husband because he’s gone to work, you know, hundreds of miles away. In the closest city because they can’t grow food on their land anymore like that is the guts really of what we’re trying to discuss on the show, is you know how climate change is deeply affecting communities and in particular black and brown and indigenous women, girls, gender non conforming folks who are existing on the frontlines of those issues, as you’ve brought up, we still think about in the global north, we think about climate change is something that will happen in the future. But in actuality, it’s been happening for generations already to all kinds of communities all over the world. So we’re trying to address that and recognise that talent, creativity, intelligence, genius, live in all factions of society. And therefore, it goes to say that, obviously, these people who are existing on the frontlines of the climate crisis have the best, most holistic solutions for us to be engaging in and listening to and learning from.

 

Catherine: It sounds obvious, really, when you put it like that. And yet, yeah, as I’m sure we’ll go on to discuss that isn’t really the face of the climate movement, a lot of the time that most people would immediately think of, but tell me first a bit about yourself. I have worked out from one of the podcast issues that you and I are exactly the same age, because we both [laughs] I’m not like outing, you here, because you already put it on the podcast.

 

Thimali: Oh Yeah please do, I’m not I’m not afraid of age.

 

Catherin: Yeah, we both had our 40th birthday at the very beginning of lockdown. But tell me a bit more about yourself and how you came to be interested and involved in climate justice issues?

 

Thimali: Well, the truth of the matter is, I had absolutely no idea about climate issues. When I started working on the show. That’s not entirely true. Actually, I knew all the key bullet points, Paris Climate Agreement, but my issue was always racial justice intersectional, feminism, immigration advocacy and reform, those felt so much more apparent and still do in many ways. You know, those are the issues that I deal with on a daily basis, on an hourly basis, I’m sort of trying to manoeuvre those things constantly. But I actually had a friend who worked in immigration reform in New York, South Asian friends Sri Lankan friend, actually, and she was a really big deal in immigration, and had quit her job to work in climate and everybody, all of us in the community, like, what are you doing, like climate is a white people’s issue? Like, what do you mean? What do you do what’s happening, you know, really didn’t understand the connections at all, but really respected her and, and so sort of kept it in the peripheries. And it wasn’t until I was invited to come and work on the show that I really sort of, had to do my digging around and understand how I could possibly augment this show. Because I joined in season two, season one is actually launched out of London, but the executive producers are like, no, it’s got to be you. And I’m like, Why? Why is it gotta be me.

 

But actually, it was Mary, who helped me make the connection really early on, because I went to and I asked, you know, people seem to be using the terms environmental justice and climate justice interchangeably. Do you do the same thing? She was like? No, they are two very different issues, because climate refers to the existential crisis that is, is occurring on planet Earth. And it clicked into place for me just immediately that, that it was going to be black and brown people that were going to be affected most directly and most quickly, and then making the connections that like, Oh, this is already been happening, and oh my god, yes, my own family, my, my aunt was killed in a tsunami in 2004. I watched family in Sri Lanka, you know, dealing with floods, season two, very quickly, after I started working on the show, we had the former president of the Maldive Islands on the show, which is just you know, right there next to Sri Lanka. So all everything started connecting very, very quickly. But it’s very important to me to help people make those connections in the way that I did. But I think we can also the show sort of benefits and that we’re all learning together. And what’s brilliant about having someone like Maeve, is that she actually verbalises the questions that we feel that the audience is thinking, but maybe feel too embarrassed ask.

 

Catherin: I love how she does that. Yeah, and I love

 

Thimail: she’s our secret weapon.

 

Catherine: She really is and I love, as well as the longer episodes where you have mothers come on Mothers of Invention, you also have these minisodes, these mini episodes where you Maeve have explored things that could be how to discuss climate with your climate sceptic relatives or how to write a letter to your MP or how to sue your government and you lay it all out in 10 minutes while going for a walk down the streets of Brooklyn. I’d love the atmosphere of those shows.

 

Thimali: Yeah, well, this sort of strategy with the minisodes and it’s very strategic show actually. Because we, you know, we developed an editorial strategy for the show. But simultaneously, we develop a social justice impact strategy makes the show very, very unique. So within the full episodes, we’re really sort of doing a lot of thinking, trying to get people to really engage in, in new ways of looking at climate, but the minisodes are really more action oriented, like how can we move our audience from being an audience into like, a community? And how do we activate that community into interaction? So yeah, as you said, is Maeve I both learning on the go, which is really, really, really fun, and we it forces us to have a relationship with our environment. So we’ve every single person working on the team has seen their behaviours shift and change a little bit from interacting with the show.

 

Catherine: I love that atmosphere of learning that goes on and exploration and curiosity and I think it’s very inclusive. Do you feel that these perspectives that you’re bringing that, that you’re allowing us to see that you’re learning from perspectives of people of colour, people in the most marginalised communities, especially women of colour, because most of the Mothers of Invention are actually women – do you feel that all these voices have been excluded from the climate debate? And, you know, what consequences has that had for us so far?

 

Thimali: Yeah, I mean, women of colour generally excluded from most things in general, it’s not uncommon. But I’d like to think that the way that we’re developing the show is helping people understand how to better include women of colour, not just in the climate movement, but in all aspects of life, the way that we sort of set up the hosts, for example, you know, Mary just does such a beautiful job of addressing the issues of women from global south nations may does a fantastic job addressing issues in global north nations with, you know, more diasporic issues. So being able to sort of talk to people on their level, we’re having our audience learn how to listen, how to learn how to engage with women of colour, but also, our whole team is almost exclusively women of colour, mostly black women, the whole of season three, we have one man and everybody else’s is women, only two white women, everybody else is black or brown, that also sort of influences the work that we’re doing on the show. But it’s prioritising women of colour. It’s really, when I think about democracy, when I think about justice, that is who is in the centre, the most marginalised people in the room are, who is in the centre of that conversation, if you’re not including them, you’re not really coming up with comprehensive strategies, you know, it’s just it doesn’t, it’s always going to be a half baked idea. So I’m hoping that people are learning to change their behaviours and find ways to include women of colour in all aspects of life that they do.

 

Catherine: I often feel with the stories that the mothers bring to the show, I often feel they are already encountering issues that people where I’m living might not encounter for another 10 or 20 years, because we’re a bit further back from the frontlines. So we really need to listen to them, because they’re the ones who are already developing the solutions and the leadership, and we need to hear how they’re doing it, whether it’s technical innovation, like there was this wonderful one about Green Wave – new forms of aquaculture that will actually restored marine environment where it’s really degraded and will give incomes to numerous people on an artisanal level, you know, we need to learn this stuff. This is the stuff we need to be putting into action before it hits us ideally.

 

Thimali: Exactly. And again, you know, I think there is lots and lots and lots of passive racism in the way that organisers will presume that a white Western, often male idea of what the solution should be, or college educated, you know, idea of how things should be or how things should progress is the only perspective in the room, which should be listening to. But for us, it’s like, it’s absolute nonsense. The genius is everywhere, it is absolutely everywhere. And it’s enhanced by education, it’s enhanced by access to money, it’s enhanced by access to resources. But fundamentally, these ideas are everywhere. And we’re proving it on the show all the time. We, as you said, we speak to people, you know, who are working in, in government level, who are state leaders, all the way through to grassroots farmers, you know, organisers, activists, artists, all kinds of people. And there is work to be done at every single level. And that’s sort of the power of the climate justice movement is that everyone could participate and get involved.

 

Catherine: Well, I mean, it would be lovely to hear from you a couple of your favourite examples, really, because we’ve got all of the Mothers of Invention you’ve ever had together all in one room, it would be such a diverse gathering as you just said, in terms of like age, and sector and language and culture and life experience – could you tell us about maybe two of the ones who have inspired you the most or given you the most sense of hope for the future?

 

Thimali: It’s a really tough question. It’s a really tough question. Because if you listen to this show, I mean, what you have is it’s super, it’s really super powerful mix of people. And there is definitely something to learn from every single one of them. This season, we just finished season three. So it’s very, very close to me at the moment, but we had a woman called Vivien Sansour on the show. Yes, she’s incredible. And she’s the founder of the Palestinian seed library. So she is based in the occupied West Bank in Palestine. And she is finding ways to return or find seeds that going extinct that have been indigenous that land for centuries since like Canaanite times, and bringing them back to life. And she’s also an artist. So the poetry she puts into the seed and of possibility and ancestry and family, and it’s just so exquisite. But also, I know I’m doing a good job, when I can bring someone to Mary really sort of surprises her or excites her. And, you know, Mary’s, you know, through her work has spent a lot of time in Palestine. She talks about how impactful it was listening to Vivien talking about dignity, you know, the quality of life that she has been forced to exist within is seemingly the and undignified perspective to be living from but Vivian’s perspective is like living with absolute dignity. It’s the people who are oppressing me that aren’t dignified. And Mary’s still talks to me about it still sits with her. And it’s something that she talks about in her other work. So that was really, really beautiful moment.

 

Catherine: Love that one, because I’m a storyteller, that’s my artistic practice. And I love the way Vivien made the link between the seeds that belong to communities that she was sharing that and they were appreciating those seeds again, and the stories that came with them. And she developed a kind of moving kitchen, didn’t she, that would come to a village and people would come out and gather around this kitchen and show each other how to cook these varieties of beans or whatever seed it was. And in doing that all the stories would come out of who had developed the seed varieties, who had kept them What did they used to be used for in the past, and it wasn’t just the seeds that were being celebrated, then, it was the culture itself that was being celebrated, which I guess comes back to what you’re saying about dignity in oppressive surroundings?

 

Thimali: Exactly. I love the way you said that, Catherine. Yeah, that’s sort of the power of our show, I think is, is the storytelling, it’s, again, if you try and explain away climate change through data and statistics, you’re gonna get maybe 5% of the room engaged in that information that they will then take away and use or share. But really, the stories are where the point of change are. And that’s, that’s what’s so powerful about stories like Vivien’s is that it’s, it’s the escapism we sort of needed to have in this period of lockdown. We needed to be able to leave our homes and be and travel the world and at a time when we can’t. And yeah, being able to hear these very rich stories is helping us connect our audience to the issue really, in a very direct way.

 

Catherine: Well tell us another one. Tell us another example. Give us a sense of the range, another Mother of Invention that you really learn something from if you were to pick one.

 

Thimali: Oh, I know. It’s so hard. This is tough. I will go maybe with, because as a producer on the show it’s also a very different perspective than just listening to the stories. So I would say maybe working on Eriel Deranger’s story and she is running an indigenous project in Alberta in northern Canada. She’s from the Athabascan Chipewyan First Nations people. But she grew up on land, which has now been turned into tar sands. And it’s such a violent, invasive, disgusting way of treating a landscape. And it’s so far away from the English suburban upbringing that I had, just to sort of sit through the drama of her description of what she experienced having gone and camped on the land with her parents to returning to that land 10 years later, driving them up over a ridge and just hearing the soundscape of these cranes and trucks and in a way from the butterflies and the bees and the birds that she’d heard that really sat with her and resonated throughout our life. And I think, you know, going back to that those connections trying to help our audience directly to the issue in a very visceral way, in a human way, that was really powerful moment for me, I would say, it’s doesn’t always come through intellectual thinking. It doesn’t always come through data or new concepts. Sometimes it’s just a felt, experienced thing. And something that we’re really lucky to have talking about feminist solutions is we can afford to talk about things like, you know, love and care and compassion. And it’s something that connects us all together. And yeah, Eriel’s story’s a really, really powerful one, it was tough, but it was really beautiful.

 

Catherine: Well, when I listened to that one, I really recognise what you say about the just sometimes that emotional gut feeling that you get because I was listening to her talk about Athabasca, which, as you say, is a much more dramatic situation than anything I’ve seen firsthand. But it made me think of when I was a child of about 10 and on the route to my Granny’s house was a beautiful meadow that was lovely in the springtime full of flowers and and butterflies. And we drove past it in a car. It’s not that I used to go frolicking there all the time as a child, I wish I had, but then housing development appeared on it started to be built up and it and it was built within months. And it’s expanded ever since. So now most of that gap of land between our town and and where my granny lives is full of this housing development like a barytes housing development. And I remember the grief that I felt as a 10 year old when I saw those first scaffoldings and hoses going up. And that sense of a place that you love not being the same place anymore.

 

Thimali: Solastalgia.

 

Catherin: I think so. Yes, solastalgia for for home when you’re still at home, but home is not what it was. Yeah,

 

Thaimali: Yeah. It’s so powerful, isn’t it?

 

Catherine: So with all this range of stories and the power that they have, what do you think University educators could be getting from Mothers of Invention and other podcasts like it? You know, we should mention, there’s some other fantastic podcasts as well on climate justice, but you know, how can we be? Do you have any thoughts on how lecturers like me can be using these stories in our teaching? I mean, obviously, we’re all teaching different subjects, and it’s going to depend how they fit in, but do you have any thoughts about that?

 

Thimali: I mean, what you’re doing is so fantastic. I was just saying this morning, if you know, I spent four years in art school and I would have given an arm to be able to have had the work that I was doing integrated into social justice work. I actually ended up doing an advertising programme but on my day one of my advertising programme I told my professor I had absolutely zero inclination of working in advertising, I wanted to learn about this awesomely powerful communicative medium, and use it in a positive context. And he was like, Alright, then

 

Catherine: Was he interested to hear that? Did he work with that?

 

Thimali: Yeah well, I was very lucky in that he had worked in New York, in the 60s in these like, bugged Trotskyist offices, like, we were sort of like peas in a pod in that we were always seeking the most subversive way to, to do what we what we wanted them to do. But um, he definitely got it. And I was really, really lucky to have that kind of encouragement. But I did find myself sort of on my own a lot, because everybody else was sort of vying for an art direction copywriting job, and I was completely in the opposite direction. So having sort of the support, a support system for that curiosity would have been really, really powerful. But I think in the way that the podcasts can be used, I’m hearing now that people are having like listening clubs and things to discuss the subject matter. But I would really love also for the mini-sodes to come into play where people actually like take actually finding ways to take action, finding more innovative ways to take action. And we’re doing this in like very short turnaround times. But I’m sure there’s all kinds of wonderful, creative ways to get involved in the climate justice movement, but it is about action. None of this is about theory. We’re not trying to just as I say, the way that we develop the show is not just rooted in the transference of information. It’s nothing if we can’t get people to get up off their butts and go do something. I feel that happening, but I think that it could be explosive in an educational context.

 

Catherine: Sometimes I wonder if we have a kind of a hidden curriculum in all of our subjects. Like there’s plenty of scope for an interested student in almost any subject to take a climate justice focus in their studies, like you did. You said, right, I’m doing this degree, but I’m going to turn it around to my purpose. But that’s probably only ever a minority of students that are going to do those things, and really shape a course in that very determined way to their own their own values. I think a lot of students might look to us as educators to see what sort of examples do we draw on? What kind of projects do we suggest, if we’re talking about in my discipline, our own artistic practice? What practice do we talk about? What examples do we give what speakers do we invite, and for me, I think that’s where Mothers of Invention provides loads and loads of grist to my mill, because I can tell these stories, I can link them to different people in different subjects, different sectors. So I hope that they provide examples for people who are wanting to work at the cutting edge of their subjects and bring that cutting edge to their students. So hopefully, we can develop it in that way. But I mean, one thing I really appreciate about Mothers of Invention is that as well as informing and as well as inspiring people to act, it really, even as a listener, I feel like I’m drawn into the community somewhat. It’s as much about warmth and humour and learning to look after each other in difficult times. And I feel like you really model that, is that very much a conscious thing? Or is it just because y’all love each other that much?

 

Thimali: No, I’m really glad you noticed that. And it is very strategic again. And it’s because we love each other at this point, we’ve gone through so much in the course of productions quite full on, as I’m sure you probably know. You know, climate crisis is terrifying. It’s an absolutely terrifying subject to talk about. Lots of people don’t want to think about it. Also, it’s highly conceptual for a lot of people who are not experiencing it firsthand. So, you know, trying to quantify something that basically amounts to the extinction of the human experience, like how do you even begin to encourage people to come and have that conversation with you. For the most part, people don’t want to do that unless there is some kind of level of deep curiosity. So the humour aspect is the way that we’ve overcome that, we’re trying to overcome that is, you know, inviting people to come listen to these stories, very warm, heartwarming stories, relatable stories, but doing it in a way that, you know, women so often do getting together, talking, laughing, supporting each other. And I think that that does show, but also through the lens that I’ve sort of pushed it in the direction of BIPOC climate leaders, people of colour certainly have used humour as a survival tool. Since always, it’s a means of self care. It’s a means of resistance, resilience. So it’s not a humours not an uncommon tool to use in social justice movements, I don’t think but it definitely is absolutely critical to climate conversations, I think, because we’re in it for a long time. Now, we’re starting these conversations today. But these are conversations we’re gonna have to sustain for a long time. So in a way that women’s rights movement has a sort of has a culture behind, it racial justice as a culture behind it, climate doesn’t quite have that yet. So we’re sort of developing that, a very privileged and intimidating place to be, but I would hope that humour is injected into that culture as we continue to grow it.

 

Catherine: That’s so interesting, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody, you know, articulate it like that, that every social movement needs to have its own culture that holds it together, that glues and binds it and sustains it. That’s a really interesting way of thinking about it.

 

Thimali: Yeah. And I’ve actually thinking about how to grow it, it’s part of our strategy is thinking about how we can overlay it on top of existing movements instead of trying to start it from scratch when we’ve only got nine years to go before they’re irreversible effects to the planet, you know, so helping people make those connections, again, between their own movements and the climate movement, because climate justice is racial justice and climate justice is gender justice, you know, so it’s just expedites things as well.

 

Catherine: Absolutely. And also, if I think of the kind of conversations I have with students on these subjects, on climate justice, you know, they are exactly as you say, they find this a really difficult thing to think about and if they’re choosing a subject to make a piece of theatre about they might choose something that feels smaller and more manageable where they feel a sense of agency such as, I don’t know, mental health or body image. But as you say, all of these things are connected. And if we want people to engage your climate justice, they need to feel they’re coming into a conversation that’s a welcoming room, that’s ready to welcome them. And it’s ready to take their concerns with mental health, for example, which I think is really bound up with climate justice in lots of different ways, and continue their conversation as part of that bigger conversation about climate justice. And I wonder, you know, sometimes I like muse on what the ideal university would be, that would prepare students for the challenges that the 21st century is going to throw at them and their careers and in their lives as citizens and parents and teachers and designers, and what all else they’re going to be. And in my mind, it includes a lot more conversation of that kind.

 

Thimali: Yeah, conversation and being outdoors. I don’t know what your upbringing was, like, your education is like Catherine, but we hardly spent any time outdoors like to make these connections to our environment, it was always something that was sort of totally separate to us, you know, like, we did eventually in primary school sort of have like an environmental area that was sort of boxed off.

 

Catherine: You can do Environment in the Environmental Area!

 

Thimali: Exactly, But like, you know, my friend Mary Annaise Heglar, who’s a fantastic climate essayist, talks about the water you drink is nature and the air in your skin, it’s nature and the air that you’re breathing is nature. Making your environment more relatable is humility, isn’t it? It’s like a form of humility.

 

Catherine: Yeah, and students can learn from – it’s not just primary school children who can learn from the immediate environment – like at York St John, we’ve actually got a beautiful campus. And we’ve got an estate team who really care about biodiversity and about energy efficiency. But I don’t know if we make the most of that in our learning. I don’t know whether we do enough to encourage students to see the campus as an ecosystem and a place. You know, our design students could be learning circular economy principles, and designing new furniture for new areas that is designed to be reused and taken apart and turned into another product. And there’s almost no subject that couldn’t be learning more, I think, from the campus.

 

Thimali: Oh, God, yeah. And that’s why the arts is so important, is making those like very intimate connections, you know, is so powerful. It’s so, so powerful. We had our guest Claire Mifflin on the show, who was a green buildings architect for 20 odd years, you know, looking at things like Sick Building Syndrome. But then doing a course in biomimicry, which is the study of systems and infrastructures in nature, and then repurposing those in modern everyday life. She realised like, wait, nature, doesn’t create wastes, like maybe waste is a design flaw in our social systems. And so went about developing the zero waste design guidelines for New York City, which was just sort of looking deeper, more intimately into how nature has so much endless creativity and so much endless possibilities. Yeah, so many possibilities.

 

Catherine: Well, I think we’re probably coming to the end of our conversation. I don’t want to end it, though, without talking about one additional project of Mothers of Invention, which is Climate Reframe, because it’s just a fantastic project. Tell us a bit about that before we go

 

Thimali: Yeah. So Climate Reframe is a satellite project of Mothers of Invention that was launched in the UK, and it’s a repository of 100 climate leaders, BAME climate leaders from across the UK. Something that comes up a lot in my work, which I was not expecting was people trying to tell me that black and brown and indigenous people are nowhere to be found in the climate movement. And that is absolutely not true. I get asked Where do you find them? How do you find them, then I say, Google. Or like asking people, but now we just sort of made it easier. And launched this project with some incredible BAME climate leaders who are working in all sectors of society. We’ve got politicians in there all the way through to youth activists. So I highly recommend everybody go and check them out. There’s just endless resources there.

 

Catherine: It’s a fantastic resource. And it’s also very hopeful and encouraging to read it because so many people in there are doing exactly that thing of connecting other movements to climate justice and bringing all their networks and all their knowledge from those movements, as well. Thimali it’s been so lovely to talk to you. I was very excited and nervous to meet you and

 

Thimali: And it was so easy,

 

Catherine: You’re not scary, actually.

 

Thimali: You’re not scary either. I thought maybe you might be scary, but I really appreciate the work that you are doing, it’s so impressive to me, as I said, like I would have loved to have had the opportunity to connect my arts experience with social justice work. And it’s phenomenal that that you’re working so hard at that. So thank you for the work that you’re doing to,

 

Catherine: You know, we have a long way to go. And we need to keep learning. So thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts. And yeah, everybody go and check out Mothers of Invention and Climate Reframe.

 

Thimali: Please do and if any of your students would like to be in touch with me, please, please let them I would love to support any work that anyone is doing.

 

Catherine: Could they find you on Twitter?

 

Thimali: They can definitely contact me on Twitter. I’m trying to do better at it so you can definitely find me that way. My handle is @apathysuckseggs,

 

Catherien: apathy sucks eggs. Indeed, it does.

 

Thimali: Indeed it does. Catherine.

 

Catherine: thank you so much. Lovely to meet you. Have a great rest of your day.

 

Thimali: Absolutely. You too enjoy.